![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Drabble #199: Furious
...we had a nice response to the drabble prompt of Drabble 198, with entries by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
apachefirecat and redwolf
For this prompt, we continue with our one-word/phrase drabble roots:
Furious
Tell us all about it. Labyfic-style, of course.
Given our entries from recent months, let's continue with the suggested limit 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
$your_beautiful_drabble
I'll be running weekly challenges in the space aroundjalenstrix's monthly challenges.
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.)
apachefirecat and redwolfFor this prompt, we continue with our one-word/phrase drabble roots:
Furious
Tell us all about it. Labyfic-style, of course.
Given our entries from recent months, let's continue with the suggested limit 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
$your_beautiful_drabble
I'll be running weekly challenges in the space around
jalenstrix's monthly challenges. 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.)
Immolation
Sarah was wandering aimlessly through the Labyrinth, trailing her fingers through the foliage of the closely cropped hedges. She would dearly love to burn off some of her frustration by sparring, but her magic was currently reacting to her mood and she decided that it would be safer to be where people weren’t for the moment.
A crackle of magic arced down her arm to vanish into the hedge and a moment later an incongruous rose bloomed with an audible pop. The soft sound was enough to catch Sarah’s attention and reached out to gently touch the petals, marvelling that it was the same colour as Jareth’s eyes. Leaning over to inhale its fragrance, she coughed in surprise.
“Goblin ale? Really?” Sarah chuckled as she patted the hedge fondly. “The colour is perfect. Thank you.”
There had been a workplace incident and Sarah was wondering if it could have been avoided. A staff member who had been removed from a people management role due to bullying had died when she’d deliberately sprayed perfume in the face of her replacement. Ordinarily, this would have been enough of an escalation of her poor behaviour that Sarah would have dismissed her. However, in this case, what was a minor assault cascaded into catastrophe.
Sarah was uncertain if it was common knowledge in the team that Zeynep was a dragon shifter, because the unexpected olfactory assault triggered a sneeze that was unexpected enough to cause a belch of flame. This wouldn’t have been a problem if the bully hadn’t liberally doused herself in the scent prior to her assault and when the tiny flicker of dragon fire met a cloud of highly flammable, aerosolised perfume there was an explosion.
As a dragon, Zeynep was unharmed. Her clothing was destroyed and the room was a mess, but it was fortunate that no one else was harmed beyond singed hair due to Zeynep shielding them. As for the bully, her actions had resulted in a spectacular self immolation that left little more than a ruined rug.
As the incident was investigated, Sarah was further infuriated that the bully had not only previously been isolating her own team from each other, but had also been manipulating several other team leaders in an attempt to regain her previous position. She didn’t know if they were salvageable as yet, or whether she would need to dismiss those who had fallen under her sway.
The Labyrinth popped another blue rose into bloom and Sarah sighed. “The compromised staffing issues are painful enough, but I still need to formally offer my condolences to the dead woman’s family and I’m not certain how to diplomatically explain that their family member is dead due to being a malicious narcissist.”
Sarah had no sympathy for the dead woman. She’d been given a chance to redeem herself and her own actions had brought about her demise. Whether or not her family were being treated as poorly as her work colleagues was yet to be determined.
Sarah's Rescuer
Sarah ducked her head and kept moving. She had not been out so late in years, but with the overtime she'd been soaking up at work lately, it had been bound to happen eventually. It was easier to work though, rather than to free her mind to remember those moments and faces for which she so desperately yearned, all of which the doctors had always tried their best to convince her she was imagining until she'd at last been able to leave her parents'. She should have left them long ago, but it wasn't as though doing so enabled her to go home anymore.
Nothing could. Nothing did. For all the doctors' purportedly sage advice, and all the medications they'd thrust down her, over the years since she had first saved Toby on that fateful night, nothing eased the pain in her heart. At least, when she was at work, she could focus on the tasks at hand instead of remembering. But now... Now she was hearing footsteps again, but she told herself it was only her wild imagination.
She was alone; the streets were deserted at this hour. If she were to look behind her, she'd see nothing. Her ears were hearing what her heart and soul ached for her to hear. They were hearing the tell-tale scrabbling sounds of little, green claws on the pavement -- because she so desperately did not want to be alone.
Her stepmother barely wasted words on her these days, but both Toby and her father were constantly nagging at her to find a good man and settle down with him. She'd tried dating for a while, in between doctors, jobs, and academics, but no one could compare to the man she remembered. The man they all said she had only imagined. But if it had only been a fantasy, why could she still not forget about him? Why did she have to compare everyone she encountered to him? Why did she ache for him so badly?
She felt rapid movement behind her, and although Sarah had been trying to ignore what she'd told herself was merely her imagination playing its usual tricks, her instincts kicked in. She darted to the side, grabbed the hand that had been reaching for her, and slammed her knee up into the stranger's gut. He was not alone. She saw, in an instant, that the reports she'd been hearing about the gangs in her neighborhood were no one's imagining.
She was able to deflect her second attacker as well, but the third came at her with a switchblade. She was forcing down the panic rising in her, slowly backing away, when an animal cry split the night. A snowy white owl dove the knife-wielder. Talons raked his hand, causing the knife to drop. His wings beat with ominous warnings, but it was his beak that acted most furiously, ripping at her attacker's eyes while Sarah ran. Heart pounding, she soon smiled. She was not alone; he was real!
The End
Re: Sarah's Rescuer
Re: Sarah's Rescuer