A/N: So, another entry for this @flashfictionfridayofficial prompt. This time, here’s a poem. (sorry, I’m a little too incoherent to write stories or fics, atm) This was what I could come up with in the last twenty minutes.
Word Count: 112
TW: Potential Angst (???)
***
A house's tattered windows
Fling open and shut
By the heavy wind
Hiding a troubled room
On the worn armchair
A pale skeleton sits
Alone with no company
Completely sinking in misery
A wary human occupies
A dim room above
Their head resting on
A fine ancient pillow
Their mind racing with
Haunted thoughts slowly poisoning
Their heart and soul
Weighing down their being
Beneath the soft skin
Also lays soft bones
That belies a strength
Full of steel dignity
In a metaphorical closet
With dusty skeletons residing
Remember that the bones
Are soft and firm
The impact of it
Remains long enough to
Be a constant reminder
Of the gloomy past
Thank you all once again for your amazing and fantastic contributions! It was a pleasure to read them! If we missed your entry, please let us know! Also, consider to check out your fellows’ pieces and hit that like button to make a writer happy!
And don’t forget the end of the month masterlist with flash fics written for old prompts. If you feel creative tag us as well and you will get a showcase at the end of the month.
You've forgotten now, that – by @astralis-elysian
Game of Strategy – by @skaifeyth
Every Night – by @themidnxghtwriter
Old Bones – by @bigboldgold
Hot in the Kitchen – by @pamelawalkerwrites
What's This? – by @writekitwrite
Bantan – by @clad-in-sunshine
Soft Bones – by @pheita
Soft Bones Indeed – by @writingamongthecoloredroses
Decaying Love – by @wolfishwrites
In Every Life – by @emberv
Soft Bones – by @random-chaos-thoughts
Stay Soft – by @itsokaytobefreak
Soft Bones – by @stories-by-rie
Let's find that damn map! – by @soul-write
On Persimmons, plums and puppies – by @woodhouse-jay
Soft Bones – by @jewellsfrommaruss
Soft Bones – by @phantom-does-a-thing
Bargain with the Devil – by @starklyscifi
Secrets of Soft – by @meteor-writes
The Women in the River – by @pamsdrabbles
In the Name of a better Future – by @atalossforwords
On the Record – by @a-j-quill
The Key to Loving Someone – by @unceuponanaromantic
*This week, I used characters from a WIP of mine, a scifi novella I’ve been playing with for a while. Wheeeee, enjoy! - A.J. Quill
You know what adds insult to injury when you’re being chased? thought Mim, growing impatient. Locked doors.
Thankfully, the locked doors in question sprang open with a single blast from her phaser gun. She grabbed her partner by the scruff of his neck, and threw them both into the room beyond.
They hit the floor as one, and Mim just barely kicked the doors shut behind them in time to block enemy fire. Good thing their phasers aren’t as strong as ours, she mused, as a blast ricocheted off the outside.
“The pain is excruciating, thank you for asking,” snapped Sparrow. Her partner lay beside her, all his long limbs splayed except for the one arm. The broken arm.
Mim refused to look at it, abdicating guilt. Instead, she rose to her knees, scanning the room for the thing they’d come all this way for in the first place.
It wasn’t difficult to find. Sarsidian escape shuttles were, like everything else in their godforsaken military, painted the sickly shade of expired Pepto-Bismol. The thing sat on its docking base, about the size of a telephone booth. Nowhere near as charming as a Tardis, Mim observed, getting to her feet and crossing toward the launch control panel. All the controls were written in Sarsidian, of course. She cursed under her breath.
“I need you over here,” she called to Sparrow. “I can’t read your fucking language.”
“Hello? Did you not hear me the first time? Broken arm? Excruciating pain?”
“You need your arms to stand up?”
“Uh, kind of, yes! What if I fall? Maybe I’ll hurt myself worse!”
With a deep sigh, Mim stomped back the way she’d come, and amidst Sparrow’s cries of protest, dragged him to his feet. She did her best to avoid his entire left side.
“Told you to put your shield suit up,” she muttered, making sure he was steady before crisply backing away.
“I did have my shields up, thank you very much!” He gestured frantically to the armored rings he wore on each extremity—ankles and wrists, still pulsing with the telltale silver light of recent use.
Mim frowned. “If your suit was engaged when the blast hit you, then why is your arm—”
“For the ten thousandth time!” shrieked Sparrow. “I am fragile as fuck! I am a walking all-you-can-ouch buffet of chronic illness! I have soft bones!”
“Here we go,” muttered Mim. She turned back to the launch control panel, hoping the words would swim into magical focus. Of all the missions for her translator to malfunction…
Sparrow’s face was suddenly inches from hers. “Why is it,” he hissed, “that I am always in your line of fire?”
“I’ve taken fire for you plenty of times,” Mim retorted.
“Oh really? Name one.”
The doors behind them shook. Even sub-par phasers did the trick when there were forty of them.
Mim jabbed a finger at the gibberish on the launch board. “Tell me what this says. Now.”
Sparrow tilted his eyes downward without turning his head. “It says you’re an asshole.”
“Listen, little bird,” Mim hissed, and Sparrow sneered at the nickname. “Either you get us out of here, or every soft little bone in your body gets pummeled with phaser fire.” She pointed at the door. “Your former boss’s phaser fire, no less.”
Sparrow rolled his eyes. “I want it on the record that you owe me. Big time.”
“Whatever you say,” said Mim, distracted by another blow to the doors. They wouldn’t hold much longer. Sparrow reached across her—deeply invading her personal space, but then again, so did his entire existence—and punched a series of buttons. The shuttle whirred to life, and a previously invisible entry hatch swung outward to greet them.
“I can’t believe my launch codes still work,” Sparrow said. “You’d think when someone goes double-agent and partners up with the enemy,”—he gestured at Mim in her Tirithian uniform—“you’d revoke their privileges. Maybe they still like me?”
“It must be your charming personality,” said Mim, full of disdain and dragging him into the shuttle by his good side.
Cradling his injured arm, Sparrow grinned. “I want that on record, too.”
@flashfictionfridayofficial
Thanks for reading! These characters are near and dear to my strange little heart. To all those out there who manage to be both chronically ill and spunky as hell, Sparrow is with us all the way. ;) <3
Drinking coffee is a tricky thing. Doubly so when you've run eight blocks to be on time because of a subway derailment and are desperately trying not to show any of it. Lilli glared at the shake in her hand as she reset the China cup on the saucer.
The hawk eyes with the perfectly pressed suit saw the movement. She was sure of it, even if he was laser focused on his phone.
“I can get it to you on Saturday, for the base price.”
“What about Thursday?”
“Oh, no, can’t. Booked through the week. If Saturday doesn't work, I can do next Wednesday.”
“Well, I guess it’s Saturday.”
“Brilliant,” he said, smiling wide with teeth a shade too white.
Maybe she should ask about the price? The quoted one wasn’t bad, but wasn’t this always a negotiation?
“Anyway, pleasure to meet you,” he said, getting up and laying a bill on the table to cover his foul smelling tea. “See you Saturday.”
She sat there as he left, frustration dawning as she realized they’d come full circle and ended right where she’d been trying to budge him from.
The old Russian woman in the corner, all sharp angles and hard eyes, got up from her table where she’d been staring at Lilli during the whole meeting.
“Soft bones.”
“What?”
“You have soft bones. Weak.”
“What’s it to you?”
In her head, it sounded tough. Out loud, it sounded like a teenage boy quoting a gangster movie. Her voice was high enough.
The old woman sat down in the vacated seat and leaned close, hot breath hitting Lilli’s face. “That was not a human.” She leaned back, smug.
“I know.”
The woman’s brows knit together. “Then you bite off more than you can break.”
“Chew,” Lilli said, annoyed. Defensive. Hating her sweaty palms and the uncontrollable flush.
The woman looked at her, eyes devoid of the annoyance she’d try to stir up.
“The saying is ‘bit off more than you can chew’,” she clarified, as the old woman sniffed the leftover tea, muttered in her native language. “Fine. You seem to know everything, how do I fix it?”
“Not fix. Just choice,” she muttered, still shaking her head.
“Why do people keep saying that? Like this is easy!”
“Just choice,” the old woman repeated, rising from the table.
Something clinked against the saucer of her coffee cup. She glanced down to see a charm dangling off the plate.
“You need this.”
“I don’t—”
"You need this," she said firmly, accent as thick as ever. She turned and left the cafe, the waiter dropping both their bills on her table.
“Guess it’s the charge for the charm,” she muttered to herself.
“Oh honey, that's free.”
She hadn’t realized the waiter was still within hearing distance, dropping her wallet as she fumbled for her card.
“Mine at least,” the waiter said, cocking a hip and brushing the black hair out of his eyes, “Hers are inexpensive, given the quality.”
"Do you have one?" she asked, as he swept up the bills.
He laughed. “I work in every non-human's favorite place for a working lunch, I couldn’t afford not to have a few.”
She noticed a rattling key-chain dangling from his hip as he sauntered away. She picked up the charm on her own table, weighing it in her hand.
“They do help, especially with those soft bones,” he tossed over his shoulder.
She slammed the charm back down, rattling the table.
“Why does everyone think I'm weak?”
“Aren't you?” the waiter asked, setting the receipt in front of her. She stared at the charm with its dried flower and tiny skull of some unknown creature.
“No, I'm not,” she said, as firm as possible. Her voice still wavered.
He patted her on the shoulder. “Take the charm. You'll be fine.”
Yeah I don’t really know about this one. I don’t like it but I saw it and after a lot of thinking debating if I was going to do it (since I’ve been kinda taking a bit of time off tumblr) I remembered the crinkley bones thing so whatever. @flashfictionfridayofficial
203 words
“Woah Chris, what on earth happened to you?” Sharon exclaimed as the bell above the door rang.
“Ah,” Chris coughed awkwardly, “it’s kind of a funny story.”
Dave peeked around the shelves to the door.
Chris’ arm was in a sling with a purple cast.
“When did this happen?” Sharon asked.
“Last friday…” Chris scratched at the back of his neck, “but it’s fine. I’ve broken a lot of bones before.”
“Dude, how did it happen?” Dave leaned against the shelf.
“Oh, Katyln and I were cliff diving and uh… my arm got caught…” he winced and shrugged, “but really it’s fine. I’m used to it.”
“You’re used to it?” Sharon raised one eyebrow, glancing to the side at Dave. He shrugged.
“Yeah, when I was younger I broke bones all the time,” Chris rocked back and forth on the heels of his feet, “I’ve just got soft bones.”
Sharon made a noise between a choke and a snort, “What is it with you and bones Chris!”
“What do you mean?”
Dave let out a shaky breath trying to hold in his laughter.
Chris looked between Dave and Sharon, then he smiled and laughed.
“Oh are you talking about the crinkley bones comment?”
The Key to Loving Someone (is to know how to let them go)
(Written for @flashfictionfridayofficial‘s prompt: FFF60: Soft Bones. A little bit from Superheroverse featuring Siren’s backstory and one (1) adorable badass vigilante assassin who I honestly love writing. Enjoy!)
Their first kiss is part joke part experiment. Their noses bump and their foreheads knock until they figure out how to angle their faces just right. They giggle as their lips separate, constantly readjusting and trying to see how they can press their (dry, chapped) lips together to resemble a kiss.
Their kisses get more dramatic. Nyx pulls Siren’s hand and bows exaggeratedly to flip their hand over and drop a kiss to the smooth underside of their wrist. Siren smirks and trips her, sliding Nyx forward to raise a kiss to her cheek when they’re both on their way to dinner.
Once, when they spar and Nyx has won, she pins Siren to the ground with a palm to their shoulder and grins as she kissed their sweat-soaked forehead. Siren rolls their eyes and spins their body to push her off and Nyx goes, still laughing.
Nothing much changes when they start dating. Nyx flutters a litany of kisses down the line of their neck and wraps her arms around their body when they curl up together on the sofa. Siren learns the lines of her spine and the edges of her ribs where they kiss an artwork onto their girlfriend’s body. Nyx runs cold fingers down the lines of their cheeks and tuck their head under her chin.
(“Your bones are so soft.” Nyx says once, rolling over to run her fingers over Siren’s scalp. The blankets tangle around her legs.
Siren laughs and asks, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Nyx pulls her right hand out of Siren’s hair to caress their arm. She kisses their wrist where there’s a slight line where their body armour and gloves overlap on normal days. “It means that you’re my best friend, whatever else happens. Don’t ever let the world harden you.”)
When Nyx gets injured while acting in her professional capacity, Siren tends to her injuries. Nocte does the actual medical part, of course, but Siren does the ‘carrying their very grumpy girlfriend around while her legs heal’ bits. And the ‘kiss her injuries better’ bits. And the ‘laugh at her when she complains that the broken bone part isn’t even a place she wanted strengthened now her bones are going to have unequal density’ bits.
They mutually agree to stop dating because they don’t need to be dating in order to get comfort and love from each other. They know each other’s minds and movements; they don’t need to be dating in order to learn other parts of each other.
When Siren leaves for the first time, Nyx pulls them into a tight hug and presses a firm kiss to the shell of their ear. “You will always be welcome here, no matter what.”
Siren holds onto their best friend tightly, and they both pretend that they’re not crying. If Nocte notices that her younger sister’s smile is a bit more forced and that her strikes are a little more violent in the weeks that happen after Siren’s departure, she quietly cleans the blood from Nyx’s nails and from the floor and does not say anything.
Nyx does not kiss Siren while they’re recovering in the month after Nyx dragged her body from the shallows. She grips Siren a little too tight and she doesn’t leave their side for the entire time they can, yes. She murmurs how she knew that trying to be a superhero was a bad idea and really, Siren is always welcome back, yes. She talks more than ever and pulls Siren close to her whenever she has any excuse, yes. They don’t need to kiss.
“You knew this was a possibility.” Siren says when they can finally speak again, voice still hoarse from the various attempts to strangle and choke them.
Nyx sniffs. “Superheroes.”
Siren’s laugh echoes through the marrow of Nyx’s bones. “They have their uses. You know like not needing to hide all the time.”
Nyx snorts. “I’ve seen the excuses for armour. Spare me. Being a demon is far better.”
She taps her fingernails against the head of the bed, holding on to Siren for as long as she can.
When Siren leaves for the second time, they lean in and tilt their head to press their lips to Nyx’s. This kiss is gentle and quiet, perfect for two people who’s lives have never been gentle or quiet. Siren rests their hands on Nyx’s waist, pulling her close. Nyx keeps her eyes open, trying to memorise every last detail, every silvery edge of every scar, every last twitch of their eyelashes before she has to let go again.
When they separate, Siren’s fingers twined loosely at Nyx’s back, they watch each other. Not as they would normally watch other people, not taking in their weaknesses and strengths and evaluating how to best kill them (Nyx) or how to get the information they seek (Siren). No, they watch each other with the fondness of two people who already know each other like an extension of their selves.
“I have to go.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I know.”
“I love you.”
“I know.”
Nyx gently pulls Siren to her and abruptly hugs them tightly. “Stay in contact this time, okay? I… dislike only finding out about you when you’re in severe danger or badly hurt.”
Siren smiles into her shoulder, closing their eyes. “I promise.”
once more, unto the breach- it's flash fiction friday, so it's writing time! @flashfictionfridayofficial i hope you like it. this prompt was really nice. i've always loved the possibility for potential physical horror, and this one immediately made me think of a very familiar kind.
anyway, the prompt for this week is soft bones! i'll put a content warning in for this one- it involves cannibalism and a death mention.
Outside the cabin, the wind howled furiously through the trees. But inside, the old witch's fire still burned.
The witch did not look old. That was something Mykolas knew well. She looked younger than him, if anything, not even fifty like he looked- not even thirty, small with soft features and a fluffy mess of thick hair and movement too smooth and too un-pained to have gone through the feeling of aging that he’d learned to bearl. If he’d seen her on the street he’d have thought she was just some young woman gone to the market, or on her way to a bakery for bread.
But he wouldn’t make that mistake with her. Never with her. He’d learned under her, after all, and lost so much along with her.
The witch’s name was Hiraya, and she kept him well fed.
Today, there was a bowl set in front of him, wooden and worn and full of a warm, thick brown soup that smelled unfairly good. He could spot beef in it- actual beef, that was new- but the bones... The bones were the same ones he was used to seeing in his meals, with the jagged shapes of teeth and smooth-curved anatomical hearts delicately carved into the surface.
Daina’s bones. Daina’s bones. The words were all too familiar in his mind.
... He’d met Hiraya when he was much, much younger, still in his twenties and having just left home. He’d met her wife, too. Daina had been kind and careful and far, far too willing to learn magic, in the same way that he had been, older than him and having been with Hiraya for much longer than he’d even known her. A witch in her own right, if a younger one. They’d both loved Hiraya, in their own ways, him in an almost familial manner and her in one that had become much more intimate.
Together... Together, they’d been a family. They’d been so carefree, so confident, so sure of their magic.
And look where that had gotten them now. Now he was to come back here every night to- to eat what remained of her, god- until every last bit had been consumed.
Carefully, Mykolas lifted the bowl to his lips and began to drink the soup. The worn, carved bones in it shifted along with the oddly non-human meat inside. It was good soup. It had begun being only barely stomach-turning a long time ago.
“What kind of soup is this?” he asked, mostly to break the silence. There was no use in it; Hiraya never answered. The spell they’d failed, the curse they’d almost unleashed, the spell that had killed Daina- it had had left her silent, unresponding, doing nothing but carrying out a routine that never fluctuated or faltered. And he recognized the soup was bulalo, or at least a bastardized version. There was no use in asking. “It tastes good, miss Hiraya. Then again, everything you make tastes good.”
Hiraya only stared up at him from her seat, not even blinking in a farce at the humanity she’d lost after the failed spell had killed her. Mykolas sighed, turning away from her.
There was so much he wanted to say.
Daina died for us, he thought. Died to save you. She gave herself up to the curse we all unleashed together to bring you back after it backfired, to keep me alive. She died to save us. And what have we become after that?
He didn’t say it. Only continued to finish off his soup, the worn, soft bones as heavy as the gnawing guilt settling in his stomach.
