#miss fisher snippets

[foxspirit1928]

Miss Fisher Snippets (213)

A work of art that made Jack blush, whether he admitted it or not. Little did he know that a few episodes later, in about 3 months’ time according to my timeline research, he would get to witness the real thing on stage in S2E1 Murder Most Scandalous. Talk about blushing…

(Posted 12-Oct-2024)

[tinyplanetss]

i like thinking about different reasons phillip referred to his partner/husband by his (their?) last name, such as

1. (normal) it's a work thing and so he wanted to be as professional as he could be while covered in flour

2. (gay people) gay people nicknames are just like that sometimes. maybe phillip started calling him that before they got together and it just stuck

3. (gay people 2) it's fun when you're gay married to nod at each other and go "hello mr. blanc" "hello to you too mr. blanc" hehehehe same name go brrr :)

[avoteforme]

jack reclined back in his chair to look up at her. a thrill tingled up the back of phryne's neck as he stretched his legs out and folded his hands across his chest, as though he had all the time in the world to drink in her appearance. she'd dressed with care, wearing her white silken surcoat and she watched as his gaze drifted down from her hat to her lips and then briefly across the neckline of her low-cut blouse.

[dangerpronebuddie]

Inspiration Saturday!!

Tagged by @theotherbuckley @diazsdimples who both posted INCREDIBLE stuff y'all should show some love 🩷💚

I'm focusing on Eddie's second oh moment right now, but the other night I was writing for my Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries AU and decided to try something... I made my first moodboard!!! I like it, but I might change it up a bit as I keep writing for it.

Ta da!! And here's a snippet to go with it:

Buck crouched and opened the cabinet by the sink. An opened box of pink packets sat turned on its side in the cabinet. The box read Nerve Powders. Something at the back of his mind told him there was more to it than that. A sharp knock echoed off the tile in the bathroom. “This lavatory is fully occupied!” Buck called as he closed the cabinet, stowing away a few packets in his jacket. “Police! Open up!” Damn. Buck stood and opened the door, plastering on his charming smile. Good Christ. Detective Diaz from a distance was a sight to behold in itself. Up close? Adonis wouldn't stand a chance. Coffee brown eyes shone in the light streaming in from the window. A wayward wave fell across his forehead, the only thing out of place in his otherwise immaculate appearance. His bone structure was beyond perfect.

He carried himself with a relaxed confidence Buck spent years faking. How this man achieved it? Buck didn't know. “You must be the detective,” Buck said. “Apologies for my urgent call of nature.” “You do realize this is an active crime scene,” Detective Diaz pointed out. Wow, even his voice was gorgeous. “Forgive me, detective,” Buck smiled. “It's very fortunate I'm wearing gloves, is it not?” Diaz stepped past Buck and stared at the chalk outline on the floor, his brow furrowed in concentration, the smallest pout on his lips. Buck turned to the officer standing near the doorway. “Do you think it was poison?” “Most likely,” the officer nodded. “We have yet to determine the cause of death,” Detective Diaz said with a pointed look at his officer. Oh, what Buck wouldn't do to see the man be a little mean to him too. Buck honestly hoped Detective Diaz would arrest him. Buck could show him a thing or two with those handcuffs. Not that he’d ever voice that thought out loud.

Absolutely no pressure tagging: @13shadesofanni @lover-of-mine @monsterrae1 @loveyouanyway @thekristen999

@daffi-990 @wikiangela @kitteneddiediaz @steadfastsaturnsrings @ronordmann

@exhuastedpigeon @spagheddiediaz @actuallyitsellie @tizniz @fortheloveofbuddie

@bidisasterevankinard @rainbow-nerdss @wildlife4life @hippolotamus @daniwib

@alliaskisthepossibilityoflove @likeamollusconarock @smallandalmosthonest @idealuk @jshadow01

@shipperqueen6 @lunarspark-cos @misshiss727 @weareallstoriesintheend11 @lin27 @orangeboxfox92 and anyone else who wants to share!! 🥰🩷

[inklings-challenge]

Inklings Archive Dive: 2021 Time Travel

Welcome to the Inklings Archive Dive! Today, we’re exploring the time travel stories written by the members of Team Tolkien during the very first Inklings Challenge. In 2021, writers used at least one of the following seven Christian themes in their stories: Incarnation, Stewardship, Sacrifice, Humility, Grace, Mystery, and Reconciliation. If you’d like to read some of the stories you might have missed, or revisit any favorites, you can check them out with the links below.

2021 Team Tolkien Time Travel Stories

Escape by @ashknife

Fishers of Time by @secret–psalms–saturn (unfinished)

From the Roots to the Leaves by @why-bless-your-heart

Inklings Challenge Story by @alana-k-asby (unfinished): First Act

Rewind by @rockinlibrarian

Tales of a Frozen Sailor by @allisonreader: Masterlist, The Letter, The Book, The Search, The Autopsy, The Donors, The Tour Turned, Challenging the Way, The Interview, Ruth Winters nee Hudson, Story Facts, Snippets, Of Rainbow Portals, A Timely Event, Jessica’s Overview, The Reunion, The Visit, Another Letter, Lost at Home, What Nanna Can Do, A Morning Walk, A Hard Decision, Ruth’s Worries, Her Chest of Letters, Final Wrap-up

The Untethering by @afairmaiden

WatchFaces by @awesomebutunpractical (unfinished)

If you read and enjoy, let the author know with a reblog or a comment! Now go forth and read!

[midnight-els]

WIP Title Ask Meme

Prompt: Make a new post with the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! And then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

Thank you to @tiltedsyllogism for tagging me!

You've all got a lot of choice:

For All Mankind

Americans crossover

Crossover - West Wing

Crossover - WOT

Houston, this is Christmas

Inherited Sins

An Interlude

Interlude SQL

Lake Names

Margo birthday

Margo Sergei phone box sex

MM NYE 1974 - Cover You In Moonlight

Molly Blind Astronaut

She sights a bird

Suits

The Truth

TimeLoop

Ya Got TRoubles

Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries

Case multi chapter

Champagne Problems Sequel

Christmas mystery

Halloween murder

Happy Christmas fic

If It Wasn't For The Nights

JR Body Swap

Letters

Murder Under the Mistletoe cont

No Question

Pool Table Case Fic

Reverse blood on the wheel

Rosie JR Funeral

Valentines Day Fic

Whumptober 1 - Phric

Whumptober 2 - Phryne & Dot

Why not me

Star Trek Voyager

Janeway court martial

Long Live

I am tagging @allatariel @gabolange @moocowmoocow @yamelcakes @eternally-conflicted @galadriel1010 @glamorouspixels and anyone else who wishes to partake!

[andthekitchensinkao3]

Let the WIP Games begin! :3

Thank you to @temporary-enthusiasm for the tag 😀

rules: reveal the titles of the documents in your wip folder and tag as many people as there are documents. Let others ask questions about the ones that interest them and post snippets or explain the contents as you see fit!

Yeah, I’m not gonna lie, I have soooo many WiPs I’m not gonna be able to tag as many people on here. XD It’s not even a humble brag, I’m just a mess of a 40-year-old with too many ideas and not enough time to put them all down in writing. But I’m working on it! One idea at a time. :3 So bear with me, everyone. Moar HankCon (and other pairings) will be in all our futures.

The Kamski Experience - When a team of struggling documentary filmmakers get an invitation to the secret location of Elijah Kamski's newest stab at hospitality, they expect an exclusive peek into the mind of the reclusive genius.

But when the work weekend turns into a deadly game of chess with a masked serial killer, they must each pass a personally customized death trap in order to escape - or die trying.

Wayfarer - AU take on the movie Passengers, but if it were a thriller and the main character and love interest were more equal partners right from the start.

When You’re a Stranger - AU take on the movie Deliver us Fom Evil, in which Connor is a homicide investigator with a psychic streak, and Hank is a (derobed) Lutheran priest now working as freelancing exorcist.

Heart/Soul - set five months after the end of the game. Starting with Connor taking a leap of faith on stage, declaring his love for Hank with an old power ballad from the '80s.

Monochromat - a story set a few months after my first massive HankCon fic, Metamorph; When androids first start disappearing for no apparent reason, there’s no obvious signs of foul play, but then android bodies start showing up all over Detroit. Android life and death semantics aside, it would seem there is a serial killer on the prowl.

Then, to make matters worse, one of the original leaders of Jericho suddenly goes missing without a word. Hank and Connors Mark I and II find themselves racing against the clock, with too much evidence and too little time.

Gambit - another what-if kind of fic branching off a chapter of Metamorph.

... ... ...

And then there are the ones I haven’t even started posting yet. >_>

DBH x Dragon Age Inquisition AU, in which Hank is a former Templar and Connor is a mage on the run. Set right after the botched Conclave.

Mr Stern’s Criminal Conundrums - a silly, fun Ms Fisher’s Murder Mysteries AU in which the honorable Mr Connor Stern is an elegant bachelor by day and all-out flapper fabulosity at night. Solving crime and making men swoon all hours of the live-long day. His ever present adversary-cum-ally is Lieutenant Hank Anderson, who doesn't need this kitten heel/fancy frock BS in his life (but secretly loves it).

Plotbunny Hank/60: At CyberLife Tower, Hank shoots the wrong Connor and completely breaks down. As a direct result, Connor-60 begins questioning everything he thought he knew.

Runaway Man - A The Fugitive (movie) AU, in which Hank is wrongfully accused of killing his ex, and Connor is tasked with hunting him down.

The Mummy AU - with Librarian!Connor and Pilot!Hank tracking down an ancient ruin to retrieve an heirloom of Hank’s (or something far, far worse ;) ). Something he lost a veritable lifetime ago. Featuring ridiculously rich Elijah Kamski headed to the same ancient site in order to find something far more interesting - an artifact promising eternal life; and the Jericho Four as a gang of troublemakers who may or may not be out for the same thing (or just stopping Kamski). Everyone has secrets, and nobody’s safe from whatever lies waiting in the depths of the ruin.

I have woefully neglected two raffle fics I started as well, but more on them in a different post. <3

Last but not least, I have a whole sentence of a PWP that never went anywhere (yet): “One of Connor’s favorite things to do in the bedroom, was watching Hank fuck himself using one of his dildos.”

I TAG EVERYONE WHO FEELS THUS INCLINED LOVE YA! <3<3<3<3<3

[cafeinama]

WIP Wednesday

Current plan is to publish next chapter of you believe in my heart in late july and following/last chapter in early-mid august. Well, the actual calendar dates depends on my life and if my body decides to get sick (knock on wood it doesn't), but I do want no more than a 2-week gap between chapters.

Not exactly an everlark snippet, but inspired by all the times i've been called miss and ma'am when in northern-ish appalachia and it's taken a moment to register that, oh, that's me.

It’s just three of the Fisher boys talking to Annie by the door, so it’s only a matter of icing their mother’s cake and handing them the cardboard box, and she can handle this. “Peeta’s not feeling too well tonight, so I’ll finish off your cake in a bit if you don’t mind waiting,” she says, unable to stop herself from smiling at their faces when she gestures to them inside. “Off the cold, c’mon.” She tries her best to hold back her laughter as she lets them in the kitchen, at the “Will Mister Peeta be fine?” and the “Is Miss Johanna here?” and the “I wish we had a dog too”, because she can do this. “He’ll be fine by tomorrow and, no, Johanna’s not here. Is she aware you’re calling her Miss Johanna now? I should warn you boys that she won’t like that.” They look at each other before the youngest says, “She told us we should only say it if we respect her, and only because she’ll kill us if we call her ma’am again.” Well, yeah, that does sound about right.

[avidbeader]

Rules: Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you asks with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! Then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

I was tagged by @eghfeithrean for this one. Many of my WIPs are published, so a lot of these are actual titles. And there's a LOT of them.

Sheith Fairy Tale Bang

Severance (Sheith, Shiro Saves Keith Week 2023)

Give Me a Sign (Sheith as teachers AU)

Frathouse AU (Sheith)

Misunderstanding (Sheith)

The Legion of Paladins (Sheith, Sheithlentines 2022)

Going My Way? (Sheith meet-cute)

The Icarists (Sheith)

Skydancer (VLD)

QB 17 (Sheith, Quintessential Bond chapter)

Shiro Clones (started gen but may be Sheith)

Ectype (Sheith)

Hey Sweetheart Ideas (for next year's @ficwip event)

Call Against the Tide (Sheith)

Touch Bracelets (Sheith)

Rescue (Sheith)

Wedding Series 4 (Sheith)

When a Wish Comes True (Sheith, Shiro's birthday idea)

Two to Three to Two (Koliveith, Kolisheith, Sheith)

Time Travel (Sheith)

Captive Prince AU (Sheith, not really Captive Prince)

Sense8 AU (VLD)

Lab Results (Sheith)

Lotor Fix-it

The Ring (Sheith)

Olympics AU (Sheith, hopefully co-writing with @lionescence one day)

Kosmo (Sheith)

Allura (Sheith & Allurance)

Mistaken Identity (Sheith)

Ted Lasso 10 years on

Regrouping (Sense8)

Gathering Information (Sense8)

Perils 34 (Harry Potter)

Sherlolly Hogwarts AU (Sherlock, Sherlolly)

Threads (Sherlock, Sherlolly)

mollys ring (Sherlock, Sherlolly)

snowbound (Sherlock, Sherlolly)

lost and found (Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries)

nightmares (Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries)

Suffragette Planet (Doctor Who)

9thdocTWOTcrossover (Doctor Who)

wayofthings (Doctor Who)

mistakenidentity (Doctor Who)

Twelve Clara Rose TenToo There's too many to tag others - play if you want to!

[laiqualaurelote]

first-lines-of-fic meme! I was tagged by @tiltedsyllogism​ (thank you!)

Rules: share the first lines of ten of your most recent fanfics and tag ten people. If you have written fewer than ten, don’t be shy and share anyway!

Starting with the most recent and working backward (I didn’t include ficlets and snippets, which means numbers one and ten on this list make for quite a neat How It Started/How It’s Going circle):

1. all the men and women merely players (Ted Lasso, 15k and counting)

In with the wind blows the news that the Players are coming to town. Trent Crimm hears it in the pub where he is nursing a pint, his throat raw from hours of talking. It’s not much of a pint, if he’s to be honest - he’s not even sure what’s in it. Mae brews it herself - the only way you get any sort of alcohol in the post-pandemic world, if you haven’t been hoarding a cellar since the before-times. He takes another sip, winces and says: “Which players are these?”

2. The Lady With The Recorder Asks The Questions (Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, 6k and counting)

“You took out the line about the threesomes, didn’t you?” 

3. ain't practical, a world you can't touch (The English, 5k)

Just a whole lot of aiming, he’d told Cornelia once. But it’s Martha Myers who misses.

4. maybe everything that dies someday comes back (The English, 14k)

“He don’t look like much,” said the client. “You sure he’s the chap we’re after?”

5. a song that will keep sky open in my mind (The English, 4k)

We knew Eli was back because of the baby. We could hear it crying clean across the wheat fields. By the time we all fetched up in the front yard, Cornelia was already standing at the gate, arms akimbo, watching him ride up to the house. We could not see her expression because she was wearing her veil. 

6. can't start a fire without a spark (Stranger Things, 9k)

It was a whole thing when Eddie Munson and Chrissy Cunningham blew town together and ran off to start a rock band. Or at least it was for the rest of Hawkins, who didn’t have to worry about shit like the world ending on the reg. Steve was busy that summer trying to stop the apocalypse again, so he didn’t pay the news any mind. He’d noticed Chrissy in school, of course – anyone with eyes couldn’t miss the golden girl of Hawkins High – but he had never given Munson a second thought, at least not till Dustin started wheedling him about some concert in Indianapolis.

7. A Gentleman's Guide To Love And Piracy (Our Flag Means Death, 13k)

Day seven of my return to the high seas, wrote Stede in his journal. Since Lucius was no longer around to take dictation, the journal existed only in his head. Morale is low, I will not lie. There remains tension among the crew, especially the ones who tried to eat each other. Prospects still dim on locating the whereabouts of my ship, my other crew and E - 

8. you don't have to be crazy to work here (but it helps) (The Magnus Archives, 1.5k and counting)

“We should get TikTok,” declares Tim.

9. they will see us waving from such great heists (Ted Lasso, 21k)

“You know,” says the American tourist in the Tate Modern’s Surrealism wing, “I do believe that is my favourite telephone in the whole darn exhibition.”

10. The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret (Ted Lasso, 20k)

Trent Crimm hangs up on Nate Shelley and says crisply into the darkness of his living room: “Fucking hell.”

Tagging, if they fancy it: @leupagus​, @nandalorian​, @kiraziwrites​, @themardia, @swallowtailed​, @aberfaeth, @eisoj5​, @sagiow​, @glamorouspixels​, @tovezza​ and @justplainsalty

[foxspirit1928]

Miss Fisher Snippets (216)

Happy Halloween to all whether you believe in ghosts and spirits floating in our realm or, like Jack, you are cynical in the face of mysteries you can’t explain.

(Posted 31-Oct-2024)

[galadriel1010]

🖊 Post a snippet from a current WIP AND 📊 Current number of WIPs

Following On spoilers:

“Good. And more importantly, is this going to win my Marie points with Mrs Stanley?” He gave Jack a weary look. “That woman frightens me.” “She frightens most people with sense.” Jack added the dates to the form, signed it and handed it back. “I think she even frightens Miss Fisher, and no one has accused her of having any.” Heppinstall’s lips curled under his greying moustache. “She must have some.” He stood up and held his hand out. “I’ll see you before you go, but I’ll wish you safe travels now. Now get out of my office.” “Yes, sir. And thank you.”

Current number of WIPs? Uh... 3 actively ongoing (1 original, 2 fic), 2 benched (1 of each), several under starter's orders. I try to keep myself to one main project, but that went wrong some time ago

[goldeneyedgirl]

Ficmas22: Day 3: History Switch

Okay I thought I'd posted snippets of this but apparently not?

But just in case I made it extra long.

This one is based on the idea that Alice was 'recruited' from Mississippi in the late 1800s by Maria, and after running away to join WWI, Jasper ends up in an asylum in Texas, unable to cope with his PTSD. A few details had to be fudged (Jasper would have been born a little later than Alice to be able to go to WWI, and would have been changed in the early 20s, I believe; Alice's relationship with the Cullens is definitely altered.) It was just a fun experiment I'd love to finish because they are so different from their usual selves? I mean, Jasper's still simping for Alice hard, but is this even a Jalice fic if he isn't?

Lil bit of smut in this one. Nothing graphic but definitely implied. Until tomorrow, ducklings!

He sneaks away to join the army when he is sixteen and gets dragged into a war halfway across the world. He’s back less than a year later, wrecked and ruined. Broken. 

He never heals, certainly not fast enough for his family. He might be the first born son, but there is still another boy, and they only needed one to carry on the Whitlock name. 

They call it respite and help. That he’s too strong and difficult and violent to be reasoned with when he’s in one of his episodes. That they will heal him and fix him and send him back home, good as new. 

It is none of those things, and it’s the last time he ever sees his family. 

(For a while, he misses his sisters. Then he doesn’t remember that he has sisters to miss.)

—

Everyone knows of the Brandon girl. The one that’s not all right in the head. 

The one that has an uncanny knack for guessing what’s going to happen. Like that Marlene Fisher’s baby would be stillborn, or the Jenkins boy had drowned long before the search party found him. The gossip is that that’s the only reason that her granddaddy saved Brandon Imports - he gambled on his granddaughter’s oddity and won.

She really is a strange creature, always laughing and dancing and running around town like she’s still a girl and not a woman grown. Her sister is always chasing after her, and everyone worries both Brandon girls will turn out the same.

Especially their father. No one notices the bruises on Mary-Alice anymore; they don’t change anything so why should they care. 

They all think they know how the story will end - Mary-Alice will be a spinster, because no one is interested in her as a bride, trapped in her father’s house laughing at a joke no one else heard. 

Instead, Mary-Alice disappears in the night, walking home from her father’s store. It’s a Friday night, and everyone says that it was the same as always - Mary-Alice might not be good for much, but she is trusted with the money box. The other shop assistant reports that she finished cleaning, donned her coat and hat and gloves, picked up the money box, and bid him good night. That everything was quite normal - the Brandon home was only a twenty minute walk through the park, very safe, and many young women walked unchaperoned through it. 

But she never makes it home. They find her hat and one of her gloves - torn, with blood on it - and nothing more.

—

He wakes up suddenly, as if he was never asleep at all. 

It’s as if this is the first second he has existed. It’s night, and he is alone in the stillness, covered in mud and dried blood. 

He has nothing. 

Just a chain knotted around his wrist with a bent pice of metal that says ‘Jasper W-‘ on it in worn-down letters. 

It’s as good a name as any, honestly. 

He’s more focused on the raw, burning feeling of his throat, and he would do anything to end it, to make it stop. 

(That is his beginning. Alone, thirsty, and left in the mud. If he remembered anything from the war, he’d laugh at the parallels.)

—

There’s one thing that they all agree on - Nettie and Lucy, Peter and Charlotte, Alice, and the other few that last beyond their newborn year. 

You have to be a little bit mad to survive the Southern Wars. You have to let go of everything and anything you know about yourself and simply be. That’s the only way you’re going to make it through to the other side.

Luckily, Alice’s has always been a little be mad. It suits her as well as anything does, and at least now when someone hits her, she can hit them back twice as hard. 

//

He finds her in Philadelphia and he’s in awe of her. Five foot-nothing, in a powder blue ensemble, she’s beautiful. Shiny black hair falls to her collar bones, and her lips are painted shiny red. She’s slim and tiny and utterly covered in half-moon scars, and he’s like a moth to a flame. 

(Even after decades together, he will still be obsessed with her hair. The way it tries desperately to curl when she leaves it alone; the way she twists it and braids it and ties it up a million different ways. The one curl by her left eye that seems to escape every single time. How soft it is, and how he’s the only one that she lets touch it, let’s only him stretch those hopeful little wannabe-curls out. But then, he could wax lyrical about every part of her, of her orange-red eyes that are so big and round that they make her seem more like a doll than a person right up until she gets her hands on some cosmetics and lines her eyes with kohl and glitter to look like a devilish dream. She’s so perfect, so unbearably beautiful to him.) 

For her, it’s like coming home to someone she’s missed dearly, the person whose face she’s been looking for in the crowds. He’s perfect in all the ways she can count, and he smells exactly right and he’s just… beautiful, even in an ill-fitting coat and bare feet, looking slightly bewildered when she approaches him. (He’s hungry, starving; she knows that immediately. He flinches when she reaches for him, only relaxing when he registers the glove she’s wearing. She’s not sure if she wants to laugh or hug or start sobbing because she’s waited for him forever.)

//

She knows about the empty space where his human memories should rest, like dusty, forgotten books. Somehow she uses her memories to fill his spaces, to give him back some of his understanding of family and humanity without shaming his own lacking biography. 

Apropos of nothing, she will tell him her story in little fragments, like pages torn from a book and tossed into the air. 

“Mother was terribly unstable after my sister was born. She used to hit, used to scream and rage. Then I walked into the sitting room one day when I was twelve and she had hanged herself from the chandelier,” she had told him, as if she was commenting on the weather as they watch a woman hurry down the street with her children, her arm looped in his. 

Or

“Oh, we had an orchard behind our house! We had peaches, though. I used to make myself utterly ill on them when I was small - I’d climb the trees and sit in the branches with the fruit gathered in my skirt,” she bounces as she descends towards the neat rows of trees, tugging him along behind her, and there’s a memory made as she kisses him in the branches of apple trees.

//

She wears three necklaces, always has - a little gold cross she took off a body down south; a brass one with ‘Alice’ in script that he bought her years ago at a street fair; and a little amethyst flower with tiny tanzanite leaves. 

That necklace is her legacy - one of ten her father designed to display in the shop window, to attract wealthy clients. He had claimed there was one for each of the women in his life - Diamond for her mother, sapphire for her grandmother, ruby for her stepmother, amethyst for Alice, and pink sapphire for Cynthia. Opal, topaz, aquamarine, pearl, and emerald rounded out the collection, for his sisters and cousins. 

“He’d talk about them as if they were gifts to us, a token of his love for us,” Alice had sighed, as he examined it closely. “They weren’t. They were props, to make him seem like a loving man. To make us seem like high society, to lure in the rich.

“I spoilt it all when I stole Mother’s and through it into her grave when no one was looking. The collection was incomplete then, and no one wanted to buy the set from him with two missing. Went back when I was eighteen and stole mine right from the cabinet one night. I figured I deserved it since I would never need a dowry,” she had said carelessly, and he understands how hard she fought to keep that delicate necklace. That it is the tragedy of her human family, the victory of her own rebellion, and her private legacy in one tiny necklace. 

It’s nearly a year after they meet that he shows her the chain with the tag that gave him his name. He feels ashamed when he confesses he doesn’t even know if Jasper is his name, it was just all he had. 

Alice had kissed him hard, and held the chain so carefully. “It’s yours now, if you still want it. If we can ever find out your story, find your first name, then you can use whichever one you want.”

There’s something freeing in that, that Alice accepts him exactly as he is, borrowed name and all. He asks her to keep the chain safe for him. He expects her to zip it up in the little pouch she pins to the inside of her clothing, but instead she puts it around her neck. 

“I’ve got you,” is all she says, tucking the disc down the front of her top. 

//

When it comes to the south, Alice tells them all stories that say everything but nothing. Maria looms large in those tellings, a vicious and conniving warlord with no empathy and less compassion. She tells of her own abduction like it’s some kind of comedy of errors, her years as a soldier as a hard-knock life.

He knows better. He knows what her survival cost her, and what haunts her in the dark. He knows that Maria built her from her ashes, strung her together like her personal little marionette. He finds teeth marks on the inside of her legs and is horrified at the implications until Alice tells him the entirety of her and Maria, of at least a decade wrapped up in each other. Simultaneous parasites, Alice says as she twists her fingers in his hair. 

“She didn’t make me a good or nice person, Jas. She made me into something monstrous, something vile and rotten. And I made her manipulative, vicious, cruel.” She shakes her head. “It wasn’t love or like or anything good. It was destructive.”

The idea of Alice and Maria together makes him pause, only because he hadn’t considered the two of them like that before. He spent his life haunting libraries, yes, but he had always been invested in world histories, in the biographies of great men. Salacious novels had never been to his tastes. The only people he spoke to were his victims. He’s socially stunted, so behind, that he finds himself faltering in the face of so many new things. Alice seems to know when he needs her guidance, an explanation. And she’s never seemed to falter telling him the uglier things she’s seen and done. 

Perhaps there was subtext he missed in all her stories of Maria. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s had to stop and spell something out. 

But the very idea of someone else seeing Alice like this, with her slip pushed up her thighs and her breast exposed as she reclines in the bed makes him feel snappish and possessive, makes him crawl up the bed and cage her body underneath his, his arms bracing him on either side of her head. 

“You’re mine now,” he says in a low voice, and she leans up to snag a kiss, a desperate pleading kiss that he resists for a moment before he sinks against her, against violet-and-moonshine scented satin and moon-white limbs, against the flutter of her hair against his cheek.

“All yours,” she says breathlessly, and it’s girlish and giddy and so very genuine that he falls a little bit more in love with her (as if there is a bottom of the well that he feels for her). 

//

Peter is a tall, skinny, and vaguely sly man who was changed at twenty-two-ish with a mop of blond-brown hair and a suave grin that makes Jasper not trust him. 

He trusts him less when he sweeps Alice into a hug with, “Hello beautiful,” practically purred at her. And Alice just laughs and hugs him back. 

Peter’s mate is a sugar-sweet looking girl named Charlotte with strawberry blonde curls and eyes just a little too far apart for her to considered conventionally beautiful. Around the same age as Peter when she was recruited, she smiles politely at Jasper and hugs Alice briefly. 

He’s aggravated to discover Alice and Peter’s history from Peter’s never-ending innuendo; his emotions are joking and light, there is no attraction or lust or bitterness directed towards him or Alice. Some curiosity. And it’s reassuring that Peter isn’t looking for something from Alice, but the way he moves around her, talks to her… it makes Jasper irritated. 

(They’ve only been together a few years, and he still finds himself a little awkward around her. Like when to take her hand, and when to steal a kiss, and when to start unzipping her clothes. Alice says it’s because he was alone for twenty years, with no maker to guide him and no memories to remind him. That he’s still finding his rhythm, and she doesn’t mind being the one to take his hand or pressing surprise kisses to his cheeks. 

“It doesn’t help you’re so tall,” Alice says but with a flicker of delight in her emotions. She dances around the fact that she loves their size difference, that she adores feeling precious and protected for once in their life, with him at her side. That every part of being with him makes her feel less like the killer, monster, soldier that she spent so very long being.)

//

The thing is, he knows she’s not normal. She knows it too. And she has no excuse. Maybe it’s the visions. Maybe she really was nuts as a human and it came with her that night Maria found her in the park. Alice thinks it was years in a vampire army that curdled her brain - or finished the job, at least. 

But he loves his half-feral, crazy wife. He loves that she laughs too loud and asks strange questions and has no sense of modesty or propriety. He loves that all the shadows and spaces on his body line up with her slender curves, that she moves over him with awe and lust in her eyes every single time; that the reverence in her gaze and her mood are better attributed to some greek god than his sharp, bony frame. 

That for every comment whispered across a locker room or behind hands that he’s weak or sickly or somehow lacking, Alice is there with her eyes full of him and only him. That she’s not above a filthy kiss in a classroom to stake her claim and remind everyone - including him - that he is utterly desirable, the heart-throb and prince of her story. That their easy dismissal of him is the joke she’s always laughing at.

He doesn’t bother to try to explain to their family that he had nothing before he woke up in the middle of what he assumes was Texas, alone and unknowing. It was only old dog tags with ‘Jasper W-’, the surname worn away, knotted around his wrist to give him a name. Ragged clothing and old dog tags - he had nothing else. And then he found her and she grounded him, tethered him into a time and place at her side. That she had poured out everything he ever needed before she’d even kissed him for the first time. 

She’d been upfront too, looking him in the eye at her grand height of five feet high, that she was a mess but maybe they could be a mess together. He’d initially assumed she meant the scars, but it had taken him only a few hours to realise that the scars were nothing. 

(He loves the scars, loves pinning her to the mattress so she can’t squirm away, and reopening them, pressing his own venom into her tissue to make every single of them his; to make her his for forever and a day. She hisses and cries but she still begs with him not to stop, to at least fuck her as he tears her open. If he could, he’d carve open her chest and take her heart for his own; a bloody trophy she’d be all too willing to give.) 

That Alice might be crazy, unpredictable and volatile, but in her heart of hearts, she’s soft and fragile and ephemeral; a girl who is half rabid and terrified of slowing down and desperate to be loved as she is. That only he sees the vulnerable part of her, when Esme gets frustrated with her riddles and double talk, when Rosalie gets angry at her constant innuendo, when Edward storms out at her twisted little thoughts, he stays at her side. 

He watches her face fall when one of their classmates calls her crazy, insinuate things about her to the new girl; feels her lean against him, her emotions a cocktail of disappointment and shame and hurt; one that makes him drop a kiss to the top of her head, to take her hand. Every school in every place claims Alice struggles with impulse control, from calling out inappropriate things in class, to skipping school, to having sex with Jasper in empty classrooms. It’s not like the Cullens can explain all the pieces that make up Alice - the ostracised daughter, the vampire soldier, the powerful psychic, the repentant murderer… that she still struggles with the unspoken rules, with remembering she’s supposed to be human, acting like a human teenager.

But she does try - she has a whole section of her closet dedicated to high school clothing that she carefully curates from magazines and online. Her own tastes opt for couture, for vintage dresses and cocktail dresses. She mutters and complains as she is forced to pick out ‘school approved’ garments - today’s ensemble is a graphic t-shirt, a satiny red skirt that glides against her thighs in a way that should be illegal, and shimmery tights. Her hair hangs in loose waves to her collarbone, and she’s perfectly lovely. A normal human girl would burn to be as genuinely pretty as Alice is.

"You're biased," she sighs when he tells her that. "And stop saying that in front of Rose, you know it pisses her off."

//

The nomads are sauntering towards them with the arrogance of predators. They are dirty and blood-stained and look every bit threatening as a vampire should. 

Alice is standing beside him, and he’s reassured that she’s wearing a long sleeved shirt under her baseball shirt; leggings, a mini-skirt and knee-high socks; it means the only scars that can be seen are Maria’s and his (he hates it, a little, that her Cullen choker covers up those scars like there is something shameful about her past, that she should regret her marks.) 

He feels like a traitor, thinking that. But it wouldn’t be the first time that a nomad has come across the family, seen Alice’s scars and things have gone sour. He wants her beside him, safe, unthreatened by these nomads - she looks utterly innocent and harmless, with her hair twisted up into cute little buns. 

He washes the females of their group in mundanity and it should be enough, it should make things easier. Except Alice reaches out and grabs his arm, her eyes flashing to their whites as she utters his name. It’s a bad vision, one that has her emotions punch him straight in the chest and scatter his intention - her horror and shock and rage. 

The vision lasts seconds and Alice’s knees buckle for a second before she is rigid and furious. 

It’s just enough time for Jasper’s influence to fade from the nomads, for them to take stock of the Cullen family. 

And James’ face stretches into a delighted grin, his pleasure sickening as he moves closer. 

“Major Jasper Whitlock! What an unexpected surprise!” 

“Do I know you?” 

Alice is full-on growling now, her body leaning forwards and he’s suddenly and intensely aware of how much she’s restraining herself, how angry she is. 

“I never thought that you’d make it this far.” James is pacing back and forth right now. “And you brought a snack!”

“Get Bella out of here, Edward.” Alice’s voice is low and angry and he’s not sure if he should hold her back or get everyone else clear of whatever is about to happen. He’s seen Alice fight before, when they were travelling together and the nomads then weren’t nearly as high stakes as this moment. 

But this man knew who he had been. Major Whitlock? That was more than he’d ever had before. 

“Alice, please,” he murmurs but Alice is already slinking forward.

“Don’t, Jasper,” is all she says. And then she lunges. 

—

The fight is not fast, but it is thorough. Laurent gets away missing a hand, and Victoria’s face is disfigured, but James is shredded and strewn around Alice, her shirt torn and her eyes black. 

She’s practically trembling as James’ remains burn, and Jasper pushes aside the horror of the Cullens, of finally seeing what Alice is capable of when threatened. 

It’s not fear that has Alice coiled up; the tension is primal - ready for the next attacker, ready to fight, still processing the threat to her mate and coven. The absolutely rage and terror has her limbs alight for the next strike, and he moves forward cautiously, telegraphing his movements as he gets closer. Her eyes track him as he gets closer before his scent catches her and her body visibly relaxes, a flash of a vision passing over her as she reaches out to pull  him closer. 

“I let the other two get away,” she mumbles into his shirt. “He was a goddamn monster.”

“You got them good, though,” he says, his hands gentle on her back.

//

Alice is quiet after the Cullens’ meeting; he finds her up to her nose in a bubble bath. But it’s not the usual bubble bath, where there is incense burning - the stuff that smells like forest flowers and moss - and Alice’s hair is tied up in a scarf with some pointless but indulgent green face mask on, music playing, and maybe a magazine held just above the bubbles. 

No, her hair hangs wet and lank in the water and half stuck to her face. Her eyes are a dark gold, even after hunting. She just lies there, staring, and he leaves her be.  

He doesn’t say anything, not even the she pads out of the bathroom in actual pyjama bottoms and an oversized t-shirt; not one of her lingerie sets that she takes so much pride in teasing him with. Her hair is still wet and she looks inhuman and sad. 

He opens his arms to her, and she reaches for him, as they curl together on their bed. She buries her face in his neck, and then she tells him everything that she saw - that James was involved in his change, that James had known him back at some kind of hospital and had hunted him to his death.  

That Jasper had once been Major Jasper Whitlock. 

That there had been someone on Jasper’s side. Another vampire who had not lived to see through Jasper’s change. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry that I couldn’t let you find out more… he would have attacked; we would have gotten hurt.” Her lips graze his neck as she speaks and he hears what she’s saying but he doesn’t listen. He can’t. It’s so much more than he’s ever had before that it doesn’t seem real. 

Major Jasper Whitlock. It feels like a joke. So many years he thought that his name was nothing more than borrowed boots, but it was his all along. That someone had cared enough to make sure he had that little token with him through the change. That awakening alone had never been the plan, just a tragedy. 

Her fingers trace under his shirt, dipping around his ribs and he tightens his grip on her. It’s easier to focus on her right now, when he’s feeling so distant from everything with the new information rattling around in his brain.

He’s sorry she washed her hair; the little pigtail-buns were cute and made her eyes bigger. He could drown in those eyes, gold and ochre and lemon. Or scarlet, ruby, burgundy. Whatever colour she has, they swallow him whole every time. 

If they got married now, he wouldn’t have to be Jasper Brandon, he realises suddenly. They don’t talk about marriage - Alice says it’s a Cullen thing, that they don’t need to be married. But he still thinks about it, and wonders if she rejects it because she still hates herself for some of the things she did in the south, because of how steadfastly she rejected it as a human. 

She’d be Alice Whitlock now. That makes him feel odd; a little guilty that he’s somehow letting her down wanting her to take his name even when she’s mentioned a lot of times she hates it. Hates Brandon and the human life she lived. 

//

There’s smoke and yelling and he cannot see or hear her anywhere on the field. There’s too many people to filter out emotional flavours and panic is beginning to rise in his chest. 

Alice isn’t dead. Alice can’t be dead. There isn’t a world without Alice. He doesn’t exist without Alice. He doesn’t know how to be without her. 

Panic is like stinging nettles and running out of air underwater. Every fragment of body scattered on the battlefield could be her. 

It feels like someone has carved away half his chest. 

Then Emmett is there, grabbing him by the shoulders - Emmett has a nasty bite mark and a long scratch down his arm, and one over his eye.

“Jasper, what is it?”

His knees are buckling and he can’t get the words out. The family knows he gets depressed, gets anxious. But they never see the panic attacks - he hasn’t had one in a good amount of time, and Alice is the one that takes care of him then,  takes him somewhere quiet or says something outrageous so that everyone is too busy being annoyed or shocked to notice him. He needs her violet-and-liquor scent to ground him and she’s not here, she’s not fucking here. 

It’s because she’s dead, he knows it. There are pyres scattered all over the battlefield, the smoke a gathering haze around their ankles. 

“Alice,” he croaks and Emmett’s eyes widen in understanding, in terrible comprehension. 

“She’s here, I saw her tangling with Caius,” Emmett says, looking around. That’s worse, somehow; he knows she’s lethal, a death wish in a cocktail dress, but Caius. The one who destroyed the werewolves, who is legendary for his fighting skills. Not his Alice, no. 

Peter and Charlotte are heading over, and the tangle of panic and outside emotions round him feels like an ice shelf cracking, like something has to break inside him for it all to stop. Charlotte immediately goes to him; he doesn’t need a mirror to know he looks haunted and hollow, and Peter darts off. 

He’ll find her body and bring it for me to burn. Then he can finish me off is the most lucid of his thoughts and the look of horror on Emmett’s face, of shock on Charlotte’s makes him realise he’s said it aloud. 

//

Suddenly she’s limping from the back of the field, tossing Caius’ head onto the fire without ceremony. She’s a mess, with a crack spiralling from the corner of her mouth to her ear. Her eyes are black, and her shirt is torn open. He can’t see why she’s limping but she is, quite obviously. There is something utterly inhuman about her in that moment, like a righteous deity arriving to deal out bloody justice. 

As his eyes meet hers, all the steel in her stance melts away and he realises with a shock that she had assumed the worst too. Assumed that he was gone. Assumed that the battle had cost her him.

She slams into him, or he into her, he’s not sure because they were both moving. She smells mostly like ashes and venom and smoke, but she’s a secure weight in his arms, holding so tight to him, as they fall to the grass clinging to the other. 

I love you I love you I love you

I thought you were gone

I thought I’d lost you

I’m here

[dangerpronebuddie]

WIP Tag Game

Tagged by @tizniz @diazsdimples thank you!! 🩵💚

RULES: Make a new post with the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! And then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

The amount of wips I have is insane 😅, so I picked the ones most likely to actually be finished sometime (🤞):

Big Damn Hero

Like Bloodstained Wood

BTHB: Severed Artery

BTHB: Verbal Abuse

The Sub Eddie fic

Clipboard Buck sparks Eddie's queer awakening

Slight Air and Purging Fire

Cause I'ma Stay Through It All

Miss Fisher AU

Hanging By A Moment

I feel like I might sink and drown and die

Ooh, When You Bite Your Lip

Oh What A Way To Die 2

Tags:

@lover-of-mine @monsterrae1 @loveyouanyway

@ronordmann @steadfastsaturnsrings @daffi-990 @kitteneddiediaz

@inell @exhuastedpigeon @hippolotamus @thekristen999 @theotherbuckley @slowlyfoggydestiny and anyone else who's interested!! 🥰🩷

[timetravelbypen]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

I have been tagged by @eriadu-in-the-wildwood, thank you!! :D

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

25 (so many and also not enough!!)

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

211,662

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Doctor Who! *TARDIS noise*

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

we never said our love was evergreen

Two Idiots in a Box

In This World of Strangers, I Belong to Someone

Even Now, There's Time

Take Me Home

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I do, yeah! I love chatting with people in the comments. :D

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Hmmm maybe baggage that one was very angsty...

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Probably In This World of Strangers, I Belong to Someone, because it's an AU and so they can be happy and in love forever. So much so that there's a fluffy as heck sequel thing. :D

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Not that I'm aware of!

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

*blushes forever* I have written only one M-rated fic ever and it was a CHALLENGE, you're welcome/I'm sorry.

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

I haven't but I want to steal the vibes of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries and put it into a Thasmin fic. Someday. Maybe.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Oh I hope not...

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

You know someone asked me if they could once and I thought it was spam honestly I didn't realize this was a thing? Sorry to that person!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Oh yes! to know how it ends and still begin to sing it again (as if it might turn out this time), teamed up with @eriadu-in-the-wildwood, it was awesome :D

14. What's your all-time favourite ship?

Thasmin has taken over my life, it's fine.

15. What's a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

I haven't published anything that I'm in the middle of, but I have many a plot bunny hopping around in my brain, I hope they all make it to the writing-and-sharing stage eventually.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Oh goodness I don't know, I think I'm pretty good at dialogue, and at some nice interior monologues and feelings.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Plotting is hard. Also I have a tendency to go on a bit, which I absolutely indulge in fic writing and perhaps should not...

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I wouldn't ever do something lengthy, but a little snippet I could probably sneak in. Particularly if it's in French or Italian and I could be relatively confident in my ability to fact-check Google translate, heh.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Oh was it Lord of the Rings first or Phantom of the Opera first? One of those two!

20. Favourite fic you've ever written?

Wait I have to pick one?? D: Hmmmm I think for right now I'll say falling down the stairs (of your love) because I got to fit so many things I like into one story.

Thanks for the tag!! I shall tag... @highlyillogicalandroid @aleksandrachaev @fuxdeiflswued @elephant-in-the-pride-parade If you all are so inclined! :)

[muse-oleum]

Blind Dates OC Challenge: Lady Victoria Crawley

Fandoms: Downton Abbey/Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries

Time period: 1920s/30s

Face claim: Elisa Cifuentes in Las Chicas del Cable

So, hum, I haven't written on here in a veryyyy long time, forgive my rustiness. I've been toying with an idea for a crossover between Downton Abbey and Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries ever since I first watched the shows, because it just makes sense lol. This is my introduction to Lady Victoria Crawley, fourth and last child of Lord and Lady Grantham.

I wanted to participate in @mercurygray 's Blind Dates OC challenge, and thought it would be the perfect opportunity for me to write something *not* academia related. I hope you enjoy this first snippet of Victoria and perhaps there shall be more...

Victoria missed the Antipodes. She missed Christmas in the sun, the hustle and bustle of the city, the constant activity she had known for the past two years, living far away from home and yet as alive as she had ever felt. But she missed her friends the most.

She missed Phryne’s laugh and Dot’s sweet smile; she missed Jack’s skepticism and Hugh’s clumsiness, and even her two favorite commies had found a place in her heart, though she would deny it if anyone asked. They would happily throttle her if they ever heard her use that word, but she couldn’t help it, annoying them tickled her. 

But most of all she missed Mac. 

Mac and her stern attitude hiding a softness that few people ever truly got to witness. Mac and her sardonic replies to Phryne’s less than stellar ideas—and there had been many; how she’d survived this far, she’d never understand. Mac and the way she smiled softly just for her, even when she thought Victoria couldn’t see. 

She missed that smile most of all. 

Here, in England, it was so much harder to let herself truly be. But with Mac, tentatively at first, and then more fully once they’d both understood the coast was clear, that they would be safe with each other, it had been different. With her almost two decades more of experience, Mac had been a friend, at first, someone whom she could trust with her most damning secret, before it had morphed into something more. 

And just as quickly, Victoria had been called back to England, her grand-mother on her deathbed, asking for her. She hadn’t seen her once in the last two years, not since she’d left Downton behind after yet another row with her father, neither willing to bend before she’d decided to break instead. But the Dowager Lady Grantham was not someone to be refused and when she had demanded of her youngest grand-daughter that she should write to her, Victoria had made a half-hearted promise that she would. 

She regretted not keeping it, now. 

1928 was proving a difficult year for her family. Between her grand-mother’s illness, her mother’s tiredness (a false alarm, thankfully) and her own problems to face, returning to Downton in mourning had not been something to look forward to. She had left angry and she'd returned apprehensive. 

Mac would have helped, but she could hardly bring her to England while her family mourned yet another passing. She had offered, of course, wanting to be there for her as Victoria had been in the past, insisting that she could take a room at the Grantham Arms, that no one would be the wiser… But it was a lie and they both knew it. Lying, after all, was an art they had mastered; anyone in their position had to be a damn good liar in order to survive. 

And now, as she sat in the library, alone with the fire cracking in the grate, the quiet of the Abbey playing with her nerves, she wondered why she’d come home at all. And could she still call it home? It wasn’t anymore, not really. Home was with Phryne and Mr Butler, waiting for the next case to drop so they could make sure to crash down at the station, taking perverse pleasure in eviscerating Jack’s well-laid plans in moves that would have had her parents tying themselves into knots. He complained—a lot—but she knew he secretly loved it. 

She also knew that he was not so secretly half in love with Phryne, but she had an inkling that he’d rather be caught dead than admitting it. So she hadn’t pushed… yet. 

The door to the library opened, pulling her back to the present. 

“I thought I’d find you in here,” Edith said, closing the door softly behind her. 

Once upon a time, if someone had asked her which of her three elder sisters she’d most looked up to in her youth, she would have said Sybil. But after her death, she had grown closer to Edith, finding a source of comfort in her sister’s embrace, and amusement at the shrewdness she so easily disguised as passiveness. She had admired that; her ability to hide what she was feeling almost to the point of quasi-invisibility. A wallflower, that’s what Mary had called her, once, when she was feeling particularly vindictive. 

Edith may look like a flower, with her honey-blonde hair with a dash of red, which they’d both inherited from their father, her pink lips and beautiful green eyes, but she could be a thorny one too, and Mary often seemed to forget that. Victoria, on the other hand, had always been much quieter than either of her dark-haired sisters, trying to find her place as the youngest of four—and the disappointment of everybody’s hopes. But she and Edith were alike, and it had only become more apparent as they grew from girlhood to womanhood. 

Perhaps because of the age difference between Mary and herself, Victoria had never found herself on the cutting edge of her eldest sister’s sharp wit. If anything, she suspected that Mary was quite fond of her, if a little distant, as was natural for an eldest facing much larger troubles than the rearing of her littlest sister. While their twelve years difference had put a certain distance between Mary and herself, Edith and Sybil had loved to play with her, and, when the time came, taught her much more than their mother when it came to matters of the heart. And she'd learnt much.

Or at least as much as she could learn from two sisters for whom there had never been the slightest doubt that they would marry a man.

In truth, if Victoria thought long and hard about it, she remembered certain looks and allusions that Sybil had dropped, which made her think that perhaps she had known, just a bit, what her little sister was only just discovering. But then she'd died and left a gaping hole in their family that would never truly heal. 

But Edith, Victoria thought, would understand. Edith, she could tell, one day. 

“I’m very predictable,” she answered, smiling, laying her long-forgotten book on her lap. 

Her sister threw her a disbelieving look. “I wouldn’t say that,” Edith said, sitting down on the sofa next to her. “I still remember the shock on Mama’s face when you hurled yourself out of the door two years ago. Personally, I applauded you.”

“Of course you did,” she laughed, rolling her eyes. 

They fell silent, Edith lost in contemplation of the fire and Victoria pondering the qualities of sisters. On the tea table, a picture of her grandmother, all blonde curls and so young, taunted her. She quickly averted her eyes, unsettled by the clear blue gaze of a woman who was not here to scold her anymore. She noticed her sister looking at her, her eyes saddened by their recent loss but heavy with something else.

“There’s something I’d like to tell you.”

Victoria looked up from the cover of her book which she’d been fingering absent-mindedly, the silence between them natural enough that she had almost forgotten her sister’s presence. 

“It’s about Marigold.”