#fanfic extract

[kazisstillawake]

🐍 The Runemaster - Tomarry ⚡️

Excerpt

Harry left with a lot on his mind. His mess was far from over, but it felt like he was finally making some headway.

He turned the corner and slammed into someone. His bag slipped off his shoulder, and all his books, parchment, quills, and ink bottles slid across the floor.

‘Sorry,’ he said on reflex, crouching to grab his stuff.

‘No, my fault.’

Harry’s blood ran cold, and his scar flared. He kept his eyes down as he scooped his books back into his bag. He discreetly flattened his hair over his scar. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Riddle crouch and help.

‘It’s alright,’ said Harry, hoping to stop him.

Riddle ignored his words, and Harry tried not to rush too much. You’re nobody; you’re one of many, thought Harry, the words a circling mantra.

He shoved the last book into his bag and looked around for the rest. His eyes settled on the last few that Riddle held out. Before Harry could take them, Riddle changed his mind and disregarded his hand. He shoved them into his bag and zipped it up for him. Harry tried not to wince. Bit much.

‘Thank you.’

‘No problem.’ They stood up. ‘How has your first week at Hogwarts been?’

‘Great, thank you.’ Harry adjusted his bag strap.

Riddle’s voice was smooth, and he spoke softly. He was probably smiling too, but Harry couldn’t bring himself to look further than the top of his tie. Neville once said that avoiding people’s eyes made you less memorable. Harry didn’t know if that was true, but it was worth a shot.

‘If you need anything, you can come to me.’

He spoke benevolently to Harry like he was a disoriented first-year. And not for the first time, Harry wondered how Voldemort was so beloved by professors and students. He was older than him; it was beyond insulting.

‘Thank you.’ It was all he could squeeze out. He felt like a broken record.

‘I’m sorry to hear about your cat.’

That cat. That damn cat.

‘He was old but thank you.’

Harry’s dead responses got the desired effect. He glanced up. There was nothing beyond the disarming smile on Riddle’s face. He had seen that smile before in the diary, and did it always look that manufactured? It was so infectious in his second year. Perspective did wonders.

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[p1princess16]

I wrote this little thing like 10 minutes ago. I was hoping to get some thoughts and opinions from you guys❤️

You can't move. 

You are stuck.

Unable to move on, but not willingly unable. Unable because of the mistakes you made that have to be fixed or made up for. And when you manage to do that, you become once again, free as a bird, living peacefully on the riverbank, ready to leave when the floods hit.

Oh what I would give to be that bird... 

Except I wouldn't fly. I would stay, looking at the opposite riverbank, wondering. 'How will I ever get there?' And if I finally decide to fly, I would think back to that view and that riverbank, its ferocious floods and the danger it gave me, but also the sight I woke up to every day, wondering the same question. 'How will I ever get there?' 

The challenge, and the feeling living at the riverbank gave me. Having my whole family constantly talk about getting to the other side. 

That is why, I have stuck with Ferrari for so long, without leaving. I am the bird, the opposite riverbank is the championship. And maybe there is an easy solution, like for the bird to fly to the other side, but i haven't found my solution yet.

I have hope in them, I know that it is possible. I know that I can't just leave now. Not after surviving so long through their floods as I lived on the riverbank.

I can do it, and I will. I am confident.

-Extract from Lost Battles Chapter 8

[saunne]

The tree under which I first met you has died, just like you. 

Just like him, too. 

And yet I seek your ghost in the sound of the waves crashing on the reefs and in the litany of the offshore breeze. I hunt our memories at the bend of every path, in the rustle of the pages of your favorite plays left to rest in my bookcase and in the delicate perfume of the white tea that we drank in silence after the rain. 

I chase after the Mirages, echoes of this ancient and sacred sea to which you had dedicated your life. The Permanence runs through your veins and those of your kind, preserving their whispers in the lapping of waves and the tinkling of raindrops. 

Some have kept your voice, imprisoned in the undertow.

My memory fades with the passing years and time smoothed the edges of grief. But I don't want to forget, not when I'm the only one who still remembers. How could I dare betray the only things I have left of you, after having already betrayed everything else ? And if that means endlessly reopening a wound that centuries should have healed… Then, so be it.

Sometimes, during sleepless nights, when the moonbeams let me imagine your silhouette in the shadows of the sheets, I think I understand. 

I wonder if that makes me a sinner too.

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[i-write-hurt-not-comfort]

A snippet from the fictober request I’m currently writing

-takes place in Nepenthe, they have just been talking about Oz-

“Of course, he doesn’t study Chemistry,” Vincent commented slyly, sipping on his drink. And the smirk donning his lips suggested he, in fact, knew he’d provoked the other. Thus, he continued. “A pointless subject, really. It’s no wonder he chose not to take it to Advanced Level.”

“Chemistry is pointless, you say?” Break sipped his drink, mirroring the other’s bitter smirk. “I think you’ll find the Chemists are the ones who formulated those Risperidone pills you take. I doubt the Literary scholars had anything to do with that.”

The glare Vincent responded with told Break rather bluntly that he should not have said that. But the fact that he could tell he’d pissed him off only made him grin more.

Reim was, of course, frantically cleaning his glasses, as he nudged Break and spoke discreetly to him, “B-Break, I’m not sure you should be making this so personal-“

“I need not be defended, Reim,” Vincent promptly cut him off, the sinister, unsettling smile creeping back onto his lips. But the glare, directed at Break, remained stern, and just as threatening. “People like you have no imagination. Getting personal is the only way you can win an argument.”

“People like ‘me’, you say?” Break raised an eyebrow. “Care to elaborate?”

“Scientists,” Vincent spat. “Ninety percent of what they say is a conspiracy, and nothing more. There is no talent to it.”

From beside him, Gilbert frowned, turning to Vincent and flashing him a rather confused, and slightly offended glance. “Um… Vince?”

[kazisstillawake]

Riddle smiled and sat on the edge of his bed. ‘How are you settling in?’

Harry hated how he was still being spoken to like a first-year. He gripped the edges of his book. ‘Fine, thank you.’

‘Have these lot been treating you well?’ He nodded to the others. The tenseness in the room was so viscous it was like they were all trapped in a jar of molasses.

‘They have.’

‘Man of few words, aren’t you?’

Oh, Harry had plenty of words. It was just that the rest of them were too colourful in their crudity to ever be spoken aloud, no matter how much he wished he could let them out of his mind.

‘Unfortunately, I’m going to need more than a “yes” and a “no” for our next conversation. Could you follow me, please?’ Riddle then stood up and left the room, not waiting for Harry to follow.

[kazisstillawake]

‘Wait, wait, is he crying? You crying?’ Rowle grinned, letting the letter hover in the air, under the wrought iron chandelier.

‘Give it back!’ wailed the boy.

‘Who’s this going to anyway?’ He held it up to his face. ‘Mrs Joan L. Hilton, 15 Edinburgh Road, Pitlochry, Scotland.’ He recited it all in a high voice, dodging the boy’s attempt to grab it. ‘Can’t be your mooggle mum, can it?’

Yaxley did a very convincing cow’s moo, and the pair of them chortled. Rowle was crying himself now, wiping his tears while the first-year looked on sullenly. From the look on his face, the epithet had gone over his head. Maybe it was for the best.

‘Ah, go fetch it mudblood.’ Rowle flung the letter out the window, and it landed outside with a distinct wet splat. ‘Woof!’ he yelled in his ear, cackling as the first-year flinched and ran past him, and out the doors to retrieve it.

[saunne]

“If your people knew that you had brought me here, there would be great unrest.”

Hearing his voice again is a miracle that I thought was impossible but oh, Dan Feng, you always liked to achieve the impossible, didn't you ? I had lost hope of ever being able to remember it accurately. Our little conversations, the sound of his laughter, the inherent rhythm of his words, the faintest singing of his accent... Those were the first things to fade from my memory. Time is but a cruel master after all.

It's hoarser, the voice of what he became. Sometimes, when my closed eyelids take me back to the damp darkness of this accursed place, I recall his screams in the distance. If the former "him" still exists, the same way that shreds of your memory persist in your new incarnation, tell me… Does he still scream ? I thought I saw him, for a moment, behind the reflection of those eyes. 

I wonder, Dan Feng. Is he still there, somewhere ? Or did I lose him just like I lost you, for a stranger wearing his face like a prosecution ?

“They will never know. Keep quiet, Yingxing — this will make us even.”

I missed hearing his name linger on your lips, that way so terribly sweet you had of rolling his name on your tongue, like a prayer, like a secret. 

I hated him for that, did you know ? He seemed to be the only thing you could ever see. But who could blame him… or rather, who could blame you ? Time is a construction in front of which we were not equal and for Yingxing, every moment was a moment to be lived. 

I was so childishly jealous of him and his tireless vibrancy, and that he had dragged you into his orbit by the mere fact of being.

He was alive, while we were content just to exist.

Was that what drew you to him in the first place, Dan Feng ? This inner fire that animated him, as luminous as his smile and the hearth of his workshop ? It is said, after all, that dying stars are the ones that shine brightest. He was destined to burn just as quickly, after all, in the face of our coming centuries. 

I was still young and immature then, hopeful that maybe you would finally see me once he was inevitably gone. I thought I had time to wait and granted him, in my great and childlike magnanimity, the possibility of loving you before me. 

But you Vidyadharas don't handle loss well and I was too blind to care, despite your hundreds of elegies on this exact theme. I have listened to them all now and learned their lesson by heart, even centuries too late.

You were never going to let him go.

Just like I could never let you go.

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[karama9]

Conversation with Hylia

This is part of a story I’m working on. If it doesn't get cut, anyway.

Link is praying to Hylia in an effort to either restore the Master Sword or get some divine inspiration on how else to go about it. The map and features of Hyrule in the story are based on Breath of the Wild, and the statue Link is praying to is the one in the Temple of Time on the Great Plateau. Link, however, is an OC of mine - this story would be taking place a very, very long time before Breath of the Wild but very, very long after Ocarina of Time.

***

Link stood in front of the giant statue, sword in hand. He was here for a specific reason but the familiar feeling didn’t seem to care – as usual, the mere sight of a statue that was almost certainly not an accurate depiction of the Goddess as she looked when she lived as a Hylian was enough to trigger a strong reaction in the oldest part of his soul. 

The feeling wasn’t all that definite. Link wouldn’t have known why the statues consistently made him so sad if not for the memory fragment he’d got from his very first lifetime. 

The memory was one of the flashes he’d gotten when he’d gone through the recall ceremony his parents had rightfully forbidden and that he’d done anyway. It hadn’t been much, but having seen it over and over again in his dreams made it quite intelligible to him. He’d seen a young girl with blond hair and blue eyes ageing and drifting away while he remained locked in place. The girl was reaching out for him, he was reaching out for her, but they were both powerless, separated forever. 

Officially, Hyrule did not know whether the first hero was the father to the children of the Goddess reborn as the first Zelda. History said the Goddess had chosen a Hero she knew would do anything for her, but what their relationship actually was wasn’t known. 

Most people sort of figured they had been a couple and that the bloodline of Zelda was also the bloodline of the first Hero, even though the Hero’s soul did not tend to be reborn within it. But as popular as the theory was, it was still just a guess with next to nothing to back it up. 

Link didn’t need to guess and didn't need proofs. He knew for a fact that the Hero had been completely consumed with love for his Zelda, and had still been at the time of his death, and he knew she loved him back. And rather than being able to reunite with her in the afterlife, the hero was trapped in an endless cycle of rebirths, forever separated from her spirit, which had moved on. 

Link cleared his throat. 

“Hello Hylia,” he said. The feelings that belonged to a man thousands of years dead threatened to flow to the surface. “He yearns for you,” he said. “He misses you so much I can feel his pain.”  

The statue made no response, but Link felt a bit lighter. It was usually how it went: acknowledging the feelings, in the third person, eased them back deeper into his own mind, out of the way of his current life.  

There was nothing he could do for his past life. Even Hylia was powerless on that score. He needed to focus on the present and the future. 

“I need your wisdom,” he told the statue.  

Deep within, a small part of him wanted to say he needed her love. He ignored it, because there was simply nothing else he could do.