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Doing a thing.
Alphabetical prompts.
Pick one song for each letter from Spotify. Write a drabble for that prompt.
A - Awkward Goodbye - Alfred
B - Baby We'll Be Fine - Wayward Son
C - Call Them Brothers
D - Daughters of the Soho Riots - Hyun and Rhea
E - Edward is Dedward
F - Flightless Bird, American Mouth
G - Growing Up Beside You
H - Ho Hey
I - I can't make you love me
J - Jesus Saves, I Spend - Llewelyns
K - Keep the Home Fires Burning
L - Little Talks
M - Madame Van Damme
N - National Anthem
O - Oxford Comma
P - Paris is Burning
Q - Quelqu'un M'a Dit
R - Romance is Boring
S - Sleep All Summer
T - This is a Flag. There is no Wind.
U - Understanding Salesman - Iris and Rhea
V - Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks
W - Welcome Home
X - Bonus W round: We Almost Had a Baby
Y - Your Ex-Lover is Dead
Z - Bonus Y round: You'll Need Those Fingers for Crossing
That playlist in full. If you'd like to suggest characters or other songs, drop em in the comments.
Pick one song for each letter from Spotify. Write a drabble for that prompt.
A - Awkward Goodbye - Alfred
B - Baby We'll Be Fine - Wayward Son
C - Call Them Brothers
D - Daughters of the Soho Riots - Hyun and Rhea
E - Edward is Dedward
F - Flightless Bird, American Mouth
G - Growing Up Beside You
H - Ho Hey
I - I can't make you love me
J - Jesus Saves, I Spend - Llewelyns
K - Keep the Home Fires Burning
L - Little Talks
M - Madame Van Damme
N - National Anthem
O - Oxford Comma
P - Paris is Burning
Q - Quelqu'un M'a Dit
R - Romance is Boring
S - Sleep All Summer
T - This is a Flag. There is no Wind.
U - Understanding Salesman - Iris and Rhea
V - Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks
W - Welcome Home
X - Bonus W round: We Almost Had a Baby
Y - Your Ex-Lover is Dead
Z - Bonus Y round: You'll Need Those Fingers for Crossing
That playlist in full. If you'd like to suggest characters or other songs, drop em in the comments.
tiger rule - J - oh man my absentee i'd do anything to please you
“You lived in the time of plague,” Elsa mumbled into her hands. “I don’t—I don’t want a boyfriend..”
“Go on,” Mari shook the salt shaker over her chips; little grains of salt bounced off the chopped potatoes. “It’s not so bad. Just one date.”
“I don’t like them,” squirming, she looked at her fingers, at the plate of food Mari had brought. “They’re awkward…and there’s so much going on…”
“Yeah, but you’re a going out with a teenage boy,” Mari examined her nails. “There’s about a hundred per cent chance of sex at the end of it.” Elsa slid under the table, cringing with embarrassment. Mari leaned over to look beneath it. “Someone’s not a sex fan.”
“I just don’t want to,” she mumbled, pulling herself back up.
“Not even one date?”
“No!”
“Wow, alright,” Mari balanced her elbow on the table and frowned. Elsa said nothing. “So what is it? This guy have two heads or something?”
“No! Why are you---“ she couldn’t think of any other words. A week ago this woman, who looked maybe twenty five at the most, had turned up at her door and proclaimed herself to be Elsa’s grandmother. The days that followed had been taken up with proving this claim beyond a doubt – which had turned out to be heartsinkingly easy.
Elsa hadn’t known much about her mother and father, or the people who preceded them, or who preceded them. Mari had been able to fill in and in the space of a few hours, a nervous eighteen year old student had gone from knowing nothing about her past to knowing far more than she'd ever wanted to about the series of tragedies, awful happenings, terrible luck and general loserdom the Llewelyn family had been subjected to. It had been enlightening. It hadn’t been fun.
And now, Mari was meddling. “I just don’t like him,” Elsa shrugged and frowned. “He’s my friend. I don’t want…any of that.”
“Seriously?” Mari folded her arms and frowned. Even after six hundred years, the idea of having standards was alien to her. If it had a heartbeat, she’d probably envisioned fucking it. She pushed her remaining chips around, feeling the gulf between herself and the family she’d searched for for so long grow and grow.
“Yes.”
“Alright,” said Mari. She drew stickmen, dipping the chip into ketchup like a stylus into ink. Elsa watched her, leaning back in her seat. “Want to go out, tonight?”
Elsa considered this. “Will it be…you know…tame?”
“Tame?”
“Yeah…your nights out can be a little…I mean, the chicken...”
Mari held out her hand. “Tame. Tame. Tame.”
Elsa considered this hard. She’d regret this, she knew that. But she was beginning to think that part of being a Llewelyn meant taking actions she would deeply regret.
“Alright,” she said.
--
The first bar was alright. It was the second that had been the trouble. They’d found the boy who’d been asking her out and Mari had stuck her tongue down his throat (“I’m just distracting him!”) which had taken his mind off of Elsa. They’d separated when Elsa had met up with another friend and ended up at another bar…he’d walked her home, which had been good of him. She was slightly drunk when she got back in, the stairs difficult to navigate. Mari sat on the sofa waiting for her, ears pricked up. When the door opened she ran to it, all over eager. “Was it fun?”
“Yeah,” Elsa said. She sat down hard on the chair. “It was fun.”
“I followed you a bit, to make sure his intentions were honourable.”
“Thank you.”
“You really weren’t interested in him, were you?”
Elsa shook her head and rested on the kitchen table. Mari cleared away plates from supper. “You look tired.”
“I am,” said Elsa. And then: “Do you like girls?”
“That’s a strange one,” Mari said.
“I mean…you know, like straight boys like girls.”
“Yes, I understand. And yes,” Mari looked at the plates in the sink. She turned the water on, watched it splash over them. “I suppose you could refer to me as omnivorous.”
“Because you eat—“ Elsa stopped midway through the sentence and began to giggle. Mari laughed a bit too, washing ketchup off the ceramics.
“Do you like girls?”
“Yes,” said Elsa. She paused, surprised at herself. “That’s not a disappointment, is it?”
Mari turned off the tap. She came over to where Elsa was and took her cheek in hand. “If you think I’d answer any way but ‘no’ to that question, you’re either very drunk or very tired,” she said and kissed her forehead.
Elsa thought about that for a moment. “Both,” she said.
--
“I am glad there’s another one,” Mari said after a bit. Her children had died so long ago. Their faces were burned into the undersides of her eyelids. “I thought there was only me. But then I found out that there was another one. Only one. Just you.”
“Just me,” echoed Elsa, her head on the pillows of her twin sized bed.
“Little Wren,” Mari lay down on the bed so they were shoulder to bony shoulder.
“We’re not very good at surviving.”
“I’d say,” Mari corrected, “it’s the only thing I’m good at.” Silence fell on them like a duvet, cutting off all conversation. After what could have been an hour or thirty seconds, Mari moved her arm up so it went around Elsa’s shoulders. “Sorry about your mum and dad, Wren.”
“It’s alright,” Elsa stared at the ceiling; all brushed white and looking blue-grey in the dark. “It was a long time ago.”
“I’m here now,” said Mari and the saddest part was that she believed it – that for a moment, both of them believed it. Elsa closed her eyes, not wanting to see Mari’s shaky smile.
“I know you are,” she said, to appease her.
“You don’t look like me much,” Mari said, after a bit. “I suppose…it’s been how many generations between me and you? Thirty?”
“About that.”
“I suppose in thirty generations things can change. But you’re so…short.”
“Thanks, grandma.”
“Really,” Mari stretched out; she wass at least eight inches taller. “And you’re all curly up top. And Northern. And glasses, what’s all that about?”
“You need glasses.”
“Yeah, but I don’t go around admitting it. Wearing them all out in public, like you’ve got nothing to hide.”
“What’s wrong with glasses?”
“People like secrecy, surprise, an air of mystery. They’ll all guess you’re long sighted if you take out glasses every time you need to read something.”
“Short sighted,” Elsa corrected, but she had a feeling Mari rarely talked about anyone other than herself. Mari fell silent, and wrapped her arms around her. She smelled faintly of whiskey; Elsa’s own head was spinning, she didn’t want to babysit her drunk grandma on top of this.
“I’m going to look after you,” Mari told her. “You’ll see. You’ll never want for anything. My little Wren.”
Elsa stroked her back, not knowing what to say. Her head didn’t feel like it was attached; her skull felt like it was filled with helium. “Let’s have a quiet time,” she suggested. Her mouth tasted like glue and Mari was making the bed warm, irresistible to her tired little body.
“Alright,” Mari agreed and lay next to her. Elsa was aware, strongly aware that Mari was listening to her breathe, tapping out the rhythm of her beating heart against the mattress. But she couldn’t help but doze. On the ragged edge of consciousness she heard Mari speak again, some soft sentence; “I’m going to look after you,” or some other sweet lie. Elsa was falling off the edge into the oblivion of alcohol laced sleep; she dreamed, once, troubling scenes of the jungle, ligers dancing through the darkness. It ended in darkness but by the time she woke up she could not recall a single moment; not a single scene.