Hi! I'm Megu! I've been using drabbles as a tool to give different characters some attention for a while now, although my process generally doesn't consist of much more than "Pick a number! Pick a character!" Still, I'm slowly but surely working towards completion of several prompt lists. One is the classic devart prompt list, which I, unfortunately, have no link to. The others were given to me by friends, aaand I don't know where they're from either. Oops.

Because I work on so many lists at once, it would mean a post 12 feet long if I tried to fit them all in. Instead I'll be posting drabbles one-by-one and including the state of completion of that particular drabble list. I might also include a few from seperate prompts unrelated to my quest.

I'm new here, so if there's a problem with how I've set this up somebody let me know!

Comments and crit are welcome! I'd prefer long, detailed critiques (WHICH I LOVE) go in a PM, though, if you don't mind 8D

`_____recent activity

056 (7) Warmonger
083 (2) Heal

`_____overall progress

033 / 500
xxxxxxxxxaheh...heh. D|

`_______001 ( 5 / 100 ) Introduction

Well, this seems appropriate enough to start a thread! And it's not creepy or angsty like all my other drabbles, even! *D* [/managed to make Love into a rant about how much everything sucks]

A little background: I imagine this as the prologue for a Lovecraftian steampunk RP I've been mulling over, which is based heavily in 1800s literary traditions. When I matched "Introductions" to the character, I got a frame story of loose logic instead-- it cuts off so suddenly because that's where the story begins. Of course you guys may not care. But it's better than Ling's rambling about collecting teeth as an intro, right 8D

The whole matter was quite strange, and I’m at a loss as to how to explain it to you, Claudia. Let me preface this letter by saying I’ve missed you terribly and I still intend to return to Spain as soon as I am able. However, it seems that may be a time. Since I left you I’ve lived in Russia, where I had several escapades which I believe I relayed you, and then in Sweden, from which you had no correspondence, I know, and for that I apologize deeply, dear Claudia. From there I went to Prussia, and that is where things became frightfully difficult for me, and the reason why it’s taken me nearly a year to write you again.

I lived in Cologne, which is a city of statues and the past. History is almost in the air, there, like the smell of fresh bread. I think you would quite enjoy it. However I went into the city itself only, perhaps, once every few weeks, for supplies I could not purchase from local farmers in exchange for such skills as I possess. They were taudry, monotonous jobs, and I will not bore you with their details, but I lived quite happily on that sustenance for several months.

That—I believe it was July—that was when I received a certain missive from an organization in London whose name I am, apparently, not at liberty to disclose. You will have to forgive me, darling. It was rather convenient timing, to be perfectly honest, as I believe I had outstayed my welcome in the area and housewives were spreading the word of the reclusive paranatural who thought she was too good for them all over the county. The Bundesministerium die übernatürliche Aktivitäten would have almost certainly been called at one point or another. At any rate, the letter I was sent made it quite obvious that it was in my best interests to accept the offer I was extended.

Ah, excuse me, allow me to elaborate. The organization wished to take me on an expedition. To Afrika, if you can believe that, the dark southern continent which I believed so uncivilized, and which now, I profess, I consider…enlightened. In fact, they insisted I join their crew, to board the World’s End with several other experts, on pain of being given up to the BA. And considering that an investigation of my registrations would reveal very few legit immigrations, I doubted it was wise to ignore them.

While at first I was convinced it was some elaborate prank, I became quickly enamoured with the idea of a grand adventure with peculiar experts on arcane subjects, and I was not disappointed, as I will explain later. I departed for London immediately, bringing as many of my possessions as I needed, since I suspected I would not return. I have not since, and doubtless the housewives have pounced on some other poor newcomer to grind their tedious teeth on.

It took me about a month to finally arrive at the Selander Inn, which, I was told, was by a certain small tributary of the Thames I am quite certain I could no longer name. For several weeks I waited there, enjoying what company I had in the area, and wasted my time in various salons. I profess I also asked around about Wicks & Sons, but nobody I asked had heard the name; I presume the carnival has stayed on the continent for several years or had only ventured into the heathen wilds of Scotland.

However, after that long wait, during which I grew, as I’m sure you can imagine, interminably impatient, the captain we were promised, James Freeman, finally made his appearance, and pointedly so.

`_______Ivory

A poor homeless solo piece for Nolori's drabble contests, while I'm at it 8D These guys will be making more of an appearence later. I have ideas for Pain and they've already got one for Puzzle which is really twisted thus which I may not post. This prompt was Swan.

She has a long, slender white neck, and her eyes are round and deep and black and bitter. He doubts he could explain her allure to another. It’s become personal. Like a nostalgic photograph, so beautifully mundane. He catches her hands, with fascination for every ragged nail, every purple scar criss-crossing at the bend of her elbow.

He brushes her downy cheek; there’s nothing more graceful than that quirk of a snarl on her lips. She speaks in a hiss, he shushes her with one finger. He wants to keep her, keep her quiet, for as long as he can.

`______005 ( 6 / 100 ) Seeking Solace

Oh, look, some more usual writing. I have no excuse this time for the lame ending. B| It was all Emeric would tell me. Alternate steampunk conworld 8D

Sometime in the middle of the night someone knocked on Emeric’s door. He groaned and levered himself out of bed. Whoever-it-was kept pounding as he fumbled for the dial on the luciferin lantern that sat on the floor. What time was it? According to the clock on the opposite wall, much too early in the morning. That couldn’t be right. Nobody went walking only a few hours after mid-night on a Setdi.

Regine did, of course. Emeric sighed when he opened the door to her mess of black hair. “What are you doing here?” he hissed. “It’s the boy’s quarters, you got warned last time—“

She looked up at him with a sniffle. The whites of her eyes were the colour of pomegranate tea, her pupils oddly dilated. She wiped her nose with the puffed black sleeve of her pinafore. “Canni come in?”

Regine was crying.

Wordless, Emeric stepped aside. Regine stumbled into the room and collapsed on her back on his bed, staring up at the ceiling.

Emeric closed the door as quietly as he could, wincing at the click, as Regine started to giggle. He sighed. “They warned you about the truthbreath. Your pupils are the size of tai.”

“I just—I just--”

“Be quiet, Regine!” He was worried the ward watch would wake up from the sleep or dazedness that’d allowed a drug-addled Regine to slip by at this time of night.

“I just wanted to talk to you…” She grabbed his wrist as he paced past her, pulling him to sit down on the bed, and buried her face in his shoulder. Emeric blinked, putting a hand awkwardly on the back of her head. She mumbled something he couldn’t hear into the cotton sleeve of his nightshirt.

He didn’t have the heart to tell her they could talk tomorrow, and anyways, she didn’t speak. Emeric looked at the clock uneasily, and then sighed, resting his head on hers. Her weakness was so rare that it seemed infinitely more vulnerable. Outside, below, in the streets, a cloud of girls’s laughter swelled and faded. The luciferin burned the amber-brown colour of Regine's eyes, and her breathing, when she slept, was as soft as moth’s wings.

`_____079 ( 5 / 100 ) Teeth

Ling on the mind because of the OC chat. This is older though. Second 100 theme list, too.

Lately she’s been keeping trophies. She thinks that means she’s progressed into full-on serial killer. Not all that much, just…a lock of hair…a ring, a coin. Teeth.

These she keeps in a little mint tin that rattles comfortingly when she takes it out. She usually knocks free a least a few teeth when she gets them in the head. The trouble after that is finding them. She’s been thinking she should put them on a necklace or something. People would probably assume they were synthetic. Nobody would stop her in the streets going “where did you get those?”

After all she's completely harmless.

Although the voices have been getting worse.

`______039 ( 5 / 100 ) Transformation

lol guys i think i'm addicted to this drabble thread. Here's a little more out of the steampunk conworld, different continent 8D Nooot sure where nurse chick came from since Hemi is the character, but whaaatever

Bai was nineteen, a nurse at Saint Teng’s, and wanted no part of the screaming man in room one-oh-six. More than that, though, she didn’t want the others to know she didn’t want it. Shi Shi and Ling Mha had both made jabs already about how she thought he’d infect her. She didn’t. Just because she had lived in the country didn’t mean she was a fool.

It was just that…it was just…he was…

He was fellkin, or almost, and…

Doctor Hao had offered her a few words when she hesitated at her assignment to 106’s shift. “I know it’s a little frightening, but until he’s out of his transformation stage he can’t be of any harm to anybody. He just sounds it. He’s in a terrible state, dear, it’s our duty as servants of Jai to help him. Alright? He’s not contagious, just different.”

“I know he’s not contagious,” Bai had said defensively.

But she was here now and found the shift not so bad as she had expected. She entered 106’s room only when he stopped screaming for a time, which every so often he did, subsiding into whimpers. Bai found herself a little curious about the man. The chart at the end of his bed told her he was probably about 30, Ursan, two weeks into a bad route of slow-change fellkin’s disease. There was a eograph of him when he’d been brought into the hospital, a long-faced Beyi, sharp nose, faint shadow of a beard and curled hair. His skin was the colour of a blacknut. He looked sort of arrogant with those cheekbones. Once she hung around a little too long and nearly jumped out of her skin when he spasmed with pain, rocking the bed, and let loose another howl. As Bai scurried out of the room like a woman pursued she wondered exactly what was moving around inside him.

One winter morning she found his hallway silent, and hurried inside, suddenly frightened he’d died on her watch. 106 was not dead. He was sitting up in bed.

She recoiled a little at his face. It was not the one he’d worn before, the one on his picture. She had never looked at it while he changed. 106 had black eyes, and when he blinked a second pair of eyelids slid closed beneath his proper ones. He smiled sheepishly, nervously at her with sharpened teeth. Pale blue gills crested under his jaw like great collars. No hair was left on his head or chin. His shoulders were patched with blue scales shining under the lights. Bai went to the window, setting her jaw, and threw open the shades.

106’s voice was hoarse, his accent heavy. “Cousin. Do you know where I am?”

“Saint Teng’s hospital,” Bai said, trying to make eye contact with him. “Ah, you…you…you aren’t well.”

“I’ve noticed,” 106 said, softly, holding his fingers out in front of him. They were webbed with translucent, blueish skin. “At least I’m not dead,” he added, with a cheerfulness there was no way he could have felt.

“I’ll—I’ll get Doctor Hao,” Bai said, turning. “What’s your name, brother?”

“Hemi Go Fei,” he said. “Hemi. Cousin, I—"

Bai left. It was the first time of many Hemi would be abandoned.

`______002 ( 6 / 100 ) (5) Marriage

Hello again Hemi!

Around the time of the morning that the fog began to drift up from the river like breath, Xemi and his mother walked down to its banks, him draped in an overlarge red wrap, embroidered and beaded. He picked at its hem constantly, occasionally prying off a bead and then dropping it guiltily in the grass with a quick glance up at his mother to be sure she hadn’t seen.

Miake already sat on the river’s edge, dropping rocks into the water. When she heard their footsteps she scrambled to her feet, brushing grass and dirt from the knees of her dress self-consciously. As their mothers greeted each other with loud shouts and expansive hugs, the pair of them looked around, trying to be nonchalant, trying to ignore the other’s attempts to do so.

Finally, when the parents had finished, Xemi’s mother clapped a hand onto his shoulder and drove him onto the river bank alongside Miake. “Let’s get started,” she said, cheerfully. “It’s going to be cold, you two, so it’s best if you get it over with quick.”

Xemi smiled, although he suspected it looked a little sick. He glanced over at Miake, biting his bottom lip, and then reached a hand out to her, tugging her to follow as he walked into the river. The current was insistent against his ankles. Miake clutched at his hand, as if for a hint of warmth. The river was the coldest thing any of them ever felt, and that was in the daytime. It seemed to sap the heat from your very blood.

“If you have any objections…” Miake’s mother called, out of ritual; they’d discussed this long before, and nobody expected an objection. The hem of Xemi’s ndara billowed in the current as he waded deeper in, holding Miake’s hand above the surface. She was slightly more hesitant, picking her way over the smooth, slick river rocks in her straw sandals.

“On three,” he muttered to her, out of the corner of his mouth, with a crooked smile—they weren’t supposed to be talking, but it was such a rote phrase that Miake couldn’t help a giggle at its incongruent presence on such a solemn occasion. He tapped up to three with his fingers on the inside of her palm, and then took a deep breath and folded into the water.

Xemi came up with a deep gasp at the strangling cold of it, while Miake slicked back her hair and spat out silty river water. On the bank, his mother was murmuring prayers. Miake gave a few words to the gods, but it might as well have been in surprise for all they were holy. Neither of them had any deep regard for the stories and heroes of their youth, which seemed fantasies, half-legend half-tall tale, as someday this day would seem—an ill-remembered dream wrapped in emotion and fog. Xemi was briefly fascinated by the black freckles dotting Miake’s cheeks, and put a hand up to cup her face, their fingers still intertwined between them.

Eventually their hands went numb, as they waited out their minutes in the water, but in Hemi’s memory it seemed the touch of her hand was always a brand against his skin.

`_______056 ( 6 / 100 ) (7) Warmonger

Usually I don't post the long ones (over a page), but I kinda like this one, so.

Michael took no pleasure in it. War was a sordid business. Certainly it was his business; and like anything he did for God, he did it to the best of his ability. Over many centuries practice had made him very good at it; and anything one was competent at was a little enjoyable simply because one had a talent for it and knew the fact. That was all.

Gabriel seemed less convinced of the fact. As Michael cleaned the gutter down the middle of his sword with exquisite care, the younger angel sat down beside him on the small mat. His expression was worried. Michael looked at him long enough to acknowledge his presence, and went back to the sword. Our Lady of Sorrows had been his first, but she was heavy and difficult to wield, certainly a death sentence for this weak human incarnation. Instead he had a cruciform hilt, a straight blade, solid steel; a sword meant for shedding blood, not hanging on a wall. It was beautiful in its utility, as all things that did what they were made for were beautiful.

“I don’t understand why all this is really necessary,” Gabriel said.

Michael looked up at him in silence, pausing briefly in his work.

“All this,” Gabriel said, motioning around the tent, as though at the world. “The fights and the killing and the fire. It’s just one city.”

“It’s a holy city.”

“Then they’re all on the same side. They ought to just work together to—“

“Gabriel,” Michael said, in his best ending-the-argument tone, “it is far, far more complicated than that.”

To Gabriel, it wasn’t, Michael thought—he understood in his head, doubtlessly, but his soul was simply tuned to idealism and a better world than this one. He was not a creature of the battlefield, but of soft skies and softer hands, and there was no way he could fully comprehend things the way Michael saw them, dirt and blood and moments in the fray sliding by like the tolls of a church bell, slow and heavy.

Gabriel pulled his knees up to his chest. “It shouldn’t be,” he said. He whispered the words as though they were sacrilege. They were, in a way. Michael recognized the signs of a crisis of faith. He’d had them himself, a long, long time ago, before he’d settled into the strange morality of doing simply what the Lord had for you to do. Lucifer had been second, but somehow Michael had lost him. He’d stopped outright blaming himself for it centuries ago, although once in a while he still thought if he’d caught it a little sooner, if he’d had the right words…

“God works in mysterious ways,” Michael said. “This is how it will be, regardless of whether or not we fallible mortals think it should be different.”

Gabriel looked at him for a second that seemed too long. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“Hardly,” Michael said stiffly, after a moment, as aware of the double meaning as Gabriel was; but it was the only way to lie to the child.

“I don’t want to be here anymore,” Gabriel said. “I don’t understand why they didn’t send Uriel.”

That one Michael agreed with. He shook his head, and repeated: “God works in mysterious ways.” Maybe this is why. Because faith must be tempered. And if he had been made for war, he had also been made as a leader, a beacon, one who shaped. Who is like God. Not a question, he thought sometimes. A statement. In a humble way, admiring of God’s ambitions for him, a statement.

“I want to go home,” Gabriel muttered, allowing himself brief petulance.

“So do we all.” That was a lie, and while Gabriel knew it, his reaction was little more than a jaded sidelong glance. After all, this was Michael’s home.

`___________083 ( 11 / 100 ) (2) Heal

If you've been checking up on other drabble threads, you'll recognize Uwe and Nathan from Nolori's. Uwe is hers. I feel the need to correct her author's note: they have bromance crushes on each other and any denial of Nathan's love will result in sadness

“Nate? I’m bleeding.”

Nathan hurried to Uwe’s side. There was a deep cut in his palm, dripping onto the cutting board. His expression was somewhere between surprise and horror, although it didn’t seem like something to worry so about. Nathan cut himself off there. The rules were different for vampyres. He rifled through the cupboards, looking for bandages or gauze, but when the previous tenants of the inn had left, they’d taken first aid supplies with them.

There was an edge to Uwe’s voice. “Nate, I—“

“I know, I know, give me a second.” Nathan shoved the board out of the way and went through the drawers again, this time for rags. There was nothing nearly long enough to wrap around a dressing the way they’d been taught. Nathan sighed, looking back at Uwe with a slightly resigned expression. Uwe didn’t seem to notice. His attention was still on the blood seeping from his hand in a steady leak.

“I don’t do this very often,” Nathan said reluctantly. At his voice, Uwe looked up, finally, and Nathan grabbed his bleeding hand. Uwe flinched. “Hold still,” Nathan muttered. He gripped Uwe’s wrist with one hand, to keep it in place, and made a seal over Uwe’s wound with the other, cupped.

He’d never found the focus involved in the magic to be much of a task, if there was nothing else going on in the immediate vicinity, but for some reason he was unable to slot his mind into the proper state for several long seconds. Uwe’s face was drawn, and it distracted him, a little worried part of his brain demanding to make it better now without disappearing to let him do just that.

Finally he was able to shut it out long enough to summon whatever sense let him stitch the wound back up. Blood pooled at the heel of his palm, leaking out between Uwe’s fingers. However, the light heat from the spell radiated against his skin, and when he removed his hand and shook it out, examining Uwe’s palm, it was whole and clear, even if the area was still slightly smeared with blood.

“You’ll want to wash that,” Nathan said, suddenly sheepish. He turned away to find the bucket of waste water they’d set up on the counter somewhere, for just such events—well, maybe not just such. As he came back he smiled. “Are you alright? I didn’t mess up, did I?”

“I’m fine,” Uwe said, although his voice still sounded a little shaky. He ran a finger along the line where the cut had been moments ago.

“I’ll finish cutting,” Nathan said, after a moment. “If you like.”

Uwe nodded.