10 First Lines
Now that I have you distracted with Gale…
Was tagged by @asorceresswrites and @stupidsexywizard, who is strong-arming me into giving you all my awful dick jokes. (I’ll spare you all and give you one!) 😂 Thank you both! 💜
I’m not sure if this is meant to be all WIPs, so I’ll do a mixture of both as I don’t have a ton of WIPs at the moment that are more than scribbled down notes in docs. Also, I’m cheating and giving more than one line (and might not even be the first line) because at this point I just have to lean into not ever shutting up. I can’t change my ways, so I’m just going with it.
1. (Just for you @stupidsexywizard 😘) Though this was just one of those scribbles, not anything fully formed god please don't judge the awful writing:
The tower stood lit against the dark like a challenge, its magic humming through the air.
Audra tilted her head back, a simpering smile growing at the thought of the wizard next to her desperately assessing the tower against his own.
“So, Gale, be honest. Big tower envy?”
Beside her, he crossed his arms, gaze already sweeping upward, appraising its worth. “I’ll have you know that my tower in Waterdeep is very respectable.”
She looked at him then, eyes alight with mischief. “That’s what all men say when it’s smaller.”
And just when she thought she’d finally bested him, his mouth curved into that infuriating, devastating smirk. He leaned just close enough for his voice to dip low and dangerous.
“I assure you,” he hummed, “it’s more than adequate.”
2. From a chapter of Two Storms that I just finished and is going through its quality assurance phases:
“Be careful. Your legs’ll probably give out first.”
(Look, I did it! One line!)
3. Mini-fic: Dark: When she reached the bank, he turned half away, giving the trees his attention while his breath fought for composure. Gods above, he’d only wanted quiet. A place to think. Now here he was, waging war against his own restraint, undone by the very thing he’d spent so many nights craving in secret.
4. Until the Heavens Bend: He told himself it was the stars that gave him solace, but the truth was far more vast than any constellation above. Mystra’s absence burned like a phantom limb, as constant as the orb smoldering beneath his heart, heavy as a fallen star in his chest. It throbbed with hunger, and in it he felt his own, a constant reminder of all he once had, all he had lost, and all he might yet stand to lose. It was as if the Weave itself mocked him at the cost of his ambition.
5. Words of Love and Loss: The parchment trembled in her hands, though it wasn’t the weight of the words alone that made her fingers unsteady. The ink blurred through a film of tears, neat strokes dissolving into haze, yet her eyes clung to every line. Each sentence split another fissure through her chest, like cracks spidering across glass too thin to bear the strain.
Why now? Why had he left her these words? The timing was its own cruelty – letters pressed into her hands when all she wanted was his. But Gale had always dwelt in language, and subtlety was never in his nature. Where another might offer a word, he would conjure a speech, a sonnet, an entire constellation to spill across the night sky. Even when silence would have sufficed, he turned phrases into armor, into balm, into confession. And now, those words lay strewn in her lap like relics, remnants of a man who had always been equal part brilliance, dramatics, and heart.
6. One Drop More: "All that care," she went on, rolling the blossom gently between her fingers, “just for a single drop. But it’s so sweet.” Her thumb then skimmed the green base of the flower, barely a motion at all. “It’s like the gods never meant for us to have more than that. Just enough to taste it — to remember there’s beauty in the world, even if we can’t hold on to it.”
He watched her, and something inside him tightened. A silent throb beneath his ribs as she looked up at him, a wistful smile curving her mouth but not softening the sorrow in her eyes.
“Maybe that’s all we’re given. A drop. Just enough to want more.”
7. Untitled Fluff: “If the wizard wants to stare at her arse, let him. It’s marginally less irritating than this godsdamned mating ritual you two seem to have going.”
8. Confluence: Gale shifted, the fire’s dim light catching in his eyes until they looked almost molten and unblinking. “You think my feelings are swayed by your polish or whether you could charm a room of scholars?” There was no anger in his words, only quiet astonishment. “By gods, is that truly what you think of me?”
She shook her head, though the knot in her chest only seemed to pull tighter. “I just think you deserve someone who–”
“Stop,” His voice carried no sharpness, only a certainty that stilled her. He eased his hands from hers, but only so he could lift both to her face. His palms were warm, his thumbs resting along the curves of her cheekbones as though. The gesture usually steadied her, but tonight it set her heart stumbling. In the flicker of the embers, his deep brown eyes caught gold.
“I am in awe of you,” he said, as though the words had been sitting on his tongue for a long time. “Do you understand? Not for who you might be in imagined life, but for who you are here. Now. Every moment I have known you.” His hands cradled her more securely. “You astonish me.”
His thumbs brushed lightly across her skin. “You think you’re less because you haven’t walked my streets? Those streets would be poorer without your shadow in them.”
9. Fade to Black: Her hands spread across his chest, mapping him like uncharted territory, carefully taking note of every rise and hollow with aching care. She lifted his shirt free, leaning in to kiss the center of him just where the orb lay dormant beneath skin and bone.
Her palm settled there. “This part of you,” she whispered, gaze steady, “is mine now.”
Their eyes met, and it wasn’t just desire that looked back at him. It was claim, care, and something almost defiant in its tenderness. A fierce protection. In her gaze was a quiet fury, as if she dared fate or the gods themselves to try and take him from her.
She saw him. Not just the scholar or the mage. Not just the vessel of a god’s whim. She saw all of him — the fractured parts, the burden he bore, the damning shards of his hubris carved into his chest like a brand — and still, she looked at him like he was worth holding onto.
10. WIP: But in the tower’s silence, the name mocked him. Gale of Waterdeep — what tempest was he now, hunched and clawing at his chest like a wounded thing? What legend, when he wept alone and vomited into a basin, too mortal to claim what he had stolen?
He had wanted to be more than human. And the cruelest irony of all: he had become a vessel for a magic beyond comprehension, and yet it only made him feel smaller.
Soft-tagging (since we've all been playing these across blogs): @fireflyeyes @bladesingerlily @kcwriter-blog @starlightweave 💜✨
