They fled into the night, Dala laughing hysterically and Hasari gritting his teeth.  He’d scraped his face in the rush to get out the window, and Dala had nearly been shot by a guard, but she kept laughing, laughing, as if they had never done anything so amusing.  They could both have been killed, and for what?

The city streets flew by, dark and too familiar.  Just the sight of them made him tired. “Stop.  STOP!”  He grabbed her arm roughly and dragged her into an alley.

“We can’t keep doing this, Dala.  We –” he ran out of words.  “We just can’t.”

“What do you mean?  Of course we can!”  There was a feverish shine on her face, a fretful energy that was afraid to rest.

“What do I mean?  I mean it’s only blind luck that we’re not dead yet!”  Her carefree nonchalance had stopped being convincing a long time ago.  It had been real once, and he’d loved her for it.  These days it had a manic edge, a desperation for the girl who’d existed before the Fall to still be there.  It had taken him a long time to recognize: she couldn’t stop.  She would keep looking for trouble until it consumed her.

He had nothing left.

“We should go back.”  A rough village in the middle of nowhere, a life in hiding.  It no longer seemed like the worst thing that could happen.

She reared back sharply, incredulous.  “They told us not to leave.”

“And they were right.”  The words fell between them like lead.  She was staring at him with a blank look on her face, like he was speaking a language she didn’t understand. He looked away.  “I’m going back.”  He didn’t have to ask.  She wasn’t coming with him.  He looked back at her face for a long moment, memorizing.

“Goodbye, Dala.”  He dropped the words over his shoulder and left her, standing in the alley and staring after him.

Welcome to this week’s Trifecta Writing Challenge!  This week called for 33 to 333 words using the third definition of the word BLIND (adj.):

“You’re my wife, mother of my children.  You can tell me.  What did the Oracle say?”  He clasped her hands earnestly.

Her voice was ghostly, remote.  “It said that I was your doom.”

Welcome to this weekend’s Trifextra challenge at Trifecta Writing Challenge!  This weekend’s prompt asked for 33 words on something that was three different things at the same time.  Thanks for reading!

Midnight.  Kate crept down the hallway, candlestick in one hand and the other raised to shield the flickering flame.  The stone floor was cold under her bare feet, but she was silent as a cat without the betraying shuffle of slippers.  The distant rumble of voices sounded belowstairs.  She slipped into the library.  Safe!

Kate straightened and let her hand fall away from the light of the candle.  The library smelled of old books and a faint hint of her father’s snuff.   Kate rather thought it was the Virgil that was so musty.  Anything that ancient could hardly smell any other way.  It was a man’s space, with solid furniture and long velvet curtains in a color her father called claret and her mother crimson.  Kate liked to think of them as scarlet, which made her mother, already nervous about Kate’s dubious attitude toward propriety, throw her hands up in despair.

Kate started to search.  She had her aunt to thank for bringing it into the house.  Her parents had immediately banished it to the back of the library, but at least they hadn’t consigned it to the fire.  Finally.  It seemed like everyone had read it but her, and Augusta Mainwaring had been a perfect pig about it.

There!  She pulled out the slim volume and looked at the cover.  Printed in thin gold letters was the scandalous name and the title: “THE CORSAIR.”  Kate grinned delightedly, tucked it into her dressing gown, and stole back to her room.

I am having so much fun with the prompts this week, I decided to go for a second round with a little splash of Regency for Write on Edge‘s Red Writing Hood prompt.  (Also, all the new books on hand available for reviewing are Terry Pratchett and I thought I’d give you guys a break.  I swear, a shipment of all new books from Barnes & Noble is on its way.  And none of them are by Pratchett.  Seriously.)  This week, in honor of the board game Clue, they asked for up to 250 words including the words “candlestick,” “scarlet,” and “library.”  For those not familiar with the period, suffice it to say that Lord Byron’s personal life was known to be scandalous by the standards of the time and rumored to be quite scandalous even by modern standards, and his works were considered not appropriate for Nice Young Ladies’ eyes.  Thanks for reading!

Cold beer, football, feet on the coffee table. Dan took a swig.  Every weekend should be like this.  They were even ahead.  He turned up the volume a little.  Callie wandered in with a yogurt in her hand and peered at the game.

He shook his head.  “Babe, why do you eat that stuff?  You don’t need to be on a diet.”

She snorted.  “Thanks, but I like yogurt.”

“Seriously.  You don’t need to lose weight.  You’re just –” he waved a searching hand, “ample.”

“Ample?  Ample?“  She turned to look at him.

The sharp rise in pitch and her expression rang the warning bells.  “No — I meant — you’re enough for any guy.”  He sloshed a little beer on his shirt in his rush to sit up.  His foot knocked a coaster off the table.  “You’re plenty.”

“Plenty?”  The pitch was even higher.  He winced.  Apparently that had been the wrong thing to say.  “Let me give you a tip.  When you’re giving women unsolicited opinions on their figures, avoid using words commonly applied to cornucopias, harvests, or Victorian nannies.  I don’t need a commentary on the quantity of me you think is appropriate.  And if you so much as mention Peter Paul Rubens, so help me, I will throw you out the window onto your meager ass.  Trust me, I’m strong enough to do it,” she growled.  “I’m ample.”

Dan zipped it.  He wasn’t sure who Rubens was but he was positive it wasn’t the time to ask.  After giving him a searching glare, Callie wheeled and flounced out.  Dan kept it zipped until he couldn’t hear her any more, then peered carefully down the hallway to see if she was out of sight.  “Whoa.”  He slumped back into the couch, shrugged, and went back to the game.  “Maybe she’s hungry.”

Welcome to this week’s Trifecta Writing Challenge!  This week called for 33 to 333 words on the third definition of the word AMPLE (adj.)

: generous or more than adequate in size, scope, or capacity<there was room for an ample garden>
2: generously sufficient to satisfy a requirement or need<they had ample money for the trip>
3: buxom, portly <an ample figure>

Thanks for reading!

“How did you know?”  They inspected the gruesome heap that was all that remained of their captor.

She grimaced.  “Demons are tricky.  They hate wizards.”  A pause.  “And he drew the sigil backward.”

Some weekend fiction fun with Trifecta Writing Challenge‘s Trifextra prompt.  This weekend calls for 33 words using the Rule of Three:  writing principle that asserts that, in writing, groups of three have the most impact.  Thanks for reading!

It was a tiny thought.  Simple in its execution, radical in its scope.  Grand ideas were not for people like her.  Some might say that she’d lost the right to those ideas when her father had died.  She thought it had been earlier, the day her mother had died and her father had hastened into marriage with the elegant widow and her two merciless daughters.  She was only a person for small ideas now.  This one, though?  It was hers, and once it had her in its grip, it was strangely reluctant to let her go.

It was a good position, so she was continually told.  She must be grateful.  She must be. With no proper upbringing, she was unused to those finer feelings that my lady prized so highly.  It must be gratitude that formed the hot knot in her chest when my lady sent her to muck in the pigs’ stalls so that the prince in the parlor could dine with her stepsister uninterrupted.  Gratitude that left her devoid of speech while her stepsisters tore her mother’s old gowns to rags to stop their courses.  She was lucky that there was this place for her.

She stood in front of the cold fireplace, fire neatly laid and waiting, ashes from the cleaning still on her hands.  Then she looked at the room around her, the rich silks and tapestries, the ornately carved chairs, not a single thing of her parents’ left but their daughter.

Standing there, she lit the match and let it burn.

Welcome to this week’s Trifecta Writing Challenge!  This week called for 33 to 333 words on the third definition of the word RADICAL (adj.):

“You display a refreshingly total absence of guilt,” the instructor remarked as they inspected the aftermath of Eila’s graduate project.  Three days later, the ruins still smoked, and a scent as of burning hair lingered in the air.

“I grew up here.”  She was looking out over the pitted field, not bothering to watch the instructor as he considered her work.  Her grade had yet to be determined, but her graduation no longer seemed to be in question.  The breeze stirring her hair was hot and acrid.  She would probably have to throw away these clothes.

The instructor tilted his head consideringly but without surprise.  “Normally that rather weighs to the other end of the scale.”  He squatted to look at a dish-like depression some six feet across where the sandy soil had been melted to glass.  “Good depth of effect here.”

She paused at the edge of the deepest crater, shining with a thin layer of black glass.  There were no signs remaining of what it had once been.  She considered his first comment.

“Not in this case.”

“Indeed.”  They strolled on.

 Welcome to this week’s Trifecta Writing Challenge; this week called for 33 to 333 words using the third definition of the word ABSENCE (noun):

“Phrenology and palmistry?  You must be joking.”  The new fortuneteller leaned in Aiyan’s doorway, flipping his tarot cards in a smooth stream from hand to hand.  He looked contemptuously at the yellowed hand-drawn diagrams on the walls.  “You are such a dinosaur.”

Aiyan smiled vaguely at him and nodded, eliciting a disgusted snort.  “Whatever.”  His visitor whirled away, leaving the curtain hanging askew.

Aiyan straightened it.  “Dinosaur,” he repeated.  He turned back to his desk, humming lightly to himself, and sank into the worn wooden chair with a creak.  He picked up a brush out of the jar and a piece of translucent paper from the drawer.  “Don’t try to frighten us with your sorcerer’s ways, Lord Vader,” he murmured pleasurably.  “Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you…”

He dipped the brush into the ink.  In quick, sure strokes he inscribed a string of symbols onto the thin strip of paper, the wet ink gleaming black in a series of fat curves and sharp lines.  He picked up the paper by the corner and waved it gently until it dried, then, in a sharp movement, tossed it into the fireplace.  The curse flared briefly as it took flame, sending a burst of golden light flying up the chimney, and was consumed.

Aiyan smiled placidly and went back to his diagrams.

Welcome to this week’s Trifecta Writing Challenge!  This week called for 33 to 333 words on the third definition of the word DINOSAUR (noun):

1: any of a group (Dinosauria) of extinct often very large chiefly terrestrial carnivorous or herbivorous reptiles of the Mesozoic era
2: any of various large extinct reptiles (as ichthyosaurs) other than the true dinosaurs
3: one that is impractically large, out-of-date, or obsolete

Thanks for reading!

Voices from the courtyard met Camilia as she entered.  She smiled and paused under the arch to enjoy the daily spectacle only she got to see: the empire’s most notorious young rake playing with her children.

“And how are you going to get there?”

“ELPHANT!”  Aleish bellowed.  Cahleina giggled.

“Vash!  What are you teaching them?”  Camilia struggled to keep the laughter out of her voice.

read more »

“Gods!”  The soldier next to him smeared at his brow, sweat trickling down his neck. “This forsaken country.”  He smacked at an insect and started to express at length his opinion of the bandits they were here to put down and their painful elusiveness in the height of summer.

Dyan twisted his mouth and looked out across the water.  The heat of Njaia was relentless, and there were days when the drone of the cicadas drilled into Dyan’s head until he could hardly think.  This kind of waiting was the worst thing he could think of, and he wanted to leave more than he could say.  The campaign had been too long, too slow, and he was starting to feel like he needed to be somewhere else.

Home, perhaps.  He thought of home sometimes when he was on a campaign, and wasn’t always sure where he was thinking of.  Home was the little house in the city where his wife and his children waited for him.  His oldest, who reminded Dyan startlingly of his father, and the baby Ellin would be almost ready to have by now.  That was home, but sometimes the scent of the grasslands came over him in a giddy wave, and he heard the shuffle of horses and his sister’s laugh.  In the vertiginous space between dreaming and waking, the soldiers around him became his clan striking camp for the spring move.  He was as at home here on campaign as he was anywhere, but…  He had always expected to go back.

For a moment, he saw his son playing with his cousins, a wooden practice sword in his hand, and Ellin watching them from the flap of the clan pavilion.  He smiled and turned away.

Welcome to this week’s Trifecta Writing Challenge prompt. This week called for 33 to 333 words on the third definition of the word HOME (noun):

1  a : one’s place of residence : domicile
    b : house

2: the social unit formed by a family living together

3 a : a familiar or usual setting : congenial environment; also :the focus of one’s domestic attention
   b : habitat

If you’re wondering how this fits in to past responses?  Dyan is Cy’s father (more of Cy under the Calere category).  Thanks for reading!