#moon june

[starfullskys]

Title: Bath Time

Rating: G

Fandom: Stargate Atlantis

Pairing: John Sheppard/Elizabeth Weir

Prompts: Blame, @monthlywritingchallenges Moon June: Midnight, Bath or Shower.

Summary: It was their little ritual. His way of pulling her back.

Elizabeth entered her quarters at half past midnight. She finally finished the paperwork that was due with tomorrow's report to Earth.

Six death reports and personal messages to families.

A Wraith attack. Two survivors. Two.

There was a knock and she opened the doors to find John. He must have been waiting. Immediately, she went into his arms, the tears she'd been holding back escaping.

"I shouldn't have-" she began.

“Shh…” he soothed. “You did the right thing. Come on.”

He led her into the bathroom and started running a bath. She was silent, only moving when required as he undressed her. Gently, he sat her down in the tub.

She hugged her knees and stared straight ahead. She could see steam coming up from the water, curling and twisting in the cooler air.

“I should have-" she tried, her mind going over and over the events. The briefing before the mission. Sending reinforcements after the emergency call.

“You did what you could,” he interrupted, dipping a cloth in the water and running it over her shoulders.

“Did I?” she asked, resting her chin on her knees as a sob escaped. “We've lost so many.”

“We're in a war,” John said simply.

"I used to help prevent wars,” she reminded him, turning her head to look at him. “What happened?”

He didn't reply for a long moment. Instead, he ran the cloth up and down her back. It began to soothe her.

“You went from mediator to the one making the tough decisions,” he finally said.

Carefully, he poured some water over her hair. It hung wet and loose in her face, but she didn't bother to move it.

He was right. Before, she'd do her best but ultimately things weren't up to her. She also hadn't been privy to all the information. Now? Now she knew all the gritty details. Now it was all up to her.

He worked shampoo into her hair, his fingers firm. He was massaging more than necessary and she sighed.

“That's nice,” she admitted, closing her eyes. He focused on the base of her skull for a few moments and she felt the tension leaving.

“I know. Lean back.”

She tilted her head back and he rinsed her hair with warm, fresh water.

“Here,” he said, handing her the cloth and disappearing into her room.

She quickly washed the rest of her body. He returned and held up a large towel.

“I didn't know Wrath were that close to the planet,” she said uncertainly. They couldn't have known.

“No,” he replied, wrapping her in the towel and rubbing her arms. “We didn't know.”

We. Reminding her that they were in this together.

She leaned her forehead against his until he stepped back and helped her out of the tub.

Dry and in pajamas, she climbed into bed.

“Stay?” she asked. 

“Scoot,” he replied, undressing to his underwear.

It was a tight fit on the small, single bed, but they made it work.

“I did the best I could,” she finally said, hugging him and resting her head on his chest. “We did the best we could.”

“We did,” he replied, kissing the top of her head.

[seaglasswrites]

Moon June

Day 1: Eclipse - @monthlywritingchallenges

For Moon June, I’m going to be writing excerpts from a current project of mine, The Language of Wolves. These are all out-of-order and -out-of-context; They’re mostly just to get my creative juices flowing. Keep in mind that they’re also unedited.

Niv had been working for hours, and she still had no idea what Wolf wanted her to find.

Evening had fallen on the Forest of Shapes. It hadn’t come slowly; It had been dropped on her like a bucket of cold water, bursting forth from the day on a whim. She supposed that her fervor had eclipsed all else. The pittance of light the leafy canopy above had afforded her had slowly trickled away, leaving her sitting alone in a dim blur of silhouette and color. If she hadn’t been attuned to their energy, she wouldn’t have registered the flowers in front of her. She ran her fingers over them, letting her hand sink into the soft, amorphous blob she had been puzzling over for what felt like a century.

The few pieces of sky she could see through the trees had become an exuberant purple with explosions of marigold and nectarine at the horizon. Niv knew that it wouldn’t be long before someone started looking for her.

She sighed. She knew that she couldn’t stay there any longer, that a Shape could be upon her before she even had the time to realize what was happening. But she needed to know why Wolf had sent her there. She needed to figure out what he couldn’t. What was it about this patch of flowers that had drawn him in? What had he meant when he described its buzz to her?

Sitting on the forest floor with hardly any light to guide her, Niv was starting to think that there was nothing to know. Perhaps she’d been wrong. Perhaps he wasn’t as intelligent as she’d thought he was.

With a heavy heart, she unfolded her legs and rose from the ground.

The walk back to the village wasn’t long, and its character soon began to interweave itself with that of the forest. Through the thick patches of leaf and lichen, she saw light. Interspersed with the low growls in the distance were exclamations, clangs, screams of excitement. Cooking fires wafted through the air to her, although she didn’t smell meat.

She brushed aside a bush, and stepped into the world, the sky returned to her.

The world was burning.

[lunarhorns]

Summer Moon

[seaglasswrites]

Moon June 2026

Day 14: Midnight - @monthlywritingchallenges

For Moon June, I’m going to be writing excerpts from a current project of mine, The Language of Wolves. These are all out-of-order and -out-of-context; They’re mostly just to get my creative juices flowing. Keep in mind that they’re also unedited.

I know I’m late as shit. I’m currently at college orientation and I do my best work when I’m supposed to be doing something else, so may as well.

Niv didn’t remember much of her father.

She knew that he had been a Redcloak. She knew that he had been killed protecting the town. And she knew what he looked like: Her. Sketches from her mother and musings from the townspeople made up for that missing piece in the puzzle of her family, filling it in with something that only sort of settled into its shape. He had had a mane of hair the color of midnight and ivory skin that glowed in the sun. Broad, square shoulders and strong, angular features. She couldn’t recall that image, but she knew it to be true. It explained the girl he had left behind.

People said that he had been brave. Strong. Kind. That she should be proud. But what did it matter? He hadn’t been any of those things long enough for her to see it. If he was so strong, why had he left her to pick up so many pieces? With shoulders that broad, there should have been enough room for all the things he had left her to bear.

[seaglasswrites]

Moon June 2026

Day 5: Whisper - @monthlywritingchallenges

For Moon June, I’m going to be writing excerpts from a current project of mine, The Language of Wolves. These are all out-of-order and -out-of-context; They’re mostly just to get my creative juices flowing. Keep in mind that they’re also unedited.

Sorry this one is a day late!

Niv huffed.

An amorphous blob of metal sat in front of her, distorted beyond recognition. Imogen had presented it to her at the beginning of their lesson. After three hours of work, she had only managed to flatten out the smallest bumps on its surface, and that just made the heftier bumps look even bigger by comparison. Her mentor’s stony gaze honed in on her work.

Niv reached for it again, but Imogen swatted her hand away and pulled it towards her. She closed her eyes and hummed a harsh, staccato melody, choppy and disjointed, stopping abruptly and starting again with no clear pattern. Slowly, one of the largest bumps began to plateau, until it was completely flat, as smooth as a blade. She pushed the mound back toward Niv.

“Metal is hard,” she dictated. “It doesn’t want to move. You can’t whisper to it. It needs to be commanded.”

[seaglasswrites]

Moon June 2026

Day 3: Silver - @monthlywritingchallenges

For Moon June, I’m going to be writing excerpts from a current project of mine, The Language of Wolves. These are all out-of-order and -out-of-context; They’re mostly just to get my creative juices flowing. Keep in mind that they’re also unedited.

Niv fumbled around in her satchel. She hadn’t taken much money when she left; She hadn’t known how much her mother had left.

What she found was a handful of silver coins, each one engraved with the Olgravian seal. She held them up sheepishly.

The wagon driver raised an eyebrow, and Niv registered for the first time how strange she looked compared to the people of Kerest, auburn-haired and pale, with thin, angular features that made her gaze look all the more critical. She hadn’t realized quite how far she had traveled.

“That won’t get you far, here,” she said, her voice gruff. “You’ll need some of this,” she dug around in the pocket of her apron, “To get much out of anyone.” She held up a small rectangle of blue paper with a pattern Niv couldn’t make out.

Niv straightened, resisting the urge to smack her forehead. Of course she would need Thastan money.

The woman turned and made her way back to the wagon, and Niv sighed, preparing herself for the long trek ahead. But the wagon driver held up a hand and waved her over.

Perhaps she didn’t need Thastan money yet.

[seaglasswrites]

Moon June

Day 2: Nocturne - @monthlywritingchallenges

For Moon June, I’m going to be writing excerpts from a current project of mine, The Language of Wolves. These are all out-of-order and -out-of-context; They’re mostly just to get my creative juices flowing. Keep in mind that they’re also unedited.

Niv continued to duck her head long after she had slipped out of the tent, keeping her gaze fixed on the ground. She wasn’t trying to hide; Everybody in the village knew whose lodgings were whose. But it felt as if even the sky would judge her.

She made to lift the hood of her cloak, but her hands brushed against her hair. She hissed, then cursed herself for the noise. Ever since the incident, she had forgone the uniform. She didn’t deserve to wear it. She wasn’t her grandmother. And she was starting to realize that that wasn’t anything to be proud of.

Her feet tapped lightly on the cobblestones, beating a hesitant, deferential path. The village was starting to come back to itself. Vendors sat at their markets in the town square, waiting patiently, more cognizant than they might have been that there were worse things than spoiled goods. Children ran around in aimless circles. A man sat at the base of a tree with his lute, strumming out a soft, mournful nocturne. She slowed down. He paused in his music just long enough to spit at her.

I have got to stop writing these so late in the day 😅

[seaglasswrites]

Moon June 2026

Day 19: Obsidian- @monthlywritingchallenges

For Moon June, I’m going to be writing excerpts from a current project of mine, The Language of Wolves. These are all out-of-order and -out-of-context; They’re mostly just to get my creative juices flowing. Keep in mind that they’re also unedited.

Imogen’s lodgings may have been a lot more sophisticated than the rest of the houses in town, but they were, at their core, lodgings. She had rejected messy, everyday clutter in favor of expensive, meretricious clutter from the bustling streets of Belrid. There wasn’t a single space in her living room - and, Niv suspected, her entire home - that wasn’t filled. Glass statuettes stood in neat rows inside glass cabinets, each one another voice in the grand cacophony that would fill the room when the whole thing inevitably came crashing down; Empty notebooks - Niv had checked - sat in a sad, dusty stack on a corner table, partially obscured by another sad, dusty stack of something or other sitting on a separate corner table, and so on until Niv began to wonder if she were looking through a series of mirrors without realizing it. Trinkets carved from wood, glass, jade, obsidian, limestone littered the area, strewn wherever Imogen could safely put them and a fair few places she couldn’t. The room seemed to strain against the girth of its contents, but Niv got the feeling that her mentor was more likely to add to the space than take anything away. She supposed that you could take a woman out of the city, but you couldn’t take it out of her.