#i hope? someone maybe has fun reading this or somehting?

[katrielles]

so i wrote this thing and it was going to be part of something else but im too lazy to ever finish it so it’s. a one-shot now i guess.

anyways here it is pls take into account i havent written anything in years and that english isnt my first language lmao ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It was a cold night out in Stansbury. A thin fog crept through the small town, hanging somewhere below the clouds and above people's heads. The Ascot house, slightly away from the rest of the town, was silent and mostly dark, except for a dim light pouring out from a single window in one of the upper floors. Most servants had been dismissed by that time, and the long hallways and rooms felt too big, too empty.

Hershel quite enjoyed the silence from the spacious back garden. Randall himself didn't appreciate silence all that much; his definition of "enjoying nature" involved expeditions and adventures and constant action. Hershel preferred a cup of tea and a nice book, but Randall couldn't get his head around the appeal of such slow-paced, quiet activities. Hershel was surprised he hadn't dug holes through the entire garden in search for some hidden treasure, or simply out of boredom.

Now, however, Randall was mostly still and silent, lying face up on the grass. He kept sneaking gazes at his friend from between his absent-minded stares at the starry sky.

"... Though it's not known where the alleged ruins are located," Hershel read quietly, eyes barely focusing on the words in the book on his lap.

Randall yawned. He was being kept awake merely by force of will and afternoon coffee. Although he could barely process Hershel's words through the fog in his mind, his voice was soothing. He quite enjoyed to hear him read.

Hershel yawned in reply. "How about we continue tomorrow?" he offered, rubbing one eye.

He'd rather Hershel kept reading, but he knew his friend was tired, so he offered his most convincing, "Great idea," and closed his eyes for just a moment.

Hershel lay down on the grass beside his best friend, book cast aside. It was cold and slightly uncomfortable, but in his half-asleep state, he barely noticed. They had spent the entire afternoon (as well as a great deal of the night) reading archaeology and mystery books. When Randall had become too sleepy to read, Hershel would read aloud, until they both became too tired even for that. Books littered the grass around the two boys in disorderly piles.

Hershel gazed at the sky above. Through the thin fog, the stars shone brightly. That was another thing he fancied about Randall's home; it was far enough from other buildings in town to avoid most light pollution. The starry sky was a breathtaking view, one not many had the opportunity to enjoy like this.

"Hersh?" Randall's voice cut through his thoughts like a knife.

"Yes?" he replied, turning his head to face him. His arms were spread out, one hand almost touching Randall's, something the young man was painfully aware of.

The distance between them fueled Randall's heart with a nervousness he was certain would turn into a fire. He knew he went too close to others at times without noticing at first, but there was something different about others initiating it. It made him too aware of himself for his own good.

"Have you ever kissed anyone?" He glared at the night sky, as if blaming the distant stars for the thoughts plaguing him. You're being so obvious, Randall, he scolded himself. Talking usually helped divert him from his own upsetting thoughts, but this time he was doing a terrible job at it. The fog clogging his mind with sleepiness wasn’t helping much either.

Hershel breathed in sharply, and Randall immediately felt embarrassed. As no answer came, Randall suspected for a few seconds that he would pretend to be asleep to avoid his question.

"No, not really," came an answer that sounded more like a question. Randall relaxed, if just a little. Truth be told, he wasn't surprised by his words. He didn't fully understand why he'd asked at all. Hershel, in turn, was becoming more anxious each passing second. "Why the sudden question?"

"Hmm... I don't know. Just came to mind, I suppose." He chuckled and scratched his face. Was his nervousness too obvious?

"Have you?"

Randall finally turned to face him, propping himself on one elbow. "What do you think?" he said with a smirk and a dare in his eyes. The opportunity to tease his friend distracted him from other, slightly more concerning thoughts. The fog in his mind thinned.

"I'd guess... You have?", he ventured with half a smile and knitted eyebrows. Randall could swear he looked worried half the time. His eyebrows almost seemed glued into a permanent frown.

Randall laughed lightly. "Nah. Never have." He watched in amusement as Hershel's eyebrows shot up, beady eyes widening slightly. Randall’s smile widened in turn. "Surprised?"

Hershel smiled back sheepishly. "I don't know, you just seem like the type of person to grow attached to others easily. And people tend to like you a lot too."

"That's flattering."

"Besides, you are a bit impulsive and excitable."

Randall pouted. "That's not flattering."

"I hadn't really thought about it before," he said, his last word turning into a yawn that he covered with the back of his hand. He was barely keeping his eyes open.

"What? Too boring for old Hershel?"

Hershel sat up. If he lay down for another second, there was no guarantee he wouldn't fall asleep immediately. He shrugged his shoulders. "I don't— It's not a pressing matter."

Randall sat up as well, one leg crossed over the other, and brushed the grass off his hair. Hershel hadn't bothered to. His fluffy hair was as messy as ever. Randall had always really wanted to run his hand through his hair. The closest he had come to that was hiding things in it (which always resulted in a confused and slightly annoyed Hershel).

"And you don't ever wonder what it's like?" he said, scooting closer without noticing. Hershel was more than used to his friend's apparent obliviousness of others' personal space; but although he knew to expect it, it would still make him a little nervous. No one was as comfortable around Hershel and as physically affectionate as Randall was. It was nice, he thought, but different to what it was like with everyone else.

"Not really." He absently reached out to take Randall's glasses and tried them on. Randall blinked and cocked his head to the side, but made no attempt to retrieve them. Hershel gasped, noticing everything looked exactly the same. "You don't need these!"

Randall chuckled, holding his stomach, while Hershel frowned at him. "Of course I don’t!"

Once he was over his initial confusion, Hershel started laughing too. Of course. Randall was... Randall enough to wear glasses for aesthetic purposes only.

And then it happened.

Randall felt so light, like everything was right with the world. It was only him and Hershel in the quiet garden, blanketed by a thin fog and crowned by stars, and it felt like it was them the stars shone for. And it was cold and Hershel looked cute, wearing his glasses and staring with his brow furrowed and then laughing, and there were dried leaves in his tangled hair and Randall was itching to reach out and pick them out of his hair, and they were so close and Randall was so sleepy and happy and—

Randall was sure he had started it, though he couldn't remember doing it. One second he was laughing with Hershel, and the next he had leaned in and was closer than he'd ever been to his friend's face.

Their foreheads bumped and he thought for sure that whatever the mysterious source of his courage was, it would flee that instant and he'd freeze, or that Hershel would pull back, or that he'd suddenly wake up from a very strange dream. But he leaned in and pressed his lips against his friend's, and his heart skipped a beat and it was still happening. His nose brushed against Hershel's cheek and Hershel tilted his head slightly. Randall closed his eyes, raised one hand and rested it on his cheek.

His lips were soft and tasted like coffee, and Randall distantly thought he probably tasted like coffee as well. His heartbeat was too loud and overwhelming, effectively drowning the usual noises of the garden and the forest behind it. He didn't know what to do with himself. He opened his eyes. Closed them again. Changed his mind and ran his hand through Hershel's hair (finally). Hershel smelled like a library, he noticed, of books and dust and old wood; of comfort and stability and warmth. Hershel shakily raised his hand to Randall's cheek, and it was warm and soft. Any unsteadiness and uneasiness Hershel carried with him were gone from his gentle grasp. The world spun around them, but Randall couldn’t care less. The fog in his mind had cleared, and he felt as if the sun itself were shining from inside him, burning his heart and his lungs and under his skin.

But, of course, it didn’t last.

Of course, things weren’t going to go so nicely for him.

Of course.

He had barely registered the sound of footsteps on the back of his mind when something hauled him from behind. A confusing blur replaced his view for a few straining seconds, the collar of his shirt almost choking him from the strength of what dragged it. He was pulled to his feet and now faced a familiar man.

His father.

Saying he looked angry would have been an understatement; he was breathing heavily, one hand balled into a fist and the other clenched around the fabric of his shirt, face a concerning shade of red. "What's the meaning of this?" he barked.

How could Randall think he'd get away with this?

He turned to Hershel, who lay stunned on the grass, with shaky shoulders and fidgety hands. "Get. Out," he managed through clenched teeth. The boy stood up, as fast as he'd ever seen him, shot Randall a worried look and half-ran, half-walked awkwardly to the door.

Randall would later get the scolding of his life.

And neither of them would ever talk about it again.

[edmundofgloucester]

6, 10, 18!

<3 

6: What point of view do you tend to write in? Do all of your pieces use the same POV? Do you have strong opinions on the POV used in novels?

My default POV is probably 3rd person past tense, but I’ve been really trying to expand my horizons when it comes to POV lately. I think POV is a really important element of a story that needs to be used consciously, and there are a million different things you can do with it. Shaelinwrites  on youtube has made a lot of really informative videos that opened up my eyes to the possibility of POVs. I try to vary my POVs based on what the work needs-- Prevent is in first person past because it’s a very narrowly focused story, Red Ink will be in third person past because it has a million different POVs and I do not need to complicate the timeline more than necessary, and I’ll probably do something really weird with No Pilgrimage-- I want to do omniscient, but I also kind of want to do first person from Daniel’s POV, so I may try to combine those? Who knows. My only strong opinion on POV is that you shouldn’t limit yourself, and there are no good or bad POVs, or easy or hard POVs, just what’s right for a story.

10. What scene was the most fun to write for you and why?

I’ve just recently gotten back into seriously drafting, so I haven’t made very much progress on actually writing most of my novels. I have made really good progress on a couple short stories, though. “Question Game,” a short story about the simultaneously intense and shallow relationship between two high school students, had a really fun scene at the crux of the piece, where the main character Jamie sees a ghost and essentially decides that she’d rather become a ghost herself than Live In Society. That scene was really intense and flowed really well, which made it fun. The short story I’m currently working on is called Solipsism, and it’s about a 10 year old named Orla who gets chained in a field during a famine. I’ve been really struggling with it because Nothing Happens, like literally she stays in the field the entire story and doesn’t talk to anyone, but I loved writing the flashback scene when Orla gets arrested, because I got to make her clash with the community and their ideology and show how feral this child is. 

18: What writers have inspired you with their use of language? What are some of your favorite quotes?

I’ve recently realized how important strong language is to me in a piece. I tend to like writing that’s very deliberate, voicey, and somewhat intricate, but not necessarily flowery. Some books that really inspire me in their use of writing: 

-If We Were Villains by M. L. Rio (”You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough”)

-The Secret History by Donna Tartt (I love the first paragraph of this “Does such a thing as ‘the fatal flaw,’ that showy dark crack running down the middle of life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn’t. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.”)

-Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire (”The habit of narration, of crafting somehting miraculous out of the commonplace, is hard to break”)

-The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

-Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu (”Inside was another universe, and maybe if she figured out the right way to ask, someone would let her in.”)

-The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater

-In the Woods by Tana French

-The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell (”Matthew ten, verse twenty-nine: Not one sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it." “But the sparrow still falls.”) (”the sparrow still falls” is also the title of my Leo playlist I love that quote SO much)

-City of Thieves by David Benioff (the inspiration for my Leningrad oneshot!)

I haven’t actually read the book this is from but one of my all time favorite quotes is something you sent me on tumblr actually and I deeply love it. “All witches are selfish, the Queen had said. But Tiffany’s Third Thoughts said: Then turn selfishness into a weapon! Make all things yours! Make other lives and dreams and hopes yours! Protect them! Save them! Bring them into the sheepfold! Walk the gale for them! Keep away the wolf! My dreams! My brother! My family! My land! My world! How dare you try to take these things, because they are mine!I have a duty!”- Terry Pratchett

List of questions here they’re all very good