Drabble #131: Ghosts
Monday, 4 September 2023 12:15![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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labyfic...we had a nice response to the drabble prompt of Drabble 130, with entries by
redwolf and me (your intrepid drabble proposer jalenstrix), and comments by us both as well. As always, special labyfic love to redwolf for adding entries and comments for many previous drabble prompts. Huzzah!For this prompt, we continue with our one-word/phrase drabble roots:
Ghosts
Ghosts of who, or what? Where did they come from? Is someone or somewhere being haunted? Tell us all about it. Labyfic-style, of course.
Given our entries from recent months, let's continue with the suggested limit for this month of 500 words. Though remember that shorter pieces are most definitely welcome!
Your entry should take the following format, posted as a comment on this entry:
Word count: # of words
Drabble: $your_beautiful_drabble
I'll aim to get the next drabble challenge out on the first Monday of next month (Oct 2).
I'm also very happy to take suggestions if something in particular strikes your fancy -- comment on this post or PM me with your suggestions. You can see our current collected suggestions here.
Remember: Feedback is LOVE. So do reply to your fellow labyficcers' drabbles if so inclined. (Though be careful of concrit unless specifically okayed by the author beforehand. Authors generally write for love.)
Collate
2023-09-19 08:44 (UTC)Drabble:
The reports that were being sent to Jareth obviously made sense to him, but Sarah found herself getting lost in the mountains of intelligence. To combat the issue, she decided to start collating the reports in much the same way she had when managing projects Above.
While she’d had an initial impulse to reach for the familiar tools she had used in the past, she refrained from following through on that urge. While a whiteboard would have been useful, she had a suspicion that dry erase markers would vanish into goblin possession the moment her back was turned and then the miscreants would redecorate themselves and anything in their vicinity before eating said markers. This would have been annoying enough, but it was really the magnets that gave her pause. She’d heard enough horror stories of small children eating magnets to fear that not even the goblins' impressive digestive system would prevent potential injury.
Sarah’s fallback position was to go for the old school option of a blackboard that was now broken into columns of data on the major players and challenges.
As she worked through the paperwork Bishop and Angel filled her in on any details related to each of the reports.
The Labyrinth had more guardians than those who protected herself and Jareth. There was another group of shapeshifters who specialised in espionage in service to the kingdom. They were all foxes and all female, and where the Labyrinth provided a shadow glamour for the bodyguards, it provided something a little more adaptable for others who served the kingdom. They could appear as any of the lower fae in whatever form would be best suited to be overlooked in the kingdom they monitored.
While most of the reports were written, Sarah had seen a handful via Jareth’s crystals and those senders had looked like naiads and dryads. They worked in bars and kitchens and laundries, wherever people gathered to gossip about their day, and their Labyrinth bestowed camouflage coupled with their innate ability to be unnoticed made them eminently suitable as spies.
Sarah leveraged her team’s expertise on the various skills of the kingdom’s inhabitants beyond those of their standing armed forces, which was vast when the Goblin Kingdom’s status as a haven for refugees saw it attract people with a diverse array of skills.
Jareth walked into the room and let out a bark of laughter as he saw Sarah’s work. There were two major sections on the blackboard labelled as Idiot One and Idiot Two, each illustrated by a spiky, heavily pigmented crayon portrait that appeared to have been hate drawn by very angry goblin, with the only recognisable differentiator being the usage of the relevant family colours for each of the sketches.
“Do you have a problem?” Sarah glared at him, the hand on her hip leaving a smudge of chalk dust.
Jareth grinned broadly as he looked over the neatly categorised information. “No,” the warmth in his voice soothing Sarah’s concern. “This is perfect.”
Re: Collate
2023-09-27 19:04 (UTC)Re: Collate
2023-09-27 22:06 (UTC)no subject
2023-09-27 19:02 (UTC)For a moment, as Jareth sat across from me, concentrating intently on the latest intricate bit of magical machinery he was crafting, I saw the ghost of another Jareth superimposed on him. And it wasn’t just a visual, but a duality of experience, a kaleidoscope of dizzying joy and aching sadness, of love clouded over by madness, of agonizing separation, of children — many children! — asking for their father and me having no answer. Of another us that was tantalizing and terrifying.
I shivered, trying to wrest myself back into reality.
Jareth looked up at me, raising an eyebrow. “What was that?”
I swallowed. “I think I just had a…vision.”
“Ah. Not filled with sunshine and ponies, I take it?”
“You sound like you know.”
“Hazard of dwelling in this realm. Time folds in on itself here in strange ways. And I’ve been here awhile.”
I smiled a little, but couldn’t shake my disquiet. My skin kept prickling with goosebumps as flashes of what I had seen tore through my mind. There had been children. Such beautiful children. But such sorrow too. “Are these might-have-beens that the Labyrinth shows us?”
“Sometimes.”
“Are they might-bes?”
He raised an eyebrow again. “Possibly. What did you see?”
My heart stuttered in my chest. “Children. Our children.”
His eyes flashed with something sharp and unnameable. The Fae were notorious for low fertility, which is why they pursued mortal alliances a fair amount. But so far, our alliance hadn’t had much luck either. And oh, how we both wanted children. His voice rolled out like a velvet shadow. “What were they like?”
My lips twitched up even as my eyes burned. “Perfect. Beautiful and naughty and sweet and brilliant and ours.”
He smiled briefly. “And what was the cost?”
I swallowed hard. “You. Your sanity.” I closed my eyes and blinked back a wash of hot tears. “You had to be separated from us and the Labyrinth for the safety of all of us. It was…brutal.”
He sighed, nodded, and closed his eyes. “Do you think it was worth it? To have those children.”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to know. I love you. You’re real.”
“But maybe those children could be real too. There are ways.”
There always were. That was the thing about Faerie. I shook my head. “If it’s a might-be, then fine — I’ll take my chances. But I won’t force it to be.”
“Mmm. Perhaps we should focus on the practical, then.”
“Which is?”
“The more standard way to try to have children.” His fingers walked their way along the sensitive skin of my forearm.
I smiled, a real smile this time. “You mean, instead of consulting with dark, unspeakable atrocities lurking in the deepest pits of Faerie that have the power to contort the threads of reality?”
“For instance.”
“Your plan is a good plan.”
“Thank you, Sarah love. I try.”
In the heat and cinnamon-vanilla-frost scent of him, I tried to forget the things I had seen.
no subject
2023-09-27 22:10 (UTC)