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westernredcedarI've been having quite an adventure working on the June Challenge for lupin_snape but I'm fairly pleased with my progress so far. The Dostoevsky quote has really sent me in an unexpected direction, where I am a bit lost, but it's coming along. I've also been *gorging* on fic, reading in every spare minute. (In fact, I need to take a break and get out into the beautiful sunshiny day.) In the meantime, I have made a commitment to myself to write drabbles or ficlets several times a week to get my flabbly writing muscles toned up. LJ is my new gym. (Except I should really go to the real gym too, I suppose...)
Cross-posting recent drabbles...
Posted on snape100
Title: Afraid of the Dark
Author: Cedar
Word count: 100
Challenge: One thing that never happened
Rated: G
Characters: Severus, Eileen
In the dark, the moving shadows on his bedroom walls became monsters. A slathering werewolf lunged with each gust of wind through the trees. A basilisk emerged from the rustling slither of his curtains. He murmured made-up curses and hexes from under the covers, paralyzed in fear.Then, shifting clouds revealed an acromantula advancing through the window.
“Mum!” he screamed. “MUM!”
Like a white knight in a story, his mother burst into his room, gathered him in her arms, and drove the monsters away.
“It’s alright, Severus,” she crooned, rocking him, stroking his hair. “I’m here. Nothing can hurt you.”
Posted at snupin100
Title: At the Lakeshore
Author: Cedar
Word Count: 100
Rating: PG
Challenge: #106- Sunshine
Characters: Remus/Severus, Marauders
Although the others had not noticed, the skinny boy in black had been behind them since leaving the exam. Remus’s canid nose was filled with the familiar, heady scent of his sweat under the heavy black robes, now sharpening in the blazing sunshine by the lake. His head was swimming with desire, flashes of the night before- last aisle, restricted section, all lips, hands, teeth- distracting him the precise moment Sirius finally spotted him.
“Excellent. Snivellus.”
The “James, Sirius, leave him alone,” that he owed Severus caught in Remus’s throat. He hid behind his book. The sunshine hurt his eyes.
I just came across this old old old piece of writing yesterday. It is non-HP compliant (I probably wrote this in 1996), just a random prose poem sort of thing I was writing back when I was being inspired by Margaret Atwood and Tim O'Brien (oh, wait, I still am inspired by them...). I was thinking it might be fodder for a future Snupin ficlet or other piece, so I'm storing it here for safe keeping, and to think over.
Anatomy
There was a night they leaned close together, their heads touching, and cut open the heart. It was little, the size of a small plum, a large walnut, the meaty dark ventricles, thin skinned atria. His thumbs, stretching the white of the latex gloves, huge thumbs, clumsy, too large to pry into the small crevices, the precise engineering.
She watched the back of his neck every day. Rusty shade, even in February, the first month of watching. Skin taut and smooth and thick, impenetrable. Coarse black the delicate lane between skin and hair, imagined running her tongue along the base of his skull. Definitive slope to his shoulders, sturdy and solid. She sat behind him and to the right like a wispy breeze, like a secret shadow cast by a second sun.
The lab smell was chemical, medicinal, and hard. It seeped into fibers, into paper, into skin. In the months after, she would leaf through the books that they had shared and inhale: formaldehyde lust.
With the gloves on, the moments they touched were papery. Occasionally their naked wrists would brush and pull away like a shock, like touching boiling water, or ice.
They would sit sometimes and contemplate their own bodies, the minutia that was keeping them alive. He would move his eyes, she her hand, look, eyes rotating, breathing, bones holding them up. They would be still for a long moment, thinking about all the things that they knew, the bones they had touched, their bones, their blood.
They needed an excuse.
The fluorescent lights were too much.
Let’s get out of here, he said.
The intricacies of the circulatory system are like following a river back through its tributaries. The thin columns of blue and red, tracing out the life pattern, feeding the muscles, telling it when to think and when to twitch and when to move its eye. Tracing a path like following a river through the body.
His hands like mitts covered her, his body like an oak tree, like a piece of stone, leaning his weight into her, his eyes closed, his swollen fingers on her, melting her in her lack of substance, she is hollow, filled with air.
Once, before, she had sat down next to him, thigh on thigh, hip touching, trying to find her solidity. He had held up his hand once, for her to grab, or slap, or lick, and it was like an offering. She could touch his hair, but it was his skin, she couldn’t go near. They knew the names of the nerves, nerve endings. They knew how fingernails form. They knew the scientific name for the tongue.
When he was naked, she considered his body as from a text, giving each muscle its name, pointing to them with her tongue, with her fingers, straining over them, learning him. She wanted to see inside, trace the rivers of blood, feel the meaty assurance of the beating of his heart, know him completely.
The last day, they didn’t touch, talked about inconsequential ideas, crossed a stream. He brushed the inside of her knee with his fingertips, it seemed too late.
Let’s get out of here, he said.
We never opened the heart.
They leaned close together, their heads touching, and cut open the heart. It was little, the size of a small plum, a large walnut, the meaty dark ventricles, thin skinned atria. His hands, giant’s hands, too massive to open the delicate valves. Her fingers, long and thin, too insubstantial to leave their mark, too weak to hold on, to rip into him and find out what was inside.
Thanks again to everyone who has been so welcoming to newbie me...yay!
Cross-posting recent drabbles...
Posted on snape100
Title: Afraid of the Dark
Author: Cedar
Word count: 100
Challenge: One thing that never happened
Rated: G
Characters: Severus, Eileen
In the dark, the moving shadows on his bedroom walls became monsters. A slathering werewolf lunged with each gust of wind through the trees. A basilisk emerged from the rustling slither of his curtains. He murmured made-up curses and hexes from under the covers, paralyzed in fear.Then, shifting clouds revealed an acromantula advancing through the window.
“Mum!” he screamed. “MUM!”
Like a white knight in a story, his mother burst into his room, gathered him in her arms, and drove the monsters away.
“It’s alright, Severus,” she crooned, rocking him, stroking his hair. “I’m here. Nothing can hurt you.”
Posted at snupin100
Title: At the Lakeshore
Author: Cedar
Word Count: 100
Rating: PG
Challenge: #106- Sunshine
Characters: Remus/Severus, Marauders
Although the others had not noticed, the skinny boy in black had been behind them since leaving the exam. Remus’s canid nose was filled with the familiar, heady scent of his sweat under the heavy black robes, now sharpening in the blazing sunshine by the lake. His head was swimming with desire, flashes of the night before- last aisle, restricted section, all lips, hands, teeth- distracting him the precise moment Sirius finally spotted him.
“Excellent. Snivellus.”
The “James, Sirius, leave him alone,” that he owed Severus caught in Remus’s throat. He hid behind his book. The sunshine hurt his eyes.
I just came across this old old old piece of writing yesterday. It is non-HP compliant (I probably wrote this in 1996), just a random prose poem sort of thing I was writing back when I was being inspired by Margaret Atwood and Tim O'Brien (oh, wait, I still am inspired by them...). I was thinking it might be fodder for a future Snupin ficlet or other piece, so I'm storing it here for safe keeping, and to think over.
Anatomy
There was a night they leaned close together, their heads touching, and cut open the heart. It was little, the size of a small plum, a large walnut, the meaty dark ventricles, thin skinned atria. His thumbs, stretching the white of the latex gloves, huge thumbs, clumsy, too large to pry into the small crevices, the precise engineering.
She watched the back of his neck every day. Rusty shade, even in February, the first month of watching. Skin taut and smooth and thick, impenetrable. Coarse black the delicate lane between skin and hair, imagined running her tongue along the base of his skull. Definitive slope to his shoulders, sturdy and solid. She sat behind him and to the right like a wispy breeze, like a secret shadow cast by a second sun.
The lab smell was chemical, medicinal, and hard. It seeped into fibers, into paper, into skin. In the months after, she would leaf through the books that they had shared and inhale: formaldehyde lust.
With the gloves on, the moments they touched were papery. Occasionally their naked wrists would brush and pull away like a shock, like touching boiling water, or ice.
They would sit sometimes and contemplate their own bodies, the minutia that was keeping them alive. He would move his eyes, she her hand, look, eyes rotating, breathing, bones holding them up. They would be still for a long moment, thinking about all the things that they knew, the bones they had touched, their bones, their blood.
They needed an excuse.
The fluorescent lights were too much.
Let’s get out of here, he said.
The intricacies of the circulatory system are like following a river back through its tributaries. The thin columns of blue and red, tracing out the life pattern, feeding the muscles, telling it when to think and when to twitch and when to move its eye. Tracing a path like following a river through the body.
His hands like mitts covered her, his body like an oak tree, like a piece of stone, leaning his weight into her, his eyes closed, his swollen fingers on her, melting her in her lack of substance, she is hollow, filled with air.
Once, before, she had sat down next to him, thigh on thigh, hip touching, trying to find her solidity. He had held up his hand once, for her to grab, or slap, or lick, and it was like an offering. She could touch his hair, but it was his skin, she couldn’t go near. They knew the names of the nerves, nerve endings. They knew how fingernails form. They knew the scientific name for the tongue.
When he was naked, she considered his body as from a text, giving each muscle its name, pointing to them with her tongue, with her fingers, straining over them, learning him. She wanted to see inside, trace the rivers of blood, feel the meaty assurance of the beating of his heart, know him completely.
The last day, they didn’t touch, talked about inconsequential ideas, crossed a stream. He brushed the inside of her knee with his fingertips, it seemed too late.
Let’s get out of here, he said.
We never opened the heart.
They leaned close together, their heads touching, and cut open the heart. It was little, the size of a small plum, a large walnut, the meaty dark ventricles, thin skinned atria. His hands, giant’s hands, too massive to open the delicate valves. Her fingers, long and thin, too insubstantial to leave their mark, too weak to hold on, to rip into him and find out what was inside.
Thanks again to everyone who has been so welcoming to newbie me...yay!