#i probably *do* have a bunch of others tucked away somewhere but uhhh

[chaoticspacefam]

WIP Ask Game!

I was tagged by @swtorpadawan​  , thank you! :D

Rules: Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Send me an ask with the title that most intrigues you and I’ll post a little snippet of it or tell you something about it. And then tag as many people as you have WIPs. No pressure as always, only if you want to, I’m not gonna have as many people to tag as I have WIPs cause a lot of my friends and mutuals have def already been tagged for this, but incase anyone has something they’d like to share here: @darth-bagel , @elaphaemourra , @mercurypilgrim , @the-raven-of-highever , @outcastcommander , @walk-ng-d-saster , @thedinalixlegacy and anyone else that hasn’t been tagged yet but wants to join in! Yes, I promise I mean you! :3

So, without further ado, the WIPs! I have so many hahaha help me *cries* and not enough time in a day to finish any of them rn (Strikhedonia is top-priority on the list, sorry you’ve been waiting so long for that prompt Anto ✨✨I’m Garbage✨✨ 😂)

Creeping Shadows 8 (working title)

Creeping Shadows 9 (working title)

Strikhedonia

By The Stars 1: Bury Me Face Down

By The Stars 2: I’m An Animal, You’re An Animal

By The Stars ??: I Don’t Dance

Yes, I Know I’m A Wolf (connected to “And I’ve Been Known To Bite”)

And I’ve Been Known To Bite (connected to “Yes, I Know I’m A Wolf”)

You’re In My Veins

I Am Not A Machine!

SoR Filler: Hello (working title)

#swtor #WIP ask game #elven's writing sneak peaks #finally blowing the dust off my askbox after a few months #i'm gonna try and get back into doing some ask content again! but if i get too busy or like #the p*rnbots start appearing in it then i'll have to close it for a bit again #anyway i do miss these ask memes so go forth and grill me about my way-too-long list of WIPs if you so desire LOL #bonus points to anybody who can guess any and/or all of the songs that make up the ones that have proper title(s) xP #ok I know the list is like decently long but real talk it's actually a lot shorter than i thought it'd be #i probably *do* have a bunch of others tucked away somewhere but uhhh #i can't find where i *put* them; so that means they don't exist /lh #XD #also i know i said that before but like this time for *real* that prompt is getting worked on tomorrow i have it MARKED IN i promise XD

[friendshipcampaign]

Magic Words

Some downtime with Rooster and Ditto! Rooster learns Find Familiar.

(If there’s anything Ditto says about the nature of magic and the universe that doesn’t line up with what the DM has in mind, she’s just wrong. She read it in a book somewhere.)

Rooster sat near the edge of the cave as everyone else fussed over Erwyn and Voski. She might have been doing the same, but after the tension of the ritual she felt restless, and moved away from the others to try and burn some energy. She rubbed her hands together and paced around. She tried checking her sword for damage at some point but couldn’t keep her concentration, and was soon back up and pacing.

She eventually found herself observing her companions in the cave. Erwyn and Voski were   asleep, the Lady Coila and the others they had rescued seemed content to chat with the Lily White Girls and keep to themselves, and Kriv and Amaranth were outside talking; but she didn't see Ditto.

Since her bedroll had been confiscated along with the rest of her possessions, Ditto had found a spot in the pile made by the others' discarded bags where she could comfortably curl up. She'd also helped herself to a piece of Stelly's flatbread and a piece of jerky that had been left in easy snatching distance...she'd assumed no one would mind, and besides, she hadn't eaten anything since Rooster slipped the half-a-pie that nice girl had given her into her backpack.

Rooster continued to scan the cave and see if she could find Ditto. Her eyes landed on pile of their belongings, and she saw Ditto there eating. Rooster imagined she must have been hungry after constantly keeping up a spell for several hours and then being arrested. She winced slightly at that thought, Ditto might have avoided that If Rooster had returned as she said.

Rooster decided to walk over and chat with Ditto, and quickly sat down beside her in the pack nest. "You doing all right Ditto?"

"Hmm?" Ditto glanced up as Rooster approached, then gave her a smile. "Oh, I'm fine. I mean, I'm great, obviously, because Erwyn's back!"

It wasn’t a lie. She knew what Rooster was probably referring to. She hadn’t forgotten everything she’d done. All that she’d left in the castle, or what it all meant. But she wasn’t ready to think about that, not yet.

All she could think of now was the fact that against all odds, in defiance of the laws of nature and probably a few local ordinances of time and space, Voski had brought Erwyn back. Ditto could still hear the harmonics in her mind. They were beautiful. And they were unearthly, as they ought to be. Watching Voski perform the ritual was one of the most beautiful, terrifying things she had ever witnessed, and it had given Erwyn his life back.

Sister Calma had told Ditto she wasn’t a person of faith. Ditto wasn’t really sure how she felt about religion, but she was sure how she felt about what she had just seen.

"It's really kind of hitting me, you know, because I kept saying 'oh, he's not really dead. He's just stuck in a ring, we're going to fix it' because I didn't want to think about what would happen if we couldn't. But now that he's back, it's sinking in again...he gets a second chance."

Rooster chose not to directly address Ditto's rambling about what happened to Erwyn. She imagined Ditto wasn't as used to her friends dying as she or other mercenaries were, and she didn't want to drag that out. Though she would admit, it was strange getting a dead companion back. Not bad certainly, but it wasn’t something she would have expected before now.

"We could talk about something else if you want?" Rooster laughed a little and glanced at Rose. "For instance, how unseasonably cold it has been this year!"

"I know you're talking about Rose, but how could you even tell?” Ditto cocked her head at Rooster. "It's not like any of us know what Soreth's usually like."

"I suppose that's true, but it does ruin the joke a little." Rooster answered. She was silent for a bit, and decided to look into her pack to see what rations she had.

She pulled out some dried fruit and offered a little to Ditto, "What do you usually talk about when the matters at hand are awful?"

"Umm..."

Ditto balked at the question, at a loss for words.  After a moment she reached out and took the fruit.

"Bugs...mice…” she thought, trying to remember the conversations she’d had over the years. “Web-spinning? I dunno. Usually the only person I'm talking to is TikTik, and they don't read, so it's a lot of practical stuff?"

"TikTik is your familiar right? You make them with magic."

"Well, I don't exactly make them, but yeah. They've been my familiar for about...." She paused, trying to count back the decades in her head. They blurred together, and coming up with specifics seemed hard. She shrugged. "A bunch of years."

Rooster laughed a little "I imagine it's hard to keep up when you live as long as you do." She idly fiddled with the rope on her pack, "It must be nice though. Having a friend that you can always call on."

Ditto smiled, looking over her shoulder at the hawk perched comfortably on a branch Ditto had dragged into the cave and wedged under a rock for that purpose. Their head was tucked under their wing, and they seemed to be dozing.

"Yeah. It's pretty great."

"Can you teach me?"

Ditto’s head snapped back towards Rooster, surprised. She wasn’t certain she’d heard right.

"...Teach you?"

"I'm not the smartest but I still like to learn," Rooster looked away, suddenly a bit uncomfortable.  "And anyway, having someone to call on when you're all alone with your thoughts. . . It'd be nice."

It seemed too good to be true, but here it was. Ditto covered her mouth with her hands as a wide, excited grin slowly spread across it.

"You...want me...to teach you a spell?"

"Yeah, I guess I do," Rooster looked back, not being able to resist a smile on seeing Ditto's own. "It'd be fun to have a spell that doesn't make people explode."

"I mean, yeah!” Ditto laughed, “Yeah, I could do that! I'm not doing anything else! Let's start now!"

In one motion, she stood and stuffed the remainder of the bread and fruit into her mouth. She chewed vigorously, washing it down with a gulp from a nearby canteen.

"Okay! So!" She took a deep breath, composing herself a little better. "...I guess you kind of already answered this question, but I think I should ask anyway, just so you can answer for yourself." Ditto looked at Rooster, schooling her face in a serious expression, trying to look teacherly. "...Why do you want to have a familiar?"

Rooster looked down and thought seriously about it, "I suppose I’d like a companion, someone I can call on who I can trust, and who can help without me worrying about them getting arrested or worse." She rubbed her hand through her hair, and mumbled, "Damn  it sounds like I'm talking to a matchmaker. Maybe I should mention long walks on the pier."

Ditto laughed. "No! That's a great reason! Really, it is! See...I can teach you the spell itself. The gestures and the words and all that, and you'll probably pick it up quick, it's not one of the harder ones. But the first time you cast it will be different from every other time."

She waved her hands and made the image of a hawk appear in them.

“Normally all you're doing is making a magical body for your familiar to inhabit. But the first time you cast it...you have to call a familiar down. And that's...well, it's not just casting a spell. It's starting a relationship."

"Ok" Rooster nodded, "Where am I calling it from?"

"The Ethereal Plane! See, there's these..." she paused, frowning. "Spirits? Creatures? It's like... everyone's got some innate magic in them, right? I mean, I was able to make bugs and butterflies appear before I ever learned my first spell--"

Ditto waved her hand, making a few illusory fireflies appear in the air, to demonstrate.

"And Amaranth's not really big on magic but she can still do that--" she held her hands out and wiggled her fingers "FWOOOSH, fire thing. And--" she tilted her head and gestured to Rooster, "Humans probably got something like that too, right?"

"Uhhh, no, Not really." Rooster said, "I think I remember an elven tutor saying that the only thing remarkable about humans is that there is nothing remarkable about us."

Ditto made a face. "Wow, he sounds like a jerk." Sounded a little like a jerk she’d known, to be honest.

Rooster laughed, "Don't worry, I paid him back with a few lizards down his pants."

"Ha! Good! Get 'im!" Ditto smiled. "Well, anyway, when you practice magic you can make that little flame of power bigger. But even the most powerful wizard you're likely to meet in your lifetime is only gonna be, say, eight percent magic and ninety-two percent meat. A little goes a long way, you get me?"

“Yeah I think so," Rooster said, " it's like striking with a sword right? You don't put everything into the swing, just a little twist of the wrist."

"Probably!" Ditto shrugged. She was pretty sure she had lifted a sword once. To hand to someone else. That about summed up her experience with the weapon. "But when you call down a familiar, you're reaching into a place that's...all magic. And you're making...I guess, an offer? I'd call it a contract, except the creatures there don't really do words like we do?"

She shrugged again. Words were hard sometimes with magic stuff in general.

"Basically you're giving the magic in that plane a chance to do something it doesn't normally get to do...be a person. Be someone with a name, and words, and a body that can exist in the material plane, and...I guess a purpose?” She scratched her head. “TikTik said that once, but they kind of rolled their eyes at the 'purpose' part, and I never knew whether it was sarcasm or not."

"So, you’re sort of offering them a chance to try a new existence?"

"Yeah! And in exchange for that, they must magically bind themselves to you. So they’ll come when you call, and leave when you dismiss them." Ditto's face turned serious. "And they will do anything you tell them to...even if you tell them to walk into a fire and burn."

She paused, glancing back at TikTik again, her brow furrowed.

"....Which I always thought was such a terrifying leap of faith to take with someone you don't even know yet. But I guess the appeal of being a living, physical being is just...good enough that some of them risk it."

Rooster winced at the idea of someone forcing a familiar to kill itself, "I suppose so."

Ditto took note of her reaction and nodded sympathetically. "...So you can see what a big responsibility it is. Having that much power over another person."

"Yes," Rooster said.

"...Now, if a familiar's body dies, the familiar will be okay. They'll go back to the ethereal plane and be ready if you call them again. ...But they can still feel pain, and fear. So you can't take their lives lightly." Ditto smiles. "...Really, though, I'm not worried about that. Not from you."

Rooster smiled a little.

"Sooooo," she said, "How do we begin?"

"The first step is making a call...I'll help you with that part. Then, when you feel something answer it, you give it a name. That will complete the part of the spell that binds your familiar to you. A lot of people want a pet, so they give their familiars pet names like midnight and smoke and blueberry." Ditto frowned. "Some of them want a slave, and so they just call them Familiar, or Creature. Whatever name you choose, it'll be the gesture you make in saying what kind of relationship you want with your familiar."

"Hmmm." Rooster pursed her lips and looked down, "One time when I was visiting my cousin, there was a young apprentice who tried summoning a beast. A duck rabbit came to his call, so he just abandoned the poor thing. It was scared and lost, so I took it in and I named it "Champion", because I thought that would help it feel brave."

She looked back at Ditto, "Would that be a good name?"

With Rooster sitting and Ditto standing, the two were nearly face to face. Ditto approached Rooster and squeezed her shoulder.

"I think that sounds like a name for a friend that you're going to take good care of."

Rooster smiled. "Let's meet our champion, then."

#downtime #rooster #ditto

[mbavholidayexchange]

to @loftydreamsproductions from @dxlilith

title: did you miss me?

rating: general audiences

summary:

She knows if Sarah was anywhere in Whitechapel it would be at Ethan Morgan’s house. Cleaning up his and Benny’s mess or saving them or actually babysitting Jane.

ao3 link: link

content:

Erica stands under Micky’s Pawn Shop awning staring at the black screen of her phone. It died a while ago despite telling herself several times throughout the day to charge it. She hadn’t so much as found an outlet. She lets out a sigh of frustration and almost chucks the phone against a brick wall but remembers at the last second that this is her third one this month.

The sky is falling. A thunderstorm not once predicted by any meteorologist this week in full swing. It put a literal damper on things but Erica was determined to make this work. If only she could get a hold of Sarah. She debates internally about just setting out. She knows if Sarah was anywhere in Whitechapel it would be at Ethan Morgan’s house. Cleaning up his and Benny’s mess or saving them or actually babysitting Jane.

“Fine.” She says out loud, shoving her useless phone into her jacket pocket and running out in the direction of the Morgan home. Despite the use of her vampiric speed, rain was still rain and the two minutes it took her to make it onto the porch, she was soaked through. Thankfully an all black outfit would remain opaque when wet.

She rings the doorbell. Unlike Sarah and Rory, she had never once been invited in so she couldn’t just break through the door. She hears footsteps and the door swings open to a slightly confused Ethan.

“Erica! You’re looking...soggy.”

“Astute as ever dork. I’m not here to chitchat, is Sarah here or not?” She scans the entryway and finds Benny running up the stairs, gangly arms flailing to keep from falling upwards. A feat even Erica had to appreciate was hard to accomplish.

“Uh Sarah? No, uh...haven’t seen her since Friday at school.”

“Why are you lying to me?” Erica presses in, relishing in the fact that Ethan steps back to get away.

“Lying? I’d never lie to...”

“Listen here durfnerder.” Erica grabs Ethan by his shirt and pulls him up onto his tiptoes so that he is forced to look into her yellow eyes. “I can smell your lies and old spice. Where is Sarah?”

“Uhhh, I....um...she told...”

“Put him down Erica.”

Doing as she is told, Erica puts Ethan down into a heap on the floor to watch Sarah come down the stairs. She’s wearing a lilac dress that exposes her shoulders under her favorite denim vest. The hem floats up every step she takes down. Though her soft features are marred by the look of contempt on her face, she remains as beautiful as the day Erica met her in middle school.

“Hey Sarah, missed me?”

“Missed you? Missed you?! You disappear for weeks with zero communication! Of course I missed you, you asshole!” Sarah takes the last few steps two at a time and runs straight into Erica, wrapping her small arms around the taller girl’s waist. “I was so worried.”

“I’m okay. I had a few things to take care of.” Erica whispers, wrapping her arms around Sarah’s shoulders. This felt nice. It felt worth it. She lets herself be hugged and feels all the pent up rage and stress of the last three weeks disappear. She doesn’t even care that Ethan remains sat on the floor of his entryway, staring openingly. “Can we talk?”

“Yes. You have a lot of explaining to do.”

Erica probably would have picked a nicer place. Something with ambience and twinkling music. Somewhere where the soft candlelight would dance onto Sarah’s beautiful brown skin and alight her honey eyes. But the tacky and under-kept booth of

Whitechapel’s oldest diner would do just fine.

“At first I wasn’t worried. I figured you had found some guy to fixate on or went on a blood binge at the frat house again. But then, not even Rory had seen you and I got worried. You have no idea how many times I just stared at your last text. I was so scared bbl dnt wry would be the last thing you every said to me.” Sarah is rambling, worry obvious in her voice. Sure she’s smiling and eating her fries but Erica knew better.

“I’m sorry. I had...a lot on my plate.”

“So tell me! You’re my best friend. Forever remember?” Sarah wipes her hand on a dusty brown napkin and reaches out to place it on top of Erica’s.

“Not for long.”

“What?”

Erica doesn’t answer Sarah. She takes her hand away and goes into her pocket. She produces a rounded glass vial. It’s less than two ounces of a blue liquid capped with cork. “I left to find this for you.”

“For me?” Sarah looks at the vial but has no recognition. “What is it?”

“A cure.”

“What?”

“You ladies enjoying everything, need any....”

“No.” Both girls answer the waitress, immediately dismissing her without breaking eye contact with one another. When she backs away, Sarah is the first to speak.

“When you say cure, you don’t mean...”

“Juice to defang you? Yeah. That’s exactly what that is.”

“Where? What? How? Erica...”

“You told me that there was only one thing you wanted more than anything in the world and if it’s not me, I figured I could just get it for you.”

“Want you...Erica hold on. What makes you think I don’t want you? You are like the most important person in my life, vampire or not!”

Erica winces. She knows what Sarah means and it’s nice but not what she wants to hear. Now or never she thinks “Sarah, I...I love you. As more than a friend. More than a sister. I...I like...love love you.” There. She said it. Simpler than the grand speech with flowers and serenade she always pictured but easier than watching Sarah kiss someone else.

“Erica.” Sarah almost whispers, her lips parting at the last syllable

“It’s...it’s okay if you don’t feel the same. I, I get it. I, uh, I realized a while back that maybe I wasn’t so much into guys as I was into you. I...” Dream about you, fantasize about holding hands and kissing you and playing with your hair. Is what Erica wanted to say. “Anyway, I got this for you because I want you to be happy. It wasn’t that hard, just lots of finding old dudes and shaking them up for...” Erica doesn’t finish her sentence because there’s a clattering of plates and the sloshing of forgotten coffee onto the floor. There’s also a pair of soft, cool lips pressing onto hers.

Imagination has a funny way of playing out. Sometimes it follows reality as close to the letter as possible. Other times, people have wings and marry you with a gumball eyes. But in the end, imagination isn’t real. Sarah leaning her entire body across the diner table was.

“I’ll just clean this up then.” The waitress’s voice pulls the girls apart. She’s smiling but not making eye contact as she mops up the mess. Sarah sits back down, the apple of her cheeks pinkish as she covers her mouth with two hands. When the waitress finishes up, Erica finally has the nerve to speak.

“Did you kiss me because...”

“I feel the same way about you as you feel for me?”

“What about Ethan?”

“He’s nice. But he’s not you. I...uh...I realized I might be interested in girls as much as I am boys. In eighth grade.”

“Eight grade?!” Erica almost shouts.

“Yeah. You wore that pink dress with too many frills and your hair was a mess and you’d just gotten your braces taken off and I kinda couldn’t stop staring at you. You looked so beautiful and I, I just knew.”

“Sarah.”

“Why did it take so long for us to figure this out?” She chuckles, tucking a stray curl behind her ear. It reveal a small heart earring that Erica had gotten Sarah two months previously for her birthday.

“Maybe the durfnerders aren't the only dumb ones.” Erica smiles, leans her head against the palm of her hand when she puts her elbows on the table.

“Maybe. Maybe not as dumb as them but pretty close.” Sarah giggles and the sound of it trills into the unbeating heart inside Erica’s chest.

“So are you gonna, you know...” Erica eyes the vial then looks back at Sarah.

“I...I don’t know. I...it’s a lot to process.”

“What’s there to process? Drink this and it makes you human.”

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You’re gonna stay a vampire, aren’t you?”

“Well yeah, I mean, I love it. You’re the one that never...”

“I’ll die.”

“What? No you won’t, I made sure to beat up all the right....oh.” Erica stops herself when she realizes what Sarah was referring to. “You mean because humans die.”

“Yeah.” Sarah looks down at her fries. They had shifted across her plate onto the placemat and table, tiny crystals of salt scattered everywhere.

“Vampires can die you know. We’ve gotten rid of a bunch of them ourselves.”

“Erica, you know what I mean."

“Can we just go back to the part where you’re kissing me?”

“We can, but I think I need a little more time on turning back into a human.”

“I don’t understand. You literally have been brooding from day one about being part of the fang gang and now you have an out that you don’t even have to share with ANYONE. I thought this is what you wanted.”

“It is? Was? I don’t know. I just, knowing that you share my feelings, I...vampires don’t age. I’d be all old and wrinkly and you would still look like this. I might grow jealous and resentful. I might grow to hate you.”

“That’s....woah.”

A silence befalls the table as neither girl knows what to say next. It stretches out like cobwebs in an abandoned shed. When the waitress comes by with the check, she frowns at the changed atmosphere. She scribbles something onto her pad and rips out both copies, placing one in front of each girl.

“Thank you.” Sarah says automatically, not really looking at the slip of paper.

“Sarah?” Erica says, holding up her copy. Sarah looks at it and looks down at hers where the same thing is written. It makes her smile.

“Love is about figuring it out, together.”

#my babysitter's a vampire #mbav #mbav holiday exchange #serica #mbavholidayexchange #sarah fox #erica jones