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threesentenceficathon is going strong this year, and I finally had the time to jump in! My fills so far:
-Naruto, Team Guy, it's just a short walk on the water
-The Apothecary Diaries, Maomao & Hongniang, a collection gotten out of hand
-FE3H, Claude/Edelgard/Petra, sun, moon and stars
-My Roommate is a Detective, Bai Youning, flapper fashions
-The Banner Saga, Oddleif, there is no night
***
Bernadetta sat, shoulders and neck hunched, like a turtle desperately trying to get back into its shell. Unfortunately for her, in this case the shell was a whole fifteen-minute walk away and the turtle stranded on horseback, stretching the metaphor to its breaking point.
Beside her, Marianne was speaking to the horse in low, soothing tones.
"She can tell you're nervous, and that makes her nervous too,” she explained to Bernadetta. “You don't have to worry. She won't let you fall."
She put a hand on Bernadetta’s knee.
Slowly, Bernadetta unfolded in her saddle like a flower in the sun.
***
I've been stalling hard on the Snowflake Challenge and... everything else, really, as the winter sads set in.
But: rthstewart’s three sentence ficathon is running again this year, and as always it's a treasure trove of fun prompts.
Micro fills round-up, to be updated as I go:
And so at last it comes to this: the Empire comes to Fhirdiad, hungry for nabatean blood. Humanity, for all its flaws, has at least the merit of predictability.
No matter. She has made the Empire and she can unmake it. Put down the rabid dogs, slay the monster in human skin who would dare to wield her mother's own desecrated corpse against her.
She'll do it right this time. No more legends, no more stories. No example for others to follow.
And so at last it comes to this:
Burn it all to ashes.
From the ashes, start anew.
***
Annette enters the School of Sorcery like a whirlwind, four feet ten inches of restless energy that she pours full tilt into everything she sets out to do.
Slow and steady, Mercedes draws on the memory of another girl who could never just stop and matches her step by step, meeting frustration with patience, failure with encouragement, long evenings of work-until-you-drop with cookies and a blanket.
Sooner or later, she knows, Annie will storm ahead and leave her, slow and steady, in her wake.
But whenever she starts to fall behind Annie slows down to match her, step by step.
***
***
Sometimes, in moments like these, when all three classes are mingling together with no regard for petty politics, Edelgard wonders. It doesn't happen often, but sometimes: Claude's smile rings more true than usual; Dimitri looks almost relaxed; and Edelgard thinks maybe, thinks what if, in the same distant way she thinks of all self-indulgent things.
But peaceful change takes time, and time is the one luxury she can never have. From the moment she crawled out of the pit her siblings died in there was only one path to her goal: quick, violent, and unwavering.
To the bloody, bitter end.
***
This is the most important thing Hilda can learn from her brother, according to every weapon instructor she’s ever had: how to let inertia carry her swings so it does most of the work for her.
This is the most important thing Hilda can learn from her brother, according to her: hope, when it comes from others, is a slow-acting poison; success a bear trap closing over your leg; disappointment its inevitable end.
Thankfully, she’s getting pretty good with inertia.
***
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