Moonlight Held in Flesh

This is largely for my reference, but here's something to keep you all interested all the same:



Shadows of Melbourne (original trilogy of stories):
Paranormal romance.
Gothic: A novel where the main character, and the whole cast of characters, is introduced. Also, main character would like to be anywhere but in a paranormal novel. Fairly werewolf centric. Finished.
Carnival: Main character is a fair bit more settled with the fact she's not going to manage to escape her paranormal life. The fae get involved and the vampires and werewolves have a territory war. Read a bit of Last Watch for inspiration here. Finished, but for the shouting of it.
Collateral (working title): Main character is being pursued as a pawn in the games of the fae, vampires have long memories and may have to get around that in order to form an alliance with the werewolves they know against the enemy they don't.

Winters Duology:
Young adult.
Tidal Wave: Themes of broken families written from the perspective of a sixteen year old girl, drug use and addiction, with a happy ending for the heroine. Finished.
Shutter Down: Written from the step brother of the other book, sociopathy and bad boy themes where the bad boy doesn't automatically get the girl.

Untitleds:
Young adult lesbian/coming out story:
Constance Murray, calls herself Con, refers to herself as 'himself', cross dresses much to the dismay of her parental units and the kids at school who thinks she's a big freak just going for attention. She doesn't have a lot of friends apart from Kjell who is pretty sure that he is gay.
Alice Psyche Waterhouse, born of rather parents who both legally changed their names to Waterhouse when they married and gave all their children names of god/desses as middle names. Alice is the shiest one of the bunch and does her best not to be noticed, currently trying out not being gay.
Young adult gay/coming out story:
Kjell Strøm, comes from rather non-conventional Norwegian immigrants who moved to Australia after a schism with his mother's parents, they will object to anything that her parents would accept on principle. Kjell has told his grandparents that he is gay but not his parents, wants true love but has started to accept that it's not something that's going to happen in high school.
Adrian Hardy, arrogant transfer student in last year of high school, estranged from his family and currently living on his own because he wasn't dealing with being gay, projected onto them how they were supposed to react and got out of there early.

Fairy tale series:
Either an anthology of short stories, or a couple of longer pieces, where both romantic leads in the fairy tales are the same gender. An idea sparked off by a conversation with @InkBats.

The Queen is dark. Dark skin, dark nails polished and pointy at the ends. Dark lashes grow long from her eyelids, creating cruel shadows over sharp cheekbones. Spider web gossamer makes up the dress that flows from shoulders to ankles. Her dark hair is broken by florescent pink highlights; the only colour.

Around her, subjects pay court. They are in many different shapes and sizes. Horns and wings are popular themes. One small creature seems clothed entirely in vines. Another has bark for hair. They like to leave bark in place of the ones they steal. Bark and bracken. They laugh about it afterwards.

Before them all, a serpentine girl awaits their pleasure. Awaits the Queen's pleasure. None of those paying court are moving. They all are there awaiting the Queen's pleasure; dreading her displeasure.

"Play." The Queen's word is formal.

The serpentine girl is blue and green. Her arms and legs are long, flowing; fingers and toes have extra joints. She is beautiful, hair flowing like water, trinkets in it like goldfish swimming through sea weeds. Her painted skin is bare, perfect globes for breasts that barely move as she twists and turns in impossible contortions that seem perfectly natural to her form.

Her audience stares in silence that is only broken occasionally by awed gasps that she seems hardly aware of. Her hair flows into her face and away again. Her gaze has attached itself to a far-away point on the wall.

"I tire of this quickly," says the Queen. Courtiers look around and a new silence, made of in-held breaths, replaces the last.

The serpentine girl seems not at all surprised. Rumours of this Queen have come a long way, so that when the serpentine girl was summoned, she knew her likely fate. Once, death had been terrible to the long-lived races. Not so with this Queen. Still she had come to make this dance.

As her fate came to fall down upon her, the serpentine girl moved not at all, fingers still and clasped before her smooth nether regions, hair long but still, as though it had never looked like water. Her lips seem big now, pronounced, out of place. Her nose is small. Her gaze is no longer fixed on some far off point. Her stare pins every faerie in place, calling them on their compliance to let this action occur.

It is almost a relief when her head is relieved from her shoulders. It rolls towards several courtiers to the right of the Queen. They all step back into the faeries behind them.

Even the blood runs blue.

The Queen is unmoved. The night is young.

"Next!"

**

I wrote this -- something like this -- a very long time ago.. and then promptly lost it. It's been playing around in my head ever since and tonight, buried nose deep in my new copies of Holly Black's the idea came to me again and I decided to rewrite it. There's a whole novel attached to this vignette, less than half of which is written.

I'm torn between writing that novel for my PhD, or the piece I've been working on and off with since I was 16. 11 years on and I can still stand the sight of the latter. But my interests and exegesis are more in line with the mostly unwritten novel that I've had in mind for only 3 or 4 years.

But hey, at least I'm talking about my PhD again!

I seem to be doing a fairly good job, so far, of documenting where it is that I'm getting my inspiration for actual and projected scenes, even if it is from UK Skins watching with priortodeath today.

I make it no secret that I love the character of Effy Stonem. So, it's equally possible that I'm indulging in a mini Effy photo post here... which has also inspired an idea for a scene that isn't going to be written anytime before tomorrow.



And some prose: "I'm the one who gets to have the fucking breakdown," James said, his voice low and angry. "That's how it works. Your job is to hold it together, and I kill people, and I fuck, and I do all sorts of evil shit that you don't have to think about."

"Trash. Trash. Rubbish." Things were flying over James' shoulder and into the doorway of the room behind him, even as Tash sat calmly in that room, on a beanbag, and flicking through a glossy magazine that had been one of the first items James had thrown out of the room he'd claimed as his.

They were settling in well here. All things considered. Daniel had, of course, cased the house for places that might need guarding against. Then, around five minutes later, Sebastian had done the same thing. Tash had no doubt that, given another ten minutes, and once he was done throwing things out of his room and into hers, James would suddenly realise he'd not yet cased the place and would remedy that.

While that happened, Tash would move everything he'd thrown in her room back into his without lifting a finger. Sometimes, it was good to be a witch.

Somehow, she had the idea that Bri wasn't adjusting so well as the rest of them. It might have been that the blonde just hadn't seen as much as the rest of them. Even as she flicked on through pages of her magazine, her mind reviewed the merry band she'd come to ally herself with. Daniel had seen enough to be a smart ass, even though he was merely human. As far as Tash could see, there seemed to be a silent pissing contest between Daniel and James that Daniel still seemed to think he could win.

Sebastian was definitely the brains out of the men. Well, not so much brains. James demonstrated brains on occasion. Particularly in plans that involved himself getting out of situations scot free. Sebastian was the brains behind figuring out what the rest of them might do.

Bri still seemed as though the whole vampire world was a mystery to her. Not surprising as she'd barely been a vampire six months so far. Coming here via the underground must have been a real treat for her. She'd give the girl till later on in the night before trying to approach her about it.

As for her, she had her own reasons why she'd left her home town and come on this jaunt with a group of vampires and their human. But if she had to define it, she'd probably say...

Coming to the end of her glossy mag, Tash delicately removed herself from her beanbag As she started on down the hall to see what the rest of the house was up to, she stopped idly by James' bedroom door.

"Try getting into my mind again? You're going to find all manner of strange things start crawling their way into your head."

James had stopped muttering under his breath and throwing things from his room into hers some time ago. In answer to her accusation, he turned slowly to look her up and down. He wasn't even attempting an innocent fascade. Instead, he gave her a special smile that did not make it even halfway up to his eyes. "Looking forward to it," he answered, with a dare-devil glint.

Tash turned away from his room, made it to the end of the hall where Sebastian was in the process of pouring himself a drink. While she plonked herself on the couch and kicked her legs up over one side, she called out to him, "I thought you said you were going to keep a better leash on your brother."

Sebastian turned aside from the bar -well, dresser, but they had already begun to stock it like a bar- and gave Tasha his whole attention. His eyes were kind of lazy as he considered Tash's request. Really, they'd only been here about two hours. "What's he done now?" he asked, with the world-weary voice of one who has been tied to an unruly twenty-three year old brother for the better part of half a century.

Tasha heaved a sigh. "Tried to get into my mind. Didn't get very far. Obviously. I think I need a drink to make myself feel better about the whole thing."

Sebastian hesitated, then turned back to the bar where there were beverages that were people-friendly, not just vampire-friendly.

"What would you like?" he asked.

"Mm, scotch and soda. Do we have soda?"

Sebastian shook his head. "Guess you'll have to just make do with scotch."

Tasha's lipstick darkened lips twitched in mirth. "Oh, damn."

Alright. So this.... This is a story that is best represented by itself. It's poking fun of a whole lot of things, and was really fun to rewrite.

(If anyone knows how to do dreamwidth cuts, I'm happy to hide these stories behind them. I just don't know the html)



The Underground and Himself
This was before they knew him. He was arrogant, self-entitled, after that, but all the Sidhe were like that. Brought up as unelected aristocrats of the fey. At least according to Themselves. So what was he doing down here?

He was humble, only just this side of broken, and only just doing that well. Frator Victatio didn't forget much that he saw. He never brought it up afterwards, and neither did Bones. By the time they arrived at Arize's place, they were already pretending like it had never happened.

But out there, on that dank, drunken night, they had made first sight of the Sidhe that would become Samael. Vic didn't drink, but he did a good impression of a drunk man for all of that. They were swaying back and forth on the street that kept moving -- the street totally could have been moving; it was the underground, after all -- when Bones stood shock-still and Frator Vic resumed watchful sobriety.

"What the fuck is one of the Sidhe doing down here?"

Bones was moving again before Vic could quite reach out to stop her. She could take care of herself, it was just that Vic didn't necessarily think it was a good idea for her to prove that on a member of a race whose presence down here usually preceded violence.

As he watched this Sidhe, however, he didn't think that that was going to be the case. This one looked... lost. Like he didn't know what to make of the two of them, or even of himself having found his way down here. It was unsettling to see in the usually confident Sidhe.

Not unsettling to Bones, apparently.

"You look like shit." She wasn't saying it to borrow trouble, though Vic felt some concern that this might be the way her standard bluntness was received. For surety, the Sidhe was taken aback. Then his eyelids dipped half over his eyes in a way that somehow didn't obscure his view of Bones; a reasonably suave move coming from the Sidhe, since Bones stood almost as high as the lithe fey man.

"You are the bone woman."

Clearly, he'd heard of her.

Bones didn't preen for a moment over the obvious claim to infamy. "Yes. And you are tall, dark and reasonably attractive. For a fairy boy. So what are you doing here?" She attempted a leer but, between her drunken stance and lack of one eye behind the eye-patch she wore, it came out as almost more of a snarl.

Vic groaned under his breath, but the 'fairy boy's eyes flickered up immediately to assess him. Damned Sidhe. Their hearing was as bad as the vampires'. Vic cleared his throat, but stood his ground. Cherry wouldn't like it at all if he came home in more than one piece, but she'd like it far less if he didn't come home at all.

The Sidhe's eyes moved away from Vic as suddenly as they'd come to him, obviously -- probably correctly -- assessing her as the more volatile threat.

"And, he is?"

It was interesting that, bedraggled as he still clearly was, he was already beginning to command some of that arrogance that made up much of the backbone of his race. Bones didn't play into it at all. "That's Vic. And I'm Bones. And, you are?"

"I don't... have one." He frowned.

"A name? Eh." Bones shrugged one bare shoulder. "You'd be surprised how common that is around these parts. Why are you here?"

Bones' emphasis referred back to the original question, still unanswered, and now repeated twice. Apparently, this time the fairy boy saw fit to answer it.

"I have no where else to go." That lost look was returning to his features again. Apparently, they'd offered something to distract him for a while. Vic found that he almost preferred the fairy boy when he was cusping on arrogant.

"You do now," Bones supplied briefly. "Come on. Let's go knock on the Succubus' door."

Vic groaned again, this time without the Sidhe's note. Arize wasn't the best for having house guests; his partner even less so. This was going to be... interesting.

"Vic? You coming?"

Coming? Vic questioned silently, his feet already moving to follow up behind them. Like he'd miss this.

I turned to the_bone_yard as I started writing this this morning to say 'Man, I really need to stop writing this depressing shit'. So this is the low mood of the vignettes. There's been too many vignettes were all the fairies concerned were kind and lovely people. Makes me sad like sparkly vampires.

Ahem. Don't know if this was inspired by anything beyond the last vignette, really, but I was reading Yeats' Celtic Twilight this morning and also Lady Gregory's Visions and Beliefs of the West of Ireland.



This was the story of the Summer Girl, how she came to Fairyland, and how she had gained the attentions of King Finvarra. It is a story she would have told herself, if she had been able to remember it.

For the most part, she remembered silence. Not so long ago, there had been the voices of others, later the sounds of revelry, but now, nothing. Just silence, in an opulent room of which she was the only occupant. That wasn't always the case. Betimes, the fairy king would return to the room, and then she would be whirled into a too brief time of sound and colour, all previous points of reference forgotten until, once more, silence.

She couldn't remember how long the silence had gone on this time. It seemed like a while, long enough that when a sudden break came to silence, she startled. Immediately, her eyes looked for the king, but he was not there. It was not the kind of sound from a door opening, or even a footstep. The sound originated in her head. A voice, like from before.

"He didn't expect I would come back."

The voice was strained, drawing to her mind's eye a conversation in images that already seemed to be halfway through a story. Through him, she remembered herself, but that did nothing to help the lone figure staggering through a wilderness that even she could not see the end of, with nothing but dry sand for miles, and hot grit burning the undersides of his feet. He was tired, bone tired, and had been travelling so long already.

Her shock gave way to a shuddering sob.

"Don't think of it. There was nothing you could do."

Before she could argue, she received a string of images, of the young girls who had been Summer Girls before she, girls that the king had stolen away from others, decked in the finest of clothes and jewels until his interest in them waned. She looked down at herself, decked as she was in the finest of clothes and jewels.

"You can get out of there." From the determination in the strain in his voice, she came to realise his link to her was keeping him going. She resolved no argue with him no more after that; wouldn't risk taking even that much of his strength from the journey back. Instead, she kept on talking to him, quoting poetry remembered from high school to him, anything that would distract him from his long journey that would bring him back to her. Meantime, as she kept tight hold of that contact, she launched herself away from the king's bed, as though stung, covered herself and exited the manor via shadows and doorways.

"Think not of it sweet one so. Give it not a tear; sigh though mayest and bid it go any-- anywhere--"

As she continued, tears choked her thoughts, filled her eyes and overflowed to her face. He spoke back to her too, when he could.

"Remember... Do you remember where we used to meet... the old building... Do you remember it?"

"Of course. Yes!"

"There we will meet. Tell no one."

He was silent thereafter for the longest time. Tears burned down her cheeks over fairy cruelty and deception, for there was no doubt in her who had delivered Him so far and thought he'd not come back. For a long time, she sat alone in the old building, waiting and hardly daring to hope. When the sound of leaves crunching outside the building touched her ears, she stood, wiping tears with both heels of her hands, and fear and hopefulness vied for first emotion.

Despite that, she knew she could take the few steps to the front of the building if He had actually found his way back here. She pulled herself to the doorway, bracing herself as best she could for the eventuality that the king of the fairies had found her. She had no time for relief when she rushed forward to break his fall from his last unsteady steps.

"I found you," he croaked, and his voice in her ears this time was the sweetest thing she'd heard by far.

"Come on, please. Just a little further," she said, already starting to bring him closer to inside the building, and looking furtively over his shoulder just in case. But no, this was their safe place, theirs alone. And, with her help and the last of his strength, they found shelter together within the walls of the old building where they would not easily be found by the King Finvarra.