#lark writes

[willow-lark]

if anyone has actually read s&b and has a decent understanding of how the saints/ravkan religion works, as well as grisha powers, would you be able to advise me as to how might be the most plausible way that nina might be able to use her powers to cross over/enter into the afterlife, or open a portal or gate to let others through? thanks!

[ma-lark-ey]

letting tumblr decide what i actually polish to post from my snowbaz drafts have at thee

[sleeplesslark]

Curious about number 15 and 16 of the writing game, if you'd like to share! ☺️

Thank you very much for sending an ask!

15: Favorite writing weather: going to be very stereotypical and say storms. I love the sound of thunder and rainfall.

While at university I really liked sitting at the top floor conference room when nobody was there and writing while it showed though. It was something kind of magical to see. Snow in general is a close second.

16: Favorite place to write:

For typing: bed, lol. I like being cozy with a nice blanket. I have a toy rabbit called "plot bunny" who's essential to the process as well and does not like leaving the blankets.

For handwriting: outside on a lawn chair. Especially on warm days.

This is the ask game if anyone else wants to send an ask!

[mourninglark]

It Takes Faith

Thinking about Steve and Lucas shooting hoops in a local park after everything happens. Max and Eddie are both still in the hospital, and Steve should be resting, too (a nasty infection that got worse before it got better), but Lucas is anxious. Restless.

Steve knows how to help with that. He can't fix anything, he can't offer solutions, but he can listen. So he takes Lucas to the park under the pretense of working on his form.

At first, they don't speak at all. Lucas is in his head, and Steve is patient.

They stretch, get warmed up. Jog back and forth across the court for a bit until Lucas gives Steve this look. He's ready to play.

Steve starts with the ball, and gets the first point without too much trouble. He doesn't go easy on Lucas; Lucas doesn't want him to.

Whatever advantage Steve might have from experience gets balanced out by the fact that he's simply not well, though, so it's not long before Lucas is beating him out.

After a certain point Steve's barely playing anymore, too exhausted to go running after the ball or shoot.

He's just standing between Lucas and the hoop, now, watching as Lucas shoots, then passing the ball back to him when it goes through the net.

It's nearing sunset when Lucas finally says something.

"Do you think they'll wake up? Either of them?"

Steve doesn't know. He hopes so. Can't let himself believe that they won't. "They're fighters," he says instead. "Both of them."

Lucas frowns. He bounces the ball once, twice. Makes like he's going to shoot, and then sighs.

He sits down on the pavement and buries his face in his hands.

"Hey," Steve says, softly. His core strength isn't what it was before the bats tried to eat him, so it's a struggle, but he manages to sit himself down next to Lucas. He puts a hand on his shoulder. "It'll be ok."

"How can you know that?" He's very nearly as tall as Steve now, but curled in on himself like this Steve is reminded of how small he used to be. How small all the kids used to be.

"I don't," Steve admits. Lucas curls himself even tighter. "But we gotta believe, right?"

"I guess."

Steve takes the ball from Lucas. "When you're lining up a shot, you have no way of actually knowing it will go in, right?"

Lucas gives him a look, but he doesn't interrupt.

"You know how to throw the ball. Where to aim it. But you don't know until it's in."

He mimes the action of setting up a shot. "You just gotta trust your body to get the ball where it needs to go. It's the same thing."

"It's really not."

"It is. All it takes is faith. We gotta trust that they'll pull through. We can make it easier for them, that'll help, but—"

Lucas cuts in. "But what if she doesn't?"

Steve's jaw snaps shut. He gives Lucas' shoulder a comforting squeeze.

"What if she never wakes up? How am I supposed to just— just— keep going? I already miss her so much."

"You can't think like that."

Lucas glares at the pavement.

"I know you miss her." Steve does, too. Fuck, he misses her so much. "She'd kick your ass if she heard you talking like that, though."

"Yeah." Lucas huffs out something that sounds a little like a chuckle, a little like a sob. "I know."

"Whatever happens, we'll work through it. As a team, right?" He gives Lucas' shoulder a small shake. "Max will wake up. I know she will. But she needs your support, too, ok? So don't go doubting her now."

Lucas nods. He sniffs and scrubs his hands over his face. "Ok. I won't."

"Good." He struggles up to his feet, and then offers a hand out to Lucas.

Lucas accepts, but doesn't actually let Steve take on any of his weight. He knows that Steve is still hurt, no matter how healed he tries to present himself as.

"Come on," Steve says "Let's get you home."

Later, when Steve's alone again, he climbs up to his room. He stumbles into the bathroom, ignores his reflection when he passes by the mirror, and throws himself into the shower.

The water is as hot as he can stand it. He sits down in the tub and feels the water hit his skin.

When he's done, he barely has enough energy left to towel off. He collapses into bed, ignoring clothes entirely, and turns onto his side to watch the last bits of sunset through the crack in his blinds.

After it's dark, he digs around under his pillow.

Eddie's vest is still covered in blood and grime. It's crusty and stiff and stained, but even through all that Steve can still smell smoke and cheap detergent.

He cradles it against his chest, and thinks of all the things he really wants to say now. Things might not get to say.

Steve doesn't believe in God, he hasn't since he came face to face with a monster in the Byers' living room, but still he prays. He prays that Eddie and Max will wake up. That they'll be ok.

Max's hair tie is around his wrist, and Eddie's vest is under his pillow. Always.

He needs them to wake up.

He needs his little sister back.

He needs his— his— He needs Eddie back.

Max's letter is unopened on his bedside table. He won't read it. Whatever she has to say to him, she can say when she wakes up.

What Steve has to say to Eddie will wait, too. It will wait until he wakes up. Until he's well again.

He just has to believe.

[flaphack]

it’s actually so crazy that anthony dropped the lore that LARK FUCKED SPARROW’S WIFE. that’s so crazy. can you imagine. your wife fucks your IDENTICAL TWIN BROTHER and you know but you don’t say anything bc it’d be too awkward and he lives w u and you’re so used to managing your family (specifically your dad and brother - basically acting as an intermediary between the two) and being the peacekeeper that you internally compromise and decide to never bring it up. a couple years go by and you’re ignoring it and then you get trapped in a crazy eldritch horror dimension with him and get so drunk and shocked by the horrors you are witnessing that you TELL HIM YOU KNOW. IN FRONT OF YOUR SON. AFTER TELLING YOUR SON YOU THINK HES A DISAPPOINTMENT. and allllll this happened to my buddy sparrow swallows oak garcia.

[willow-lark]

thank you for the tag!! also tyty @starsarefire824 for tagging me earlier in this too 🫶

surprisingly, this is Not byler… ya girl is branching out & also going absolutely feral over six of crows. if anybody else has also read it lmk 👀 this au im tryna write is eating me alive

It hadn’t been a hurricane, though, had it? It, like all the worst things in the world, had been a man who took Inej away, a cocky, new-money mercher who Kaz hadn’t even thought he needed to be wary of.

open tags bc i am not sure who has already done it…if u write fic n ur reading this then That Means You <3

last line wip game!!! ty @bookinit02 and @booksandpaperss for tagging me <3

i also wrote a Section that cannot stand alone so:

Will blinks at him, looking like a kicked puppy with those wide eyes and pouted lips, and Mike groans.

“Oh, stop doing that,” he complains, holding up a hand to block Will’s face from view and forcibly turning his own face away. “You can’t win arguments like that.”

np tags @willow-lark @wayward-sherlock @etchedstars

[r-f-m-writes]

A Lark In a Hollow Chapter Three

Lark knew how to make adults like her. 

            She knew how to make herself clean, presentable and sweet seeming with two long brown plaits laid down each shoulder, a pink tee shirt and raggedy denim shorts that stopped just past the sharp points of her knees. She understood the different ways to speak to men and women, how she should present to strangers on the bus or her teachers at school.

            Adults like girls who speak softly and only when they’re spoken to. Adults like girls who address them properly and look them in the eyes. Adults like girls who behave like tiny grown ups, tiny women.

               Adults love little girls with good manners. 

              Mrs. Parker used to go on and on about it, pinching Lark’s cheeks and cooing at her as she dolloped another heaping scoop of mashed potatoes onto the girl’s plate. “You see how Lark finishes everything she’s given, Missy? She’s a good girl - good girl’s get ice cream for dessert."

              Dinner at the Parker house had been a staple of Lark’s routine before. After school or on the weekends Missy would ask her randomly, mumbling the invite to her phone more than to Lark, blue eyes splitting focus between whatever was on screen and her friend sitting in the swing opposite.

              Lark always said yes. Missy’s dad would pick them up within the hour in his red Mercedes, and Mrs. Parker would be at the door to greet them, hair perfect, grinning with teeth whiter than the pearls around her neck. 

              The family were rich and strange in a harmless sort of way. Lark had been friends with their daughter for years - but she never cared for her much. Missy was the sort of despondent, rude girl that Lark had mostly seen stereotyped in movies and books; Veruca Salt or Nellie Oleson. 

              She was spoiled, pretty, and frantically, crushingly alone . 

              Lark pounced on her loneliness quicker than a starving street cat to a plump mouse. She had held it, dripping wet and half dead, between her teeth since their first conversation on the playground swings as elven year olds, because she needed Missy’s family as badly as Missy needed her friendship. 

             Lark’s life had depended on it. On the dinners Mrs. Parker fed her. On the spontaneous sleepovers that let Lark rest without the fear of something happening while she slept.

             Dad overdosing. Dad wandering off into the night when he was high. A stranger barging into the apartment and hurting them because the lock on the door was broken and the chair she jammed up under its knob every night would only do so much. 

             Mrs. Parker was sweet and erratic. Mr. Parker was impassive and utterly indifferent to Lark. He didn’t speak to her and he didn’t stare at her the way other men did - low and hungry.

            Not like the man who owned the convenience store two blocks down from the apartments. He had stared at her the most of any of them, constant and starved, eyes carving into her like a physical thing, marking the tops of her shoulders and the back of her thighs.

           Lark wasn’t oblivious, she couldn’t be, it was dangerous not to know how men saw her, what they would try to do if she got close enough.

           Lark would never have allowed the clerk to touch, but she let him look for the steep price of ten dollars on weekends and sometimes after school.

            As a minor, it was illegal for her to work stocking shelves or manning the till - forget hauling huge boxes of beer from forklifts into the back of the store like she did on most Saturday afternoons or being responsible for throwing away expired food.

           He knew having her work there was as wrong as him trying to steal glances up her skirt, Lark knew that if she went to the police her ‘boss’ would be in jail before she could say boo. 

           She might have mentioned it to him one muggy afternoon when he tried to cut her pay, and then again a week later when she decided her work was worth fifteen dollars an hour, not ten. 

           Lark knew how to make adults like her, but more than that, she knew how to make them do what she wanted, leading them around by the tether of her will without them ever noticing. 

           When Mr. Hollow pulled up to a sprawling wood log cabin carved into wild, bright green mountainside, a scatter of deer rushing away from its front porch at the sound of the engine, Lark prayed she could make him like her, too. 

            Because there wasn’t another house for miles and the closest town was two hours away by car.

           Her heart was in her throat when he climbed out of the truck and walked around to the passenger side, pulling open the door and holding out a hand for her as she lowered herself down on shaky legs. 

           If Christopher Hollow decided he didn’t like Lark, if he decided that he wanted to take the lock off her bedroom door, or watch the backs of her thighs all low and hungry - if he decided she wasn’t worth liking;

            There wouldn't be anyone to save her if she screamed.  

[geraskierfanficprompts]

Prompt 64

Jaskier has been cursed to turn into a Lark during the day for years now. It makes following his dreams very difficult, what with a lark not being able to carry a lute nor his money pouch, but he just waits to move at night, when the magic turns him back into his human form. Which means he technically has a very awful sleep schedule, but that's not what we're focusing on. Jaskier is sat in a tree one afternoon, trying to sleep, when a horse neighs below him. He peeks down and to his surprise sees a witcher. A witcher! What stories he must have! Jaskier must follow him so that he can ask him questions once he becomes human again! So a very sleepy bird follows after Geralt, twittering and singing all the while. Geralt evidently notices, but ignores the bird for the most part. That is, until the bird lands on Roach's back. Geralt sighs. These birds will stop at nothing... He reaches into his pack, and plucks off a few pieces of bread, and scatters them along the road behind them. He watches as the bird eagerly hops down and pecks at them. Jaskier isn't usually one for eating off the ground, but he's technically a bird right now, and he really mustn't let free food go to waste! It's only after he's finished his banquet that he notices the witcher has ridden off. Oh drat. He'll try and find him that night. When he's not so tired. The next day, Geralt is sat at his camp with Roach, and is surprised to see the same hungry lark as yesterday flying over to sit beside him. Geralt once again shares a bit of his food, and even gets to pet the bird's head. He admits he's grown a fondness for the little lark. That afternoon, just before the sun has set, Geralt is armored up and ready for a fight. Roach is tacked up, he has his potions, his swords, his lark, his oils, hi- Wait, his lark? The lark keeps insisting on following him, until he finally shoos it away with a firm "Don't come. It's dangerous." and the bird seems to understand. Geralt is unnerved at the implications, but he has a contract to attend to first.

Geralt wakes up the next morning, bloody and beaten, no longer high on potions. It was very nearly a pyrrhic victory, it seems. Geralt brushes himself off and looks at his surroundings and sees that the monster and him tore the forest up a bit during their tussle in the night. He's walking back to his camp when he spots it, a fallen tree, and next to it, his lark. Geralt races over, and sees that the tree is pinning the lark to the ground by one of it's wings. The lark opens it's eyes and chirps frantically at him, kicking it's little legs and batting it's free wing erratically. Geralt manages to get the lark unstuck and mends it at camp. He plans to see to the lark's healing, and then release it back into the wild. This is complicated by the lark turning into a man in the middle of his camp later that night.

[danikatze]

[ID in alt text]

"Lark does something Tzila has never seen her do before. She smiles."

(Excuse me while I cry a little)

[microwave20001]

not so hot take (i think) but i lowkey wanna see batshit crazy kiddads. the kiddads but they're actually powerful and not goofs (except for terry he deserves that title). they literally doomed an entire realm just to save their kids. please.

[willow-lark]

describing a kiss is literally like. ok let me give you in detail the description of literally everything else except the kiss taking place in this scene. fill it in for urself u fuckers (affectionate)

[ma-lark-ey]

*crashes into the blog like a feral scientist leaving the lab for the first time in weeks* *drops fic link like it's an over-filled file spilling across the ground*

p.s. object shipnames >> namesmash shipnames, even if i know the history of namesmash shipnames.

[sleeplesslark]

Yooooo time for some 2am outlining.

The July prompts are almost out so I have to get back to Resonance. Thankfully the break seems to have helped.

[lunarrosette]

Narkmas day 3: smoke !!

Loosely inspired by @calamity-unlocked-main ‘s admission free (could it be)

[writertyozzie123]

As a writer I serve a very specific audience. And that audience is me.

[r-f-m-writes]

A Lark In a Hollow Chapter One

Really, she doesn't have a choice.

Lark barely remembers the huge shadow of a man sitting beside her in the dead heat of Mrs. Poppy's office at the children's home. He is silent, stoic, and completely terrifying.

Christopher Hollow.

Muscled.

Six foot five.

Storm blue eyes.

Dog tags outlined under the straining stretch of his black tee-shirt.

"Lark," Mrs. Poppy says, gently, "you're happy with this arrangement? You want to go with your Godfather?"

There's no money left for her to live off until she finds a job - if she finds a job.

Her Dad is dead.

Lark doesn't have a choice.

Lark Douglas didn’t know who Christopher Hollow was when Mrs. Poppy brought his name up to her on a hot Saturday afternoon in her office. The additional details that he had served with her Dad in Afghanistan and was her appointed legal guardian and Godfather did nothing to help jog Lark’s memory.

      In fact, it was a full week after Mrs. Poppy informed Lark of Christopher Hollow’s existence that the girl finally managed to scrounge up a single, short, fuzzy memory of the man.

         She was home.

         The door to their flat was open, the old ceiling fan had been turning in slow circles over her head. It did nothing to fight against the mid July heat that was so stifling and muggy it made her skin stick to the linoleum floors. She had sat on the couch playing with Labrador, her stuffed toy dog, when Mom walked in with someone.

        Lark was five, she thinks, and she hadn’t paid attention to anything that was being said, or looked at who had stepped the room after her mother. She only glanced up from where she was making her stuffed dog do backflips off the worn-down couch cushions when big, black boots stepped into her vision off the edge of the sofa.

       The man who stood in front of her was tall, wearing camo pants and a fitted grey tee-shirt. His face was hard to remember, but Lark thought he had sandy brown hair and the start of a thick brown beard. He had crouched down, setting aside a battered black duffle bag, looking at her like he expected something.

     Lark had only stared at him.

      Mom’s voice had a strain in it when she spoke.

     “Say hi to Chris, baby. He’s come all the way from the airport just to see you.”

     The man spoke before Lark had the chance. He had a deep, rough rumbly voice.

     “Don’t worry her about it, Lori. Been two years. I’d be surprised if Pet remembered me at all.”

      Pet.

      That was the only memory Lark had of Christopher.

      She wasn’t even sure it was real and not just something she had made up in the recesses of her mind as an unconscious effort to help herself fill in the gaps and feel less uncertain.

     She had lots of memories like that.

      Memories no one else could verify. Memories she wasn’t sure happened, but couldn’t shake as being real.

      This was what led Lark to where she stood at the top of the worn flight of wooden stairs.  Seventeen years old, dressed in clothes that didn’t belong to her, feeling entirely unsure of what the future would hold.

      Seventeen, and only three weeks and four days shy of her eighteenth birthday.

     It was ridiculous.

     Stupid, even.

     Why couldn’t she just wait it out at the girl’s home?

     Why was Mrs. Poppy was obligated, by law, to reach out to relatives Lark had never even heard of and negotiate with them down the phone, asking and then, after the eighth rejection, pleading with each of them to come and pick her up?

      “Just a month - no, no, you wouldn’t have to commit to adoption, Mrs. Tanner - not at all. I am only reaching out because Lark is your niece, and I am sure you want the best for her -”

     The list thinned, name by name. Lark saw them each time Mrs. Poppy opened the manilla envelope with her initials on it, glancing over the struck off phone numbers and feeling nothing.

    The rejections didn’t surprise her.

    She knew from lived experience how reluctant people were to help a stranger.

     It took less than half a week for them to reach the last one.

     His name.

     Christopher Hollow.

     He was who Lark was waiting for as she hung onto the banister, her dark eyes fixed on the panes of frosted glass in the door, anticipating seeing a shadow blot across the panels when he stepped onto the porch and rang the buzzer.

     Floorboards creaked.

     Lark moved too late when Mrs. Poppy stepped out of her office that stood at the side of the stairs. The stacked blonde beehive of her hair bobbing into the girl’s view as Lark tried to scurry back out of her sight.

    Too little, too late.

    The kind wrinkles around Mrs. Poppy’s eyes doubled and deepened as the sound made her look upward and spot Lark.

     “Lark, there you are! I was just about to come and find you, dear. Nip down into my office for a moment, I’ve got some things I want to discuss with you before Mr. Hollow arrives.”

    The old stairs squeaked loudly as the girl walked sheepishly down the grossly worn-out blue carpet runner, rounding the curved banister at the bottom to follow Mrs. Poppy into her office.

    It was sun warm inside, light spilling over the faded hardwood floor and shiny varnish of the big, brown desk, highlighting the dozens of ring-marks stained into its top by mugs of coffee past. Mrs. Poppy rounded the desk, having to skirt sideways between the edge of it and the rows of heavy metal file drawers that flanked the room on all sides.

   Taking her perch in a black wheely chair, the woman gestured for Lark to sit in one of the two big, green, retro velvet sofas that faced her desk.

      Sinking down into her seat, Lark folded her hands in her lap and looked at the woman, waiting to be spoken to. She had been thoroughly taught from a young age that she was to be seen and not heard. There had also been plenty of occasions when Lark wasn’t to be seen or heard. Those were moments when her half empty pink, princess wardrobe came in handy.

        Mrs. Poppy placed a pair of up-swept cat eye spectacles on the tip of her tall, gently crooked nose, and took out a notepad. It was one of dozens she had, this particular piece of stationary sported Lark’s name on its front, written in black pen and then broadly underlined in purple marker.

       “Miss Douglas today is a big one for you. How are you feeling, hon? Excited? Nervous?”

        The soft slip of her southern accent calmed Lark some as she fought against the urge to fidget, keeping her fingers still in her lap.

        “Excited, Ma’am. Dad didn’t like to travel much, so seeing the Appalachians sounds like a real adventure.”

        Lark stuck a quick smile onto the end of her lie. She had rehearsed it in her head a hundred times since she was told the good news a week before.

        Christopher Hollow wanted her.

        He was driving the whole way down the coast from his home in the Appalachian Mountains to come and collect her. Lark couldn’t even comprehend where the Appalachian Mountains stood, just that they were stupendously far away.

        Mrs. Poppy grinned at Lark, genuine and radiant, as she wrote something in fast scratching cursive over and empty line of the notepad.

       “Always such an optimist, Lark. I’m sure Mr. Hollow will be delighted by you.”

        Lark’s left thumb twitched. When she smiled, it felt tight in the corners, “I certainly hope so, Ma’am.”

        And she truly did. Lark knew the way men behaved when they weren’t delighted by her.

~R.F.M~

         A fist gripped long, brown hair tightly enough to tear dozens of strands out of Lark’s scalp as she was dragged down the hallway by her head, the girl’s frame stooped almost to the floor as she clawed at the hands restraining her.

       “Fucking little bitch coming to steal from me? Think you’re slick, huh?”

         In honesty, Lark did.

        She had stolen from the man before on countless occasions, rummaging through the contents of his worn leather wallet, fishing out loose coins and dollar notes that wouldn’t be missed. Before, he was always too out of his mind to realize, so Lark had gotten greedy.

        Twenty dollars was a lot of money to people like them. She was foolish for thinking she could snatch it away without his notice.

       Lark didn’t know his name, or his age, or anything about him other than the fact he bought pot on Thursday afternoons and left the door to his apartment wide open with 90’s music playing full volume while he sat out on his balcony in a beat-up pink recliner, back to the living room, smoking.

         By all accounts, the man wasn’t very smart. But he was still a man, a man much stronger than Lark.