"What are you two doing?" Two small faces peer anxiously up at me.

"We just wanted to look like you," she offers quietly. He looks down and nods. My heart twists and suddenly I'm not angry anymore. I kneel and pick up the bowl and the brush.

Both my siblings have shrunk away from me. "Come on," I reassure them as I pull my sister to my side. "Let's finish you up."

We sit there on the floor for hours while I trace my swirling patterns onto their arms and legs and chests until we match.

Only, mine are real.

--

Hey, remember the Air elemental from Invincible, with the twins?  Welcome back!  Yeah isn't it sad?

I actually wrote this one in a notebook -- aren't I awesome?

They could never refuse each other anything, which was a weird dynamic for Fire and Water to have.  Even they knew it, but it never stopped them.  Further and further down the rabbit hole of destructive desires; it was a spiral of bad decisions and it was inevitable it would end up like this.

Water was laughing, a panicked sort of laughter.  Fire was just sitting there, trying to take in this information neither of them had even known was possible.

“A freak of nature?”

“A mistake?”

“Whatever it is... it’s our child.”

“What the hell do we tell them.”

She couldn’t stop crying.  This was utterly ridiculous for the living embodiment of Fire.  The streaks on her face and neck burned with salt and tingled as the tears evaporated from her skin.  In a minute she would probably set the comforter on fire.  She almost missed the knock on the door before Earth slipped into the room.

“Go away; I’ll burn you up accidentally,” Fire sniffled.

Earth ignored the warning and set a clay bowl full of mud on the bed.  “For your skin,” she offered,  “Whenever you’re finished.”

Through her tears, Fire smiled.  Maybe everything would be okay.

--

I don't even know what this is.  A very sad Fire, evidently.  And I like the tears evaporating; that's pretty cool.

“See these yellow marks?”
They nod.  “What do they mean?”
“They mean I’ve been chosen for a special job, and I have special power that goes with that.”
She wrinkles her nose, but his eyes light up.  “Like magic?”
“Kind of like magic...  I’m going to live five hundred years.”
“But not with us,” I hear her whisper, but he isn’t listening.
“Are you going to be invincible?”  He sounds so excited.
It’s hard to speak around the lump in my throat.  I grab both of them and snuggle them tight against my chest.
“Yeah, little brother.  I’ll be invincible.”

Is this what drowning feels like?

Or maybe it’s the reverse of drowning.  My lungs won’t fill with anything, not air not water not anything I CAN’T BREATHE.

How can she do it?  How does she breathe way up here where the earth has only the loosest hold on her?  I’m going to fly out into empty space if emptier space than this actually exists and I’m going to reverse-drown in the nothingness I CAN’T BREATHE.

I’ve never understood why anyone could be afraid of water, they all love air so much and now I know why.

I CAN’T BREATHE.

The silver against his dark skin was startling and out of place.  Earth usually wore gold and it was jarring to her to see the silver ring on his little finger.  He saw her staring and held out his left hand.  She took it and inspected the band, nothing more than a silver wire with the ends twisted into overlapping spirals.

Someone was climbing up to join me on the roof.  I sighed and turned around.
“What are you doing up here?  Why’d you leave the party?”
“Because I was lonely.”
“All the people are inside, dork.  You’d only be lonely out here!”
A breeze wrapped around my shoulders, whispering amusedly in my ear.  I smiled.
“The air inside is hot and dead.  Out here it’s alive and breathing.  Out here, I can breathe.”
I suggested to the breeze that it whisper to the invader, and felt it leave my skin.
He backed away.  “Okay, you’re a nut.  I’m outta here.”

--

Drabbling in a notebook is tough because you have to count the words and rearranging is a pain.  And I even misremembered the prompt, which was actually "Just Because I Was Lonely".  But whatever.

I sorta like this one, although the conversation is terrible and the end is too abrupt.

She expected Air to make a move, but she didn’t expect them to gang up on her.  Fire grabbed her around the waist and pinned one arm behind her back.  Water sat on her ankles so she couldn’t kick them away.  Air snatched her wrist and yanked up the sleeve before she could wrench away.  She heard Fire suck in a breath at her ear, seeing the neat rows of parallel lines crawling their way up her arms like zebra stripes.  Air traced a finger over the scars.  She flinched.

“Why?” Air whispered.

“To make maple syrup,” she answered bitterly.

--

Mash-up of elementals plus an actual experience with a zebra-striped person.

I enjoy that Earth is never named even though it's in third person limited.  And her dark joke at the end made me smile.

Searing heat on my face, smoke in my lungs, clawing my way up – out –

I must have woken up because it’s dark but I still can’t breathe and I hear screaming. Something comes at me from one side and picks me up and then my head is underwater and someone’s saying “BREATHE, DAMN YOU” and the screaming stopped.

I take in great gulps of water until I stop sobbing but I’m still shaking. Someone lets my head up – Fire? He pushes dripping hair out of my eyes, pulls me to his chest to keep me warm. “Breathe,” he orders again.

--

More elementals. :3  I like the Fire/Water interaction, and the way the scene totally isn't complete.  And going from breathing water to breathing air is pretty awesome as well.

He knelt and took one of her hands in both of his. He couldn’t look at her face.

“You asked me once what the worst part was. I think I said having three sisters, like the gods couldn’t pick one other boy. That was a lie. The worst part is this. You’re going...” He choked. “You’re going to die. And I have to spend the rest of my miserable magical life without you. That’s the worst part. Five hundred years of heartache.”

He dropped her hand on her chest, rose, and ran away. He couldn’t let her see him cry.

--

Sad sad drabble.  I think this is a Fire elemental, but it doesn't appear to really matter which it is.

I like the phrase "miserable magical life" a lot.  I don't like the last two sentences; they don't feel right.  But I'm too lazy to tinker with them anymore, so there they are.

Definitely based on the phoenix's five-hundred-year lifespan.

Winter is the dead season. For all of us. Maybe Air has it easier than Fire, maybe Water has some new tricks to make it more bearable. But we all struggle. I think I struggle most of all.

Every winter I’m afraid it’s going to be my last. You’d think after three hundred years I’d have a little faith, but it’s difficult to believe I’ll see another spring when I start feeling like an empty husk. When sleep finally overtakes me... it’s hard not to be afraid I won’t wake up.

The worst part is I know someday, I won’t.

--

Oh look it's the elementals again.

I think this is drawn partly from the phoenix myth, where after five hundred years it is reborn in another body.

I think this one is cool when read with the other Earth and winter drabble, Change In The Weather.

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.)

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.