#preview time!

[lush-specimen]

GET HYPED!!! It's Preview Time!! @tf-bigbang posting season is almost upon us! This year I had the opportunity to make art for the amazing fic As Babylon Fell by @hipsofsteel. This incredibly epic tale of the seige of Iacon (and prequel to Prodigal) deserved equally stunning art. I can't wait to share what we've created! All will soon be revealed!

[dramamelon]

TF Big Bang 2025 Sneaky Peek!

I didn't have the stamina to complete my full outline and apologize greatly to my amazing artists, @furexfurex and @fuccerito. 😭 (I appreciate you both so much and absolutely will finish it for the two of you!)

As always, much love and appreciation to the bang runners @tf-bigbang, as well.

So... How about that preview?

Terrible Bad Summary: During "clean up" duty in a ruined city, Dadlock (not a typo) finds and keeps a Praxian sparkling because he's a soft and squishy loser.

(ETA: a title. LOL!)

a small one: the beginning (a preview)

"You have got to be slagging me."

Deadlock unfurled a small tendril of his field to nudge it against the…. Well, he had to call it what it was, right?

A Primus-damned sparkling.

"Great," he grumbled, scowling. Keeping his shot lined up, his finger tapped restless, but weightless against the trigger as things he didn't want to think too closely about swirled in the back of his brain module. "Hey, brat," he grunted, volume pitched low. "You hear me?"

On the little bot's small back, barely bigger than the size of Deadlock's hand, tiny door wings quivered in reaction. They twitched again, the joints obviously clogged and painful. Probably every little joint was filled with the system-caking dust of the city's destruction, hurting. Deadlock growled and slapped his blaster back into its thigh holster before kneeling beside the hole, ignoring the jump of his own spark.

He reached down, his hand hovering above the shivering plating over that little back, not quite willing to touch. The dust that was once Praxus lay so thick over the sparkling's armor Deadlock couldn't decipher the color of it. No spilled energon was evident, at least, not even mixing with the dust into a sticky slurry. The smallest whimper drifted up to his audials. Deadlock narrowed his optics and tilted his helm a little, one audial toward the hole and its occupant.

"That's not an answer," he said, gruff and hoping the sparkling didn't start crying and bring the closest Autobot running in their direction—at top speed, even. He tapped at the back of the little helm. "C'mon, you gotta give me something more than that."

Then the sparkling slowly moved, lifting its helm and turning a round little face toward Deadlock. Pale blue optics, dimming at the edges—not a good sign—stared at him, wide and screaming of fear, of exhaustion beyond what a sparkling should know. As those young optics locked on him, the little mouth began to wibble and cleanser pooled in the faded corners of the optical lenses. Deadlock's spark sank into his fuel tank.

The sparkling reached up to him with tiny arms. They were still round with thick pads of sentio metallico not yet stretched into adulthood. Those little door wings, barely bigger than nubs, perked and flicked with pained entreaty, matched by grasping little fingers. Dependent on his choice in that single moment, Deadlock realized his life was about to change forever. A tension he hadn't felt in vorns materialized out of somewhere he couldn't name and sat low in his belly beside his spark.

Little fingers made more grabby motions and cleanser spilled down newling soft cheeks.

Deadlock glanced over his shoulder, mouth a tight line of dismay and acquiescence, but saw nothing to stop him from doing something stupid. "Fine," he said. Whether to himself or the unseen force of fate pushing him onward, he didn't know. "I guess we're doing this. Come here."

[laurenwritesfics]

Things had started to feel calmer now. Time had begun to slow down, and Frank was grateful for the chance to breathe again. One Saturday, he returned from the boat yard to change his oil-stained shirt and caught sight of Mary’s journal on the kitchen table – Evelyn had forced her into therapy back in Boston, and though she had hated it, journaling was the one thing she kept on doing – it had been left open on a page filled with tally marks. At the top of the page, she had written ‘number of days without Fred’. Frank pressed his palms against the table and dipped his head. Perhaps Mary would always struggle emotionally in one way or another. He was beginning to feel like a failure. Was his best really good enough? It was impossible to tell.

Sunday was just as quiet. They ate together in silence. Roberta didn’t visit. Their new normal was frustratingly abnormal.

“School tomorrow.” Frank cast a glance at Mary. “Homework done? Books ready?” He knew he didn’t need to ask, but he couldn’t stand the silence any longer.

Mary’s fork danced around her plate. “Obviously.” She huffed.

“Sorry, I was just asking.”

No reply.

Mary scrunched her nose and continued to pick at her plate, retreating back into her bubble.

“Hey,” Frank reached over and put a hand on her cold arm “I know things are hard right now. But if you talk about it, sometimes it makes things easier.”

“You sound like Evelyn.”

Frank’s shoulders dropped. “You don’t have to finish dinner, okay? You’re cold. I’m gonna go get you a sweater or something.”

“I’m fine.”

He ignored her and left the table. Mary pushed him away every time he tried to slip her arms into one of his hoodies. He fought back, not realizing how roughly he was holding her until she winced and slipped off the chair. He immediately swept her into his arms.

“I’m sorry.” He rocked her slightly. “You need to stop being so fucking stubborn, Mary.” His voice cracked a little. Her tiny hands squeezed him as hard as they could and she rested her head on his shoulder. When Mary started to cry, so did Frank.

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[aenariasbookshelf]

Sunday Six-ish

Because @anais-ninja-blog is craving some fairytales. ;)  Here’s a little (un-beta’ed, mind you) sneak preview of the upcoming Shieldshock beauty and the beast fic.

**********

The will-o-the-wisp (Wanda, Darcy reminds herself.  The little flittering creature has a name, and a very human one at that, and she’s determined to use it) comes to Darcy’s chamber the next morning to bring her to breakfast.  She leads Darcy down a different hallway, a smaller, more narrow one, but after a few twists and turns and narrow creaking stairs it deposits them right in the kitchen.

The kitchen itself, tacked on to the back of the grand house with windows that look out on an overgrown, snow covered garden, is positively abuzz.  There are creatures manning stations laden with piles of raw red meat being divided up into piles by sentient kitchen tools, dishing and plating food for the castle’s inhabitants.  “Where does all the food come from?” Darcy asks Wanda, fighting back the nausea at the sight of all the bleeding meat and the indelicacy with why it’s being treated.

Wanda cocks her head to the side, little glittery trails escaping from her body, and she shrugs.  “We’ve learned not to question it,” she replies.  “It appears in the pantry, and it keeps us fed.  But there are some other options, if you’d like something a little lighter.”

“Please.”

The eggs are good, farm fresh possibly, though Darcy is a city girl and the only time she’s spent at a farm was a third grade class trip.  Halfway through the meal the falcon from the night before - Sam, she reminds herself - swoops in overhead, circles once, twice around, and alights on the table nearby Wanda.  Darcy looks down at her plate, then back up again, swallowing roughly.  “I’m not eating any of your relatives, am I?” she asks.

If a bird could laugh, the bobbing of Sam’s feathered head is probably the closest he can come to it.  “I can just about guarantee that those eggs aren’t mine,” he says.

“Good.”  Darcy nods, shoveling in another forkful of food to try and cover the sudden awkwardness she’s feeling.  “So are there any house rules here?” she asks.  “Like, don’t eat the poison apple or anything like that?”

Sam cocks his head to the side, glancing over at Wanda, who shrugs her glowing red shoulders.  “You can leave the grounds, but it won’t help,” Wanda says.  “You’ll just end up running in circles and finding yourself at the garden gate again.”

“There’s no place in the house that you technically can’t go,” Sam continues, fluffing up his feathers and pausing to preen one back into place.  “But some of the others can get nastily territorial.  So if anyone tries to start anything with you, come find me or Wanda or Cap and we’ll have your back.”

It’s still strange for Darcy to think of the giant wolf-like beast as having such a mundane name as ‘Cap’, but the more she thinks of them with names the easier it is to pretend that these are just some new wacky college roommates she’s got instead of prisoners in this place that’s set apart from time and space.

“Anything else you want to know?” Wanda asks, flittering about and landing by a pot of honey that she delicately dips one finger into.

There are hundreds of questions whirling through Darcy’s brain, but she’s not sure if she’s ready to deal with the answers to them.  So instead she just shakes her head, and tells them that when they come to mind, she’ll find them.