Sparks!

[taennyn]

Sparks for the poor?


Wild Roses:
The difference between timely and just in time (Phoebe & a young Ulysse)
a match struck in the dark (Takashi, Rock God days)
Fire-aligned at -40 (somewhere in the Trickwood)
family relationships (somewhere in the Trickwood)
changing assumptions
half-rotted leaves
tall grass
reinterpretation
I eets ur hed (the ambassador from Autumn & her daughter)
secondhand boots [2] (Isael)
fuzzy scratchy blankets (Fintain & Hazel & Sascha)
red stripes (Hazel & Sascha)
piano scales played slowly (Aodh)
bear trap (Hazel & Lin)
a little grey kitten (Isael & Conall)

---

Herding the Witches' Horses:
a broken instrument (Falcons' Feathers, Sajal & Irina)
tasting smoke (Falcons' Feathers, Irina)
secondhand boots [1] (Sibir, Sergeievich)
reoccuring dreams (Sibir/Swallow's Tail, Helena)
nitrogen snow (le Chevalier de Grammont, Sinclair)
cats (le Chevalier de Grammont, Sinclair & Grammont)
the feeling of walking into the middle of an argument, even tho nobody's actually saying anything. (le Chevalier de Grammont, Martin & Sinclair & Grammont)
large fluffy falling snow (Swallow's Tail, Petrovich & Sascha)

---

Death be not Proud:
mackeral (the Morrigan)
a partially destroyed, crucial record ([Telas] De'Ath)
brass taps & oak (Eduard De'Ath & the Morrigan)
self-indulgence (the Morrigan)

---

Other:
the smell of salted meat frying (Nataraj, Luke & Samuil)
polished marble (Nataraj, Luke)
incandescent joy (Nataraj, Luke & Samuil)

---

Unknown:
Omniscience
Heroes are irritating creatures.
just hanging on 'til tomorrow
sometimes healing brings its own sort of pain

Comments

[youraugustine.livejournal.com]

Omniscience.

The difference between timely and just in time.

Heroes are irritating creatures.

I eets ur hed.

'I eets ur hed' - Wild Roses, Sascha & her mother

[taennyn]

She watched the stuffed toy--stitched back together in contrasting thread in places--fly across the room, followed at an easy lope by her daughter.

She reached out, tweaked a line of power, watched her daughter growl and corner quickly, pursued the toy along its new course. Folding her arms neatly into her sleeves, still jerking the toy along with her fingers, "Daughter mine?"

"EET UR HED!" her daughter announced, launching herself at her toy and proceeding to do just that, gnawing on the thing's head with every evidence of delight.

She extracted a hand from her sleeve to cover her face with it.

'The difference between timely and just in time.' - Wild Roses, Phoebe & Ulysse

[taennyn]

"Observe the cup, balanced precariously on the edge of the counter. Now, a timely intervention would be this." She reached out and pushed the cup away from the edge, the motion sending ripples through the tea inside it.

Replacing the cup at the edge, "An in time intervention would be this." She pushed it off the edge, then dropped her hand blurringly fast and caught the cup before it shattered on the floor. Tea sloshed against an invisible barrier above the edge of the cup, preventing it from spilling all over her hand and the floor.

"Timely interventions tend to take less effort than the just-in-time sort," she said, raising the cup to her mouth and sipping. "Although both are the be preferred to inaction. Questions?"

"What did you do to stop the tea spilling?"

She laughed, summoned a piece of paper from somewhere and spread it out. "The matrix is shaped so..."

'Heroes are irritating creatures.' - unknown

[taennyn]

"You didn't actually tie him to the--"

"Certainly not. That would be an abuse of my power and authority." *beat* "I helped."

'Omniscience' - unknown

[taennyn]

"Wow, being omniscient would suck."

"Beg pardon?"

"Well, you know everything, right?"

"Yeah?"

"How do you process it?"

" . . hnh."

[larathia.livejournal.com]

*looks out the window*


Fire-aligned at -40 below.

[klgaffney.livejournal.com]

....i'm torn between sympathy and laughter--'cause. yeah.

[youraugustine.livejournal.com]

. . .is a GREAT excuse for a huge fire? In fireplace or out of it? That you can poke with sticks? And never fear of making the house too warm?

. . . not that I have lived this or anything.

'Fire-aligned at -40' - Wild Roses, trickwood winter, unknown

[taennyn]

"I hate you all."

"Yup. How'd you arrange to make the lattice visible?"

"Heat increases vibration of air molecules, if you link vibration to emissions on the visible spectrum, you can see where the hot spots are."

"Ah. Neat. Here--I toasted a sandwich on the floor lattice."

"Why don't we have a fire? Surely that would be a better option than feeding me all the remains of our supplies."

"Poor air flow--we'd be breathing smoke. You're much more efficient. :D"

"I hate you. I'm eventually going to fall over, you know."

"Yup. We're working on it."

" . . . me falling over, or getting us out of here before I do?"

[klgaffney.livejournal.com]

reoccurring dreams (yay, hüsker dü's zen arcade on repeat?)

the feelinng of walking into the middle of an argument, even tho nobody's actually saying anything.

a broken instrument.

'a broken instrument' - Falcons' Feathers, Irina and Sajal

[taennyn]

"What is that?"

She was leaning wide to see around him without breathing down his neck, which he appreciated, but he reached back and moved one of her hands from his belt to a hook on the wall. Which brought her even more out of his line of reference, but kept her from distracting him from the poor balalaika by shifting or slipping and taking him with her.

"It used to be a balalaika," he said, smoothing his fingers across the remains of a long neck before examining the tangle of the triangular body. "It looks like someone used it to hit someone else. See how this section's pushed in?" he pointed, and she reached past him to run a finger along the grain of one of the pieces, curling her legs in until she was crouched beside him.

"What's it made of?"

"Wood."

She looked at him sharply, her eyes narrow. "You're having me on."

He grinned at her like a liar, then picked up the poor thing and held it out towards her, his face sober. "Plastics don't shatter like this."

She made the sign of the Cross, then touched it again, her eyes wide. "Someone made--"

"Music can be just as sacred as saints' bones," he told her, a little dry, as he started packing the balalaika into a carry-box.

'reoccurring dreams' - Sibir/Swallow's Tail, Helena

[taennyn]

Her days are filled with fire, crossing brief spaces of freezing cold to slip into someone else's warmth, splash blood in stripes or capture them alive, but her nights are calm, untroubled by nightmares. She sleeps anywhere there's a space, her face not so much peaceful as somewhere else, to those around her.

She dreams of ice, the gentle blue glow of glaciers and the instruments of the vodyanoi's daughters, sleeping in the cold and hearing faraway voices sing.

She does not dream of men.

'the feeling of walking into the middle of an argument, even tho nobody's actually saying anything'

[taennyn]

(too long for subject; Witches' Horses, Martin, Sinclair, Grammont)

Grammont's stall was completely silent. Ominously silent, he revised, when he got inside and found Sinclair glaring at one of the walls in a meaningful sort of way. Hammers and wrenches meaningful, and Martin wasn't completely prepared to say that the wall wasn't glaring back. There was an interesting sort of breathless quality to the air mix, the kind you got right before electricity arced through air and made lightning.

"Should I leave you two alone?" he inquired after neither of them acknowledged his presence.

[darthneko.livejournal.com]

large, fluffy, falling snow

piano scales played slowly

the smell of salted meat frying

'large, fluffy, falling snow' - Swallow's Tail, Petrovich and Sascha

[taennyn]

He didn't think he was ever going to get used to ice just . . falling from the sky, in big pale lattices you could practically see.

He was sitting at the top of the Swallow's ramp, in about half his outdoor gear so he didn't get cold, when Sascha came back, ice caked around the heavy treads of his boots and big crystals of it perched in his dreadlocks. He looked like something out of a story, though heaven only knew what kind.

"Lev," the Siberian said, nodding a greeting when he set foot on the ramp.

"Sascha," he replied, scooting off to the side to give the other man space to get past him and inside.

Sascha banged his boots on the side of hte ramp, knocking loose most of the caked ice on his boots before he ducked inside, out of sight.

"Anything on the singer?" he called after a moment, sticking his head back into view.

"Helena and the kid are staying with her nieces until it either gets cold enough to run a sledge safely or it melts. Nothing on the other one."

"Nothin' to do but watch the snow fall, then. It's pretty, yeah?"

"It's . . strange," he replied eventually. "Like something out of a story, or a painting."

'piano scales played slowly' - Wild Roses, Aodh

[taennyn]

He sits with his legs folded up underneath himself on the bench, thinking that there are a dozen other places he could be, right now, diving through the middle of someone else's war, curled up in someone's bed, playing at dice with off-duty officers, but instead he's sitting here, at the piano of a woman who's been dead so long that it's hard to wrap his head around, years slipping like oil and water through his mind.

Without really meaning to, he reaches out, starts playing scales from the deepest to the highest, slow but without pausing. There's no jazz in his fingers tonight, no syncopation or triplets, no laughter. This Queen and both her sons are dead, and he's played this piano so often some of the staff are convinced there's a musical will-o'-the-wisp, but it's still Brighid's piano, and he is just a latecomer playing it.

'the smell of salted meat frying' - Nataraj, Luke and Samuil

[taennyn]

When he woke up, there was a pervading smell of bacon and ham wafting through the room, and his stomach heaved a protest just before his head informed that one, he'd been drinking last night, and two, that had bee a really bad idea.

There was a glass of water on his nightstand that he didn't remember putting there, and what appeared to be one of his B12 pills from the medicine cabinet.

He was going to kill Luke, just as soon as he could move.

for Zach

[taennyn]

trickwood: family, or bond (relationships)

Takashi: A match struck in the dark

deaths: brass taps and oak

Sinclair: nitrogen snow

'nitrogen snow' - Witches' Horses, Sinclair, before he got Grammont

[taennyn]

It was cold enough that there was a scattering of chemical snow on the floor, nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen, the contents of the broken air pipes spilled out and frozen before they could escape into the dark.

Perfect, really. He wrenched a few more pieces loose, took a stab at the locked temperature settings--which after a few shrill demands for passwords froze up completely and melted most of the frost on the panel but no more--then relocated to the one spot in the broken izba that he could hear his sensor net's pings.

He'd scattered the hay. Now he just had to wait for the horses.

[zero_pixel_count]

fuzzy scratchy blankets

secondhand boots

just hanging on until tomorrow

'secondhand boots' - Sibir, Sergeievich

[taennyn]

"Here, kid," the sergeant said, plunking down a pair of boots on the bench next to Ruslan. "Your boots are more patch than whole; take these."

Ruslan blinked, then as he started pulling off his own boots, "Whose boots were these?"

"Vanya Vladimirovitch. He won't need them."

[goshawk.livejournal.com]

A partially-destroyed, crucial record.

Reinterpretation.

Changing assumptions.

[youraugustine.livejournal.com]

(someone is doing her hooooomework . . . )

[sarahdarkes.livejournal.com]

incandescent joy

red stripes

"Sometimes healing brings its own sort of pain"

'red stripes' - Wild Roses, Sascha, Hazel

[taennyn]

"You should try that one." Sascha pointed, well over both their heads, and Hazel leaned back to try to get a look.

"The one with the red stripes?" she asked, a little dubious, then ducked as Sascha pulled the bolt down into her arms with a tug on the air.

"I think it'd look neat as a coat lining--you'd be able to see the stripes when the coat was open," her sister said, poking at the fabric interestedly.

" . . Straight stripes or a patchwork of diagonals?" she asked, after a moment.

Sascha grinned.

[billradish.livejournal.com]

a little grey kitten

cats in general, in one of the WH stories

polished marble

'a little grey kitten' - Wild Roses, Conall and Isael

[taennyn]

"What is that?"

"s a kitten," Conall replied, depositing her on top of his cousin's head with a certain amount of cheer.

The kitten scrabbled for purchase, cheeping, before Isael reached up, disentangled her from his hair, and held her cupped absently in against his chest.

She started purring.

Isael looked down, blinked, then up at Conall. "Why do you have a kitten?"

"She followed me home?" he said, grinning, and ducked the lazy swat. "She was a gift."

[goldjadeocean.livejournal.com]

Tasting smoke

Tall grass

Self-indulgence

'Tall grass' - Wild Roses, a Trickwood summer

[taennyn]

There was something moving in the grass, rustles that only mostly matched the prevailing breeze.

He waited at the edge, bow half-drawn, to see if it was hunting something else, or hunting him.

From somewhere else in the grass a wolf sang out, echoed in chorus by a dozen other voices, and the thing in the grass erupted, showing itself a bixie with torn wings, angry and injured and hunted.

He put an arrow through the neck, another into the barrel-shaped body, backing away as best he could with his eyes on the screaming beast.

Something huffed a warning, and he froze, until it laughed in a nearly-human voice and said "Thank you for the assist, human."

for dormouse

[taennyn]

mackerel

bear trap

half-rotted leaves

'half-rotted leaves' - Trickwood spring

[taennyn]

The snow was melting, exposing the remains of the fall's dropped leaves as lacy skeletons overlaying soft squishy mud, deceptive surfaces waiting to pull boots in and keep them, add them to the collection of leaf-mould and bird's bones that fostered the growth of new trees.

If one kept to the high places, exposed wet stones and the curved arches of tree roots, one could navigate safely, but spring was coming, and with it the floods.

People could taste half-rotted leaves in the back of their throats for months afterwards, residual mud from building dams or digging drainways.

( . . . lost the thread, sorry.)

[billradish.livejournal.com]

new prompt

A man with newly/neatly cut hair, and significant stubble