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"The New Year" S8 Submission: For - WillDFly

Posted: Mon Jan 01, 2018 3:23 pm
by Feurox
Victim: WillDFly
: I'd like to see... A family. At least one of the main/submain characters as parent(s), preferably some participation from the grandparents and maybe a pet.
Sorry this is so late, but I really wanted to this prompt to be used as inspiration but also hopefully manage to surprise you! Either way, I hope you enjoy it and happy holidays for all! :)

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Cold brought my hands together, as cold had done before, and I look past the tips of frost that crack the window into the glowing warmth.

The room breathes heat into the sofa, the tree, and even the dog I don’t remember getting that lightly snores in front of the dissipating remnants of a roaring fire. It’s ashes settling over the room and playing puppets with the shadow beaten back. Where those shadows fail to reach, I’m buried into the arms of Hisao on the couch, my knees tucked to my chest and my head feeling the ebb and flow of breath from his midriff.

I thought of the times I’d heard that rise and fall, where Hisao’s hand had found its way down the back of my hair to my back and held me tight. The first had been the festival when we’d met, though with a lack of confidence his hand hovered around the small of my back in a photo Lelouch had encouraged we’d take to celebrate the introduction of another friend.

We’d been wondering the grounds of Yamaku under the festival lights, when a boy looking like his mind was beyond him, stumbled into Taro and almost fell over. It had turned out we’d intercepted Hisao on his way to the library, and we convinced him to join our party.

Of course, it was nothing then. He was an attractive new student, Naomi had mentioned he was hot but I hadn’t even caught his eyes, until the fireworks lit up mine, and scorched the image of him into them.

Now I reach for that silhouette, but its lost to the shadows surrounding us on the couch.

A light turns on from the bottom of the staircase.

I’m back at our first date, where the lights from the sleepy town below the hill Yamaku rested on sunk into our skin as we descended into it. His fingers were gentle but firm as they locked as far as they could between my fingers and the splint affixed to my wrist, he playfully waggled his index against mine and met my eyes when I told him how I liked him. How he liked me.

A cold wind is hitting my cheek.

That cradle of lights below us, how it felt when his lips lowered and met mine and the warmth spread over us, seeped into us. It melts in my memories, like a match behind a polaroid.

We’d sat across one another in the Shanghai, his coffee made him taste bitter in our subsequent kisses. He told me about his old friends from home, how they’d wilted around him in a hospital bed. I took of my wrists coverings, showed him the battered veins and bruises under them, the scars from operations and mishaps. We were sat by the window.

I delicately

placed my hand on the pink jagged line beneath his shirt, and I remember the murmur

Of the dog I don’t remember getting, in front of the fire. The heat doesn’t touch me. The stairs creak as someone descends.

Car lights blind me through the window and

scorched our shadows into the pavement. The snow fell from cracks in the skyline, and melted on my tongue. Hisao laughed as he pulled me through the blizzard and into the warmth of a party we were attending. Taro had slimmed out, and passed us prosecco at the door with a welcoming bow in his neat Tuxedo. He’d ended up married, and this was the one-year anniversary. Naomi and Lelouch stumbled in behind us. We were all together again. Nothing could ever separate us –
The light in the living room flicks on. Hisao gets up with a warm smile.

A young girl with dark hair enters the room, she rubs the sleep out of her eyes and is picked up in a hug by Hisao. He kisses her forehead as the dog yawns before the fire. I’m no longer on the sofa.

I never was.

I’d dipped my hand in something ethereal. When we actually met in the city, there was no snow. There was no longer any us to lose. Our hearts had gone in separate directions, both into racing lights. It was never a fairy-tale.

But we both beat on, a woman with that same dark hair enters from the kitchen. My phone vibrates in my pocket.

The woman is half-cast in shadows and her hair obscures the other half, Yet I recognise her from Yamaku. I’d thought her a delinquent, I’d pitied her. Now she’s on the right side of the window.

The cold begins to burn my face and fingers. Something stings my eyes.

I withdraw from the window. The new light behind me now. But the night carries on, the streets still wind into the blizzard, beyond them, future, beyond them, unknown.

I fade, a cold heart into the ceaseless dark, all the light behind me whilst tomorrow unfolds into a snow storm.

We burn the night before with the past, as the sounds of fireworks mark the start of another year.

Baptised in colour and cold, I move on to the next.

Re: "The New Year" S8 Submission: For - WillDFly

Posted: Mon Jan 01, 2018 4:34 pm
by Mirage_GSM
I'm fairly certain this follows the letter but not the spirit of that wish :-)

Ritsu and Miki? First I'm pretty sure about, tha latter not so much.

Re: "The New Year" S8 Submission: For - WillDFly

Posted: Mon Jan 01, 2018 5:06 pm
by Oddball
Mirage_GSM wrote:I'm fairly certain this follows the letter but not the spirit of that wish :-)
Sometimes those are the most fun.

Re: "The New Year" S8 Submission: For - WillDFly

Posted: Mon Jan 01, 2018 10:28 pm
by brythain
That reads beautifully. Still trying to figure out whose perspective, though... :)

Re: "The New Year" S8 Submission: For - WillDFly

Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2018 3:11 am
by Craftyatom
Absolutely brilliant imagery and vocabulary - you crafted an excellent set of scenes. The plot was interesting, and although I first felt something was up when the main character looked through a window "into" the glow (and "the dog I don't remember getting", of course), it still took me by surprise how incredibly jarring the transition was, since the imagery of the main character and Hisao being together was so vivid!

I expected a relaxing fireside scene, and yet you managed to take it from me while making me love the story more. Fantastic work!

... oh, and (I think) the point of view is Natsume (wrist problems, friends with Naomi), who is watching Hisao (her ex? her crush?) greet Hanako (hair hides half her face, sometimes considered delinquent) through the window. Not quite what the prompt was looking for (I almost missed the part where there was a child), but a great story nonetheless!

Re: "The New Year" S8 Submission: For - WillDFly

Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2018 7:58 am
by Mirage_GSM
Point of view should be Ritsu.

Re: "The New Year" S8 Submission: For - WillDFly

Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2018 4:38 pm
by Feurox
Mirage_GSM wrote:I'm fairly certain this follows the letter but not the spirit of that wish :-)
I wasn't sure how much leniency we could have with the prompt :O So Made sure I at least 'technically' followed it.
Oddball wrote: Sometimes those are the most fun.


Kinda my thought process that and -
Craftyatom wrote: I expected a relaxing fireside scene, and yet you managed to take it from me while making me love the story more. Fantastic work!
Exactly what I intended, get surprised my friend.
Mirage_GSM wrote:Point of view should be Ritsu.
Craftyatom wrote: ... oh, and (I think) the point of view is Natsume (wrist problems, friends with Naomi), who is watching Hisao (her ex? her crush?) greet Hanako (hair hides half her face, sometimes considered delinquent) through the window.
Yup, both right, POV is meant to be Ritsu whilst the girl in the room is Hanako, and her daughter. Hope it can be deduced from the scene, but tbh, I manly hope it doesn't subtract from it without knowing.

I hope everyone's new year is filled with joy! :)

Re: "The New Year" S8 Submission: For - WillDFly

Posted: Wed Jan 10, 2018 2:20 am
by StilesLong
It's the sort of story you have to read twice to fully understand it, I think, not that it would be a hardship to read it again. I thoroughly enjoyed the interruptions to the rhythm you set and the imagery deployed made me jealous to read.

As to playing within the bounds of the prompt, I think you did that unexpectedly, though successfully.

Re: "The New Year" S8 Submission: For - WillDFly

Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2018 1:38 pm
by Zerebos
This an absolutely wonderful read. Definitely the type of experience I have come to expect from you :wink: