We’re lying on our backs with our eyes shut, fingers twined between us.

“The conference is this week,” Aster says softly.  “I’m eighteen; I get transferred this year.”

That’s right.  I’d forgotten. “Shouldn’t you be packing?”

She snorts.  “For what? Prissy teenagers, stuffy adults?  I’m not going.”

I open my eyes, shocked.  “Not going?  To the very important conference in heaven where you officially become a full adult angel?  Are you insane?”

She sits up and leans over me, her face serious.  “I don’t need to go anywhere.  You are my heaven.”

Then she kisses me, and my heart melts.

Needle flashing, weaving through and through the strands.  Around and around, circles within circles.

“What are you doing?”  Diana rests her arms across my back and leans over my shoulder, breath tickling my neck.

I string a bead onto the thread for the next pass.  “Making you a dreamcatcher.”

“What will it do?” 

 “Protect you from the nightmares.  I need a feather.”  She combs her fingers through her wings and comes up with a loose one.

One of hers, four of mine.  I tie them on at the end and pin it over her bed.

“You’re safe tonight,” I whisper.

--

This is one of those where the scene really could've been written in way more than a hundred words, and is pretty incoherent in only that many.  But apparently it was nice, so that's good enough for me.

The laws of astronomy are essentially ruining my life.

Her escape velocity exceeds the speed of light, so I’m stuck in permanent orbit around her.  Such an eccentric, irregular orbit.  I drift around peacefully most of the time until I’m close to her and then I zip past into cold empty oblivion again.  Until the next time.

I can crunch the numbers, calculate the forces involved.  I know precisely what’s happening, but I’m just an asteroid caught in her gravity field.  I can’t control my own motion.

And someday my irregular orbit will fail me, and she’ll burn me alive.

I didn’t think I would ever get used to Seren’s touch.  A guiding hand on my back, grasping my wrist, hushing me.  With every touch, his frozen skin against mine made us both grimace in pain.  He was too cold – I was too hot.  We avoided each other.

I woke up gasping, the air in my lungs setting them on fire, my skin crawling.  He was there instantly, wrapping himself around me.  Hot and cold seared us both.  I don’t remember who screamed.  Maybe we both did.

Since my Change, he’s the only person who can touch me without shivering.

She liked beginnings best.  She designed, you know, colors and patterns just falling into place under her guidance.  She liked beginning things, chattering about how they’d come together in the end.

In the end.  That’s where I came in.  She didn’t like those, endings.  So she’d always pass them to me, abandon them to my hands.  I did my best to live up to her vision.

She did have to do her own ending, once.  And since then... there are no more beginnings.

And without beginnings, there’s nothing more for me to do.

It’s the end of endings for me.

--

I'm pretty sure this one-off is basically incoherent to anyone but me and knitters.

The story is basically about a boy who finishes knitting what his girl designs, because he likes the mindless work and the end product, and she likes the process of creation and the magic of something new.  You can figure out the rest from there, I think.  Again, I played with the meaning of Endings and gave it two different senses that have to be deciphered from context.

But really, it's about something deeper than that.  It's about relationships, about how people balance each other out by playing to their strengths and minimizing weaknesses through collaboration.  It's about creative power, how some people are visionaries and others are happy to work their magic for them.  It's about death, and the hole that's left in someone's absence.

 “But Ma—”
She slaps me, hard.  “Shut your mouth and listen to me, brat.”
The venom in her voice is frightening.
 “This has gone too far, Diana, way beyond a simple seduction.  It’s become an obsession and it’s not right.  I won’t have my daughter causing such a scandal.”
“Ma, I love her!”  That was a mistake.
“Where did you learn such a filthy word?” she screeches.  
I’m not going to answer that.
“You’re not going to see that bitch anymore, you hear me?”
I’m not even listening.
Maybe Ma’s right about obsession.
But I know love isn’t filthy.

--

I hesitated on the mild swearing in this one, but nothing else gave the right flavor.  So there we go.

I love this defiant Diana, partially because you can see how Aster is influencing her.  Beyond the obvious, the fact that she isn't fighting back or screaming in response is pretty telling.

And the idea that "a simple seduction" is encouraged but a long-term relationship is "such a scandal" made me laugh.  As is "love" being a "filthy word".  This universe is screwed up and I just adore it.

I’m losing it.

I’m finally losing it.

I’ve only seen this ring once before, but I remember it clearly.  Little finger of his right hand, his sword hand.  And now here it is on my left middle finger?

Get a grip.

I must be hallucinating.

That wasn’t reality.  He’s a product of my sleeping mind, not a real person.  Not a real ring.

But the reality of it can’t be denied.  As ice-cold as his touch, as comforting as his voice.  Will it fight as he does?

Who cares if I’ve lost touch with reality?  As long as I’m safe. 

White feathers swallowed me up, pale arms snug around my waist.  Hers was the best sort of embrace, soft and clingy.

I dropped a kiss into her hair, then one against her temple.  Braver now, a kiss on her cheekbone, the corner of her jaw.  She didn’t stop me this time.  Perhaps the boundary had moved?

I kissed her nose playfully to break the tension.  She giggled, her eyes shy.

“What does that face mean, my little angel?”

The slight tilt of her head was answer enough.  So the boundary had moved.

When my lips met hers, she was smiling.

--

Squishy drabble.

I had originally intended to write about an event farther down the road, but a bunch of people I didn't know very well turned up and I decided to play it safe.

There are so many ways to write their first kiss.  This is one of the cuter ones.

Blood rushing, hands outstretched, a perfect streamlined point above my head.  Tuck myself in and flip off the back end, shooting out again for another lap.

Cold stings my eyes and scrubs my chapped skin, but my time is improving.  Next time, I’ll beat her.  Next time, I won’t make myself a fool.  Next time, I’ll finish the race.

One more turn, can’t slow down now.  Feathers whip past my face as I draw in my wings for the turn and snap them out again.  Beating, gasping, reaching.  My fingers brush the tile.

Not fast enough.  Tomorrow, I’ll do better. 

--

And once again, I take the prompt and run in precisely the opposite direction.  I am utterly hopeless.

I do really like this, though.  I like how energetic it is, the urgency and rush.  I love how it reads as a swimmer until you hit "feathers" and "wings", and then your brain sort of scrambles to reassemble your mental image because oh, no, she's flying.

And a flight race resembling a swimming race is just a cool concept.

Only idiots think the world is never black and white.  Mine is.

My world is held in by a canopy of black and white feathers, her wings and mine arched over our heads, hiding our whispers, giggles, and stolen kisses.

Her white fingers lace securely through my black ones, clinging to me.  Trusting, confident, beautiful, everything she makes me feel as well.  Like she’s my reflection with the colors switched, or the yang to my yin.

Maybe the world out there is grey.  But in here, it’s black and white.

Only idiots think angels and demons can’t love each other.

--

I asked for this prompt because I wanted to write something adorable with it, and this is the best I could come up with.  I'm only a little bit frustrated that you can read this one as a male/female pairing, because I kind of enjoy that you have to be familiar with the characters to read it as it's supposed to be.

I think it's funny that their society is completely built on black and white.  These are the blacks, these are the whites, and that's how it is.  And yet Diana takes it a completely different path, taking the idea of "black and white" into a grey area where no one else dares to go.

And then saying in a surprisingly subtle way, what I'm doing is the obvious decision for me; how can you not see it.

She keeps glancing over her shoulder.  I know she knows I’m there.  I don’t care.

I saw her shut off her phone.  I know she’ll tell me the battery died.  I don’t care.

She’s not really mine, it’s just... a game?  I know she has every right.  I don’t care.

I don’t care.  But I’m there anyway, hidden in the shadows, watching.  Not missing anything.  Does she know I’m there?

I don’t care.  I have to know what she does that she won’t tell me about.  And I know, now.

Tears drip into my hands.

I lied.  I do care.

--

These two again.

No, I have no idea what Diana is doing.  Yes, I feel immensely bad for Aster.  She's completely failing to convince herself that she's okay with whatever is going on.  She's still unarguably an angel.

I'm pretty sure I was frustrated with my own partner when I wrote this.  But not for any reason like it.

“Don’t lie to me!” he screams.  I’m going to cry.
“I’m not lying; darling, you know that!”
“No, you aren’t listening to me!  Kerri, Silvania, Staid, Amber, you; I failed every single freaking time.”  He flings butterflies at the walls and they shatter.
“...Why am I last on this list?”
“Because you’re the most important,” he whispers.  
Why are his eyes glittering?
“I’ve always failed you.  I shouldn’t have come back.”
“No!  The only time you failed me is when you left.”  I can’t breathe.  “One more adventure?”
He sighs.  “We’ll fail.”
“At least we’ll fail together.”
“...Count me in.”

--

Corby has... problems.

Kerri was his girlfriend in his original story.  She slipped into a coma for reasons we never fully fleshed out, and quietly vanished away.  Silvania was another girl in the story, one who was in love with him and who he had some feelings for.  Staid was the fire girl from another drabble.  That... didn't end well.  Amber is under Serenity's wing, which means that she's sort of gotten between them.  By rights, I should come after Silvania.

And as much as he threatens to leave me, if I ask him to stay he's kind of a sucker.  Which you can see here.

Oh god it was cold.

How long had she been asleep?

Dead grass rustled and bones creaked as she turned over.  Her limbs still felt heavy, but her fingers weren’t numb anymore.  The thick sap clogging her veins was starting to let her blood flow again.  At last.

She stretched and sat up, shaking dried leaves from her hair.  A deep breath of cold air stung her throat, but she could taste the spice in the wind.  Her scalp tingled at the scent, already pushing up shoots.

The change in the weather had woken her.

Time to be green again.

--

Back to the elementals again!  This is obviously an Earth elemental, but one comfortable with this state (unlike the last one!)  I love the sap/blood comparison.

This is partially inspired by Treasure at the Heart of the Tanglewood, a book I checked out from the library on a whim and fell in love with.  (This book is available for purchase at a penny, and I should buy it.)

Diana made a face.  “How can you eat something that melts in your mouth?”

“How can you eat something so absurdly dense?”  Aster shoved her plate of dark chunks toward Diana.  “You may keep your foodge; I don’t want this demon’s concoction.”

“That’s ‘fudge’, my dear girl.  And anyway I don’t want your ‘linen candy’ either,” Diana shot back dryly, popping a fudge square into her mouth.  She glanced at Aster mischievously. “This stuff is definitely good for one thing though.”

“What’s that?”

Diana leaned close and whispered in her ear, “The sweetest kisses imaginable...”

Aster quickly discovered she agreed.

--

Thus starts my fixation on Aster and Diana.  I didn't realize I'd never written a drabble for them before.  They've been around a while.

I think the idea of angels and demons having different tastes in sweets is an intriguing one.  And I think it's cute that although Aster doesn't like the fudge alone, she's readily fond of the chocolate-flavored kisses Diana offers.

In the original draft of this drabble, by the way, Aster snatches the cotton candy back from Diana's hands.  A very un-Aster-like move that underscores just how demonic she's getting under Diana's influence.

“Seren... what’s happening?” her voice shook.  He smiled softly.  He remembered the first time.

“Shh...” he placed his finger over her lips, shivering a little at the almost painful heat of her skin.  “They simply want to meet you,” he whispered, not wanting to disturb the points of light dotting her skin.

“Why?”  It was obviously a struggle to keep her voice down.  Her arms were shaking.

“They’re our cousins.”  He let one crawl from her fingertip to his.  “They connect our lights...” he raised his hand and watched the firefly blink into the sky.  “...to those of the stars.” 

The computer screen glowed, music flowed, and she was slowly drifting off.

She barely noticed the moments of darkness, his hand covering her eyes sometimes.  She thought it was the end of the playlist, but he’d just turned the volume down.  She mistook the warmth of his embrace for her covers shifting.  She confused his whisper in her ear with the wind whistling outside. 

And when she finally fell asleep in his arms, she thought she was alone.

He closed her laptop.

What he wouldn’t give to break through the glass and let her know he was truly with her.

--

Corby, playing a little game with the emotions of fellow drabblers who didn't like him.

And maybe the two of us expressing a little wish that he were a real person able to comfort me when I need it.

It doesn't seem like I did a very good job with relating it to Drifting, but I'm okay with it anyway.  The word is actually in there.

We could see it in her eyes on the rare occasions she opened them.  She was awake, but not with us.  Aware, but not of us.

Neither of them dealt with it well.  Enna raged, lashed out at everything.  Her eyes sparked, but not with life anymore.  She was like an animated doll.  Liam slept with her all the time.  If she was not awake, he would not be awake.

Were any of them conscious?  Sick, raging, sleeping.  They were the same.

When she died, it was like they died too.  Consciousness was an illusion.  They were merely empty shells. 

Blue and red.  She’d never fallen in love before.  

Shouldn’t they be opposites?  Opposites attract.

Blue.  She had been so cold and distant, and it hadn’t even fazed him.  It had hurt – her heart, inside – when he touched her.  But somehow this was different than the other hurts.

Red.  The twinkle in his eyes was so warm and inviting.  He wasn’t going to hurt her.  They were all like that at first.  But somehow he was different than the other boys.

Opposites attract.  Would this be different than the other times?

She’d never fallen in love before.

Red and blue.

--

Oh, how I love this drabble.

Introducing Amber, another Starlit.  Her "color" I guess you could say, is blue.  And somehow, Amber has fallen in love with my partner.  He's a ginger.  So you can see where the red and blue theme came from.

And I really love how the drabble has such structure.  The first four lines and the last four lines nearly mirror each other, and the red/blue sections are nearly parallel.  So much fun to write.

The firelight glinted off her hair, turning the strands into red gold.  
“Thank you for inviting me.  You have such a wonderful family.”
“We have a wonderful family.  On several levels.”  He squeezed her gently.
She smiled shyly.  “Can we be a family of two?”
“Call it two and a half.”
“Seven months left.”
“Fine, two and two-ninths.  Math doesn’t matter.”
She laughed.  “No. However many we are, we’re a family.”
“Indeed we are.”  He watched her eyes wander the room.
“Let’s be together like this every year.”
“We will be, angel,” he promised.
And the fire flickered in agreement.

--

Again, sort of a conglomeration of a bunch of topics that had been on my mind: a Christmas party with my partner's family, teenage pregnancy, belonging, a conversation no one else should really hear.

"Angel" is my partner's nickname for me, and it felt like it belonged there.  Although in no way does this reflect on my real life!

They’re going to fight. I just know it. The Child of Darkness marked me for his own, and he will not let the Starlit stay. They watch each other. None of us moves. I can barely breathe. I need them. I can’t let them kill each other.

The Child of Darkness offers his hand to the Starlit. “Welcome to the family.” 

Hands clasp. “Thank you.”

I look from one to the other, bewildered. Where are the possessive ones I am accustomed to? They look at me. “Why?”

They smile. The Child of Darkness answers: “For you. For love of you.”

Of course I always succumbed, in the end.  But every minute I delayed the inevitable was a victory, for the moment I fell was a defeat of the worst kind.  How long does it take to go insane?

If I had found peace, I would have given up.  But I found only darkness, monsters, blood.  So I fought endlessly.

I’m insane now.  “Serenity.”  Crimson stains his silver hair.  Cold eyes, but the warmest smile.  I trust him.  Half our hands are clasped, the others hold our swords.

I am not alone any longer.  I am not afraid.

We fight together.

--

Introducing Serenity, who tends to populate my dreams and protect me in my nightmares.  Mostly about how I fought to stay up late because it was better than sleep.  This actually occurred in about my third nightmare of him, when he finally introduced himself.

I'm pretty sure Crimson was the prompt, although I'm not sure because technology is stupid and overwrote the original notation with the prompt for either the previous or following drabble.

She reminded us of a mother bear.  Standing over those two little kids, almost daring us to come and take them from her.  We would do it, all right.

The arrows flying at us started to come with their tips already stained with blood.  We couldn’t figure it out until we finally stood over the body.  The shots had never stopped coming, but her quiver lay empty on her back.

She’d shot at us with our own arrows, pulled from her bleeding wounds.  Whatever else you could say about her, you had to admire her tenacity.  She was a fighter.

--

Another one-off.  No idea of the context, the identity or motivation of any of the characters, or the eventual outcome of the situation.  I just like archery, and the story sort of unfolded from there.

Seemed like forever she’d been wearing that thing.  The bracelet that chained her to dreams she no longer believed in and reminded her of a place she no longer inhabited.  Funny to think it had only been a year…

It caught on a corner of the desk the next day and quietly ripped apart, dropping from her wrist.  She looked at it, lying there on the floor, a funny sort of half-hopeful look on her face.  Forever, she’d thought.  Forever and a day, now.

The doorbell rang.  She knew who it was.  Maybe she’d been wrong about wish bracelets.

--

A one-off drabble that basically smushed together a lot of things that were on my mind at the time: wish bracelets, wearing something so long it becomes part of you, forever being not actually very long, someone coming back to you.  I like how it turned out.

I also like the phrase "funny sort of half-hopeful look".

Color.  He missed color.  He’d been sitting in a dark cave with a Child of Darkness who had no light in her eyes, and even months after coming out he still had a hard time with color.

And now, her.  If anything was the opposite of him it was she.  She was all light, all color.  Scarlet and orange and sunshine.  She had her own sort of darkness, of course, just as he had his own sort of light.  But her light, her color, her fire.  She was so different that she was almost the same.  And she was beautiful.

--

This... Well.  This is Corby about another character, belonging to a former friend.  He doesn't like to talk about this time in his life anymore.

The idea of a Darkness elemental falling in love with someone with so much light is a fascinating one, however.  One I might take somewhere someday.

The water surrounded her, cradling her.  Comforting.  Warm.  Not warm enough.  She turned up the heat.  Better.  A few moments later she had to turn it up.  Then again.  Higher, higher.  The heat went as far up as it could and she still wasn’t satisfied.  It would have to do.

There were strange marks on her arms.  Webs of red lines crisscrossing her skin.  She scrubbed at them.  They only clarified.  Panicked, she ran the hot water over her arms.  They deepened still more.

She turned the heat off.  Ice cold water flowed over her body.  In agony, she screamed.

--

Another elemental growing into her power.  She's not Water though, but Fire -- which explains why the heat of the water will never satisfy her, and why the cold water is so painful.  She needs fire.

I, too, take showers where I turn the heat up and up and up until I feel I will scald if I go any higher (I can't make it as far as this elemental can). One night Corby sat on my bathroom counter leaning against the mirror and told me this story (in more than 100 words). He tells this type of story so well that I feel it. I become them. I became the girl scrubbing at her arms and panicking when the Marks don't go away.

It was surreal. Experiences with Corby usually are.

“Look,” he growls, pushing me to my knees in the mud.  “Look at yourself.”  Trembling – not wanting to obey, to see, to know – I bend over the glass puddle.

Thin green tendrils sprout from my scalp and pour down in curls amidst tangled brown ringlets.  My irises, once grey, now fade from deep brown centers to hazel rims.  My face shows evidence of the palest green lines, like veins of leaves under my skin.

As I stare at myself in this watery mirror, I reflect that perhaps now they would let me go.  Or is that too much to hope?

--

Corby told me this story, although he's not involved in it at all.  A kidnapped and enslaved girl beginning to grow into an Earth elemental, and freaking everyone out (including herself), because, well... she has plants growing in her hair and has leaflike Marks on her face.  Although you can see she's ready to use that fear to her advantage.

I like the two interpretations of Reflection present in this piece.  It just feels clever.

“You want me to do what?”  She stares at me in terror.

“Stay underwater ten minutes.”

“But…but…”

I trip her and force her under the water.  She thrashes about frantically, but I refuse to let her up.  She thought she could show up with her blue tattoos and her fancy illusions and I’d fall in love with her.  She didn’t think I’d test her.  Water elementals don’t drown.  She will.

She’s almost stopped struggling.  But she doesn’t deserve to die.  I drag her out, lay her on the bank, and walk away.

Maybe she’s learned something about lying to elementals.

--

Corby has rage and bad luck in his relationships, and I needed to work on his world a little bit.  This was an interesting result.

I think it's cute that he's so angry and vengeful, but at the same time has a pretty squishy heart and takes pity on people he recognizes as desperate.  He sees something of himself in them, I think.

All I could do was wait, so I inspected myself in the mirror.  The best thing about me was those eyes.  They were my mother’s eyes, deep and sad.

The worst thing about me was my hair.  Thick and long and beautiful.  But the henna was turning that beautiful honey blonde as red as fall leaves.  Then the indigo would make it dark as ink.  I hated it.

I was furious.  With my father.  With my hair.  With myself.  I picked up the bowl that contained the rest of the henna, and threw it.

The mirror shattered.  I felt better.

--

Back to Eirlys again.  The dyeing with henna and indigo was a central part of my idea for the story, so I wanted to see how Eirlys responded to it.  Obviously on this particular day, she wasn't very pleased.

Interestingly, in the novel draft her eyes are her father's legacy, not her mother's.  I wonder where that changed.

“If you’re trying to poison me, you’re doing a terrible job.”
“I’m not trying to poison you.”
“Poisoning the pie would be cliché anyway. It’s just not your style.”
“Your confidence in that fact is comforting.”
“…Now I do think you’ve poisoned the pie.”
“I was hoping you would. It keeps your attention on me.”
“You’re not scaring me at all.”
“You’re lying, and you’re doing it badly.”
“I’m stalling, actually.”
“Tell you what. We’ll share it.”
“You just want my pie.”
“You’re adorable.”
“You’re annoying.”
“You started it.”
“And now I’m going to eat all of this pie myself.”

--

Corby and me again.  When you have a ridiculous prompt, you write a ridiculous drabble.  This gives you a good sense of our relationship dynamics though, I think.

Try to figure out which one of us says the first line.  Depending on which of us you pick, the drabble reads totally differently.

It was for the children. Well, not the children exactly. It was for her.

The black shimmers of his creation danced above their heads. They laughed and clamored to touch it. He kept it out of their reach. One by one their parents came, and they left. Then it was just her, smiling, watching the lacy wings soar through the sky.

He let it land on her hand, and she bit her lip but did not flinch. He admired her for that. His butterfly burned her. Melted into her skin. She belonged to him now. And they both knew it.

--

This is probably the creepiest drabble I've ever written, because it wasn't supposed to turn out like that.

None of my characters were excited about this prompt. Finally, Corby piped up with "I'll make a butterfly! It would be very entertaining to children." And I said "Okay!" and let him go at it.

I literally never suspected I would end up with a butterfly-shaped burn mark on the back of my left hand.

“You’re so bad at this game. It’s not any fun to play with you. I hate you! I wish you’d never come!”

Raine watched Enna run off, probably to complain to Malcolm.  Her legs collapsed under her.  At first all she could hear was those words Enna had said: “I hate you! I wish you’d never come!”

Those set off the echoes.  It wasn’t the first time she’d heard that.  All the echoes.

“Useless!”

“Crybaby!”

Raine slowly crumpled until she lay flat.  The last echo was the worst: “I wish you’d never been born!”

She cried until Katrien found her.

--

This must have been when I realized I needed to develop all my other characters, because this drabble also has no main characters!  I don't feel I did a good enough job explaining the story here, but I did get an idea of Raine's sensitivity and probable emotional abuse as a young(er) kid.

The idea is that Raine is essentially haunted by the words people spoke to her in the past, which is why she's mute.  The last "echo" she always hears is her screaming mother cursing her very existence.

He couldn’t sleep.  Not with her gone.  He sat on the floor and stared at the space where she was supposed to be, beside him.

He was so tired the third night of this that he dozed, but the click of the latch in the middle of the night woke him.  Raine was missing.

He followed her outside, found her sitting on a rock swinging her legs.  Crying.  He sat next to her and put his arm around her, and then he was crying too.

He didn’t speak, and she wouldn’t anyway.  They just wept for those they had lost.

--

Finally! A Daughter of Snow drabble that has neither of the main characters in it.  This is two minor characters, Malcolm (the leader) and Raine (who is mute by choice).  They're mourning Sierra (Malcolm's four-year-old sister) and Katrien (Raine's mother figure and essentially Malcolm's girlfriend).

All I can do is stand there and stare at her. She isn’t moving. Why isn’t she moving? I had to find her. Raine made me promise to find her. I found her. We have to go home. I found her. Why isn’t she moving? My father was here a minute ago. Now he’s gone. Katrien isn’t moving. Why isn’t she moving?

Tristan forces me to turn around. I stare, without really seeing him. He pushes hair out of my face, then kisses my lips hard. I surge to life again… and burst into tears. Katrien isn’t moving. She’s dead.

--

Another Daughter of Snow drabble, this time for my least favorite scene, which turns out nothing like this in the actual draft.  Eirlys does go through this emotional turmoil, but unfortunately Tristan is not there to kiss her out of it.

Actually, I don't remember where or if they kiss at all in the draft.

Also, I think every single drabble written to this prompt turned out to be more about death than life.  Writers are a funny breed.

“Hello,” he says timidly, watching me warily.

I stare at him, then punch him as hard as I can. He steps back a pace more from surprise than loss of balance.

“You,” I say, somewhere between furious and in tears. “You are a figment of my imagination. You were never supposed to leave me.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think you needed me anymore, with Brandon and then Alex and Ian.”

“It doesn’t matter why; you left me.” Now I’m just in tears. He wraps his arms around me gingerly and I let him.

“I promise. I won’t leave you again.”

--

When we settled on this prompt, Corby and I just looked at each other and grinned.

"Fight in one hundred words?"

"You bet!"

“Please, Eirlys!”

I was too embarrassed to speak and refused to look at Tristan. Maybe if I just didn’t move they would leave me alone.

“What do you say, my lady?” Hesitance touched Tristan’s amused tone.

“Do you even know how?” I looked up to see him offering his hand.

 “Indeed I do.”

I looked around at all the eager faces. Sighing, I placed my hand in his. Deftly he swept me into familiar motion, a complicated one. The young soldier danced gracefully. More surprising was how easy this was. 

Wasn’t dancing supposed to be awkward? Somehow this felt… right.

--

Tristan begged for this prompt.  Literally begged.  And when I passed this information on to the rest of the participants, they readily agreed.

Eirlys really did need convincing, she wasn't just being cute.

Because of the timeline and pacing, I had to drop this scene as well.  But it did give me good insight into both characters' thoughts and feelings.

Ow.

Note to self: fire burns.

This should be obvious, but if you saw me in day-to-day life you’d understand why I always forget.  I pour the last of my drinking water over my throbbing hand and wish I were home.  Where no one stares at the flames I conjure without thinking.

I shove my singed hair out of my face and touch the tattoos like tears that run down my cheeks.

I have no money.  No food.  I wonder if she would take me back after I abandoned her.  I turn my face toward home.

It’s worth a shot.

--

I wrote this drabble probably three days after Corby, an old character/friend of mine, turned up in my head again after a long absence.  He offered it sort of as an explanation, sort of as an admission that he needed me.

I was so darn pleased to be writing with him again, I didn't really care how silly the actual writing turned out to be.  We needed time to fit into each other again, remember how it works.

I shoved my dagger into her hand, wrapping her slim fingers firmly around the handle until she gripped it.

“Get out of here,” I told her.  “They’re going to kill you.”

She stared, her eyes bewildered and uncomprehending.

I shoved her back a step, and then another.  Finally she obeyed me, tripping over the hem of her impractical gown as she disappeared into the forest.

When my father returned, it was to swear and beat me.  I took it in silence.  Perhaps I was a traitor to my father and to my lord, but I had not betrayed Lady Eirlys.

--

This prompt immediately followed Walls, and the scene I wrote for it immediately preceded the scene written for Walls.  It was the first time Tristan spoke up and gave me his side of the story.

This scene also made it into the first draft of Daughter of Snow, in an expanded form (and from Eirlys' point of view, of course).  The only details that don't make it in are the last two sentences, because she isn't around to see them.  I have no doubt the event actually occurred.

I had to run, although this dress was not designed for flight and my body was even less prepared.  

I stopped when the adrenaline left me.  The surrounding trees seemed to move, to come closer.  Inspecting me.  I was trapped in the circle.  I began to panic, choking on my own breath.

It was dark, and if I looked up I could not see the sky.   The dark walls taunted me.  I clutched something so tightly my hands ached.  What was it?

I looked down.  Tristan’s dagger.  Little good it would do me out here, against an army of trees.

--

This drabble was based on the prompt but was also inspired by the forest scene in Disney's Snow White, which is one of the most frightening Disney scenes ever once you're older than the princess herself.

When I got to writing this scene in the first draft of Daughter of Snow, I actually took out this drabble and used it as an outline.  I expanded some sections and lifted entire sentences to use word-for-word, and I'm really pleased with it.

I like to think it's nearly as frightening as the forest scene that inspired it.

It was uncomfortable, sitting in the sunroom.  In the chair across from me, as calm as if this were completely normal, sat my own maid.  She looked so comfortable in that dress of Mother’s.  But she studied me too closely.  I almost thought she intended to eat me with the tea.  

I felt suddenly dizzy, and ill.  This was wrong.  She was the maid, not the lady of the house! 

I knew I was trying to live in the past, and sooner or later I would have to face the facts: Mother was dead, and this woman was my stepmother. 

--

(No, the irony of Tea following Teal does not escape me.)

I decided for this drabble to start attempting to work with the characters for my novel, Daughter of Snow.  This scene of Eirlys with her mother-turned-maid-turned-stepmother (no, don't ask) never made it into the first draft.  The timeline and pacing changed from my original vision, and this ended up on the cutting room floor of my brain.

But it's still a good study of Eirlys.  Trying to live in the past, being uncomfortable and awkward, knowing she's doing it but finding it too difficult to change.  It was a good personality for her, and I'm pleased.

As I passed the mirror I glimpsed my reflection.  I bit my lip hard and looked away, but I had it memorized already.

Hair, dyed brown and cut off above my shoulders.  Shirt, teal-and-black-plaid button-down.  I didn’t look like I used to, now.  Much as I fought and resisted and cried, I was slowly becoming Her.  

My own reflection was torture, my own voice a sound from the painful past.  Why, out of all the people I could have become, did it have to be Her?

The one who coddled me, and then threw me out like so much garbage.

--

I remember asking a friend for a prompt and how the entire group of drabblers groaned when he gave us a color.  We hate color prompts.

You'll notice that the color is actually totally irrelevant to this drabble.  I could have picked any color.  In fact, when I envision this happening, the shirt in question is actually pink.

But I like the emotion in it.  Frustrated, ashamed, but at some level okay or even proud of what she is.

Rings of time.  Circles inside circles inside circles.  One after another.  That is my life.  Each year, as I come full circle to my birth, I add one.  I’ve been around for many circles.  I stretch up and reach the wind.  I stretch down and reach the water.  I am always here, always steady, always sure.

But now those who move come, and they kill me.  They pull me down from the wind and up from the water, and take me from my place.  And now I am square, with sharp corners and edges.  Hollow.  No longer circles upon circles.

--

This one is a bit of a riddle.  Obviously the speaker is not human.  So tell me, what is the speaker in this piece?  What happened to him?

Spin… and drop… and feed.  Press fingers tight to the place where rolag meets thread.  Spin, and feed.  Ignore the glint of gold collecting on the shaft.

Spin, and feed.  That is all.  Don’t pay attention to anything else.  Spin, and feed.

Now stop.  Find a bobbin and wind it all up.  Careful, don’t let it unravel.   And again, spin… and drop… and feed.

And don’t look.  Don’t think.  Just spin.  Stay with it.  Spin, and feed.

Rolag’s gone.  Find another. Overlap the ends and keep going.  Spin, and feed.  That is all there is.  Spin.  Spin. Spin.

Gold thread.

--

I've always been fascinated by spinning, ever since I was a kid.  The information I used to write this drabble was drawn mostly from the Circle of Magic series by Tamora Pierce, the only real source of spinning knowledge I had.  It's also, of course, based on Rumplestiltskin, since I was on a fairytale kick at the time.

I found out later people do still spin, and learned in a hurry to do so myself.  With the knowledge I have now, it's astonishing how accurate that picture is.


Settle an argument for me.  Does the rhythm and repetition make this one a peaceful, soothing drabble, as I think?  Or is it creepy and frightening, as my best friend says?

I start swearing in German and laughing at the same time as I lift my hands.  I look like I murdered an alien barehanded. 

“Josué…” I grumble, “This is the fifth batch you’ve ruined in two weeks. Give me a break already.”

Josué grins at me, the telltale blue smudges of ink on his fingertips giving him away. “You always mix the blood with your hands. I can’t resist!”

I try to scowl as the thick purple liquid oozes off my hands, but I’m laughing too hard. Instead, I slap him with dripping hands. At least now he’s stained too.

--

My first ever drabble, and it had to be a color.  You're kidding.  Color prompts are difficult because it doesn't give you much to work with.  On the other hand, they tend to be the most free to interpretation.

This idea was definitely stolen from myself.  In the original concept, the offending blue stuff was squashed blueberries instead of ink.  And the character's name was Raviv, not Josué.  I did have a character named Josué, but he was from something else entirely.

Oh, and it's not clear out of context, but that's stage blood.  Slightly less creepy than you might otherwise think.