#super unfinished

[isagispistols]

Haven't done fem lock in a whileeeeee

[friedwritinggamingghost]

Sadly, I was not able to finish a story in time. But here is part of the first chapter I'm working on.

@inklings-challenge

Chapter 1

Molly giggled as she held up a pink teacup filled halfway with cranberry grape juice. 

“Coco wan’ tea?” She smiled at the young teen sitting across the table from her.

“Of course, honey,” Macarius answered, with a big smile, careful to keep his teeth from showing as he reached over the snag the precariously tilting cup from her little hand before it spilled all over the white tablecloth. Removing a stain wasn’t that hard really, but it was simply just beneath him.

Inwardly he grimaced. He knew what tea was and … This. Wasn’t. It. Whatever this was, bordered on absolutely vile. Sweet, with a cloying bitter aftertaste that clung to his tongue. To his mouth. His throat. Everything. But he would drink it anyway, because the sweet little sunshine that sat in front of him was giving it to him and he would do anything for her.

Molly wriggled in her chair with another giggle. “Coco we can play the ligh’? With the colors?”

She waved a hand at the kitchen around them and its incongruous explosion of color.  The light pink walls spotted with tiny, light blue handprints that her mom had encouraged her to put on the walls clashed heavily with the kermit green curtains held open by cords over the kitchen sink. The harvest orange of the oven, sitting between two burner stove tops where normal counters should have been made it all so much worse.

There were three large mismatched refrigerators in a gorgeous sea green, crimson red and the last, the ugliest shade of harvest gold that looked like it should have been a smear in a diaper.  The table they were seated at, and an island for counter space were crammed in the limited space that was left.

Mac sipped at the vileness in his cup, somehow managing not to gag. “Certainly.”

He stood and bowed to her with a flourish, escaping from the cup of ew.  “What color does my Princess Sunshine desire?”

Molly let out a happy shriek as she bounced in her chair. “Rai’bows!”

She squirmed out of her chair and started jumping around the kitchen, too excited to sit still as her peals of laughter filled the room.

Mac sighed. Of course, he should have guessed and simply not wasted his breath, but still. Perhaps some day his little girl would change her mind and want something different for a change. He wouldn’t want to miss giving her the chance. Though, she did also choose the hardest color choice, with its exacting demands to reach perfection and that, was the only thing that he was willing to give her.

Closing his eyes, he centered himself, flexing his bare toes into the ugly beat up sheet linoleum that had once been dark green with big flowers sprinkled over it, his fingers working the complicated hand seals of the magic before flinging it outwards. 

The room erupted in a flash, every surface of the room suddenly colored in sparkling soft rainbows, the lines perfect where they curved around corners and edges no matter what their shape.

A shriek of pure joy preceded Molly slamming into his legs and holding on as she tried to climb up his leg.

“Hold on Princess!” Mac yelped, protecting his groin from flailing hands and bonking skulls. Sidestepping enough that her forehead hit his outer thigh he swooped in, picking up the little girl and settling her against his hip with an arm around her waist and her front foot trapped in his other against his stomach. He wasn’t about to get nailed with a heel down there again. Ever. Contrary to popular belief he did learn from his mistakes.

Molly wiggled happily as she reached her hands up excitedly. “It pri’ee! Coco pri’ee!” she squealed into his ear as Mac flinched at the deafening volume right in his ear.

“Molly?” a warm, amused voice came from the other room. “What are you doing sweetheart?”

“Coco make the rai’bows mama!” Molly yelled

Macarius gave Molly a hasty squeeze and kissed the top of her head before depositing her to stand on the chair. “You must stay down Sunshine,” he commanded softly with a quick kiss to the top of her head and its crown of strawberry scented blond curls, even though he kept his arm around her so she didn’t fall off the chair. He would never, ever endanger Princess Sunshine, not even if it was as simple as a scraped knee.

Molly wiggled happily in his hold as she sat down just as her mom walked in, letting him safely dance away so Molly’s mother didn’t bump into him. That would be …. awkward.

“He made the rainbows again?” Elizabeth asked, smiling at Molly as she leaned down and kissed her, Molly’s arms wrapping around her head as she kissed back. 

“Be sure and say thank you,” she said as she straightened up. She pulled out an empty, large matchstick box filled with what appeared to be a doll foam mattress and a pillow and a tiny blanket.

“Here’s a bed for Coco,” she placed it in front of Molly, rubbing her daughter’s head. “You can put it on the table by your bed tonight.”

“Bu’ mama,” Molly frowned as she picked it up. “Coco bigger me.”

“Oh he’s bigger than you?” Elizabeth chuckled as she knelt by her daughter who was nodding at her. “But do you want to hear a secret, boo?”

“Sec’re!” Molly giggled. 

“Because he’s invisible,” Elizabeth whispered conspiratorially. “He can shrink down and fit in here.”

Molly’s eyes widened as she turned to look at her friend. “Coco s’rink?”

Across the kitchen Macarius winked. 

Elizabeth chuckled as she kissed her daughter’s head and walked over to the refrigerators. 

“Clean up your area boo, mommy’s making dinner.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Coco fit?” Molly enquired in a whisper, patting the box that was sitting on her own bed, right next to the flattened bright yellow lump of the stuffed easter duck she used as a pillow.

Well. Of course he could fit. He just didn’t want to. “Of course I can Princess, if you wish,” he said from where he was sitting cross legged on the foot of her bed. 

“Is small,” she frowned. “You have big boy bed?”

“Hmmm. What if I told you that I don’t sleep and that I watch over you always to keep the bad dreams away?” he confessed.

Molly frowned unexpectedly. “You not dreaming?”

Mac patted her ankle where it rested under the covers. “Only if I want to?”

“You not want dreamies?” Molly asked,  looking up at him in confusion. She wiggled out of her bed and ran to her little bookcase. She grabbed one of her children’s books and ran back with it. She threw it on the bed as she clambered back on and with a lot of little grunts and exasperated growls, she got back under her blanket.

“Here,” she grabbed the book and pulled it onto her lap, opening it. “I read now and you can want dreamies.”

Using her finger she read aloud.

“Once upon a time, there was an old Sow …,” she looked up at Macarius. “What’s a sow?”

“A female pig,” Mac answered her. “Like Miss Piggy?”

 Molly nodded and looked back down. “...with three little Pigs, and as she had… not en-oo-ff, eee,” she pointed to the word. “Coco help?”

“Enough.”

“Enough to keep them, she sent them out to– What that?” She huffed. “Why does see have k at end?”

“Seek,” he answered her patiently. “It’s a fancy way of saying to go find something, Princess.”

 “Ok, seek their fo’turnee.” Molly giggled. “That silly!”

“Fortune, sunshine,” he commented, gently correcting her mispronunciation. “Big people have to go out and work like Daddy does, and that’s what they went to do, because their Mommy couldn’t give them everything like Daddy does for you.” 

“And Mommy and Coco,” Molly nodded as she leaned out of her blanket and crawled to the end of the bed and wrapped her little arms around his waist. “Thank Coco.” 

“You’re welcome Princess Sunshine,” Macarius answered softly.

>>:<<

“And that’s a sloth bear, they eat termites and sometimes tigers eat them cause they know where the bears go to get termites.” Molly explained what was happening on the television to Macarius. 

“But don’t worry Coco, the bear gets away this time because predators try not to be injured and even though some tigers are very good at eating the bears, an injury from the bear can kill the tiger because it’ll slow the tiger down which will make it harder to get prey. So the tiger might starve.”

She patted his arm comfortingly. “So this bear will be ok and chase off the tiger.”

Macarius looked down from the tv to where Molly was curled up against him under her soft poofy blanket that he’d pulled over her.  He didn’t often let her snuggle like this but she’d been so lonely lately with Mommy being off and visiting her sick sister and without their regular baby-sitter Jane. Miss Alma, the old bat that was here instead, wasn't well suited for Molly. Cold. Intolerant. So dismissive of his Princess. His little sunshine was wilting like a rose without water. 

“Oh that’s good, I suppose. But what about the tiger? You don’t want him to be hungry though, do you?” he murmured, stroking his fingers over the blond head that was jammed up against his side.

“Hmmm. I don’t, but I also don’t want the bear to die.” Molly wrinkled her nose as she thought out loud. “I know predators got to hunt and eat, but that means they eat other animals that don’t want to be eaten. It's a co-nun-drum.” She nodded decisively.

“That’s a really big word for you Sunshine.” Mac praised the five year old. “The world does work like that, and humans eat animals too, because they are tasty. Does that bother you?”

“No, some animals are made to be eaten. That's even in the Bible. But it's up to us to take care of them. Like good care so they’re happy like our chickens. And when it's time to eat them, we make sure they don’t get hurt, just dead.” Molly informed him. “But the predators eat their prey alive. And that hurts them a lot.”

“That's a very honorable way to treat animals that you choose to eat Sunshine. I’m proud of you,” he praised. “I want you to think about this idea though, okay? Predators, a lot of them, can’t not hurt something and sometimes they don’t have the right things like we do to be able to just make them dead and not hurt. It’s not something they can help, it just is.”

“Ok.” She looked back at the tv. “Oh that’s an orca. They don’t hurt humans, but other animals they bully and throw into the air to break their bones!”

“Hmmph,” Mac grumbled, “well that isn’t very nice is it?”

[morwensteelsheen]

“No,” says Boromir. “Not me, I would be a terrible husband for you.”

“If not you,” answers Éowyn, her voice a little weaker than it was seconds ago, “then who?”

The answer is, naturally, his younger brother. Still Éowyn’s senior by something near to a decade she estimates, they are much the same in appearance except for all the ways in which they are not, and exactly nothing alike in manner except for all the ways in which they are. She meets him once before her life is signed away, the day she arrives in the White City. He looks at her with the sort of benevolent pity she was warned all the lords of Gondor would look upon her with. There is a good humour beneath it too, like he thinks he understands what it is to be trapped like she is. He, she is quite certain, could not possibly understand.

They are married in Minas Tirith on a cold autumnal afternoon. The festivities—if they can even be called that—are something out of her most mundane nightmares. She speaks the Elvish tongue, but more from memory than native use, and half the conversations conducted around her are impenetrable. Neither Théodred nor Éomer could be spared for the event, so she has come with Erkendbrand of the Deeping-Coomb to stand in for her kin. They sit in quiet council during the feast, and though Faramir does make a laudable attempt to engage with her, she has little need or desire for it. The task has been accomplished, she is no longer a Lady of the Mark, it matters little to her if she is liked or disliked.

It is decided that they will forego the customary bridal tour. Faramir is needed in Ithilien, though he will stay for a month or so in the City to ensure that she acclimates (a prospect she scoffs at and resolves to thwart at every turn). She is moved into his apartments in the Stewards’ Palace with what few personal possessions she has brought with her from the Mark. The Palace is bigger than Meduseld by far, but its walls close in on her with each step she takes, and she wonders if she will be able to breathe at all here.

Once the servants have finished fussing about like newly-beheaded chickens and at last leave them to their terrible, painful solitude, Faramir shows her to a secondary set of bed chambers, richly though impersonally decorated. There, he tells her he expects nothing of her. “We have not made these conditions,” he says, with a sternness that mirrors his lord father’s with unnerving accuracy. “I would not make a prison of your bower.”

“I do not see you as a gaoler,” she offers, spending the last dregs of her diplomacy.

“Nor I you. Perhaps we ought to see one another as fellow prisoners, some solidarity would not here go amiss, I think,” he says, before bowing with desperate formality and leaving.

Éowyn does not sleep at all on her wedding night, but not for the reasons she had been told to expect. She is a hundred leagues from the Golden Hall, and but a small handful of people have followed her here across the Mering Stream. It does not stop the way she sees his face in the darkened windows, or the way it feels like she’s still always, always being watched.

She cries herself to sleep on her wedding night, and that, at least, is something she has been warned about.

The ladies of Minas Tirith have no idea what to do with her. Faramir warns her of this before she is whisked away to meet them; the women of Gondor do not typically wed so young—a relic of the elder days when those descended from Westernesse lived longer. To them, Éowyn, married at the tender age of twenty-one, is practically a child bride. They have all decided to say nothing of it though, out of a belief that it is a part of Rohir culture to wed so early. Éowyn declines to inform them that it is an aberration even in the Riddermark. They don’t need to know how much her own family disrespects her.

They do not know enough to know the low price Éowyn has been traded away for. They do not think it strange that the niece of a King has been bundled off to a man with no true title, a second son though the first is yet unwed. They treat her like a provincial oddity, more like some experimental new vintage from the outlying vineries than a foreign barbarian, but it’s still enough to make her skin crawl.

In the evenings, Faramir makes himself conspicuously scarce, appearing only long enough to ask after her day, to tell her briefly—ceremoniously—of his, and to ask if she lacks anything. She does not tell him that she despises that her window looks east, and he does not ask.

He does not touch her except when it cannot be avoided, and then it seems like it is taking a monstrous effort to do so. She wonders at this. All men, she knows, play at being good men until there is a woman involved; then they cannot help themselves, they are reduced to what men always are, at their core. She wonders what it is about her that bolsters this unnatural restraint of his: does he find her grotesque?; it is a matter of her age?; or can he simply not bear the burden of being wed to a lady of the lowly kingdom of the North?

This is her new life, and she will bear it with dignified silence, but she resolves never to like it. There are whisperings in the Mark that the world is growing darker, that all hope has been snuffed out. If those rumours are true, if war is truly inevitable and no glorious light awaits them at the end, then Éowyn hopes, prays, it will all come soon. Then, at least, she will be spared the horror of her life.

•°

In the second week of her married life, Faramir seeks her out. He carries a small parcel wrapped in glistening silk, and gives it to her as she sits on the sofa in his—their—apartments, embroidering. Embroidery seems to be the only thing of any interest she can do in this strange city without opening herself up to ire.

She opens the parcel, looks at it, then at him. “What is it?”

“A book,” he says, appearing distantly amused by the question. “A traditional gift for new brides in Gondor.”

“From their husbands?”

“Yes, and others. The gifts are intended to symbolised a wife’s role in shepherding the future of the Kingdom. If a home is filled with many books, then it is said that the family that dwells within it will perform good labours.”

“This is the first book I have received.” She looks at it, runs her fingers across the supple leather binding. “I wonder why that should be.”

“I suppose,” says Faramir, standing up, “the good lords and ladies of the court think that you cannot read.”

She almost winces at the bluntness of his words. “But you think that I can?”

“You are a daughter of kings.” He looks at her like his conclusion is the painfully obvious one.

“I am,” she says, a little limply.

“I hope it brings you some joy,” he says, “or as much as there can be in times such as these.”

He leaves. Éowyn, feeling almost dizzied by the encounter, looks at the book once more, risking a look at its first pages. It is a book of tales from Lossarnach, the land from whence her mother’s mother hailed. A faint memory of the years of happiness wells up inside her, the years before darkness had shrouded the Mark, had stolen her father and mother away, had stolen even herself away.

She does not read the book, but she does keep it on the table beside her bed, and when she looks at it she imagines a life where joy was not so fleeting a thing.

In the fifth circle of Minas Tirith, there is a small practice arena used by the various garrisons that pass through the city. Éowyn takes to sitting in the small, dilapidated stands during the day, watching them like she used to watch the Riders spar back home. She doesn’t feel much like herself anymore, there’s a hollow ache of alienation deep within her that she just can’t fill, but to watch round after round of practiced, highly-technical swordsmanship makes her feel something loosely approximating normal.

Her grandmother’s sword—mostly ceremonial in Morwen’s time, well used in Éowyn’s—did not come with her to Gondor. It is locked in an armoury box somewhere deep within the bowels of Meduseld. High born ladies of Gondor, she was told, do not wield weapons of war.

She does not wish to wield weapons of war either, she wishes to wield weapons of glory. She doesn’t want to brandish a sword to do simple, quotidian killing, she wants to hold her blade aloft to the sky and command the world to remember her name. Until a few months ago, she would sit in the sun and imagine herself arrayed in golden light, dripping in ancient jewels as she sat upon a throne, a warrior queen at the right hand of her husband, a king with renown enough to surmount the legacy of even Helm Hammerhand himself.

She cannot imagine such things anymore. She sits at her husband’s right hand, yes, and there are occasionally ancient jewels, but the light in Gondor is cold and unfeeling, and her muscles have grown weak and weary from disuse. They say her husband is a scholar, and from the books in his—their—apartments, she is certain she believes them. They say he is a good captain too, if not half as impressive as his brother, and that she believes too. This is the sum total of her life now: a never ending series of almost-but-not-quites, a life wasted and spent before it has even begun.

Faramir continues to ask if there is anything she wants, and she continues to tell him no. At night, he goes to his chambers, and she haunts hers; they are alone, yet forced together. His prison metaphor, she thinks, grows more apt with each day.

One evening, a troupe of musicians from Lebennin give a performance in Merethrond. It is strange and a little unnerving to her to have an entire evening of music with not a single sung lyric, but the wine flows freely and the viols are not entirely different to the rebecs of the Mark, so she cuts her losses and enjoys the night to the limited extent that she can. Faramir is generous enough to explain the various cultural traditions at play, and while her Sindarin has improved enough to be more than conversational, she appreciates at least the neutrality of his speech in the Common Tongue.

The performance breaks and the guests begin to mingle, she stays by his side. There is nothing for her to say, and he is the only one who attempts to draw her into conversation. She is quite friendly, but quite friendly is not very friendly, and she drinks to muffle the discomfort of it all.

Later, when they retire to his apartments, she has had enough wine to loosen her tongue. She sits a little indecorously on the sofa, and senses that he is about to put them both through the nightly ritual that exhausts her so deeply. She decides, on the spur of the moment, to preempt him.

“Is there aught that you wish for, my lord? You so often ask me, but I so rarely hear an answer from you.”

“From you? There is nothing, save, perhaps, to know if you feel more at ease than in Rohan.”

“Why should I not feel at ease in the Mark?”

There is pity scrawled across his features as he looks at her. She despises it. “My brother, rightly or wrongly, has made me privy to the circumstances under which our marriage was arranged. My only hope, then, is that these circumstances, however displeasing to you, are preferable to the ones you have left.”

“Ah,” she says, haughtily. “Is that why you will not come to my bed? Or invite me to yours?”

“Do you wish me to?” He looks stunned, a little uneasy. It mirrors how she feels.

“No. But I would rather that you stay away for some personal defect of mine than a misplaced sense of guilt or duty.”

For a moment, he is quiet, and she thinks that she can almost see him following every possibility of her words to their logical end. Then he nods. “Is there anything else?”

“My sword—a sword. I wish to train again.”

This is the first time she sees actual upset on his face, just the faintest flicker of it before he masters himself, and she wonders if he is not suffering as much as she under the laxity of the sweet wine.

“You would not have your wife play at swords? It would displease you to have so unconventional a wife as one who might win herself glory and honour in the manner of man?”

“It would not,” he says, quickly enough that she thinks he has anticipated her words. “But I do not believe that glory emanates purely from the blade of a sword.”

“Would you cast away your sword then?”

“I would.”

She stares at him, this strange man who her life has been inextricably tethered to. She cannot imagine any other men of her acquaintance who would answer that question as he has, except in a lie, yet he does not look to her like a liar.

“Even in self-defence?”

“No, but you spoke of glory, not self-defence.”

“Then suppose I speak of self-defence, would you still deprive me of what I have requested?”

He bows his head, as if in thought, bringing his fingers up to rub the bridge of his nose. When he looks up at her, she is struck by the clearness of his eyes, the same colour as hers yet entirely different. “I will give you what I can, though in this, and requests like it, I would also have you know that you do not need my consent. Your time is yours to use as you please.”

She doesn’t even have a chance to thank him before he leaves. Despite the wine running hot in her blood and the fire crackling brightly in the hearth, she shivers.

[flamedork]

i was going through my old writing folder adn it turns the fuck out i started to write two soma fics and they aren’t too fuckin horrible

[janebelinda]

I was a feminist before I was ever anyone's lover and I'll be one way after they have all given up. I have never been easy to love. My mother slapped me in the face too many times to ever make me believe I could be tamed and I have been trying to make myself more palatable since the first time I craved being swallowed. I know I will always go down bitter, but guess what, darling, I'm even worse coming back up so you better just go ahead and except that I am here to make you better like a vitamin. I know you want that cold medicine feminism. The kind that makes feel better but doesn't actually fix the problem but I am a homeopathic remedy here to actually make you be better.