howls moving castle au [WIP, scene scribble]
“Well, ain’t we the hoi polloi?” The magician grins, smoke curling from between his teeth like a predator’s panting breath. “Just listen to those words o’ yours. Could sweet-talk a hangman to ‘is own noose, couldn’tcha?”
“I wouldn’t need any sweet-talking,” David snaps. “Just the honest truth.”
The magician looks at him for a moment with those too-old eyes, like the ancient stare of a hare on the faraway hillside, somehow perfectly meeting your own gaze despite the miles and miles between you and finding you, knowing you, for all but a second... For a second is all it’d need.
“Well, now,” the magician drawls, dusting a fingertip along David’s desk. “Ain’t that a pickle? The truth’s an awful dangerous thing...”
His amber eyes glint a pallid gold in the lamplight.
“Ain’t no tellin’ what that truth o’ yours could do,” he rumbles, “if someone said it sweet enough.”
“I-” Davey stumbles backwards, suddenly off-kilter, unnerved, like he just stared into the centre of a chopped tree stump and the rings had all stared back. “I have no idea what you’re talking about-”
“Oh, see now,” the magician grins viciously, “I don’t think that’s true.”
“I’m just a bookkeeper-!”
“An honest bookkeeper.” He purrs as he steps forward, step after step after step, a gleeful hunt. “Ain’t that a rare breed? Awful hard to find someone who’s honest at countin’ money. Someone who never fudged the numbers, not even once...?”
“Because!” David cries, desperate. “My father, he’s a kind man, a brave man, and he taught me not to lie no matter the hardships-”
“Now I know a fella,” the magician cuts across him, severing his words at the tongue, “who loves rare breeds. Those pretty white doves, all shiny and clean...”
“But I’m not-”
“And this fella, he’s talented. He wraps those truths around a spindle-”
“But I don’t know any-!”
“And he pulls and twists and breaks those truths,” he growls, the smoke in his mouth growing thicker with every step, “into a perfect thread o’ gold.”
“Please, just listen to-!”
“Stop,” the magician snarls, half-feral, raising a playing card like a pistol, “talking.”
The card in his hands bursts into sickly golden light, that pale glow spreading through the black ink like an infection, and as the single spade in the middle burns itself into David’s eyes, he feels his breath being pulled from his lungs – and suddenly, David is empty. Like someone stuck a key in between his collarbones and opened up his throat, and plucked out every tendon as if they were old guitar strings. He is untethered. Purposeless. Gone.
“What...” Is what David tries to say, but the word curls up and dies inside him, leaving only a strangled gasp that burns like ashes on his tongue. He chokes on it, his whole body lodging around the ghost of the word like a locked mechanism, stalling and spluttering until it all breaks apart. He collapses to the floor in a limp heap, coughing up phlegm and bile, as he desperately tries to stand, to scream, to force the foul-tasting word out of his mouth, anything at all to make this pain stop!
The magician stares down at him for one ancient, unknowable moment, stares as David’s prostrate corpse wheezes for help, choking on words that rot into poison within his own lungs. He leans down and brushes his knuckles down David’s temple – and the kindness of the gesture is so cruel it makes him sob.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, rising to his feet. He opens his card-box and tucks the ace inside. “I ain’t lettin’ the cowboy get his hands on that kind of ammunition.”
As he walks to the door, the world seems to blur and shift around him – but whether it’s magic or the simple fact that David is dying, he couldn’t possibly tell.
As the doorbell rings overhead, the magician murmurs; “Let’s see how much your Ranger likes you now.”
Even as David is dragged into unconsciousness, he knows the words are not triumphant.
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Howl's Moving Castle?!?!?! HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE????????? I'm sat. Also for everything else as well but that one is so exciting. Me to you right now:
So, unfortunately, this is one of the ones I do not yet have a snippet to share 😢 but! I shall tell you all about it 😉
Howl's Moving Castle is one of my fave movies. A definite comfort film. And I've wanted to write an AU for it for ages but just could not make it work. I mean sadly, Nesta isn't a Sophie and Cassian isn't a Howl. And then I couldn't figure out any of the other characters to make it work and I just gave up honestly.
But then!
But then, @isterofimias changed everything with three simple words. Nesta is Howl. And I was like 🤯.
So yeah! Hoping to write it for Nesta Week! It will feature Nesta as Howl. Cassian as Sophie, although cursed into a beast rather than an old man to give that man wings 😉 Bryaxis as Calcifer. Emerie and Gwyn not as children but still filling that role of Markl. Eris as the Wizard of the Waste. Lanyths as Suliman.
Send me a WIP title and I'll share a snippet or tell you about it!
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Question- in a Howl's Moving Castle AU, who would be the Witch of the Wastes? And if it's the movie version, is their father Howl's old teacher? Or is he the Witch?
Also, Saeyoung would totally pull a Saeran and dye his hair white only for MC to mess with his potions, revealing his red hair-
Well, in the context of Saeyoung being Howl, the Witch of the Waste would have to be someone who isn't a romantic interest. I don't know who would fill that role for him. As we know that in the film, Howl is in the world searching for the pure burst of magic he saw when Sophie went to speak to him through time. It leads to him becoming quite a womanizer in search of that energy. That pure heart. But, I can't see Saeyoung being like that. We all know that he would gladly give Calcifer his heart if it meant that he could become stronger. But, for him to become a bit of a playboy? Not as likely.
In fact, I see him more as the type of person that's hunting for this pure magic so that he can protect his brother. It makes him willing to work with anybody who he thinks has that energy. With that in mind, it makes me imagine him stumbling into Rika who is a powerful witch. Since she is so shiny and magnificent when you first encounter her, it would make sense that he would assume that she might be the source of that magic he saw when he was a young boy.
So, perhaps he would start training under her for a short time, learning his tricks and trades from her. That would make her his teacher of sorts. His drive is about finding that magic and it wouldn't take long for him to discover what he thought was the same magic as his childhood vision, isn't the same as all. So, he would obviously flee and leave that place behind to start his search for that magic once again. Magic that could be strong enough to protect him and his brother.
With that in mind, we would have to decide if his brother is with him or not. Where is Saeran? Are the twins together and on the run? Are they both trying to make sense of the world in the moving castle?Did he leave his brother with Rika for the time being? Would he think it's safer to leave his brother behind with a strong witch even though it's not the best outcome? Figuring out the context for that would be really important to make this story work.
I'm not sure where their father would be in this circumstance since it would take a while to make the universe work for the boys. It would need some major changes to make everything turn out right. It definitely is an au that I love to see, but there's a lot of tinkering that needs to be done.
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