“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.

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.

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.”

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.

“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.

“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.

“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!"

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.