wordoftheday — mare lamentorum

“Well then ya’ ma said,” Felcy’ra’s voice rises into a breathy falsetto, a terrible imitation of his wife, “’Oh won’t some han’som hero save me from this terrible, disgusting chigoe?’ An’ then she gave a great swoon—”

“She what?!” Her ebony ears fly back in surprise, disbelieving eyes sliding across to Stelmaria, who works quite determinedly at her embroidery—head down and lips thin.

Rosie can’t imagine ma ever swooning.

Fel grins in unrepentant glee. “—Ya’ ma went swoonin’. Pay attention sweetroll, this is gettin’ to tha good bit.”

The small kit stifles giggles with her dove gray hands, amethyst eyes shining, “Aye, da.”

“So I come leapin’ into the clearin’, strong lance arm ready to bring down this foul beast—”

“What did it look like, da? The chigoe?”

Chigoe sometimes lived in the tree outside her bedroom window. Rosie could hear their gentle chittering on quiet nights before she drifted off to sleep, but she’d never seen one.

“Huge. Three or four yalms tall at least, giant slaverin’ mandibles click-clackin’ away thinkin’ of its’ next meal. To this day I’m deadly sure it meant to devour ya’ ma whole righ’ then an’ there—jus’ snatch her up all in one big gulp.”

Rosie, ever the appreciative audience, gasps. Good thing indeed that the ones in her tree couldn’t possibly be that big, or she might worry they planned to eat her too.

“So I come leapin’ over the hedge, then manage to jump up on one log, then over to another—up an’ up an’ up until—”

“Until?”

“I snap on my lucky goggles,” he demonstrates, ”an’ I come down off the bough like the wrath o’ the Twelve. Jumpin’ wi’ all my might—an’ ya know ya’ da, wee Rosie, I got a lot o’ might. The wind was whistlin’ in my ears an’ sending my hair all flyin’ any which way. I tell ya I was very glad I had my goggles for protection.”

Rosie’s da only takes his blue-lensed goggles off to sleep and take baths. She’s allowed to wear them herself for a single bell on her nameday, to make the next twelve moons happy ones.

They are that lucky.

“Anyway, the point o’ my lance pierces right through the monster’s crispy shell an’ brain an’ deep into tha dirt. All twenty of it’s long, spindly legs go twitchin’ an’ flailin’ as it dies, an’ so I twisted my lance jus’ ta be sure it was dead.”

“Was it dead?”

“Aye. An’ I was so lightnin’ fast I managed to kill it stone dead an’ catch ya’ ma ‘afore she hit the ground.”

“Ma fell!?” The little girl’s mouth hangs open, eyebrows almost hidden under her sweep of jet black hair.

“She caught a swoon, Rosie, remember?”

Rosie may be just six summers old but she’s learning that her da sometimes fibs in his stories. She loves them though, and loves her da and ma, so she lets da think that she believes him, even when she doesn’t.

Besides, if he goes too far ma will stop him, like always.

“An’ there I was: covered in sticky, green gore, hair a right mess, my lance stuck in a dead chigoe, and with the most beautiful miqo I’d ever laid eyes on laying helpless in my arms. All well an’ good—‘cept she was out cold.”

“No!”

Ma knocked out? He is definitely telling tales.

“Aye. So I kissed her to wake her up.”

“Like in the stories?”

Da puts his broad hand over his heart and assumes an earnest expression. Pity it’s completely ruined by the quirk at the corner of his mouth.

A rustle of skirts before ma’s clipped tones ring out, “—That’s enough nonsense for tonight, I think. Time for kits to trot away to bed.”

She rises from her rocking chair and tidies away her things, making ready to take Rosie to her room for bedtime.

“But ma—,” whines Rosie.

“But Stel—,” whines da.

“No buts. Bed.”

With a petulant grunt, Rosie pads down the hall ahead of her ma, tail hung low.

Da clears his incomprehensible metal thingamajigs into a basket he keeps by his chair. All traces of his former protest have vanished, replaced with his usual fanged smirk.

“I don’t swoon. I’ve never swooned,” quips Stel, without heat.

“I beg ta differ. I could make ya swoon right now if I wanted,” murmurs Fel, wrapping his wife in his arms and chuffing warmly into her ear. He traces the shape of her jaw with one scarred thumb, calluses rasping on her smooth skin, before pressing his lips softly against her carmine mouth.

She smiles against his kiss. “Hush.”

cabal

Thu, 14 Oct 2021 14:35:31 +0000

#wordoftheday #prompt #drabble #horror #warning

cw /// paranoia (stalking/voyeurism); psychosis; body horror; self-harm; eye injuries

Unseen eyes watch from each corner.

At the brightly lit grocery store, on the silent street in the evenings, and from the shadowed doorway of the office supply closet. The eyes rake over every inch of her, their gaze an almost physical weight capable of tearing straight through her thick coat and rubber boots, her layered shirts and pants.

They can see her naked flesh.

They can even see her bones.

Bare, dry joints clicking and clacking in a parody of life as she goes about her daily routine. Trying to ignore the gazes resting upon the bleached white of her exposed shoulder blades.

She cannot escape them but she tries all the same.

Refuses to leave her apartment. Installs her own blinds. Adds extra locks to the door. Quits her job. Cuts all social ties.

They still watch.

She can feel the pressure on her skin.

How anyone could find her insignificant drudgery so interesting, she can’t say, and she certainly can’t ask; she’s never seen them. Ironic, considering how much they’ve seen of her.

But then.

Once.

Just once.

She sees them.

Wavering, shadowy humanoid shapes, edges ragged and blurred, as though cut haphazardly from a sumptuous cloth of deepest ebony. They go about their business exactly as she does: standing over the overflowing sink, sitting on the couch or on her unmade bed, leaning against the dirt streaked wall by the door.

Floating directly behind her, about 3 inches in the air, as if suspended on a hook or rope, toes pointed downward. A thing made of cloying darkness, drawing rattling breaths and staring.

Staring.

Eyes glowing like banked embers set in a featureless black face formed of smoke and fear and night.

Teeth.

White and sharp and glinting. Winking at her in the muzzy half-light of her apartment as if they are both in on a private joke.

She smells wet earth and a faintly fermented sweetness.

Like rot.

She holds two spoons over what appears to be a flickering orange blossom, sprouting incongruously from her oven burner. When the metal glows red with heat she presses the convex sides hard into the sunken pits of her eyes.

Sizzling so bright and painful she screams, even as what remains of her ruined eyes dribbles down her hollow cheeks and onto her shirt.

Into her mouth.

Tasting of blood and pus and salt brine.

Only then does she realize her mistake.

Seeing them was one thing.

However, now that they can no longer be seen they whisper.

That air reeking of the grave wafts gently past her ears, carrying words that she cannot fully make out but then, suddenly she can understand…

She wishes she had not.

They aren’t words.

They are vessels in the guise of words. Filled with no meaning, simply madness.

The whispers never cease, even in her new darkness.

They will never leave and neither will she.

odious

Wed, 13 Oct 2021 17:47:59 +0000

#wordoftheday #prompt #drabble #eberron #threadsbetween #polly #dnd

A halfling woman with clever hands—their dealer for the evening—exchanges a loaded glance with a petite tiefling, her dewy skin the color of blush. Obscured as it is through a haze of smoky, stale air and colorful, pulsing magical signage, the meaning is clear: You’re only getting one shot at this. Make it count.

The mark sprawls in the seat beside the teifling, arms and legs arranged so as to inconvenience the majority of passers-by. He doesn’t smile so much as smirk: an open challenge to anyone who fancies themselves his equal. His companions speak in undertones, but only until he projects his voice to interject his incontrovertible opinion on the subject.

He’s tall and lanky, pale as a ghost save for streaked lines and darkened palms from a botched experiment with fake tan, and peacocked in gaudy glamerweave. A single, sad tendril of limp, sweaty hair sweeps across a thinning pate in a poor attempt at concealment.

A sore spot apparently, as his toadies' eyes never fail to bounce away from his shining dome, instinctively repulsed like magnets of the same pole.

He leans in far too close, lowering dark shades to level watery blue eyes at her décolletage, “I can teach you the game, if you like. I’m the best and I always win.”

His pupils are wide as platters from the drugs. Polly giggles, displaying shapely thighs through the slit in her red spangled dress. One leg is fashioned of gleaming, golden artifice.

This pompous fool is still laboring under the impression he’d been ogling her in secret all evening. In truth, it was anything but—the brazen stares at her figure made her skin crawl and her stomach heavy as a ton of bricks.

Lashes full and dark as raven’s wings flutter against soft rose cheeks, rouged in such a way as to foster the illusion that she didn’t bother with rouge at all, “That’s kind of you. I could do far worse than learning from the best.”

Of course, she already knows how to play.

She intends to cheat with the dealer’s aid, however she aims to lose.

Once he wins, and he will, he’ll be in such a good mood he’d eat right out of her hand if she asked him to.

She’ll only need one shot to get the information.

extricate

Tue, 12 Oct 2021 15:12:04 +0000

#wordoftheday #prompt #drabble #kindansfw

“Don’t,” she murmurs, so quiet the words are nearly swallowed up by the blood thundering in his ears. Her long limbs tighten around him, entangling him with searing warmth.

He stops pulling away and relaxes, dipping to press a kiss to the trembling curve of her breast, “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Swear it.” Her gaze becomes tight, syllables clipped and hard as a blade’s edge.

Gripping the soft flesh of her thigh he rolls onto his back, pulling her astride his lap. A delighted grin spreads across his features at her muffled gasp of pleasure. “You have me trapped I’m afraid. I could not extricate myself even if I wished to.”

She crosses her arms to cover herself, but he is quicker, seizing her thin wrists and rocking his hips upward into her.

The grin widens at the high, keening moan he rips from her throat. The pulse under his thumbs quickens to a thrumming buzz. “Needless to say, I do not wish to.”