September - November 2005

The more recent drabbles are at the top

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This one was written for a challenge about innuendo and double entendre. Don't blame me…

A small hole

"I've sucked it until it's pointy and stiff," Bran said. "It should slide into the hole now."

Will tried. "Almost," Bran encouraged him. "Yes! Ah, no..."

"It's a small hole," Will complained, then gasped, and stopped trying.

"It's only a small prick." Bran sighed. "I can't believe you've never done this before."

Will studied his bleeding thumb. "An Old One has more important things to do than sew on buttons," he said stiffly.

"No ancient Celtic button-sewing spell, then?"

"No. I still get my Mum to do it," Will confessed.

"Pathetic." Bran swatted him, and threaded the needle with one deft thrust.

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A Mary Sure badfic…

A single tear tricycled down Will's limpid cheek. "I'm going to die!" He wailed. Two more single tears quivered on his lanquishing eyelashes, and his heart rang with suppurating angst. He was all, like, tied up and helpless and he had no shirt on.

"I will save you!" Will saw a ravished beauty with arrestible eyes and tumbling locks and womanly beasts. His heart skipped a beat, she was soooo hot! "Who are you?" He stammered.

"I am an Even Older One." She declared. She stepped forward, but suddenly she fell through a gapping plot hole, and died. Will kiled himself in despair.
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Note: i wrote this in two minuets in class, it is the longest i have ever taken on a story and i even spellchecked some of it and stuff. Please rivyoo(sp?) and i will right more stuff like this, if you do'nt rivyoo i will kill will.

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Rather silly… A movie crossover

A busy man

The King was coming! Merriman waited, ready to accost him and lead him to his destiny. There! There he was!

Merriman peered into the distance, and saw....

He swallowed, looking around desperately. There was a peasant nearby, strangely dressed, and clearly mad. Oh well. Desperate times, and all.

Merriman called him over. "I need to... um... Urgent appointment, etcetera. Can you tell those knights..? No, by the looks of them, it won't matter what you say." He pulled some fireworks out of his sleeves. "These might help."

Merriman fled. Behind him, explosions sounded, blending with the dread sound of clashing coconuts.

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A drabble about "finding peace"

The eye of the storm

"I'll get you for that!"

"Has anyone seen my blue shirt?"

"Mum! Mu-um!"

Doors slammed. A football pounded against the side of the house. Barbara was tunelessly singing along to the radio. A pack of Mary's friends were giggling at the thought of Max. Paul was playing his flute, the sparkling notes his private barricade against the noise.

Will settled down contentedly at the heart of the cacophony. The clamour surged around him like a storm, but at the same time, as peaceful as a moonlit pool.

Silence would be more terrible.

For now, at least, Will was loved.

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A drabble about "the end of summer"

Michaelmas

"The leaves are turning," the man said. "Not long now."

Not long, Merriman thought. A generation, perhaps, but that was such a little time. Summer trembled on the brink of eternal autumn. The Rising was near, and the world of men had never seemed darker.

"Undergraduates invading soon..." His companion plucked a brown-tinged leaf, but other worlds glimmered in his eyes.

Truths lay in stories of other worlds. Dangers of darkness, and hope lying in the choices of the smallest men. Words were like magic, if the right man uttered them.

Merriman smiled with burgeoning hope. "We must talk, Tolkien."
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Note: Someone once showed me some pollarded willows in Christ Church Meadow, visible from the wall walk in Merton College gardens, and assured me that they were the inspiration for the ents. Though I have never found any other source to confirm this story, it in itself was the inspiration for this story.

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This challenge was to take the first line of a book, and start a drabble with it. This first line is from "The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy".

Supernova

Supernova

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

Or, rather, lay. Some millennia after the bypass fiasco, the unregarded yellow sun finally decided to stand up for itself, and exploded.

Will had not yet decided if this was a Good Thing.

All life had been annihilated, which was not so good, but was certainly a setback in the Dark's attempts to enslave mankind. Plus, the supernova was shiny, a nice metaphor for the triumph of the Light.

Will did miss his body, though. And chocolate.
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Postscript: Yes, yes. I know that the sun isn't the sort of star to go supernova, but why spoil a story with such pesky things as truth and scientific accuracy?

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And another first line, this one from "Alice in Wonderland." Will's mother is, of course, called Alice…

Alice in Wonderland

Alice in Wonderland


Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank and having nothing to do.

"When I grow up," she stated, "I'm having ten children, all girls. They'll always have someone to play with."

"All girls?"

The stranger was wearing black, but she didn't think he was anything exciting like a smuggler. He looked as if he'd been crying, which was silly, because men couldn't cry.

She nodded. "Boys are boring."

"Oh." As he walked away, smiling, he murmured, "Seven boys. Oh dear."

"He was stupid," Alice grumbled. "Why doesn't anything interesting ever happen, like in books?"

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Yet another first line (sort of), and not posted to the drabble community, since it was far too long

Metamorphosis

As Will Stanton awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed into a beetle.

He reacted to the situation with surprising equanimity. After all, Farmer Dawson had warned him. Perhaps this sort of thing happened to everyone on their eleventh birthdays, like a sort of test.

He crawled out of the empty sack of his pyjamas, and descended the vertiginous slopes of his bed, and then the stairs. No-one else was up, which was odd, but perhaps just as well. Someone was bound to stand on him. It was a hazard of a belonging to large family.

Downstairs, his presents were laid out. What was the use of having six arms, he thought, if none of them could cope with wrapping paper?

Eventually, he heard voices outside. "Where is that dratted boy?" a man said. "What's the use of stage-managing that first meeting, if he doesn't turn up?"

"My jaw aches from looking enigmatically wise," said a lady.

The locked door swung open, and Will could not get away in time. The shoe descended.

"That's odd," he thought some time later, smeared on the man's sole. Not only was he a beetle, it seemed that he was also an immortal beetle.

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Another movie crossover… Another rather silly drabble…

Second thoughts

The old man waved his hand meaningfully. "You have not seen us."

Merriman brushed off the puny attempt at mind control, and froze him out of time.

He turned to the slack-jawed youth. "You are the last of the Old Ones. You must find the six signs that..."

"Do I have to?" whined the boy.

Merriman stopped, and considered for a while. "No, on second thoughts…"

He would go somewhere else and make a new start, he decided. Somewhere with fewer aliens and less sand. Somewhere where the last hope for the Light was less whiny. Somewhere far far away…

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The first drabble that I ever posted…

Music and memory

Music was like a river. He played with his eyes half-closed, and the notes rippled out from somewhere deep within. Things unbidden wove their way into the tune. Fear, dark and dreadful in a church; crosses on a belt; a flute in a panelled room.

He stopped, the tune hanging like a sword.

Think. He frowned, and all music left him.

"Why did you stop?"

Now there was no music, Paul could be a rational man again. "I almost thought… Nothing, though." He put the flute away.

He wondered why Will turned away, a small sad smile on his face.

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And the first drabble I actually wrote.

Forever

The Light had gone, but perhaps a glimmer of memory remained, because they spoke of Arthur, afterwards.

"He's only sleeping," Barney said.

Simon laughed, but Jane was musing. "What would you do if you lived forever?"

Will stopped breathing. Through a haze he heard them speak: travel and wildest dreams. Flying cars and time machines.

"Will?"

His thoughts floundered. What will I do? They were gone, Merriman and the others. Gone. But how to say it?

They gave up waiting for him, and walked on, without him.

"Hope that I never woke up," he murmured. "If I were him, I mean."