The Vault

LJ Idol S11 Week 8: True North

orockthro — Sun, 08 Dec 2019 22:51:16 GMT

Prompt: True North

When people speak of the things that hold them together, they speak of love, of trust, of family, or maybe of god.

I speak of nearly two tons of high tensile fire-resistant fabric knitted together with a foul smelling glue, a thin metal frame, and bladders of highly-flammable hydrogen gas suspended in a net above my head.

It is not much; certainly more ethereal than a man’s belief in his god.

The balloon is nearly inflated now, glowing silvery against the moonlight. It’s just my mother and I preparing for launch, secreted away along the edge of her expansive property. Our mission has been in the works for months, and if all goes well I will be the first woman to float to the north pole. And if all doesn’t, I will likely be the first known woman to die trying. That ought to frighten me, but it doesn’t. A thrill runs down my spine.

The actual compartment I will be flying in is not a typical fairweather basket, but a metal sphere not unlike a diving bell. Two layers of aluminum with packed straw sandwiched between as insulation. That will be all that protects me from hail, wind, and extreme cold. It stands, weighted down by sand bags, waiting for me to crawl inside.

“You have your journals, Ellena?”

We’ve weighed and re-weighed everything I will be taking. There is little room for margin once we take off, and there will be nowhere to stop to refuel the hydrogen bladders. But my journals were never on the table to be cut; without them I am simply a fanciful woman, with them I am a scientist.

I nod to my mother, and we go over my provisions one last time, marking off on a tally sheet to confirm nothing is missed. Our window of opportunity is thin; the winds are fair tonight, and I need to leave to make sure I arrive at the pole and return while in the warmest parts of the summer.

Just four years ago in 1909 the American, Peary, claimed to make it to the Pole on foot and with dogs, but he provided very little scientific information by doing so. It’s a shame, and one I aim to rectify. My balloon is armed with as many data collecting devices as we can spare weight for. Peary corresponded with me while I was under the guise of my brother and told me things in quite painful detail. I do not enter this expedition ignorantly. Should my balloon fail me, I will not survive.

By the time we have things checked and rechecked, the balloon is inflated and the metal sphere that will be my home is bobbing and straining to leave Earth and her worldly troubles behind. My mother checks her watch, marks the time down in a notebook of her own in the dim light we’re suffering under while not risking a match so close to the hydrogen.

She’s not a woman of many words, my mother. But she stands by me. When I told her of my wish to do this, she found ways to acquire hydrogen, to send for engineers to help build the balloon itself. She has, and will likely always be, my staunchest supporter. She fought for my education and sent me to schools my own brother was kicked out of; her own education was never fostered and I know she regrets it. But she is not lacking brilliance, and she orchestrated the plan to launch a day ahead of schedule to dissuade any... well meaning... attempts to stop me.

She helps me climb up the side of the sphere, which requires me to hike my skirts to an improper height before I’m shuffled into the dark hold.

Just before I tuck myself into it I see headlamps in the distance driving up the long winding drive to the coach house. “Drat,” I say, my head alone sticking up. “They’re figured us out.”

My mother, always a touch crasser than myself, swears several times over. “Fire her up my darling,” she says, “I’ll deal with the men folk. Then she pops up the step ladder to kiss me on the cheek. “May your wind be fair and your pencil sharp my darling Ellena.”

And, without a moment’s more fuss, she pulls the cord that releases the sandbags and I’m hoisted into the air. She was never a woman for faff, my mother.

There is a single viewport, a double layer of thick glass directly in the bottom of the sphere. I shuffle myself to the bottom immediately and look down and out. Already I’m rising fast and high but I can still see my mother’s shrinking form standing tall and strong on top of our hill as the two cars race to meet her. Our detractors from the aeronautics club, come to make sure I don’t risk life and limb for a silly woman’s dream. I tried to gain their support early in my attempts, but received nothing but concern and condemnation.

I smile as their car doors open and my mother opens her arms wide. They’re too late. And then I’m too high to see any more, and gone and off on a journey of my own.

I prop my journal on my skirts upon my knees and take my very first measurements, a ritual that I intend to do every two hours while awake. I mark my journal in pencil; in case my insulation should fail I wish to be able to make my last words known even if my ink freezes before I perish.

I scrawl, “July 2nd, 1913, 4:20 AM” on the top of the first page.

“Day 1 of journey. The weather is fair, winds from the west require a slight adjustment to initial plan for hydrogen.”

I reach up and, per my notation, adjust the flow of hydrogen via a rope lever which pulls open and closed the bladder. A second pull flares up the fire and sends me higher into the sky.

Here, floating in the sky, I am alone. I am trapped in my little bubble, and my only visual is straight down. I must rely on my maps, my instrumentation, and my intuition.

The first of these items is something I question and continually recheck, taking nothing on faith. The second two are ones I have utter belief in. The irony being my male counterparts have full faith in the first and little to none in my instruments or my capabilities.

And yet here I am, floating in the early morning sky, the sunrise filling my sphere with a glowing orange light, towards the true north pole of the Earth.

I grin and put my pencil to paper. There is much work to do.

LJ Idol S11 Week 7: Feckless

orockthro — Mon, 25 Nov 2019 21:42:34 GMT

Prompt: Feckless

Synonyms: useless, without effect

It looks so good, dressed up on TV: a little pill, not too big, not too small. White, because white means clarity and health and purity and other marketing things that Henry doesn’t buy into. The commercials show people on a beach, doing slow motion beach things, bright glowing light dancing on everyone’s shoulders and hair.

“Love the sun again,” it boasts.

Henry takes a ship through the straw of his blood pack. He’s almost through the blister and it’s supposed to last him until Tuesday according to the nutrient plan his doctor put him on. Now that the cure’s out, insurance won’t cover the blood delivery any more so he’s had to cut back on the good stuff.

Sun’s going down outside and he can feel it in his blood, like a rising tide. He can’t see it from inside his apartment; that would be suicide. But the little red numbers on his clock say it’s almost seven o’clock. Thanks to winter and daylight savings time, it’s safe enough.

He dons his windbreaker, turns the collar up against the wind, and steps into the dusk.

San Francisco is a good city to be dead in. Lots of people selling their blood for cash, lots of people to buy black market blood from, too-- Hepatitis tastes a bit funny, but it’s better than going hungry.

Henry hits up a vampire standing outside a 7-Eleven who gives him a hit out of the blister pack he’s sipping from. Even if he’s metabolically dead now, at least camaraderie isn’t.

In exchange the guy asks: “They gotten you to take it yet?”

The vampire he’s talking to is a short guy, maybe Puerto Rican. He’s got a baseball cap on, probably to hide his red eyes from passersby. Henry got over that urge ages ago. He goes out of the house and lets his dead-eyes wander, daring someone to start something.

Henry shakes his head. “Nah, and I won’t. I know it’s bullshit, everyone knows it’s bullshit. They can’t force it down my throat, can they?” He doesn’t say it like a question. Because it’s not a question. But it lingers in his mouth, a coppery fear that’s not the aftertaste of the blood. What if they can. What if they do.

The other guy harumphs, shuffles deeper into his jacket and leans against the brick wall.

“Yeah. Yeah, I mean, maybe. There are a lot fewer of us out at night, right? Might mean it works.”

“You take that shit, it’ll kill you. They don’t want to cure us, they want us gone.” Henry’s sure about it. It’s not like they can’t fake that stuff, all those commercials, all those testimonials about it fixing the blood disorder. Those stories about people going back to their old lives. Fake.

Henry wanders off after that, buys a few pints off a lady outside of a Walgreens under shitty fluorescent lights, and walks around the city for an hour or so. It’s changed, now. After the epidemic happened everyone was afraid, no one went out at night, not even him. Then there was a lot of nightlife after people started to get comfortable with the new normal. It was a good place to be. Lots of blood sellers, lots of friendlies happy to get bit, even, Dracula style.

Only lately, that’s changed again. With the cure come out the vampires wandering the town at night are fewer and fewer. Blood sellers still haunt the streets, but the prices are still shit and the quality is still shit. It’s not fun anymore.

That guy isn’t by the 7-Eleven the next night. Henry wonders if he’s taken the pill after all. Maybe he took it and then wandered into the sun, and then, zap. No more guy. Poof.

Or maybe he’s just somewhere else. Maybe he’s in the sun and he didn’t go poof.

The idea waszles into Henry’s brain and doesn’t let go. He imagines the guy using his baseball hat to actually keep the sun off. He can’t quite imagine it. It’s been long enough he’s sort of forgotten.

The commercial plays as night turns into morning and Henry’s starting to get tired. He’s got the place lined with tin foil all over the windows but he can feel morning leaching into his blood. The commercial plays basically non-stop from between 4AM to 6AM. Targeted market advertisement, which ought to be illegal.

It plays again and he hears “Love the sun again,” in that one lady’s voice, so hopeful and happy.

Maybe the guy from outside the 7-Eleven isn’t dead at all. Maybe he’s in the sun. Fine. Happy, like that lady.

He watches another hour of TV and the commercial comes on twice.

“Love the sun again.”

There’s a little phone number to call at the bottom. He punches it into his phone, deletes it, and then re-punches it three times, and then he sits there, staring at it. The little glowing rectangles and the street lamps and the fluorescent tube lighting of the blood clinic are the only sources of light he’s seen in nearly fourteen months.

He chews his tongue until he tastes blood, and he’s not sure if it’s his own or the aftertaste of his dinner.

He presses the little green telephone icon.

LJ Idol S11 Week 6: Solviture Ambulando

orockthro — Wed, 13 Nov 2019 23:09:58 GMT

There is spittle in her hair. Amenanta is standing over her, made hazy by her blurred vision and the swirling red dust. She looks like a god, smug and powerful.

“Walk it off,” Amenanta says from above her, arms crossed over her chest, and Heilia feels something boil in her belly. It’s red hot, and it wants to crawl out of her, and so she lets it take over. She rolls onto her knees and rises, slowly so she won’t faint or throw up as her body protests strongly. But then she’s standing at her full height which is taller than Amenanta by half a hand, squared up feet to hips to shoulders to fists.

“Do you want to taste dust again?” Amenanta is so sure, so pleased with herself, that the hot live thing in Heilia’s belly roars up and takes over her fists and she slaps Amenanta’s pretty face with her left hand and then swinging in hard and fast and heavy with her right, balled up in a tight hammer strike to the cheekbone.

The hit doesn’t land. It’s a good punch, but Amenanta is fast and out of the way like wind, and putting Heilia down into the dust like wind, too.

She doesn’t remember landing.

“When I say walk it off, I mean it. I will win every time.” And Amenanta is gone, sauntering off into the wheat to have a nap, most likely.

It’s a clear day and Heilia spends a moment looking up at the sky. It’s a pretty blue, so different from the iron-red dust that now covers her sweaty skin. Different, too, from the grey-gold of the wheat fields that stretch across the horizon. She likes it when days are like this, warm and clear and windless. It’s easy to breathe, and the fetid smell of death from the river doesn’t come down the valley like usual.

Eventually she has her breath back and no longer feels like vomiting, and so she stands and walks.

She finds Amenanta, as expected, sprawled out in a confident stretch of skin against flattened wheat, soaking the sun and her victory both. The wheat is starting to droop heavy; there is no one to harvest it enmass like people used to.

“Someday I’ll kill you,” Heilia says. She doesn’t sit or lay down next to Amenanta. She wants to, but the thing boiling inside her won’t allow it. It wants to find something sharp and stab it into her eye. It isn’t right. She shouldn’t want this, but she does, she wants it so badly it pulses in her like a second heartbeat.

Amenanta cracks a single eyelid, one that Heilia envisions bloody with ease, and says, “Maybe. But not today. Go walk, little dry husk, and find somewhere else to sleep, or you won’t wake up this time.”

If she strikes out with her heel, Amenanta will catch her by the ankle and she’ll just end up in the dust again, this time with wheat poking into her or maybe dead. So she stands tall and walks, turning her back to Amenanta with incautious confidence.

Her own bed-down isn’t far, a crack in a big dead tree that bisects the landscape, but she doesn’t want to go there. She wants to run, and so she does, until her feet are nothing more than the sensation of stabbing pain and her chest burns with the need to stop and breathe, and Amenanta is gone from her vision, if not her mind.

She can’t go up the valley, and down the cracked-dry river bed is unknown and dangerous. Unlike Amenanta, who is dangerous but so very known. With every step the hot boiling part of her calms. It never leaves, but it recedes until it is in her mind, not her fists, and she can think clearly again.

She finds a change in the landscape, a dip where the wheat never took root and instead hearty wildflowers speckle the monotonous land with blue and white. She doesn’t know what they’re called, and she accepts that she never will because anyone who knew is dead. But she brushes her calloused fingers over their petals and smiles.

She picks a fat pod of seeds. She knows a little about plants; knows what to chew raw, what to throw on the fire. Mostly they, people who are scattered through the wheat fields and survived, eat the wheat. There is more than enough for their small numbers. She might be able to cultivate these flowers, though, and call them hers. She knows people used to do that.

Heilia snaps the pod off at the stem and breaks it open by pressing her thumb into the flesh until it splits. Seeds, wet and unready, spell out and she lets them fall onto the dry ground. Maybe they’ll make more flowers. Maybe they won’t.

She goes and finds a stick, one of the few remnants of the trees that used to be more than a rarity here, and a rock and goes to sharpen it.

Maybe the flowers will grow, or maybe she’ll kill Amenata. She’ll see what tomorrow brings.

LJ Idol S11 Week 4: Impossible

orockthro — Fri, 25 Oct 2019 19:36:54 GMT

Prompt: Impossible

She’s going to die.

Her vision starts to pulse and fade and she knows with certainty she’s seconds away from pulling that cursed involuntary gasp of seawater that will kill her, and she thinks, “at least I’m dying in the sea. I like the sea.”

Seawater rushes into her lungs and it tastes sweet. Satisfying. She breathes it. And then she wiggles her body free of the rigging that held her captive before, now floating around her like dead eels. She sees her life vest, too, floating beside her and still snapped shut, like she hadn’t just been wrapped up in it a second ago. Somehow she’s slithered out of that, too.

Nina’s lived on the ocean her whole life, sailed for most of it, swam in it and all its dangerous tides and creatures since birth. She knows this shape she’s become.

“I’m a god damned squid,” she thinks.

And then the shock ends and she’s at the surface again, and when she grasps at the ruins of her beloved little ship her hands are her own, ten fingers and mottled brown skin burned browner yet with the sun.

A coast guard ship is not a hundred yards out and heading towards her with lights shining and she thinks, “Oh, god I’m safe.” And then, “Also I was a squid.” Because both seemed equally true and equally impossible.

She goes home that night and visits her parents and her aunt down the street for dinner, like she does a few times a week, and it’s like nothing’s changed.

“Shame about your boat, but you’re damned lucky to be alive.” Her dad is a brusk man. A good man, but firm in what he believes and unwilling to censor himself. “Foolish of you to be out in weather like that, making the coasties come and rescue you.”

Her aunt shushes him and puts another heap of mashed potatoes on his plate. “We’re just happy you’re alright. Want any more ham?”

“No thanks, I’m really craving that fish, though. Pass it along?” She takes a full flank of it onto her plate and eats it in two bites. It’s flaky and the skin is on and the salt. The salt is like water, and she drinks it in, ravenously.

She doesn’t say, “Also, I believe I briefly turned into a squid and that’s how I survived my near drowning. Has anyone else in our family done that before?”

For three days, she pretends she hallucinated. She goes to work at the bar, sleeps in her little apartment, and visits with her friends. Hallucinating is a thing, after all. Near death experiences bring all sorts of people to all sorts of strange mental places. Why not her, too?

And then she dives off a pier to swim on a Friday morning when the water is cold and beautiful and when she looks at herself in the murky water of the inlet near her parent’s house and she sees not her bare brown legs kicking in the water, but a collection of long, pulsing squid arms.

“Ah,” she thinks. “There it is again.”

It feels comforting.

It shouldn’t. It should feel impossible, horrifying, or terrifying. Or some other “ing” word. But it feels right.

This time when family dinner comes around she does ask. “Say, something odd happened the other day,” she starts as her cousin Aggie loads up mashed potatoes onto his plate like the seven-year-old he is. That kid can eat his weight in potatoes.

“Oh?” her aunt asks, but she’s too busy trying to keep the potatoes on the plate and not everywhere else to really pay attention.

Nina pushes on. “Yeah. Yeah, I, ah, I turned into a squid.”

Her dad is smoking a pipe a few chairs down. Mom hates it and every so often goes around the house weeding the tobacco out of all its little hiding spots, but she was lax this week because he’s puffing away with abandon, and he nods sagely at her. “Thought it might be that.”

“This is... a thing?”

“Sometimes.” He shrugs. He’s always been painfully quiet when he ought to be talking, and painfully conversant when he ought to be quiet.

Meanwhile Aggie is staring up at her like she’s a transformer from that one movie he likes. “Seriously?”

She nods at him. “Seriously.”

Aggie goes swimming with her, after her dad convinces Aunt Emily that it’s okay, that she (probably) hasn’t lost her mind, and after Nina promises to keep them by the beach and not go past the buoys and only to swim during daylight. Aunt Emily married in. She doesn’t know the ocean like her family does.

It’s a clear day. The water is cold, but it always is, and Aggie splashes around just where his shoulders start to dip under the waves. The beaches here aren’t nice, exactly, but they’re a relatively safe place to get into the water, unlike the cliffs that speckle the rest of the coast here. Aggie is safe.

And she can hear his squeal from above the water when she submerges her face in a backwards dive and her entire body dissolves into squid ink.

They play for awhile. He tries to catch her arms, and then three or four of her winding arms will tickle his feet.

As soon as she breathes in air, her hair is back, her arms are back, and she’s Nina again.

“Think it’ll keep happening forever?”

They’re up on the beach now, away from the water and bundled into soft and enormous towels to keep the wind out as their bodies dry off.

She shrugs, until she realizes it’s an echo of her father, and then she says, “I don’t know. Maybe. Could go away tomorrow. Dad doesn’t really know, either, but it sounds like his brother could do this back in the day.

Aggie doesn’t seem bothered by the unknown of it all. He just nods along and chomps into the granola bar Aunt Emily packed for him. “It’s a pretty cool superpower.”

“Is it?” She hadn’t really thought so. It saved her life, and she thinks fish tastes amazing now, but that’s about it.

“Totally.” He says it with utter certainty, and Nina grins. Because sure. She can work with that.

LJ Idol S11 Week 3: Everything Looks Like a Nail

orockthro — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 22:54:33 GMT

Prompt: everything looks like a nail
Content Warning for premature babies and scary medical situations, nothing explicit

---

There is someone I haven’t met yet who is 2 lbs 1 oz. He was born last week, 15 weeks early, and someday he’ll call me aunt.

This week everything I think of floats back to him. How is he doing? Is he growing the way he should? Is he safe? Will be be okay? Will be be blind or have cerebral palsy? Will he struggle with language and have developmental delays?

I’ll love him no matter the outcome, of course. That was never in question. And he has good, loving parents, too. This tiny person is my brother’s son. My younger, baby brother, who with his wife has wanted desperately to be a parent. They’ve tried hard, and had hard losses. And I still see the two of them as so, so young.

I struggled to write fiction this week. I started a story about leeches and the inadequacy of our healing, but that was just a story about this tiny person I haven’t met yet.

I tried a story about hammers and anvils, but that was just a story about being made and put forth into the world, which was just a story about this tiny person I haven’t met yet.

My dad wrote this tiny person I haven’t met yet a poem. It’s lovely and gentle and about being patient because the world will wait for him. Someday he’ll call my father his grandfather, because time marches onward and there’s nothing any of us can do about it.

The suddenness and 3-month-early-ness by which I became an aunt is the same suddenness by which my mom is now a grandmother and my dad is a grandfather. In a heartbeat, our positions in this family have shifted. In a heartbeat, my generation in our family has changed from the children to the adults. I am no longer the eldest child. I am an aunt.

I’ve felt powerless this week, and yet supremely hopeful in ways that I know other members of my family don’t feel. I have that luxury. And by god, I will use it.

Let me tell you about the tiny person I haven’t met yet:

His skin is purple because he’s still bruised from his traumatic entry into this world. He likes to kick his legs, even though they are such tiny little things. He has a little mask to block his still-developing eyes from the light, and I’ve never seen his face in full because in addition he is on a ventilator because his lungs, like the rest of him, aren’t quite ready for the world. His brain is bleeding in both hemispheres, and no one really knows what this will mean for him. Every outcome is on the table, favorable and otherwise, and nothing is certain.

His skin is so delicate he bruises at a touch. He was allowed to be held by his mother for the first time yesterday, laid out on her chest and monitored and supported by a team of doctors and nurses to keep his head and neck safe and his IV lines from tangling. He is too fragile to be held like a normal newborn.

There is a lot of fear. A lot of unknown. Things could go perfectly fine, or they could not, and there is nothing I can do about it. There’s very little even his parents can do about it except hold him as often as they can and hope. Things are in the hands of fate, of chance, of luck and the skill and patience of care providers.

Someday I will meet this tiny person I haven’t met yet. He will call me aunt, and I will call him whatever he wishes to be because I will love him, however he is.

LJ Idol S11 Week 2: Living Rent Free Inside Your Head

orockthro — Sun, 06 Oct 2019 16:04:59 GMT

“I love you.”

It’s whispered gently in her head and reverberates somewhere above her left eye, where her grandmother is buzzing around today.

Arvilla stirs clockwise six times, taps her wooden spoon thrice against the copper cauldron, and speaks the magic words. Then, with her grandmother’s love humming in her mind like a kiss, she decants the watery potion into the six waiting vials on her desk a few feet away. The wood face of the desk is scarred and mottled with years of potions accidents, knife scores from hasty chopping, and hard use. But it serves her just fine, just like the rest of the house. Two chimneys, a hearth half the size of the house itself, and a roof half made of vents on various pulleys to keep the place cool even in the heat of summer with the fires blazing.

It’s a good house.

She corks the six vials after blowing a kiss into each, and smiles when they shift from a slippery yellow color to a deeper purple.

“You’ve such a deft hand with potions. I know, there’s plenty else for a girl with your talents to be doing,” her grandmother says. She’s moved a bit, her voice coming closer now to her ear.

Arvilla rolls her eyes. “I like my life, grandma. I like it here. What would I do without this house? Besides, why can’t you go bother mother, hm? I think she’s in the bahamas right now, wouldn’t you rather be there?”

She can feel her grandmother huff inside her head. It feels like half a sneeze. “Such a rude child she raised, why would I spend time with her. And you could do plenty. World’s a big place, mija.”

“Hush, grandma,” she says back, and goes about cleaning the day’s cauldrons from the hard fire scale and slimy remnants of pond frogs.

Albert comes at half ten, as he often does, to flirt with her and pick up the day’s potions for delivery down to the town; she charms a pigeon to peck at his window let him know they’re ready. He’s a fine boy, if one likes such things, with a clean set of clothes and a pleasant demeanor. He’s never pushy or unkind, and she likes the way he smiles-- she could use that in a magic working, easily.

“Morning Witch Arvilla,” he says with a quick and cheeky bow. She blinks and lets down the wards on her door and he strolls in.

“Morning Albert. Grandmother is in residence today,” she says, because it’s polite to disclose these things.

“Ah, and good morning Grandma,” he says, a little more reserved already. But he’s met her a half dozen times already, if not more, and he still smiles at Arvilla because Albert’s a cheeky boy indeed.

“See,” Grandma says against her ear still, “The world is a big place.”

Arvilla resists the urge to roll her eyes, because poor Albert won’t understand. Instead she smiles back at him, hands him a basket full to bursting with vials that clink gently against the cloth that holds them safe.

“Your deliveries for the day. If you could go to Susan first that would be best, her son is about to find himself in poison oak. And mind the road as it bends past the willow tree, a bird told me there’s a sink there.” If she left for the grand old world she’d have to find a new batch of birds to befriend. Possible, surely, but she likes these birds.

“Ah, yes. Thank you Witch Arvilla,” and he bows again and takes his leave. She blinks the wards back into place, banks the fires with a whispered spell, and then goes to put on her boots and her seal skin cloak: it’s time to go collecting.

“I do love you, mija,” her grandmother says again. Arvilla knows this, knows it into her bones, and she smiles at the words as she cuts the heads off cattail reeds and plucks sparrow eggs from their nests.

“I know you do, grandmother. And I love you, too and always will. But my life is simpler than yours, and I like it that way. I don’t need to run and find a water spirit to marry or a city to overthrow and run.” Both are stories from her grandma’s past that have equal shaking truth to them. Her mother used to tell them as bedtime stories, whispering in Arvilla’s sleeping ear that she could have these things, too, should she want them.

“But what if you change your mind, my darling, and it’s too late to find your water spirit and your city?” Ah, Arvilla smiles, of course her grandmother knew her mind; she is in it after all.

“Then it will be too late for that, but not too late for something else.” And, Arvilla thinks, that will be okay. “Life is only choices, one after the other. If I make one that I don’t like, I’ll just make another one next time.”

A frog leaps and Arvilla’s hand snakes out to grab it from the air. She smacks it dead and adds it to her basket.

Her grandma is silent in her mind for the rest of the day, only humming occasionally once they return to the house on the hill and it’s nearly dark. Arvilla revives the fires, flutes open the vents with a careful management of the rigging, and sets her frogs out for roasting. Tomorrow she will brew the wart ward for Mrs. Elleson, the stress reducer for Franklin’s daughter, and the fertility prayer for Mary, who came to her in secret with tears in her eyes.

These are her people, this town she cares for in her house on the hill. She’s their witch, and she won’t shirk that for the world.

Her grandmother kisses her from inside her head, right above her left eye. “I think I understand, mija. Thank you for being patient with an old woman. Now, do you think sparrows eggs are truly the best choice for young Mary? Eggs are so volatile.”

Arvilla laughs, a tired laugh from a long day of tramping around the mud and swamps in the south. “They have such hope, grandma, in their little shells. I think they are.”

LJ Idol S11 Week 1: "Resolution"

orockthro — Sat, 28 Sep 2019 14:27:38 GMT

Resolution and Revolution

The graffiti is stark and violent looking-- bright, poppy red with little drips down the word. Just the one word, with a slash cutting through the word it’s replacing. Simple, really.

It’s been popping up all over town, and if there’s one thing Eli’s sure of it’s that this case of sign debasement is not being tolerated. Overtime is getting paid out, and that’s how he knows it’s serious.

So he’s out past eight o’clock because the money is good, isn’t it. Spends plenty fine. He’s got his bucket and rag, his rubber gloves, and his industrial bottle of acetone and he’s here to undo what’s been done, to try to put the rabbit back in the hat.

He works silently with only the sound of passing cars and far-away too-loud conversations to keep him company. It’s a weekday so there’s no alcohol permitted in the city, so at least there aren’t any drunks. And curfew is in an hour anyhow, so he’ll be alone and unbothered soon enough.

He dips the rag and starts to work, scrubbing until the poppy-red ‘revolution’ fades away, sliding towards pink as it drips to the sidewalk in a cascade of pungent chemical. It doesn’t fade completely-- spray paint has gotten good, and this is the illegal kind only available on the black market. But it’s better. ‘Revolution’ is just a shadow by the time he’s finished, at least in the hazy light provided by the streetlamp.

The letters spell out the government’s preferred motto now without alteration: In Resolution, Peace. It’s on the sides of almost every official building, stamped on driving permits, and emblazoned on the shirts of federal workers nation-wide. School kids chant it every morning. Eli used to, too.

Eli puts the bucket and rag in the back of his truck. It’s inching towards nine o’clock but he has a work pass to be out after curfew if he needs to be. He snaps a picture of his handiwork for his boss, who requires that, and then puts his phone in the car as well, in the passenger glove compartment where it always lives. He can’t turn the location tracker off-- no one can anymore. So the glove compartment is a good place for it.

Also in the glove compartment of his truck is a can of red spray paint-- the illegal, hard to source kind. He lets his fingers brush over the canister, and drives down the street to the diner that stays open to 10 o’clock to feed people with legitimate after-curfew permits. He parks the truck, orders a burger, and then goes to stretch his legs.

He stops by his truck on the way. His hands are clean when he comes to eat his burger, and of course his gloves have spray paint on them. That’s his job, isn’t it?

He gets the work order the next day, too. Not a curfew job, but a morning one. Same state building, same sign. Strange, unsettling, they said, that someone worked that quick. He nods and frowns with them. Strange indeed. But the money spends just fine, he says with a smile, and goes to collect his bucket.

“In Revolution, Peace.”

LJ Idol S11 Week 0: Intro

orockthro — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 00:14:59 GMT

Bonjour. I do not speak French.

Once, in Paris, I hugged a woman who reminded me of the sun. She is bright and vibrant and her words can bring life and death. She's a ballet dancer and a lawyer and she walks through parks delighting in the world around her, bundled up against the gentle chills of Paris in the spring.

I like her. Someday I'll see her again, maybe.

I speak English. I walk through life a little sleepier, with a little less delight, but I try. I am not a lawyer or a ballet dancer, but once I took ballet lessons as an eighteen-year-old in a damp, feet-smelling room above the local hockey rink. I was told I did a wonderful job of making my dancing aerobic, and now I no longer learn dance. I am also no longer eighteen.

On my thirtieth birthday I rented a bouncy castle, some space in a park, and had my quite-grown-up friends out for a day of silliness and delight and we spun and danced on the grass. On that day I had not yet met my Parisian friend. Paris comes later, but not so much later that I have shed my skin of this day.

My father is a lawyer, too, although not Parisian by any generous stretch. He plays chess and I have flirted with the game on and off since childhood, captivated by his love of it and yearning to feel that same understanding. The pieces are always so intriguing and beautiful, the little roles they play in the story that always ends in one of three ways: a win, a loss, or a draw. There are no other outcomes. The king will always fall, the queen almost always sacrificed to his protection (or the assasiation of his enemies), and the pawn alone always has a chance to be something else. But in the end, the story is the same, played out in a hundred thousand possible ways. Played out to one, two, or three.

I do not play chess, either.

I drew my dad in Paris. He was with me after we met the woman like the sun, and we were sitting in an old stone square at the head of a neighborhood having a drink at a cafe. He sat for me and I drew him in pencils in my little travel notebook. Art, like writing, is a game of infinite variables. One stroke here or there, and the outcome changes. The meaning changes. Choice after choice after choice, not to struggle towards a win or eke out a draw from a set of bad circumstances, but to simply make. To make do. To make beautiful. To make real. To make honest. To make anew.

Now Paris is behind me and I am in the present in Wisconsin, where the leaves are changing and the ground is wet and heavy with autumn. It’s not cold yet, but it will be; a renewing promise, a snake eating its tail.

I don't play chess or dance, but I make art and I write words and I imagine outcomes four and five and six and seven: a world in which the queen lives and the king becomes the pawn. I craft dreams onto paper and paper into dreams, and I like it that way.

A word here, a word there, and the meaning shifts.

Bonjour. And now the story begins again.

LJ Idol writing rollercoaster? I'm signing up!

orockthro — Sat, 21 Nov 2015 14:49:14 GMT

So friend Cisyln convinced me to join up and join her team for this craziness while I was petting cats, my known weak spot. So I'll be doing the LJ idol mini season writing extravoganza with her and others on what is now known as Team Avocado.
\o/
:)

Fic: Vanya's

orockthro — Wed, 12 Aug 2015 02:49:19 GMT

Title: Vanya’s

Author: Orockthro

Fandom: The Man from UNCLE (TV)

Summary:

“FASHION BY STORM”
Henry Pettersen
December 18th, 1971, Women’s Wear Daily
On the eve of the holiday season many eager shoppers line the halls of department stores all across America, searching for last minute bargains. I, however, am still searching for the truth behind Vanya’s, the successful and shockingly recent break into affordable fashion for the masses.
What I am finding, dear readers, is an enigma, wrapped in a mystery, wrapped in a heavenly winter coat with a fur collar.

(Or, a post-series AU. The world tries to unravel Vanya’s mystery, Illya tries to stay afloat and unravel a mystery of his own, and Rita Hogarty tries to do her job.)

Tags: Illya Kuryakin & Napoleon Solo, Illya Kuryakin, Napoleon Solo, Angelique, Post Series, House of Vanya, AU, Outsider POV

Notes: AHAHAHHAHAHAHA I FINISHED IT.

Aubrey-Maturin Fic (x2)

orockthro — Sun, 12 Jul 2015 16:33:19 GMT

SO... for better or for worse, I've fallen pretty far down the rabbit hole for the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian. I'm reading the 4th book right now (The Mauritius Command) and I am lost, gone, beyond hope, save yourself... (actually, do not save yourself. Join me. Joiiin meeee...)

But the essance of this madness, is thave I've started writing fic. Two short ones so far.

Title: Fallow Words
Fandom: Aubrey-Maturin Series by Patrick O'Brian
Summary: He’s so thin, laid out on top of the cot, the swath of white bandage hiding the carnage, but not Jack’s memory of it. He clutches his pen tighter at the half-blurred remembrance; Stephen’s heart pumping frantically, visible to all and sundry and even now turning Jack’s vision gray. Gray like Stephen’s face, except for his cheeks which flush pink with unhealthy fever.

(Or, set near the end of HMS Surprise, Jack watches over Stephen during his delirium, and begins understand that love is a complicated thing.)

Title:Through a Glass
Fandom: Aubrey-Maturin Series by Patrick O'Brian
Summary: “Stephen reflected upon Sophie’s confinement.” / “Tomorrow, at the crack of dawn, you lose your husband to his natural element.”

-The Mauritius Command - Patrick O’Brian

She yearns to leave the window open but is terrified one or the other of the children will topple out from it. And so she sits, holding Fanny, rocking her, and looking out the bolted window, through the wavering glass that blurs and warps the world. Unlike Jack’s telescopes, it does not bring her clarity or comfort, only obfuscation. She can’t see the sea from here, but she knows without a doubt exactly where it lays, at what bearing and what distance. Knows for the creaking in the wood when her husband leaves their bed to climb to his observatory and gaze out upon it, when her ability to please him falls short of his expectations. How odd they should both look at the world through a glass and see it so differently.

(Or, Sophie, set in the beginning of The Mauritius Command contemplates her family and her life.)

Fic: For Every Good Reason

orockthro — Sun, 28 Jun 2015 00:19:07 GMT

Look kids I did a thing! (And this is what happens when you sit down to write, conscript a friend to beta, and don’t move for several hours.)

Title: For Every Good Reason (link to AO3)

Fandom: Man from UNCLE

Word Count: 7,800

Summary: /Illya dreams of fire. Of smoke, of saltwater rising and locking his legs into quicksand, of Napoleon’s mouth over his as they bob in the water, breathing life into him./

“You’re supposed to be the strong swimmer,” the shadow said from above. The image swam as he blinked his eyes clear of stinging saltwater until, finally, the edges narrowed and refined, and he was left with Napoleon’s face staring down at him, pale against the blue sky.”

(Or, trapped on an island after a mission gone sour, Illya must reconcile his broken memory and what Napoleon tells him of past events, putting their partnership and trust on the line.)

Tags: Illya Kuryakin/Napoleon Solo, Napoleon Solo, Illya Kuryakin, Desert Island Fic, Amnesia, Hurt/Comfort

Internet Presence: Low

orockthro — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 20:27:09 GMT

You may have noticed (or may not have. I don't hold you responsible for watching me, lol) that I've been a little shy on internet presense lately. That's likely going to continue for a bit. :) All's well in Oro-land, just trying to restructure my life a bit and get a handle on some bad internet/productivity habits that were making me feel pretty shitty. :)
I'm severly limiting my LJ and Tumblr time, and completely abolishing the use of multiple browser tabs, in order to try and re-up my frazzled attention span and actually do shit.
So far it's produced 18,000 words of a novel idea. So until I remember how moderation works and how to not lose whole afternoods to a internet refresh-refresh-refresh haze, internet!lite Oro is on deck.
I will still be around, but if you want me to see something and don't want to run the risk of me missing it (I won't be backreading feeds for example) please email me! Fandom email: orockthro@gmail.com
Love ya'll.

Highlander Fandom Rant

orockthro — Sat, 30 May 2015 23:31:29 GMT

Ye’ve been warned. Non-specific discussion of a fandom’s reaction to a character doing Bad Things below (tw: rape)

So I’ve been re-reading and trolling through my ill-maintained bookmarks from the last 10 years of my fic reading life, trying to figure out what I want to rec, and what I wish I could pretend I never liked in the first place.

And I just need to … say somethings, Highlander fandom. I really do. I know I’m like 15 years to late, but I can’t help it.

Remember that plot line where Methos is revealed to have done Very Bad Things several thousand years ago, but because of immortality! one of his victims is still alive and kicking? Yeah that happened on the show. Also on the show, Cassandra, his victim, tries to get what we’re told is “revenge,” (because that’s not at all like what any of the male characters do but call keeping the world safe, nope /sarcasm) but is effectively sent home because a certain someone (Duncan. It was Duncan. It’s always Duncan) “wanted him to live” and told her not to kill him when she, understandably, wanted to cut his head off. He tells her not to kill her abuser, and she disappears off the set and off the show. (AHAHAHAH) The end.

Yeah that was bad, show. Like, really, really, really fucking bad. But I watched it in High School. I didn’t know any better. I, like folks with Severus Snape, saw him as a misunderstood guy. I was convinced, like the audience and other characters were meant to be convinced, that because it happened a Very Long Time Ago, it was okay. He was a different person now.

A) that’s bullshit, but that’s the show. That’s canon. I’m not here to bitch about that.

B) I’m here to bitch about the fandom reaction.

(Small caveat: I am not part of the HL fandom. I only binge read every few years.)

Fandom, what the actual fuck????????

I’ve read several, that is, MANY, fic (often epic length) where Cassandra is basically the boogyman, this character who appears some time later to kidnap Methos and torture him for his offenses against her. Which I am super down with, btw. Get it, girl.

But that’s not the end. I’d be more than fine if that were the end. But no. The end is that she’s depicted as having gone insane, torturing him for no reason whatsoever, unlike Methos, who tortured her to stay alive (and he’s 99% always painted in a sympathetic light, with a story of how he himself was abused first, and abusing her was some kind of self defense for his own horrible situation). And like, 90% of those stories end with Duncan MacLeod of the fucking Clan MacLeod killing her to rescue Methos from her wichly grasp. (Sidenote…. her being a witch is actually canon… that is no coincidence I think >___> That’s right 1990s TV show. I’m side eyeing you.)

I get it. Methos is a popular character and people were probably a bit struck on the head with NOPES when this plot was unveiled. But guess what? Killing the woman he abused in fic and writing her as mentally ill to make it justifiable?

REALLY FUCKING NOT COOL. AHHHHHHHHH!

(Crossposted to Tumblr)

WisCon 39

orockthro — Wed, 27 May 2015 00:03:33 GMT

Back from WisCon and redeposited in the real world. The con is in my own city so it's not like I left... but I feel like I just spent three days in a wonderful utopia, and it pains me so very much to have had to leave. Wiscon is a three day home. I've never felt so perfectly comfortable as when I'm at a panel about race representation in the Agent Carter series, or a panel about why Mars captures our narrative imagination, or at a sing-a-long, cross fandom vidparty that celebrates women in media. Surrounded by a thousand misfits.
Things I loved in no particular order, realizing I'm still sleep deprived and forgetting things:

Pronoun stickers to put on your name badge. They had every configuration under the sun, and would happily print out something specific on request (they, zi, he, she, prefers not to choose etc.)

Social interaction cards to put in your badge if desired/helpful (red = don't talk to me right now, thanks!; yellow = I'm open to talking but let me approach you; green = i'd love to chat but might be shy or have anxiety, please approach me!)

The Tiptree Award sing along

Alaya Dawn Johnson and Kim Stanley Robinson as guests of honor. Alaya's speech actually made me cry. Her contributions to the "Not Another Race Panel" cracked me up completely (she put the image of a CareBare/Harry Potter crossover in my mind that I will never be able to unsee... for better or for worse)

Meeting Saathi1013 from the interwebs

Meeting her husband, who had flowers woven into his beard and hair. A+ to you, sir.

Meeting two other new friends of a mutual friend who I'm hooking up to play boardgames with next week

Bitching for a solid hour and a half with two dozen angry and beautiful feminists on why we feel the disney princess franchise has failed us

I miss Wiscon already. I'm homesick (heartsick) for it in a way I didn't think was possible.

Fic Rec: Two Masters - Emily Veinglory (Man from Uncle)

orockthro — Sat, 16 May 2015 01:37:12 GMT

Hayyy kids! Taking a page out of scherwood 's book recently, I am going to start posting recs. I don't have a scheule or, frankly, even a plan. :) I just read a shit ton of fanfic, and want to share some of my favorites. Sometimes they'll be fic that are unequeled in writing, sometimes they'll be fic that just made me happy. It will be cross fandom and posted both here and on Tumblr, and will include not just the fic, but a little bit about why I think it's worth your time to read.

First up....

Fic: Two Masters by Emily Veinglory (this link takes you to the fic via the Wayback Machine) - 8,500 words - NS/IK - Author did not rate

Author’s Summary: “I made my first mistake one dark night in Essex.”

My thoughts: To my knowledge, this author has written just two MFU fic. This, and a fic called Fool’s Russian (also provided via the Wayback Machine - if anyone has alternative links, please let me know!), which although hits several of my “oh god yes” buttons, is not as strong.

It’s first person from Illya’s POV, which sounds potentially awkward, but actually allows for some really lovely writing. The prose borders on being on overdone, but because Illya is a transplant with English as a second (or third, or fourth) language who airs on the side of being over-analytical himself, it actually works very well, and has a maturity that sets it apart from a lot of other fic.

The story is slash, but centers on Illya’s loyalty to both the Soviet Union and UNCLE, not just a contentious and burgeoning relationship. In the middle of it all are Napoleon, the KGB, Illya’s own decisions, and the decisions that are made for him by both circumstance and others.

The thing that really struck me about the story was its carefulness in dealing with its subject matter. In a number of older MFU fic I’ve read Illya is written as a defector who is strongly loyal to not just UNCLE, but also the United States. This fic approaches Illya’s position much more complexly, and is a breath of fresh air that acknowledges both the false dichotomy of the Cold Word, and the careful balancing act Illya must uphold.

Excerpt: “I reached to try and move the twigs in a way so as to deflect the relentless spigots of rain, and as I drew back I touched Napoleon’s hand lying lax across a mass of branches. Surprise made me freeze and as I paused the feeling of his skin beguiled me. His wrist was surprisingly narrow under my palm. The edge of his glove was soft and curled over so that the rain had begun to dampen the lining. Where my skin touched his, warmth began to build. I sighed quietly and in doing so noticed the silence.

Napoleon had woken, but he could not know the sound he had been making and thus not know that I could tell he was now awake. I could have just patted his hand in some comradely fashion and moved away, but I did not choose to do so.“

Fountain Pen: Success!

orockthro — Sat, 09 May 2015 13:22:45 GMT

Muahahahhhaaaaa, yesssss, my creation LIVES!

Force it open, cut off the 50 year old dried rubber sac, give it all a solid clean, put on a new sac, and VOILA! A PEN!

Today I...

orockthro — Tue, 05 May 2015 02:25:13 GMT

Spent over an hour dicking around an antique store near my work, and came out with a fountain pen. Oops!
In my defence, I've been thinking about fountain pens for years now, but haven't been ballsey enough to try and deal with the cool old ones. Until now...

It's not very fancy, it's in pretty rough shape (it's stained, and the insides are dried to hell; can't even get it apart yet) but I'm going to try and fix it up! Which will be a bit of a learning experience (to say the least...) I've already splurged on a repair kit, so when it comes, we'll see what happens. XD You may get frustrated, ink stained pictures of me this weekend...

But the best part of this story is the man I bought it from, who was milling around his booth at the store. I love chitchatting with folks like this, so first thing I did was ask him his favorite item in his area. He was particularly fond of this super retro 60s era lamp the size of like, a small car. But then the ball got rolling and he started showing me all sorts of random things. He left for a few minutes to go complain to the store manager about the music selection playing in the background (apparently Lady GaGa and Atinques weren't meshing well for him) and left me to rummage around in the locked cabinets unsupervised. And then I found the pens. I mean, I also found a bunch of other cool stuff, but I had to limit myself. ;)
I talked him down in price mostly just by existing (it was about the easiest negotiation I've ever participated in), but the best part was after we agreed and we just hung out for a bit. Apparently he used to be a librarian for a primatology library, and had a dinner party with Jane Goodall! Who, apparently, really liked his fireplace.

He was a trip, lol.

(Fic) Unit I, Series LYA: Press to Activate

orockthro — Sun, 03 May 2015 19:31:22 GMT

Oops. That robot AU I've been poking at? Finally gave up and posted it. o__o;

Title: Unit I, Series LYA: Press to Activate (Link goes to AO3)

Word Count: 3,600

Summary: “Look, can I call you something else? Unit I, Series LYA doesn’t exactly, ah, roll off the tongue.”

Blue eyes stare at him dispassionately. It’s horrifying how human he looks. Probably because he was, once. Those blue eyes belonged to some poor brain-dead potato farmer, or a mortally wounded KGB officer, before he became… this… instead. Whatever this is. He’s seen what’s between those eyes now. It’s metal and flesh and wires and fluid that looks like engine oil but smells like blood, and Napoleon doesn’t want to see it again.

“A common Soviet name is Illya. If it makes you more comfortable, and will increase our success in the field, you may call me that.”

(Or, the Soviets have made a leap in technology, and Napoleon is assigned a new partner. Just not one he was expecting.)

Why art thou shitty, day?

orockthro — Thu, 30 Apr 2015 21:38:06 GMT

(Warning: 100% rant below...)

This week has been rough, this day has been rougher yet. :/ My last day at my current position within the company (and at that location) is a week from tomorrow, and I feel like the closer it gets, the farther away I get from the safety of the eye of the storm.

My immediate supervisor is under enormous stress at work from her boss, the building we just moved into is still in shamles and a mess and a half mostly because one of the people we hired recently isn't showing as much promise as we'd hoped and doesn't have much initiatve at all, and even though we essentially hired two people to replace me instead of one, she's worried I'm going to leave a gaping hole in the company when I shift. Which is kinda bullshit. I have trained my replacement, who has been doing my job on her own for the last month while I do stuff for my new position.

And I get it. I do. Shit's going down and we've been the dynamic duo of getting it taken care of in the past, and it freaks her out that things are changing.

But it's shitty as hell for me to be bearing her worries and frustrations. Especially since we've known for 6 months (hell, longer!) that this was happening.

I asked to take two days next week to help with the furniture delivery and miscelaneous set up of the new office I'm starting (because, hello, yes I need to do that. I'm going to be the office manager, I absolutely need to make sure we have coffee service and a working printer before the place opens up) and was told, "What? Why!? You don't need to do that, what are you going to do, twiddle your thumbs? There aren't even phones yet." Nothing I say has much effect; she thinks, super clearly, that I'm somehow abandining my current responsibilities in a ball of fire to go play doll house. As if I need a landline phone to do work when I have a cell phone, a laptop, and a wi-fi hotspot.

It sucks, because until this week, I had a great relationship with my supervisor, and I was super looking forward to being on a more peer level with her. Now I'm 90% convinced that after I leave, everything that goes wrong at that location will become "my fault" because I left.
:(
I'm just really frustrated and saddend by the whole thing. I want to be able to open up a new chapter of my working life, and instead I'm concentrating a ton of my energy on not pissing her off further.

/venting

In much happier news, I'm going to see Age of Ultron tonight! I'm apparently stupid/brave enough to try a midnight showing even though I'm usually in bed before ten, lol.

Earth Day/Neil DeGrasse Tyson

orockthro — Wed, 22 Apr 2015 20:29:38 GMT

I took off work on Monday to go to the Nelson Institute Earth Day Convention with some buddies of mine, where we saw Neil DeGrasse Tyson. (AHHH!!!) Connected with a grad school student/farmer studying beats who gave me tips on what to grow in tiny ass apartment window boxes, and had an all around educational and mesmerizing day fliting from air-testing drone displays to talks on how insurance agencies take climate change and risk management into account. 10/10, would reccomend.

Also there was Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

Can I say that enough?

PS he’s an amazing speaker. Inspiring on so many levels. If you get the chance to hear him, I highly rec it. :)

(I'm the goober in the front)

(NEiL DEGRASSE TYSON!!!)

OOPS I BINGED DAREDVIL

orockthro — Fri, 17 Apr 2015 01:24:13 GMT

Yeah that happened. But I blame Cortue mostly, I really do. It definitely has its ups and downs as a series, and some weird pacing slumps (and just ... weird... slumps, pacing set asside) in the season that, if it had been a weekly airing show rather than a Netflix one where all the episodes were availible immdiately, might have lost me. But you know what, there are some moments that make it really really worth it. I have nothing to say except KAREN. <3

But because I'm me, I'm now 110000% invested in a crazy weird crime fighting OT3 family.

I want this so bad it actually hurts.

So of course, what do I (and Cortue. Can't absolve her of guilt in this. Al the guilt in this) do but decide to write an epic gender AU OT3 fic where Matt Murdock is Mags Murdock, and she and Foggy Nelson and Karen Page are fantastic and have a weird little superhero life together.
Because of course. What else is logical.

(Nothing. Nothing else is logical.)

PS fair warning for anyone interested in trying this show out, it's incredibly graphic and violent. And also cool. The violence tapers off after the first four eps or so. Or maybe I just got used to it... It also has randomly impressive cimematography intersperced with really heavy handed dialogue. XD It's kinda a ... wide range. You think you will hate Foggy. You will love Foggy. This is the show in a nutshell.

Just look at themmmmmm <3

Selfiesssss

orockthro — Sun, 12 Apr 2015 22:29:27 GMT

Posted these over at tumblr. Cat wrangling is difficult. Some day I will attain proper cat wrangling and be dressed cute at the same time. Today is not that day. Today I couldn't even manage proper lighting, lol.

Well shit

orockthro — Sat, 11 Apr 2015 17:17:22 GMT

I really liked the condo I saw today.
Great area: quiet but near to some great things, super cute exteriors. Needs some updating, a solid (twice over) clean, and fresh paint, but it's... not bad. At all.
So now it's time to get serious.
o___o

Oooooops fic just keeps leaking out

orockthro — Tue, 31 Mar 2015 00:08:02 GMT

@___@ I swear to god I opened up a WIP to work on today and this just happened It wasn't my fault, okay. But the fact that I want to keep writing is totally my fault. I cop to that. XD

The body starts shaking as soon as they plug him in (plug it in, Napoleon has to remind himself. The body laid out isn’t a man, not really, even though it looks like one with its blond hair and perfectly imitated human features). Rough hands and callous touches push him onto his stomach to better expose the panel at the nape of his neck that pops open to reveal blinking lights and wires. They hold its face into the thin mattress of the gurney as they work, stabilizing the power point and ramming the cord into whatever version of a spine he has, and Napoleon wants to tell them not to suffocate him, damn it, but he’s not sure there’s any point. He’s not sure it breathes.

“Is that normal?” The power connects and the shaking takes over. The white-coated bastards step back and it happen. Napoleon wants to reach out to him (reach out to it) but he’s afraid of being electrocuted. The Soviets haven’t exactly been forthcoming with their information about this new project of theirs, and the CIA, the FBI, and half of UNCLE are convinced they’ve been handed the world’s most expensive Trojan horse. But Mr. Waverly signed the papers, and that’s good enough for Napoleon.

“Don’t concern yourself with its comfort, Mr. Solo, only its skill. You will be taking this unit into the field with you, yes?”

He swallows. “Yes.” That was Mr. Waverly’s grand plan, apparently. Napoleon still felt half a sacrificial goat.

The man in the white lab coat smiles, and his teeth are just as white. “Then it must be calibrated.”

Its name is I-LYA, some designation that means something to the scientists, but is incomprehensible and worthless to Napoleon. It introduces itself that way: “Unit I, Series LYA. I’ve been sent from Command. Where would you like me to sit?”

Napoleon stutters a bit, and finally motions to the extra chair in the corner of his office.

I-LYA sinks down onto it with precision that shouldn’t surprise Napoleon. And once he’s there, he sits perfectly still. Not even breathing. Because he doesn’t need to. Because he isn’t alive, not really.

“Look, can I call you something else? Unit I, Series LYA doesn’t exactly, ah, roll off the tongue.”

Blue eyes stare at him dispassionately. It’s horrifying how human he looks. Probably because he was, once. Those blue eyes belonged to some poor brain dead potato farmer, probably, or a mortally wounded KGB officer, before he became... this... instead. Whatever this is. He’s seen what’s between those eyes now. It’s metal and flesh and wires and fluid that looks like engine oil but smells like blood, and Napoleon doesn’t want to see it again.

“A common Soviet name is Illya. If it makes you more comfortable, and will increase our success in the field, you may call me that.” He still doesn’t move.

“Thank you. Illya.”

The far more disturbing idea, Napoleon decides while he does paperwork and carefully doesn’t look at the not-man sitting silently in the corner of his office, is that whoever I-LYA was before he became this thing wasn’t a brain dead potato farmer or a mortally wounded KGB officer. That maybe he volunteered.

I brought it on myself, talking about plot bunnies the other day. Now I have a fresh AU I want to pet. Damn it all! I'm meant to be writing so many other things!