Constant – Story Snippet

There was never any one thing that kept her going.

Sometimes she kept moving because if she stopped there would be no one to stop Them.

Sometimes it was because she knew she would disappoint her family if she gave up.

Sometimes it was because she didn’t have it in her to lay down and stop moving.

Either way, she’d been going for so long, mostly alone and almost always having to leave behind every good thing she found that she didn’t know how to stop.

It was a lot more difficult to stand still than it was to push forward.

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I struggled with this prompt more than the others. I couldn’t figure out if I was going to write a little story snippet or write a poem. Either way, this was what happened after reading the Dungeon Prompts: Needing Some Inspiration.

My Choice – Story Snippet

If there was one thing she prized above all else, it was choice.

Not everyone made the same decisions. Not everyone should make the same decisions.

And no one, not one single person to ever live or ever will live should get to make another’s choice for them.

She had lived through so many others making her decisions for her, without her consent and mostly without her knowledge.

But now…

Now that she knew what had been done, what had been bartered, what had been taken and stolen from her…

Now she would take back what little of her own life remained.

If she should die, then by all that was and would be, she would die having chosen to do so.

That did not mean that she was choosing death.

Oh no.

She was choosing to live and make her own choices.

If those choices placed her at odds with the world and that led to her death, however…

She closed her eyes and shrunk in on herself.

For one moment, she was more alone than she had ever been in her entire life.

She felt the burn of her lungs as she refused to draw in air.

She took that burn and used it to pull herself up, her shoulders widened from where they had been cringing against her body. Her head came up and her feet took a steadier stance. Her eyes opened as she finally let out that one held breath slowly and then allowed more air to come in again, regaining the rhythm that all know when they are breathing in measured strides, as if preparing themselves for something that would not be easy, but would be worth it.

This was her life and her decision to make.

No one else’s.

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This little snippet was born from the Dungeon Prompts:  No Matter Time nor Place.

The Little Ties

It was certainly one of her favorite holidays even if more people didn’t really consider it a holiday at all.

Mary smiled as she twirled around in her ‘costume.’

No one had to know that she’d made it to look exactly like what her sister had worn during the War.

Comet Trails

Comet sailed through the void, wondering at times if anyone else ever wondered just what had started it all. If anyone else wondered at the order and beauty of the universe around them or if they were ever too busy to look up and around and notice all the gory that surrounded them.

‘Surely it must be for something,’ she thought to herself, ‘Surely this can’t have happened by accident, no matter what many have thought in the past. That would be like saying that houses that humans live in sprung up out of the ground fully formed without any thought or preparation.’

She chuckled softly to herself, as if she really knew anything about how the houses were built in the first place. She’d been too busy herself to notice just how the strange things came to be in the first place, so it wasn’t like she could judge or use such a comparison herself.

Just because one had lived longer than most others didn’t make them any kind of expert on theology, that was something that Comet knew personally. After all, she had never met any of the great philosophers or such that were taught about in history classes on Earth. She knew very little about them.

She’d been too busy fighting the Chaos-created at the time. The same was said for most advances throughout Earth’s history.

With the exception of the Fall of Rome. She’d been there for that. She’d watched it burn and enjoyed the burning of the Shadows within it.

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Yeah, not really sure where this one came from. I was looking through random pictures on I Waste So Much Time (it should be noted that one should be very careful when on that site because it is apptly named) when I saw this bunch of pictures from the Hubble Telescope that took my breath away and the next thing I know, this was written and staring at me from the other side of my screen.

Tyr’s Day

Mary never thought of Friday or Monday as days of victory. Many thought of Monday as victory for the working man over the lazy man by staring their week over again. Many thought of Friday as the victory, because it meant the weekend was starting.

To her, neither day was a victory, because the start or end of something wasn’t really a victory so much as another point in the endless cycle of humanity; something she’d long grown used to.

No, to her, true victory were the days in the middle where you conytinued to trudge through all of your work no matter how heavy the load.

Snap

He was so tired of running. So very tired.

It wasn’t like he’d had a choice in the matter.

(There’s always a choice.)

Neal didn’t slump against the wall, but he dearly wished he could. He only had a moment to rest before he had to start moving again.

(He just wanted to rest.)

Why should he have to run?

Why couldn’t they just understand?

(Why couldn’t he go home?)

(You can’t always go home.)

(He should have remembered that.)

Behind him, a twig snapped.

 

Old Times Sake – Serious Snippet

There were times when she really hated her job.

“There has to be another way.”

“There isn’t.”

She reached out one trembling hand out and touched the tools sitting on the table in front of her. A smile slowly spread over her face as the tremors smoothed out.

“Good.”

Jaws of Victory – Serious Snippet

Victory has defeated you. –Bane, from The Dark Knight Rises

 

Chaos waited until they were sure of their victory, certain that It had been defeated this last and final time.

Biding Its time was something that was very familiar to the Being and It had patience to spare.

Far more than the children that It had created and ensouled had. Precious few could say that in the face of Its greatest creations’ lifespan.

A terrible smile crept across Its face.

It knew where to strike so that the victory of Its worst enemies would taste worse than ashes in their mouths.

Vicious

You don’t fear death, you welcome it. You’re punishment must be more severe. –Bane, from The Dark Knight Rises

 

Comet had never feared death; for all that she didn’t quite know just where she’d end up after her demise.

It wasn’t quite…real…to her.

Her own death, that is, not the concept itself.

For someone as long lived as she and her sister, death was something that happened to other people, not to her. Death only touched her heart and mind, it had never laid a single bony finger on her body.

That didn’t mean that she didn’t fear it coming for those that she had come to care about. Maybe that was why she so often interposed herself between one of the few that had taken residence within her heart and what, to them, would have been certain death.

For her it was merely a flesh wound.

“You don’t seem to fear those that attack your comrades,” the current enemy opined even as they danced their deadly dance, “Nor do you fear the hits that you take for them. Why is that, I wonder…”

Her opponent trailed off for a moment before something like understanding flashed in his eyes and a terrible smile grew across his face. “You don’t fear those that attack your comrades unless they actually might hit and it’s strong enough to do lethal damage. You don’t block other attacks only tho-“

Comet didn’t know why she’d let them ramble on like that before ending the battle and the enemy’s life. She didn’t know why she’d done it quite as viciously as she had either.

(And no one would ever convince her otherwise.)

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I feel like this was not one of my better ones, but I looked and looked and looked at it while writing and after writing and couldn’t get it to come out any other way at the moment. I’m blaming the migraine that hovers and spikes and then dulls just enough for the story idea to annoy me enough to make me miss the migraine. (It’s that kind of day.)

Nobody – Serious Snippet

Maybe I’m not running from you. –Selina Kyle, from The Dark Knight Rises

 

Sometimes he wondered just why he’d come back at all. Nobody here really seemed to trust him and those that did trust him were pretty untrustworthy themselves from what experience with them he’d had. Most times there didn’t seem to be anything here for him. No reason to keep going as everyone he knew from Before was dead and gone or…

Erased and gone.

By his own actions.

The Illusion Master placed his head in his hands and kept the tears trailing down his face from pulling sounds from his throat.

As he was alone, no one would ever know how successful he was.

(There was no one to care either.)