Writing challenge with prompt tables for Tanthamore fic (and other Willow fic) throughout the month of October! (Header and icons by @myrebelliousphase)
Kit + angry to discover that she actually likes textile work
A wee circus preview and some textile sweetness for you, friend.
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Kit was never meant to learn to mend things. She was meant - at least in her grandmother’s eyes - to have staff who might mend things for her. Money enough (from her husband) to be able to buy a new dress if one tore.
Kit has been taught, in the most begrudging possible way, the needle arts of a lady. She has been instructed on embroidering fine feather-stitch ferns, decorating handkerchiefs that were always just shy of her grandmother’s standards until her fingertips were numb and her head ached with frustration. She has only the dimmest memories of her mother sitting at the kitchen table, darning socks with her glasses on, saving the mending for midday when the light was best.
You can learn when you’re older, her mother had said, when Kit paused to watch the nimble work of her sure hands. Leave me to get this done before the matinee.
They both thought they’d have so much more time.
Now Kit is sitting by her own table; outdoors in the space meant for eating, somewhere in the wilds of Indiana. She’s got needle and thread, and tights with a run in them, and she’s so frustrated at her own clumsy work that she wants to scream.
“Kitten,” a voice says over her shoulder. Elora always jingles as she approaches; Kit must have missed the sound of it in her frustration. “What are you doing to those poor tights.”
Kit groans. “Nothing useful, I can tell you that.”
Elora sits sideways on the bench beside her. Her hair is all done up for the matinee, piled into a layer cake of curls and jewel-ended pins that turn her head into a confection. For the show she’ll add feathers: ostrich dyed rich emerald, bright magenta, coal black. She’s still wearing her own clothes, though - a soft calico dress, faded from being worn a hundred times over, her wrists heavy with bracelets in a way that Kit’s grandmother would call vulgar. It’s a familiar sort of absurdity, now.
“Who taught you how to mend, the barn cat?” Elora says.
Somehow, the teasing makes a little of Kit’s frustration lift. Elora knows, of course, why Kit couldn’t mend her way out of a wet paper bag. But she often does this. Gives Kit the kindness of forgetting. “I don’t need new ones,” Kit sighs. “It’s just a run in the leg.”
Elora takes the garment from her, runs expert hands along the outside of the cloth, turns it this way and that to get a sense of the flaw. She frowns at the clumsy stitches Kit’s put in - too lumpy, somehow pulling things tight but extending threads loose over the gap in a way that turns awkward - and pulls them out with a few swift motions. “You don’t need new ones,” Elora says. “But you’re going at it sideways. You need these for this afternoon?”
Kit’s stomach is already tight with worry; she manages a nod. “Hoping so,” she says. “They’re my best ones.”
The tights are a perfect, lurid mauve, so bright that they’re difficult to look at under the stage lights. The rest of Kit’s costume is black and cream; the whole effect highlights her legs, brings out the slowly developing shapeliness of her calves. She even found thread to match them. If she could just get her hands to -
Elora takes the mending into her own lap, and Kit doesn’t know if she wants to cry with frustration or relief. “Well, there’s no sense teaching yourself on silk like this, no wonder you’re feeling clumsy.”
She plucks a few things out of Kit’s sewing kit - a spare thread and needle, a second thimble - and clicks her tongue. Then she slings one leg into Kit’s lap.
Kit giggles. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
Elora draws her gaze down, points to a tiny, fraying worn spot - less than an inch - in the patterned river of her skirt. The print of the cloth is so complicated, with so many different places for the eye to rest, that Kit hadn’t noticed. “This needs fixing,” she says, no-nonsense. “And cotton is a lot kinder to beginners. You’re going to mend my dress, and I’m going to mend your tights.”
Coming from anyone else, the invitation would make Kit stubborn. She’s still breaking old habits; reflexes from a time when her world was stifling lace and lemonade socials and croquet. But Elora is not, she knows, offering a lesson so that she can speak ill of Kit to the next ten girls who come calling. Elora is not going to give Kit the cold shoulder at the next event of the season. Elora is warm and funny and unfailingly kind, her needle and thread already halfway up the run that’s been giving Kit trouble for over an hour.
Dutifully, Kit sets her unpracticed fingers to work threading her needle.
The thread Elora has given her is a perfect crimson; the colour of the contrast patterning that makes its way across the background cloth now faded to a pale brown the colour of prairie dust. Elora - always happiest in the glitter of a big city - likes to match herself to the dirt out here in the Midwest. Once a day, she giggles and ask Willow when he’s planning to add some trick ropers for a Wild West show. Kit sticks her hand under Elora’s skirt, gathering the cloth the way she’s been shown - by Elora, by Jade - and starts to mend.
It is easier on cotton.
The cloth doesn’t shift or slither out of Kit’s grasp the way that the silk was. Elora’s dress is never going to gleam the same way under the stage lights, but it behaves in Kit’s hands, as she draws her needle in and out. It’s easier on a frayed spot, too, instead of a place where the cloth has torn altogether. Frustration blooms at the back of Kit’s neck; the stirrings of one of those headaches she used to get over embroidery.
Elora pauses in her work, suddenly, and reaches out to grip the place on her skirt where Kit is trying her best. She brings it nearer to her eyes - exposing an amount of underskirt and lace bloomer that would have shocked Kit weeks ago - and smiles. “See, you know what you’re doing, Kitten,” she says. “Just gotta make it easier on yourself.”
She hands the section of skirt back to Kit. Kit stares down at her work. Elora doesn’t say a thing more. Not a lady’s needlework can never be too perfect, not a single note on the fact that Kit’s grid is running slightly off-center to the grain of the cloth. Kit’s repair - tidy, if not perfect - is good enough.
Kit doesn’t say anything in reply. She’s not sure how, yet, to reply. But she goes back to her work smiling.
[Kit/Jade] [anal play/rimming] if your comfortable
Enjoy some words about butt stuff, anon. (NSFW fanfic under the cut obviously)
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It’s not wholly accurate, to say that she can’t help herself. Jade can. She always can, is always capable of holding herself back that little bit more, resisting temptation an hour longer, a minute longer.
But she doesn’t want to.
And, in this moment, she allows herself a loosening of that tightly-held control. She licks a stripe along Kit’s cunt, from her clit up to the hole gleaming in the soft candlelight. Kit, pressed face-down, squirms. Her body is a perfect landscape: the curve of her ass twin hills, the shadow on the far side of it, between the cheeks of it, hidden valleys. Her shoulders, her back, the way her hands gather the bedsheets into tangled hillocks, it’s terrain that Jade has learned inch by inch.
She fucks her tongue into the dripping gash of Kit’s hole, and Kit keens. Jade wriggles it, licks the insides of her walls, and Kit wriggles in reply like a caught fish, like some perfect animal thing.
Jade slips her tongue out, and brings it glistening with Kit’s desire to the next hole. She licks it, can feel-see-hear the way Kit wriggles and jumps, squirms in reply. “I want to be in you here,” Jade hums into the soft curve of Kit’s ass.
Kit’s reply is a pant, a whine.
“I’m going to get the oil and slick you up, princess,” she whispers. “Going to push myself into this hole, make it learn me.”
Jade does just that.
She slicks her hand, regarding Kit waiting on the bed for her touch. There’s an artificial stillness to her, a sense that her instinct is to squirm and quiver but she’s holding herself still by design. The thought makes Jade thrill. She’s half-breathless with fond responsibility, a deep feeling of the loveliness and importance of this. She wants to handle Kit with the utmost care.
Jade presses one slick fingertip to Kit’s asshole and feels her whole body tighten. “Easy,” she whispers. “Softly, now.”
Kit whines. Jade can see both holes clench and relax and clench again, her nervousness made visible. “Softly,” Kit huffs.
“Soft as a whisper,” Jade replies. She drags the slipperiness along the rim of Kit’s hole, feels how tight, how sensitive. “Help me?”
Kit’s hips rise. Her hand snakes forward along the bedsheets, finds its way between her own legs. Jade watches as Kit’s grasping, fumbling fingertips find her clit and rub. Gradually, the taut cord of Kit’s body eases.
Jade presses again. She barely manages a fingertip; the littlest slice of opening, before Kit tenses and whines. “Soft, princess,” she whispers. “Soft for me.”
She presses harder.
She can feel Kit’s body stretching around her fingertip now. The squirm of her is mesmerizing. Kit clenches and relaxes and Jade’s name spills from her, broken and soft. She bucks her hips into Jade’s hand, advancing her progress, and then wriggles away from the pressure. “Soft, Kit,” Jade says. Her voice has a break to it now, a gravel betraying her own desire.
Kit’s hole is gripping her fingertip so tightly.
Jade wants her whole finger, her whole hand, the whole of her gripped by Kit just like that. Jade wants to press in as hard as she can, to take that passage and split Kit’s hole open and see her writhe. She exhales, hard. She runs a calming hand along Kit’s ass, letting her palm soothe Kit’s writhing body as much as the softness of Kit’s skin soothes her own eagerness.
“Push, Kit,” she whispers. “Gentle and soft. Press yourself onto me.”
Kit whimpers and tenses and relaxes once more. Jade can see her pinch her own clit, can see slick dripping from her hole. “Trying,” Kit whines.
“Doing so good, Kit,” Jade sighs. “Nearly there.”
Finally, Kit tenses in the right way. Breathes and clenches her belly and her asshole slowly opens, parting for the plunge of Jade right down to her knuckle.
Kit gnawed on her lower lip, her heart thumping so hard it felt as though it might explode. Nothing could have prepared her for this, no past anxieties, stage frights, or bouts of nerves. She wished they had abandoned the show and eloped somewhere, just the two of them on a beach, maybe. Kit took a deep breath and then another, and walked with her mother to be delivered to her brother’s arm. She watched her wedding party walk ahead of her, Jade having already gone ahead. She filled her lungs until they could hold no more air, processed not a single word that was said to her over the sound of blood in her ears, and then empited her lungs completely to become human again.
Here's two bingo cards with some of the November challenges made by the dashing @geek-and-nina
Here's a different style whipped up by @swashbucklery:
And HERE is a link to a pdf version of SO MANY different styles so you can choose your own/get a better quality image to download (also thanks to @swashbucklery)
(And here is a link to a text version of all 30 challenges)
Hello questies, writers and friendos. We’ve got a month of 30 little writing challenges you can play with through November - and a few reading ones as well.
These are super chill. You can do these through the month in any order you like, and you can interpret them all in any way you like. This is not about writing complete works - the aim is to do a little writing or reading or fandom interaction every day, and play with a few different scenarios to stretch some creative muscles.
If you want to make your own November calendar graphic to keep track of your progress, Canva has a bunch of free, editable and printable templates!
Have at it!
Write 1000 words in a day
Write 500 words in a day
Write 250 words in a day
Write 100 words in a day
Write 50 words in a day
Take a break today and don’t worry about productivity, make yourself a treat
Add 100 words to an older WIP (whatever ‘older’ means to you)
Add a paragraph to a WIP
Add a sentence to a WIP
Edit a page of your WIP
Re-read something you've written (bonus: share what you like about your work on tumblr/discord)
Re-read a favourite fic (bonus: notice something you enjoy about it and let the author know, or leave a ‘second kudos’ to show you’re re-reading)
Catch up on a fic, or a chapter of something you’ve been meaning to catch up on (no matter how old)
Leave a nice comment on a fic (no matter how old)
Post something on AO3
Write something in a new place (take yourself to a park, a library, on a train, sitting on the bench with your feet in the sink, just mix it up!)
Write using different tools (try writing with pen and paper, or on a phone, or on a keyboard - just take a break from your usual medium)
Hit shuffle on your music and let the first song set the vibe
Write a snippet based on ONE of the following prompts: The knots were tight / Faster and faster and faster / The ache was only getting worse
Write a snippet based on ONE of the following prompts: The rain was wet / The sun was blistering / The frost strangled everything
Write a meet-cute (possibilities: at a comic convention, over a bee-sting, snowed in together, a bloody nose in a mosh pit, flirting in a coffee shop)
Write a deleted scene (from canon, from your own fic, or maybe even from a friend’s fic)
Re-write a scene from a different POV (from canon, from your own fic, or maybe even from a friend’s fic)
Focus on something you love best about Tanthamore
Write 200 words of dialogue
Write 200 words of prose
Write 200 words of anything your heart desires
Write in a different tense than your usual
You’ve been doing so well - have another break and let yourself lie fallow for a day
Meets it beats it: hit your previous days goal again or beat it (you can absolutely use this as an extra rest day)
Urania looks far beyond this world and draws your attention to the stars. . .
And to the two moons lighting up the sky. The muse of astronomy is as present in the far reaches of the galaxy in a sci-fi au as she is in the constellation of Jade’s freckles.
See all the writing challenges and prompts for Musetember here
Terpsichore extends her hand to draw you into a dance...
From sexy grinding in a modern au, enforced lessons or restraint in Tir Asleenian balls, to an aching slow dance in the rain, dance can be about self-expression or tight, rigid control.
See all the writing challenges and prompts for Musetember here
Thalia is here to make you laugh. With her, it’s time to embrace the most ridiculous premises, the silliest goobers and the bawdiest jokes you can imagine. Really revel in the humorous side of Willow, a comedy of errors, or even a vaudeville au - just don’t forget that happy kissy ending!
See all the writing challenges and prompts for Musetember here
Polyhymnia welcomes you to explore religion and ritual. Speak to us of the Order of the Wyrm, of beliefs that shape the lives of the Bone Reavers… or of Catholic schoolgirls just trying to catch a moment together.
See all the writing challenges and prompts for Musetember here
With a name so close to E-rated, it's apt that Erato is the muse of erotica. With her, it’s time to get your smut on. Write a moment of intense passion, of aching desire, of the deepest, horniest bond imaginable.
Imagination and horniness know no limits with this muse....
See all the writing challenges and prompts for Musetember here
Melpomene looks deep into your heart and asks you, what is the worst that could happen? The muse of tragedy, she has seen over and over again the ruinous and inescapable paths people create for themselves and the ones they love. How could Sorsha doom her daughter to a loveless marriage? When hope is lost, what survives?
What tragedies can you dig from your own heart this September?
See all the writing challenges and prompts for Musetember here
