MagiStream

Okay, I know you have more prompts than you know what to do with, but I just had a silly idea.

A jellyfish and a mirror.

Thank you all for the great prompts! Here they all are in order they were requested in; they were all really fun to write! c: I've just posted two for now, starkittens's "drifting away" and Cocoa's "mint and lilac." Euphoria and PossessedFae, I'll post your responses as soon as I have them completed; they're taking longer than I expected, ha ha. In the meantime, enjoy these! =]

"Emotional Distance"
It happens so slow, like water freezing over.
Who could notice the gentle sweep of ice breathing deeply of the edges?
Who could defend September from February's biting jaws?
She might be buried in lake waves,
Spine pressed against sand and thick muck to better watch the waves,
And yet she will miss the splashing ice and cold.
There is no defense for these creeping dangers.
The drifting catches her by surprise every time, with each lover.
Sudden in its slowness, he drifts away from her,
An ice floe, a stranger by the time spring arrives.

"Little Red and the Big Bad Wolf Meet Two Fairies"
Nina sighed and held her hand out. "Job. Give them to me."

Job made a low whining noise. He wasn't so hot at talking in his Wolfskin, but somehow he managed to mutter, "Butter aystee." Really a pretty impressive feat with two-inch fangs, a snout, and two six-inch fairies jammed under his tongue.

"I know they're tasty, but we're trying to negotiate with them. They can't tell us anything if they're halfway down your digestive tract, can they?" A muffled squeaking suspiciously like a protest came from Job's snout.

With a Wolfish sigh, Job opened his jaws and out fell two soggy lumps of shrieking green into Nina's palm. She resisted the urge to fling them away and wipe her hands clean on her tunic.

"He ate us!" one of the fairies squealed indignantly, lifting his head from Nina's palm to look at his companion, who was pinned by the thighs by Nina's thumb. The female fairy sat up and started trying to wipe the Wolf spit from her larger set of wings.

"Was that really necessary, siccing your Wolf on us?" she asked primly, turning her tiny chin up to Nina, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, you weren't being very cooperative, were you?" Nina replied. The male, the small of his back pressed down by Nina's finger just above his lower wings, squeaked, "That's hardly any reason to throw a fairy to a Wolf! Do you have no respect for the way humans and magical beings interact?"

There was a bones-squealing-muscles-snapping sounds as Job shed his Wolfskin and stood beside Nina in his human form, looking down at the fairies in her hand. He popped the joints of his jaw and knuckles. "Yes, well, my dear human companion has her own ideas about human-magic relations. She can tell which of us are actually decent blokes and which are just sparkly attention hogs." He grinned at Nina, then said to the fairies, "Besides, fairies are hard for Wolves to catch on our own." He licked his lips for good measure. "Mint and lilacs, you taste like."

The male gave a wail but the female was unimpressed and tossed her slimy purple hair over a pale green shoulder. "What are a Wolf and a human doing working together anyway? I thought all Wolves ate humans and stole their young, and all humans hunted Wolves and skinned their packs."

Job and Nina exchanged a look, his knowing and mischievous (as always), hers a bit more...dubious. It was true, most humans and Wolves didn't get along, to put it mildly. Despite the fact that Wolves only were "born" from being bitten as human babies, the two races saw each other as entirely different, enemies, opposites. And yes, Nina and Job didn't always get along, but since their meeting about a year ago, when a man known as the Huntsman had murdered Job's pack and Nina's village, they'd stuck together. Orphans in a world where lone wolves got killed, they'd hunted down and stopped the Huntsman, and staying together after that just seemed...right. They'd been through a lot together.

For that, Nina was willing to look past Job's impishness and occasional drooling fuzziness.

"Not all," Nina said simply in response to the fairy. She pressed down a little harder as the female tried to squirm free. "In fact, we work quite well together. So unless we want to see if mint and lilac breath fresheners can't do something for that dog breath..."

"Hey!" Job protested good-naturedly. "I think my breath is fine!" He grinned maliciously at the fairies.

The threat worked. Though the female remained resolutely stubborn, her minute jaw set, the male gave a pitiful whimper. "All right, all right, I'll tell you what I know!"

"Jabber!" the female yelped. Nina handed her to Job, who allowed his snout to lengthen and grinned at her. Despite her earlier braveness, she fell silent, and Nina turned her attention to the male, gently but firmly pinching his waist between her fingers. He writhed and wriggled but couldn't break free as Nina brought him to her eye level.

"Tell us about the Candy Witch and you and your friend can go on your merry way."

"All right, just don't feed us to the Wolf, please! She lives by the Central Lake, in a house made of gingerbread and candy, and she lets us fairies have some if we lead human young there. I don't know what she does with them, no one does, I vow it, I vow it!"

Nina and Job exchanged eye contact, his dark brown eyes serious for once. They had a pretty good guess what happened to the children, if the rumors from the goblins were true. Sugary bones found in the dredges of creeks and streams, children wandering the woods who suddenly disappeared altogether without anyone finding their tracks. Whispers of someone who called herself the Candy Witch had frightened one mother enough to hire Job and Nina after her ex-husband "lost" their son and daughter. "More like that evil hag he married sent them out to the forest to die," she'd growled.

Well, Nina and Job were known in the surrounding area for their strange partnership, their ability to traverse the dangerous Manhattan Forest. They'd even become known enough that though they were given strange looks for their alliance, they would occasionally be paid to investigate disappearances and such...like this one.

Nina nodded. Job grinned. They let their fairies go, and the pair of them short away into the dark of the trees.

"She'll be warned of us, you know," Nina sighed.

"Yeah." Job's grin didn't falter. He palmed back the shaggy dark hair that always spoke of a messy pelt, no matter how he tried to groom it. It flopped back in his face again. "But we do like a challenge, don't we, Little Red?"

Nina couldn't hold back a grin and flipped her long red hair over her shoulder. "That we do, Big Bad Wolf. That we do."

And they set off for the Witch's cottage.

Hey Feathers!

I'm interested to see how you do with the same prompt I gave Kestrad: daffodils. Think you can handle it?

Ooo~ A fairytale mash-up! How'd you know I love those?! Love it! Thank you so much!

(Also, would you mind if I put in another prompt? Prompt: "I'm not insane. Yet, aren't I?")

Thank you guys for the awesome prompts! I'm sorry it's taken me so long to post some of them...they were so fun, I really wanted to do them justice! *valiant face*

I'll answer them in order; I hope they were worth the wait! ElementalNovel and Scottei, you guys are coming up ASAP!

"Perspective"
[from PossessedFae's 'jellyfish and a mirror' prompt!]
The sky can be no mirror to me.
If it reflects any specters in my life,
They must be dusty jellyfish,
Bobbing, reaching delicate tendrils up.
Is the ocean surface a glass to them?
Must they struggle, flail, thrash
To even hope to cut away from the water?

Or maybe, like me, it is too bone-wearying
To break a ceiling that can protect.
Yes, they may not feel rain,
Yes, they are not permitted to breathe the air.

But maybe these are too dangerous.
They are terribly alluring treasures.
For now, for now, it is just as easy

To lie

Under glass

Unbroken.

"The Slightest Touch"
[from Euphoria's 'the slightest touch' prompt, set in the same world/character perspective as "Something Interesting to Talk to"]
Just barely brushing the hairs at the nape of my neck, something hovers over my skin. I give it one second, two, and three because I'm feeling generous to get away, and then my nerves break and I whirl around in my chair. Rine is already across the room, sprawled on my bed, perfectly innocent as he examines his knuckles, but I know better.

"What did I tell you about messing with me while I'm studying, Rine?" I snap. As if Calculus isn't bad enough on its own, I have an attention-hungry will-o'-the-wisp to contend with, as well.

Rine smiles back at me widely, unrepentant a$$ that he is. "I don't remember. Something. I was distracted watching the way you move your lips, I remember that much, sweet girl."

I roll my eyes. Okay, I'll admit, at first, all the 'darling dear's and 'lovely maiden's made me blush, but a month in and I know better than to give him any reaction. "Rine. The rule was, buzz off and find something else to do with yourself while I'm busy. I thought you were going to start working with my mom."

He groans and sits up, crossing his ankles under him and slumping forward. I swear, if Rine wore the costume and dyed his hair from surfer blond to brown, he'd be Peter Pan. Oh, and if he lost the leather jacket and boots combination, and replaced the old jeans. Oh, and are Peter Pan's eyes blue?

All right, fine, I guess he's not much of a physical Peter Pan, but he's got the impish, childish attitude down.

"Your mother," he says, "while a lovely woman with several dozen fantastic qualities and a figure that no doubt bodes well for your advancing years, is intensely and systematically irritating in large doses. I simply cannot handle her for longer than half an hour on my own, and that's at absolute most, during which I pray fervently to the gods and deities of patience."

He didn't have to tell me twice. Still, I urge, "She just wants to document your history for our family annals. Really, she's helping me out since I'm the one who should be doing that, but I'm studying for exams."

Rine gives me a ragged look. "All well and fine for you to say, Miss I-Refuse-All-Merriment-Because-It-Disagrees-With-My-Digestion. You don't have your mother, armed with a pen, chasing you about and demanding that you impart your age to her." He grins, amused despite his annoyance. "You'd think she'd be sensitive to such a question. The nerve."

I put my hand to my temple and give a frustrated sigh. "Just...just..." I huff.

He seems to take that for acceptance or defeat and when I look up, he's standing suddenly right beside me, close enough that I can smell the faint scent of his jacket. He leans his hip against my desk to smile down at me coyly, like he knows some big secret. The creep. "Besides, even as serious and focused as you are, girl of the raised eyebrows, you're quite a spot more fun than your mother, and at least a head above everyone else I've met as well." It's so jarring to hear such...dated, flowery speeches from a person who looks like he'd be more comfortable skateboarding on a boardwalk in California, and more jarring still to hear them spoken from just a few inches away. I cross my arms over my chest and turn in my seat to face him, but as he leans a little closer, I freeze in my seat. If I breathe too deeply, I'll brush against him.

"And what is that supposed to mean?" I ask in a low voice, a little too breathy for my tastes, and yet ah, I still hit that note of boredom, of irritation. Good. Wouldn't want him to think I'm too affected by him standing so close.

Because I'm not.

Rine chuckles lowly and moves a little closer, and he moves his hand to brush against my shoulder with the backs of his knuckles. I jump, but he's pulled back before I do. "I mean no one has ever leaped just from a touch of my knuckles before," he smiles, and I have to struggle to maintain a frown.

"You startled me earlier, that's all."

He grins again and moves his fingers forward as if to touch my cheek, murmuring, "But what about now, Helene? What about--"

"HELENE! Bring your familiar and come down here, please! There's a unicorn down the street that refuses to speak to me and I want you to take care of it!"

Never have I been so happy that my mother screams through the house for me rather than coming to find me...not that she would have found anything alarming. Nope. Definitely not Rine leaning closer, or me...leaning anything but away. Nope.

I push out of my chair and can't get to my door fast enough, Rine close on my heels, and though I whirl several times to glare at him, I can never catch him brushing those knuckles over the back of my neck.

I will one of these days, though.

Wow, you're good! I have a prompt for you, let me know what you think! "Mom, there's a dragon in the shed!"

Thank you guys for the awesome prompts again! You guys come up with some great ones. ^^ Sorry for the delay in responding once again; I want to try to give each one the time it deserves, ha ha.

Ziairi, yours is coming ASAP! I'm trying to write a poem for it (since that seemed more challenging, ha ha) and I'm still tweaking parts of it that I'm not happy with. But you'll be getting it soon! =]

Anyway, here they are! I hope you enjoy them! c:


"Daffodil Lovers"
(from ElementalNovel's 'daffodils' prompt!)
We were always springtime loves. In summer we burned too hot, scalded our fingers on skin that radiated, and slowly we'd be consumed, burning away at our edges until all that remained of us were bones and cold, sleek ice. But spring, ah, spring, it could touch our chilled cores and bring us alive again. Daffodils in bloom, we burst in color from our bulbs below the ground where we'd hidden to ride out the chill. Burst, and yet it was softly that we reunited. No roughness, no burning, just need and giving and love.

And always, for at least a while, we could forget about anything but spring.

"The Painting"
(from Scottei's 'I'm not insane. Yet, aren't I?' prompt!)
Dizzying dances, climbing stairs of ivy-flowers,
He explodes into stillness,
Touches paint and color to the canvas.
Where once was white he whispers,
"Red, violet, sweeping greens and oh,
I'm not insane." Women's lips,
Dark stars of light in a darker sky
Race from his mind to reality.

He is creator, he is mother, he is God,
And laughing into existence his creations wonder,
"I'm not insane. Yet, aren't I?
Is this warping and straightening,
This destruction and beginning,
Not insanity?"

And to understand, to comprehend the
Writhing creative mind of their artist-God,
They dream

And write

Of madness.

Here's a good one! (I hope)
Taking Flight
Your name is feathers, after all.

ok, I has a new prompt, What would you do, if you could be a star? (the word star could either be a movie/song/actress(or actor) "star" or, a real star in the sky. it's up to you, Feathers.)

*drools over her last prompt*

That was really really really good. Another prompt to pass the time?

"Treading on Glass", same setting and characters please

Also are you planning on doing the RP with me?