#one sentence plus five

[sanguinarysanguinity]

They claimed there were no survivors.

"The French claimed there were no survivors," Hornblower reminds the messenger, a French farmer who stands uneasily among so many English Naval officers.

The epaulette he has brought Hornblower is of the new style, worn by a captain of less than three years seniority: the bent and twisted strap bears only a fouled anchor, with no sign of a crown. Most of the bullions have been torn away; those that remain are mangled and blackened.

"He is injured, monsieur, very badly injured," the farmer repeats.

It would be irresponsible for the military governor of Le Havre to leave its walls to lead a rescue mission -- but Hornblower's hands tremble with the hope that Captain Bush still lives.

"Take me to this English sea captain you say you have found."

[princessfbi]

He couldn't breath.

He couldn't breathe.

He could-- there was air passing through his chapped, bite swollen lips--- but he couldn't at the same time and the conflict tight in his chest left him dizzy all the same. Dizzy and breathless as his knuckles ached from how tightly he was clinging onto Buck's shirt sleeve.

Buck, who was saying his name but Eddie couldn't respond to because he was too busy losing the battle between his painful sense of clarity and the delirium of his own panic as they shoved him under to drown the other out. They needed to move but how do you move when you trapped, drowning in quickly hardening amber?

"Eddie, you need to breathe."

Send Me a Sentence and I'll Write the Next Five

[sanguinarysanguinity]

He knows his scars better than his own.

It's hardly surprising. Stewards do not generally have much access to mirrors, nor the time to spend staring into them; naturally Briggs has spent more time looking at Captain Bush's naked back than his own. Cutlass scars, those are, honourably sustained in battle, rather than the ragged marks of the lash on his mates' backs. And presumably his own, not that he would know, see the aforementioned note about not having the time to peer at his own back in the Captain's mirror.

"Woolgathering, Briggs?" Captain Bush asks, and Briggs returns to pouring the captain's coffee.

[sanguinarysanguinity]

Sentence fic (and I'm not sure if I should apologize for this or not): "She said something about reversing the polarity of the neutron flow," Marcus Bell said, reading from his notes.

…would you believe that, with the exception of the implied point-of-view, this sentence fits seamlessly into a trunked story of mine? Behold!

“She said something about reversing the polarity of the neutron flow,” Marcus Bell said, reading from his notes. “But, c'mon, you can’t take that seriously, that’s a quote straight from, I don’t remember, Star Trek or Doctor Who or something.”

“Doctor what?” Watson asked, still glaring up at the brownstone staircase.

“Clearly, it’s a widely-known science fiction franchise in Bell’s universe of origin,” Sherlock answered, extrapolating from Watson’s uncharacteristic ignorance of the purported reference. “However, and more to the point for our needs, popular stories often coalesce around some nugget of truth, and if reversing the polarity of the neutron flow has become an element of the popular stories of his world…”

“Then this just might work,” Watson sighed, and Sherlock glanced down from his study of the staircase’s supporting beams to catch Watson’s fleeting expression of regret.

[sanguinarysanguinity]

He frowned, holding the magnifying glass closer to his eye.

“Hey, look, I’m Sherlock Holmes!” Wiggins called, and then pitched his voice artificially low. “‘Eyes and brains, Wiggins, eyes and brains!’”

Tennyson’s chair beeped merrily, while the Great Detective frowned in earnest.

Watson touched their moustache, their useless monocle winking in the light like the ground-glass fascinator it was. “Come now, Holmes, even you have to admit,” the compudroid soothed, not quite hiding a smile, “a simple, passive, optic lens is a very out-dated tool.”