Once upon a time, I was very bored, went on the LJ community Impulse Driven, and started doing the challenges.
The deal is, they give you a prompt, and you have exactly three minutes - no more and no less - to write a snippet. Hence the unfinished quality of these. (We're also banned from editting everything but the spelling. By the time the three minutes were up, I NEEDED to. *dies*)
Daniel's always been the creepy kid. [Flee]
When they were younger, Daniel could send most of the other kids away with a glare and a few venomous words. He was the quiet scary one, and most kids learnt to flee when he got that I’m plotting something look in his eyes.
Kris never learnt. Ever. Daniel fascinated her. So she would beat up the kids who weren’t scared of Daniel, and watched him. Even the I’m plotting look didn’t put her off.
So instead of one scary kid in the village, there were two.
Kris never learnt. Even when Daniel’s plots got steadily more deranged, she was fascinated, watching, waiting to be able to make herself useful.
Kris was a functioning illiterate, but always fascinated by watching Daniel write. [Ink]
Ink mystifies her. Always has. It’s like water, only it stains where it drips. Not thick like paint. Thin.
Daniel sees her watching him write, the fascination she has with the way the ink flows from his pen and shapes words, letters, squiggles that mean something to him and not to her.
Come here, he tells her. Bring me needles. Unfasten your shirt.
As always, she obeys, and ends up watching him draw, the fascination balancing the pain as he tattoos a heart on her chest.
He can't quite understand why Kris would willingly be a slave for Daniel. [Jump]
“I don’t get why you like him. I swear, he’s got you jumping through hoops, and what do you get out of it?”
Kris looks down at her glass, pretending to be fascinated by the depths.
“I thought as much. Why do you let him do it?”
“Because I promised. Because he’s the boss.” She looked up finally, a faint smile on her face. “Because I love him and he doesn’t care.”
Sharpe stares at her for a few moments, completely lost.
When climbing to a lady's balcony, common sense dictates that you climb UP to it, rather than DOWN. [Safe]
“Get down from there you idiot! It’s not safe!”
Matthais is shouting somewhere below him, but Maria’s draped across her balcony rail below him, looking wrecked and beautiful, so Saul calmly ignores the common sense part of his brain and obeys the part that seems to take instructions directly from his d**k.
He swings down, fingers gouging marks in the gutter that Matt’ll have to pay for tomorrow, and starts scuffling with his feet for a toe hold.
Three minutes later, he still scuffling, and Maria’s started to sound more hysterically amused than anticipatory. And to add insult to injury, Matt’s there above him, hair sticking to his sweaty face, clamping his hands round Saul’s wrists and dragging him back onto the roof.
No sex for him tonight then.
Matt alternated between hating to be alone, and wanting to be alone with Nicco. [Alone]
Nicco sighed drunkenly, draping his arm around Matt’s shoulder and leaning their heads together. “Waddissit with you n’ tryin’ t’get me alone? S’not like you’re gonna get anything.”
Matt flinched from that, absurdly hurt, and then Nicco was hugging him tight, slurring apologies.
*
“How can you be alone at a party?” Matt cried, draping an arm around Nicco and steering him into the crowd. “Even if you hate everyone else, you could at least keep me company!”
Emi can fly, only not really. [Flight]
When Emi feel really sick, like her brain’s melting out of her because she’s too hot and the priests won’t give her any water because she’s supposed to be too hot, she needs to be this ill for - for something that no one tells her or Nicco, she dreams that she’s flying.
Well, she’s not dreaming, because she’s not actually asleep, but Emi can’t fly and then somehow she is flying. Never anywhere she knows, anywhere she wants to be. Always somewhere strange and different where the people ignore her flying and laughing and focus on grumbling and crying and living and dying.
One day, she ends up flying straight into someone. A tall man with brown hair and a silly smile and eyes that’re scary and warm and happy to see a little girl that can fly.
Sharpe wouldn't walk through his workroom in the dark. [Stars]
Sharpe liked to look in his workroom at night. The vials, all neat in rows, sparkling like stars in the gloom.
He never quite dared go in without the lights on, for fear of stumbling over something and cracking on of the shelves on his way down.
Sharpe knew what was inside those glowing vials better than anyone, knew exactly what made them shake and tremble when people walk past, as though the contents were struggling and battering at the inside of their prison to get out.
Sharpe knew better than anyone that they are.
There was something sad about watching a woman sob as she packed her child's clothes [Pack]
Mama had cried as she packed Emi’s things, hugging the child’s dress to her and sobbing. Not dramatically, not like her heart was breaking, but quietly. As though she wasn’t even away of it. Nicco had ended up sending her away to play with her daughter, while he acted like the good big brother and packed it for them.
Nicco didn’t want to cry; he felt rather empty for that.
