quinara | WIP Meme! (Reply)

I thought I'd done this really recently, but apparently it was eighteen months ago! High time to do it again, I think, especially since other people are doing it.

Stuff on my hard drive that's vaguely still alive.

Novel set in an alternate end of AtS S5 (and random BtVS post-Chosen), following on from An Exercise in Futility (the one about Wesley and Giles in a country home). Saving this until after the Spikeid; so far I have a plan and 1000 words.

“This one is older than the others,” Illyria continued, presumably to herself, still turning the beige-bound book in her hands. Wesley had no trouble resisting the urge to inform her he had a number of far older volumes in his apartment. He had a scrap of Oxyrhynchus papyrus somewhere with a spell on it. “When alive it saw a world much different from this, yet you prize its embalmed corpse.” In an instant she grew agitated, glaring at him fiercely and pointing Lilah’s book at his chest. “You allow nothing to rest! Everything is preserved, in matter or in memory; it feeds on your minds like maggots on dead flesh.”

“Illyria!” He panicked, palms flat against the varnish of his desk. It made him beg as though she were reasonable. “Illyria, please, put the book down.”

She did not; her arm did not even waver and Wesley feared for the five-hundred-year-old binding. She continued, “It pains you, that your memories were changed, that Fred’s memories were changed.” And then she threw the book to her right, where it slammed against the floor. Involuntarily he leapt to his feet, eyes falling on the battered corners of the cover and grieving that little bit more sharply. No, those were not tears in his eyes. “You must sustain every moment of past, every moment of weakness you once suffered.”

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Buffy and 5th Century Athenian Slayer timetravel bodyswap. This is so overwrought it needs a complete rewrite.

She knew Athena. Back in high school when Willow had got excited about the Slayer mythology she’d been one of the goddesses, along with the other one – Artemis? – that Willow had put in her collage tracing cultural references to warrior women. And she could make the connection – Athena; Athens. This place belonged to her, of course it did. Buffy could be certain now she was no patron god of Slayers.

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More Dawn/Satsu + Andrew in Cambridge. Hopefully going to be a classic sort of mystery, with more POVs than Andrew (just not in this scene). Also, library japes and posh people being nicer than you expect.

“Oh, god,” Dawn mumbled suddenly, cutting through his thoughts. Her eyes were wide above her carefully closed mouth, still full of scone. “I just thought.” With a little effort, she swallowed. “I’m gonna have to know these things, aren’t I? Sugar rules and – and what fork you use with fish!”

“Uh, what?” Andrew asked, glancing Satsu’s way to see she understood any better. Considering the number of times Dawn had told him off for thinking she lived in an Evelyn Waugh novel, he wasn’t quite sure where the fear of cutlery was coming from.

Satsu looked equally confused, until she nodded with an oh, right raise of her eyebrows. “The watchers,” she said.

“What watchers?” Andrew asked Dawn. “I’m a watcher – I know watcher things! There was a test.” And he’d passed, so he should know about this stuff. Shouldn’t he?

Slightly panicky still, Dawn wiped her mouth with her napkin. “Not the watcher watchers,” she said, opaquely. “The Cambridge Watchers’ Society.” Setting her napkin on the table, she visibly sat more upright, as if thinking through the posture of every vertebra. “It’s like everyone connected with the fusty old watcher families getting together so they can be fusty and old in each other’s company.” Then, with a sigh, she relaxed again. “That’s the thing we’re going to on Saturday,” she explained and he remembered: she and Satsu had a thing so he was going to the movies, maybe to the bar if he liked Dawn’s friends. “It’s the annual dinner. They invited me because of, you know, Buffy – and I’m sure you’re gonna say it’s an honour, but…”

“They’re rah to the R,” Satsu finished, before calmly taking another sip of tea.

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RPF/Not about 'Homeros' not making up the story of Odysseus... (Any more tell rather than show and this story might as well be a grammar primer. Without examples.)

So Homeros’ thoughts go on. He is half listening to the singer, singing a song he’s heard many times before, in dozens of different ways, but in his head he’s thinking and plotting, steadily growing certain of how he wants to spin the story, how all the other episodes should turn from this.

Oh, Muse...

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Hyllus/Iole(/not, again) after the end of Sophocles Trachiniae. Because WTF, story??? Heracles dies after a series of mishaps, but mostly because he's too busy sacking this city and raping/seizing the King's daughter to pay attention to his wife (who kills herself, also, having realised her attempt to woo back Heracles is the thing that kills him) - and then, as he's dying, he tells his son to marry the girl he's raped (whom Hyllus knows as the 'reason' why both his parents are now dead). Can't tell if this wants to be prose or verse. The prose I have is better. Not that this will probably ever see the light of day, because I find the whole story I've got bloody disturbing and I'm not sure I could do it properly.

“I hate you,” she repeated, in the barest murmur. “You destroyed my family – my home – my life...”

And you destroyed mine! he thought, so angrily, even as in another first she closed her eyes and turned her head away. You destroyed mine!

Yet he did not say this out loud, transfixed as he was by the brush of her closed lashes against her cheek. It was odd, this feeling of pity, deep as that he reserved for suppliants. Odd being for someone he so hated.

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And, to finish things off, a little bit of Spikeid 8. Everything from 7, 8 and 9 is kind of spoilery at the moment, so I shall content myself here by not explaining how this particular conversation has come into being...

“How modern you’ve become!” Sineya laughs.
“Rejecting myth when myth it was that built
Our world, that kept your name so long alive…”
“Enough!” Illyria demands, a snarl
Across her features. “Do not dare mock me.
You may be in this age a spirit full
Of power, fearfully revered – but you
Are human mind, once watered human blood;
Your people wilted, snapped like blades of grass
Beneath my feet, defiled by pus and gore.
How dare you look upon me, dare you speak
Without the reverence your kind requires?”
Sineya laughs again; Illyria
Can feel the shameful damp approach of tears,
Another gross affliction come on her.
She swears again, uncertain of her name,
“You may not laugh at me – you may not laugh!”
With pity then the Slayer promises,
“This world has changed, Illyria; I may.”