Ficbit: Meeting Place

Before we get to the ficbit itself, some context. While I was starting on The Great Dwarven Cheese Scandal, I was working on characters, how they function, what their motivations were, etc.

One of the characters was an key actor in the story, a drifter with a dark history. Another was more a background flavor text character. The setting is scifi, but with things that go bump in the night. The trees don’t always like people. She was one of those things that go bump in the night. I expected her to show up occasionally, be creepy, and maybe chivvy the party out of areas where they’re likely to lose a hand, or worse.

Thing was, I realized if the drifter is a drifter, and she camps about in the area the story takes place in, he’s drifted through her domain. Which means they almost certainly have met and know eachother. Which means I need to understand how they interact. Right now, I find it easiest to just write a scene and see what makes sense, and, why not just start at the beginning: how did they first meet?

So I start up an rtf, name it Meeting Place (saving is like voting: do it early and often), because what else do you call a throw-away snippet? And this came out:

Meeting Place

“So much blood…” She was a tiny woman, barely as tall as his chest. Daintily, she picked her way through the carnage, arms wide balancing as she stepped from untouched patch to untouched patch.

Typical woman, he found himself thinking. More worried about getting a stain on her fancy dress, than what’s actually happening around her. Still, there was something odd about it. Odd about her. Most people recoiled at such a tableau, yet she… “You almost sound impressed.”

Her foot hooked on something, and she started to topple. Almost by reflex, he reached out and caught her. He found himself looking into her wide dark eyes. Crimson flecks dotted her face now; not everyone had died in the initial crash. Fixing that had not been a neat process. “Isn’t it, thought?” she cooed dreamily as she began to lick the blood from his hands.

“Stop that!” He jerked his hand away. “That’s obscene!” Until that moment, he had thought he felt nothing. Perhaps that was not true.

She just regarded him coolly. “More so than this?” Her gesture swept the length of the convoy, or rather its remains. Nothing moved, save them.

“That was not the same.”

“Oh? Because the little voice in your head is telling you so? Is that what makes the difference? Leave me to my bread, and I’ll leave you to yours.”

“No.”

“Are going to stop me?” Her face was so close to his he could smell the tang of blood on her breath. “Careful, I might like that…”

——————-

So I’m writing this now…

Note, the final version probably won’t exactly match this, since some of the mechanics have changed, but I’ll deal with all that cleanup when it’s done.

Ficbit: Meeting Place; Medic

The sky was a clear brilliant blue. It seemed somehow unfair that such a beautiful day could smell so horrible.

“Huh. Guess you’re not dead.” The medic stood over him. Which was wrong. Not what their medic said. No, it was that the medic was a girl. They did not make female constructs for that, and no proper true human woman would want to be anywhere near a unit made of constructs. He was still trying to make sense of this when three trails clawed an angry path across the sky. He grabbed her blouse and pulled her to the ground. There was barely time to cover her before shards like whipcracks tore overhead.

Fred. His name was Fred. Fred was dead. Which did not matter; they were on the wrong side of a creeping bombardment. He half carried, half dragged the strange medic with him. Have to reach the fortifications before the shells get here. Which meant they were charging a fortified position too, but there was no choice.

At the final rise, he hesitated. What was he going to do about the girl? Behind was being lashed by shrapnel. There wouldn’t be a safe patch among it. Ahead were the clear and marked fire zones of an entrenched opponent. There was no safety there either. It was only a moment, but it was enough. Something that felt like fire lanced through him and the ground spun up to meet him.

* * *

The sky was a clear brilliant blue. It seemed somehow unfair that such a beautiful day could smell so bad.

“Huh. Guess you’re not dead.” The medic stood over him. Which was wrong. Not what the medic said. No, it was that the medic was a girl. No proper true human woman would want anything to do with constructs. He was still trying to make sense of it when angry trails clawed across the sky. He grabbed air as she sidestepped. She slapped him, hard.

* * *

The sky was a clear brilliant blue. It seemed somehow unfair. The medic had lifted him by his collar, yelling. Which was wrong, completely. The medic didn’t do that. The medic wasn’t a girl. The medic was dead. He’d been caught in the bombardment. The shells were already carving their arcs through the sky….

“No!” Her face was right up against his. “Grass, log, now!” They were back in the same meadow, with the same fallen tree.

She let go of him and perched herself upon the end of the fallen tree, arms and knees crossed as she glared down her nose at him. “This had better be here next time I come back. Understand?”