#bartprompts22

[type-three-djinni]

Bartimaeus Prompts Week 2022 - Day Seven: Forms

There was a devotion to detail here that could only come with genuine affection, perhaps even with love.

[fauna-a]

VII Forms

I can’t believe it.

It was a sound (a voice?) he knew well: it brought with it annoyance, but relief, too; irritation, and yet fondness.

Nathaniel, are you there?

Nathaniel! That was his name! Together with it, came an avalanche of memories: the spirits, magic, Kitty, the Staff, his decision to… and then…

Am I dead?

Absolutely you aren’t. Look!

He didn’t have eyes anymore, but when he took the decision to look, he saw; and he saw the freest and most beautiful chaos he had ever seen flowing around him, essences mingling in vortexes around him and he was mingling with them, or at least some part of him, and he felt thousands of presences, and one in particular, so familiar, and he grabbed on to it with his mind or his soul or whatever, because…

Calm down, Nat. You’re hurting me.

What’s happened?

Well. You dismissed me. Except that you must have stumbled on some syllables because… I’ve pulled you away with me. At least, your… essence, your soul, I don’t know.

Maybe it came from that, the feeling of lightness, and yet terror, of a freedom so pure it scared him to death. Sort of, of course.

Around him, the matter went together in spiral forms, then it seemed to blow up; Nathaniel withdrew, or at least he felt like that.

Oh, sorry. Your trauma.

So, this… all this… is you? And the other spirits?

You are, too. In the Other Place there aren’t precise identities. It’s complicated, but you’re gonna get the hang of it.

The matter twirled again, gushing flashes of colour, and Nathaniel tried to wrap his head around it all. Even if…

Wait a moment. Are… are you happy that I am here?

Oh well. You know how it is, I’m not totally ungrateful. You were saving my life, which was just due, with all the times I did that for you, but, you know, I don’t like owing to a dead, and…

You’re actually happy!

There was an explosion of colour, and Nathaniel realized it was himself creating it.

Good job. He felt Bartimaeus watching him, analysing him. It’s strange. Kitty and Ptolemy had a body which they had to come back to, so a bond with Earth… You are a lot more like us, now, since your body is, very probably, pulverized.

Thank you.

I’m just exposing facts, Nat.

And now?

Ah, I have no idea. Try and take a form, like us.

In the middle of the vortex, appeared the familiar Egyptian boy, radiant, with his usual cheerful grin.

Nathaniel hesitated.

Just do it. Don’t think too much.

A pale boy, few years younger that Ptolemy, took a hesitant step in the Other Place. In his eyes shone a light that wasn’t only human anymore.

NdA: That was clearly a What If where Nathaniel is not dead, but his soul "follows" Bartimaeus in the Other Place and he becomes... something else, not human and not spirit. Can he be summoned? Has he the same powers as spirits? I haven't a clue :) I wrote this in like twenty minutes.

[tarragonthedragon]

Bartimaeus Prompts Week

hi guys! it’s us at the bartimaeus discord server with this year's prompt week! in theory the prompt week is a little more geared towards fanart (since the exchanges are v fic heavy), but fanworks of all forms are very welcome. we’ll be running from monday the 7th to sunday the 13th of march, and prompts are as follows:

Monday 7th – Rituals

Tuesday 8th – Favourite Minor Character

Wednesday 9th – No Magic AU

Thursday 10th – Least Favourite Setting

Friday 11th – Rain

Saturday 12th – Favourite Death Scene

Sunday 13th – Forms

please tag all your contributions with #bartprompts22, and have fun!!!

[ununquadius]

Ms Lutyens is one of my favourite minor characters, and I love her for all her support to Nathaniel and for how she despises him in PG

[hurrgghh]

this is for the prompt "ritual," not thrilled with how it turned out but anyways here's the process of nathaniel and bartimaeus arguing to the point that by book 3 it became basically a ritual, that's what my idea was here

[type-three-djinni]

Bartimaeus Prompts Week 2022 - Day One: Rituals

“I'm the first. And if my venture goes well, and I return to record it, many others will follow after me. There will be a new era between djinn and men.”

[fauna-a]

VI Favourite death scene

In the last few hours, Nathaniel had had put forcefully in his brain a good amount of quite loud memories, opinions and thoughts. It was difficult, not to say impossible, ignore them: he had in his head a steady hum, commenting on everything.

So it came as a surprise hearing silence; it lasted only the time of half beat, of course, but it did strike him, almost destabilized him. Then came a tangled streaming of emotions and memories.

Nathaniel was able to decipher only few scenes: a sumptuous hall where it seemed to take place a wild food battle, two men squatting under a stone block in the middle of the desert, and thousands and thousands of arguments, skirmishes, insults in as many languages and ages.

It was difficult getting his head around, but Nathaniel felt underneath the chaos a very familiar emotion: grief.

Nathaniel knew he wasn’t very good at comforting people, not to say thousand-year-old spirits which he had fought (using a euphemism) with just an hour ago; about comforting over the death of a spirit gone crazy, that had tried to kill them, but that, clearly, Bartimaeus had known since the night of times… Well, Nathaniel was sure even Kitty would have had some difficulties.

The last thought raised a mental snort from Bartimaeus. It was really irritating not being able to ruminate in peace.

You’re telling me.

Bartimaeus, I…

Let it go, Nat. It’s… weird, that’s all. I knew him since the beginning. Always around meddling and stealing my job or badmouthing me in front of pharaohs… classic. A shame it’s ended like this, though. I wanted to beat him up a little. Get revenge for the story of the fish soup, you know.

Oh, so it was him that put you in so wretched shape? Have you been defeated by a skinny guy?

You know very well he wasn’t human and you put me in such conditions I looked like a mop.

Nathaniel hid a smile. If you say so. To me, he seemed a pretty powerful djinni.

All appearances. A pause. He was pretty good at cooking, though. Human food, too.

Too?

Well, usually just humans.

[type-three-djinni]

Bartimaeus Prompts Week 2022 - Day Six: Favourite Death Scene

An instant later, Simon Lovelace was gone.

[fauna-a]

II Favourite minor character

The air is scorching, the sand is scorching, and Queezle likes it.

She’s still getting to grips with Earth, but she likes this little portion of it. She likes her master too, even though he decidedly needs a wash and his ribs are so visible under the skin it’s creepy.

Her siblings spirits, when they come back home, bring with them echoes of pain and anger; Queezle, in this moment, feels only wonder for that blue so blue, and for the blinding yellow, and for all the shapes she could take, fast as thinking. In her is bursting all the energy that the Other Place has left.

***

The air is cold, the stone of the city is cold, and Queezle likes it.

When she arrives in Prague, it’s just snowed, and as soon as she can, Queezle plunges her fingers in the white blanket. In France it didn’t snow so much.

The other djinni, her colleague, is watching her with wide eyes. He has an unusual shape for the place they are in, a dark-skinned boy, more similar to her old master than to someone born here. She likes him.

Queezle knows that between spirits don’t grow friendships, even if she’s been on Earth a lot less than others; she knows that it is not done, it’s not worthwhile.

She takes a handful of snow and throws it in the boy’s face anyway.

[tarragonthedragon]

#bartpromptsweek22 Day One: Rituals

Wealth and Power

[fauna-a]

IV Least favourite setting

NdA: I guess this is set between GE and PG.

Bartimaeus

«Tell me: what is it that you like so much about this place?»

Mandrake stared at me with the empty look of someone cosmically flabbergasted.

«This place» I waved around the grim walls of Whitehall, naked and depressing. The only thing that looked decent was the chair where my master had placed his backside; privileges of being Minister, I guess.

Mandrake continued to look dull. «I don’t have to like it» he objected. «It’s my office, I just work here».

I rolled my eyes; sometimes his thick head was really impenetrable. «I see, but, you know, since you’re practically living here, I guess if you liked it, it’d be better. Wouldn’t it?»

It was clear that such bizarre idea had never touch his unyielding mind, as arid as Whitehall.

«Look» I waved around my arms «There isn’t even a painting, a knick knack, a vase of flowers…»

Mandrake’s face seemed to darken in the grey light of London; suddenly, I remembered his little room in Underwood’s house, with its old Dutch printing and the vase of fresh flowers on the nightstand.

«Whitehall is a place of great importance and work, not a playroom. Do you think I could just put on curtains of the colour I prefer?»

«Excuse me? Did you put on curtains in your house?»[1]

He took on his ‘I don’t know how to reply, but I won’t tell you’re right’ expression and changed subject. «Why are you still here?»

«I couldn’t tell, master. Maybe you looked bored and I wanted to honour you with some superior chit-chat. Maybe you wish to add something to the espionage mission, like popping up to the upholsterer and buying a moquette to cover these tiles». They were really mediocre and sad, trust me.

He heavily sighed. «I have a lot of work to do without you adding some».

«Do you realize you don’t say anything else? I have to work here, I have to work there. You’re becoming as sad as this office and, believe me, you’ve already started bad enough!»

He spoke the Dismissal syllables as each had personally offended him.

Nathaniel

Nathaniel glanced distractedly at the clock: almost midnight. It had become normal being up until small hours in Whitehall, with the war that seemed to extend and the thousands of duties Deveraux spilled on his desk.

Bartimaeus had not come back yet, but he didn’t foresee he’d have very soon.

His tired mind wandered about. Almost automatically he started to doodle on the back of a paper a landscape he had never seen in person: docked boats, the tranquil Dutch plain all around. Who knew if the Netherlands were actually like this. He’d have liked to find out, but he doubted he could leave London in that moment. He couldn’t even leave his office…

He sighed and stared at the naked wall in front of him, the same as the hundreds of other offices in Whitehall.

[1] Yes, I did go on a polemic note. But I’d like to remember you who furnished the young lord’s house, as soon as he had his own, and not his master’s.

[type-three-djinni]

Bartimaeus Prompts Week 2022 - Day Two: Favourite Minor Character

JAKOB HYRNEK

“We’ll sabotage a few likely incantations and then... we’ll see. [...] He’ll simply read the spell, draw the pentacle, or whatever it is he does, and then... who knows. Nasty things happen to magicians when things go wrong.”

[tarragonthedragon]

#bartprompts22 Day Two: Favourite Minor Character

Queezle

[fauna-a]

III No Magic AU

NdA: I think that Nat is the young CEO of a company selling (legally) weapons and he's there for family reasons. Bartimaeus went to school with him because he was part of an "integration program" and he hated every moment of it. They don't live together, Bart just steals his food, sleeps on his couch and generally is a nuisance :)

Nathaniel was woken up by the sound of forks against a casserole. He knew that sound very well because more than once he had eaten directly from there, without worrying about using dishes.

He peeled away from his cheek a very important looking document, stretched his poor back and shuffled around to the kitchen. He had an idea about who was in there (because no burglar would ever reached this point of gall) and steeled himself to a rabid fight, because he was tired, he had some work to do and he was fed up with having a parasite in his house.

«Are you sure we can?» asked a woman’s voice, a second before Nathaniel came in.

«Of course! You can ask him yourself».

The girl leaning on the table turned. The bruise on Nathaniel’s face started to burn.

Kitty Jones was, for once, speechless. She turned around to Bartimaeus, who waved cheerfully with his forkful of cold lasagna. Good God.

«What the fuck…? Are you… Are we in Mandrake’s house?!» hissed furiously Kitty Jones.

«Chill» grumbled Bartimaeus, who, Nathaniel noticed, had a quite deep slash on his forehead. «Police would never think of looking for us here».

«Sure, unless he’ll call them!» hissed Kitty.

«He won’t, relax. Will you, Nat?»

«You have to stop stealing my food» was the only reply Nathaniel could muster. Then, since Kitty kept on piercing him with her gaze, he added: «Ms. Jones, really. I won’t call anyone. I’d just like some peace to do my job».

«Oh, of course, we don’t want to distract you! Pray tell, how many Kalashnikovs did you sell today, while were beaten up at a pacifist rally?»

The girl looked quite dishevelled and bruised, indeed, but ready anyway to punch him again. Before Nathaniel could tell something that he bitterly would regret, unexpectedly Bartimaeus stepped in.

«Kitty, you need to sleep and eat something. Turn around the order and try the lasagna, Nat buys it in that deli for rich people».

Kitty Jones turned to him with a predator movement. «And you… how do you know him?»

«We went to school together».

A dumbfounded silence fell on them. Nathaniel sighed. «It’s true, Ms. Jones. Bartimaeus and I have known each other for a very, very long time. Now, if-»

«How can you do this?»

He was waiting a question like that, but addressed to Bartimaeus, not him. Kitty Jones was staring at him with all the disdain and the anger she was capable of, and he felt powerless like he had always felt in front of her, her fury and her energy.

«If you have known him since you were children… how can you work to sell the same weapons that have destroyed his home and set fire to cities…»

«Kitty» Bartimaeus’s voice had become dangerous, but she didn’t seem to hear.

«That have killed his brother!»

The silence that enveloped them was a thousand times heavier than the previous one. Nathaniel felt it like a stone against his breastbone. Bartimaeus’s face was in the dark, hidden by his hair.

Then, the young man stood up and took Kitty by her elbow; when he spoke, his tone was kind. «Kitty. Lie down on the couch over there. Don’t worry about Nat, he won’t snitch on us. Leave it be» he shut up her objections, that maybe were stammered apologies. «You’re dead tired. Sleep».

He accompanied her in the living room. Nathaniel heard him murmur something again, then nothing. Steps, a metallic snap, the smell of smoke. He didn’t yell about this like he’d have done in other occasions: he couldn’t move.

«Don’t make that face» Bartimaeus was watching him with an expression that wanted to be amused, ironically superior like always; he took a drag from the cigarette. «You couldn’t know. And, even if you did know, it wouldn’t have changed anything. Would it? If you had known about my little brother, wouldn’t you have accepted the job offer?»

Nathaniel wanted to say that of course he wouldn’t have accepted; because, despite everything, Bartimaeus was his friend. His only friend, actually, but his best friend, too. But he didn’t answer. He couldn’t.

«Why?» he asked instead. «Why haven’t you ever told me?»

«Do you think I’ve toldKitty? She’s found out herself» Bartimaeus huffed. «These are not things a kid talks about, Nat. And I don’t like doing it now, still. He’s dead, what’s to say about? And try to not feel too guilty» he smirked, almost. «When it happened, you’d have been eight, nine years, too. No responsibility. Like now, isn’t it? It’s not you pressing the button».

Nathaniel stared at his friend. His best friend, that stood for everything most distant from his world. More or less, since now there was a pacifist activist sleeping on his couch.

«I don’t know what to do» he admitted.

Bartimaeus smirked again, but the cruel hint that was there before had soothed. «For starters, don’t get beaten up by Kitty. Tomorrow morning, you’ll cook some breakfast and maybe, with her belly full, she’ll be able to listen to you».

[ununquadius]

I’m late for the prompt week, but I wanted to create something so here it’s my take on prompt 1 “Rituals”.

[fauna-a]

I Rituals

Humans cling to the most ridiculous things to preserve their mental health. I do understand that it is holding on a thread, but there is a right way and a wrong way.

One of the things that most had floored me at the times when the world and I were young and innocent (more than now, okay?) was the amount of energy put in the celebration of death.

Not in the decidedly creepy way of some shady character that bustled about organs and other, but in the way which they fussed around an already empty shell. Why washing and putting perfume on a corpse and dressing it with gold? Celebrating on honour of someone that wasn’t there anymore? Even if you believed in the thousands of tall tales that humans told each other about souls and afterworlds, what is done is done; that thing was just a heap of meat, good to manure the earth.

For obvious reasons, I had never attended one of my masters’ funeral; and probably I’d have used the occasion just to dance on their grave wearing red, as a lovely proverb between humans says. And I didn’t need it anyway: I knew what would happen to them. I knew which pyramid they would be shut in, since I had built most of them, I knew which treasures would be buried with the corpses, since I had found (read: stolen) them myself.

I knew Ptolemy wouldn’t have ended up in a sarcophagus, mummified and immobile, drenched with myrrh and gauze and jewels that he never wore, but they would have burnt him on a pyre, as per Greek tradition, surrounded by eating people, indifferent to what Ptolemy had been in life. It didn’t matter. Finished up the feast, I knew that his ashes would have been scattered in Nile, and the Nile would have ended in the Great Sea and from here… who knows. I liked the idea that something of Ptolemy wandered around the world, as he had wished, and blended with the earth, with flowers, with the dust of the great desert.

I didn’t need funerals and ceremonies to remember Ptolemy, and the humans who had orchestrated his death didn’t need them too; Ptolemy even less so, him that even in life had not loved ostentations, celebrations.

On the contrary, Nathaniel would have adored all the celebrations in his honour. Adored. Public weeping, speeches in memoriam, monuments… Ah, little Nathaniel would really have been in his element.

Funnily enough, Nathaniel too had ended up in ash like Ptolemy, lost in London smoke.

I didn’t know if Nathaniel had actually loved London: he was living there and he had adapted to it, that’s all. Maybe it wouldn’t have been bad for him too wandering about, seeing the world, understanding something more. Maybe his remains would have arrived in Egypt, in the end.

I lowered my gaze on the crowd collected for the annual celebration in John Mandrake’s remembrance, all of them contrite and very sad faced. Kitty wasn’t among them.

She would have come at the end, I knew, when the empty speeches were already finished; she would have sneered at the pretentious stony face and then she would have sacked the most beautiful flowers from the garlands left soaking against the marble. They were for a decidedly more modest gravestone, hidden away in the smallest cemetery in London, that Kitty had made it put on her own. Inside the grave there was just a fistful of ash and dust of glass.

Kitty raised her eyes to me, perched as a little drenched sparrow on the great man’s outstretched hand.

«Coming?»

I settled on the ground, shaping to a pale, know-it-all-faced young boy.

«Coming».