#set the stage

[aivicart]

An old piece I did for @hqmmzine , a Haikyuu mystery AU zine !! Kenma and Akaashi are teaming up for ‘Case 2: The Masquerade’ :) The full zine is free to download so check out the zine page for the link!!

[whats-in-a-sentence]

"I set the stage, lad," Fizban said cunningly. "I didn't give you a script. The dialogue has been all yours."

"DragonLance Chronicles: Dragons of Spring Dawning" - Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

[nyamadermont]

Setting the Stage

#FFF184 Set the Stage

@flashfictionfridayofficial

Avatar: The Legend of Korra

901 words

[Image ID: A rectangle with vertical red stripes like a stage curtain, with the text “#FFF184 Set the Stage” centered in white.]

Today’s the day.

Kya’s mind was already racing before her eyes opened. She took stock of the sunlight and shadows outside, and gave herself about six hours.

The hospital was aware that calling her in had best be for a very short list of very serious reasons, at least three of which were not physically possible (to her knowledge). She knew Opal and Jinora were serious about their boyfriends, but none of them were becoming parents any time soon. Lin was out of town, so should not be in any danger whatsoever of winding up on a surgical table. And her mother was safely at the South Pole, under Senna’s watchful eye.

She wriggled under the sheets, greedily stretching out in all directions. She contracted her stomach to sit upright and stretch with a playful groan.

The cool breeze from the window thrilled her skin, and spread a smile across her face.

Time to get busy!

With unaccustomed speed, she cleaned up, got dressed, and ate a decent breakfast.

The whole time, she was nearly dancing with excitement.

Her list was ready. Her money was ready. Her (ok, Lin’s) sato was ready. Now, for everything else.

The pickup at the dress shop? Too much fun to rush. Done.

Swinging in at the tailor’s? Can’t turn down the offer of tea. That would be rude. But soon enough, done.

A stop by the florist? Done in minutes.

A last pass through the grocery store? Took about ten minutes too long, but done.

Everything collected, Kya struck out for the park.

She pulled into the lot and parked. The cart she brought wasn’t quite big enough for everything, so suddenly, she had a bit of a problem. One hand on her hip, she glared at her car, thinking hard.

“Hey, Kya!”

The voice carried from far across the parking area. She turned to see Korra and Asami, hand in hand, walking over in her direction. She watched them, clearly happy to see her, but still quite focused on each other. She felt about four different smiles cross her face before the pair made it close enough for hugs.

Asami took a step back, and gave her predicament a professional appraisal. “Could you use a couple of hands carrying a few things?” Kya could see the narrowed eyes, the tightly restrained smirk.

I think she’s on to me.

“Hands? Who needs hands? You have the Avatar at your service!”

With that, Korra swirled her hands, and lifted the cart on a tightly spun wheel of air. Kya and Asami laughed, but pulled out the final few items. They wandered through the park until they came up to a small pavilion with a low stone table.

In just a moment, the girls had set up a small tent, hanging the two garment bags inside. Korra’s airbending came in handy as she strung lights and a few red curtains in strategic locations around the pavilion's eaves.

Asami took charge of the food and flowers, laying out a luscious display on the table and setting the cushions just as Kya would have. When she stepped back, she noticed Korra was settling back to the ground. Kya’s back was turned and Asami waved to attract Korra’s attention. With some vigorous eyebrow wiggles and wide-eyed encouragement, she finally got through Korra’s obliviousness.

Korra gasped.

Kya snapped up straight. “Korra? What’s wrong?”

Korra’s face lit up. “You’re just setting the stage, aren’t you?” She clasped her hands close to her chest. “Can we watch from over,” she whirled around and saw a far too-small bush just below the foot of the bridge. “There! That’s the same bush I hid in my first day in Republic City!”

She turned her eager face back to Kya, whose bemused grin gave Asami all the clue she needed to get the Avatar as far away as possible.

“Korra, dear, you promised Meelo.”

Korra looked confused. “Promised him what?”

Asami rolled her eyes dramatically before giving Kya a sideways glance. “Someone has to look out for them, right?”

Kya just laughed and hugged them both. “Thank you. I have a lot more time because of your help. I think we’ll see you later tonight.”

Asami was still laughing when Kya couldn’t see them anymore.

She picked up the basket of peonies and walked back to the car. Retracing her steps one more time, she laid them in an obvious path to the pavilion, leading right up to the tent. She ducked inside, and a few minutes later, emerged from the other side.

She settled onto her cushion to wait.

Lin said the two words she was asked to, then nothing again for several minutes.

Kya stood in her fitted blue suit, the setting sun lighting her from behind.

Lin emerged from the tent in the long-sleeved, deep-cut, high-slit emerald dress, her feet bare on the grass.

Kya stepped forward with a cup of tea.

Lin stared at her as Kya placed the cup in her hands and gently pushed her to drink. Lin held her gaze and drank.

She blinked and lowered the cup. She blinked rapidly several times before waving her hand above it.

A small gold ring floated up into her hand. She looked at Kya.

“You want me?”

Kya just nodded, her eyes bright.

Lin clenched the ring in her hand and leaned forward for a kiss.

“Yes,” they said in unison.

[onceuponanaromantic]

the quirks of precipitation

(Written for @flashfictionfridayofficial​‘s prompt FFF184: Set the Stage. Enjoy!)

             A young woman places her hands down on the table. “The Agency suspects that you’re the one behind the diplomat’s information being stolen at the Acheron Ball.”

             “Oh?”

           She sighs. “They think the green fire that took the stage and distracted everyone was your doing. And that it’s all a distraction so that someone could steal information from that diplomat.”

           “They would be right about that.”

           “The problem is that they’ve now sent a student as your next assistant to try to figure out how you did it while having no weapons or tools on you, and only having access to the tablecloths of all things before that.”

                       The alchemist looks up. “In fairness, I didn’t do the actual stealing. Merely, ah, setting the stage.”

 --

                         The lab is quiet except for the steady drip of a pale green liquid into a flask and the rattling of the outer pane of the window. The sunlight paints the alchemist’s face golden, though upon first sight, she hadn’t found anything particularly remarkable about her. Her face was plain by the standards of the faerie, and all she wore on her within the lab was a white lab coat stained at the pockets and sleeves.

             “It helps if you keep your wrist still.” She nearly starts at the voice, though the alchemist doesn’t appear to have taken her eyes of her own work. “Rest your elbow against the table and tilt the flask slightly.”

             She looks down at the splatter of blue-green sediment that had gotten out of the flask at her latest drop. Another drop spilled out, making the liquid inside shake ominously.

             “What am I supposed to be seeing if this works?” she asks curiously, “Because I don���t think this is working.”

             The alchemist looks up at her briefly. “Oh, you’ll notice the difference. Trust me on that.”

             It takes her until nearly sunset to see the pale bronze form on the surface of the bottle. It turns out, the bronze only forms when the blue settles and she had been agitating it too much.

             And of all the things, the alchemist just takes the blue liquid and uses it as ink.

 --

On the afternoon of the fifth day she’s there, a young woman comes around midday, her pants fluttering about her ankles and the charms on her earrings swinging in the wind she brings.

 “I’ve brought you lunch. And those notes you requested from the Eastern library.” She says, swinging herself easily onto one of the stools near where the alchemist is filling in some sort of table. “I expect you to eat it.”

 “Is this your latest attempt at poisoning me, Astoria?” The alchemist asks, turning back to your work. “I need to finish this experiment.”

 There’s a loud popping noise from where the flame encounters the flask.

 The young woman heaves a long-suffering sigh. “I make your favourite, since you’ve been spending days on end in the lab, and this is the thanks I get.” She notices the assistant, turning to look at her. “Oh, you must be her latest victim. Do you want some?”

 She doesn’t recall anything about another sister, apart from the famous assassin, but all the same, she looks warily at the food before hastily looking away before the woman can catch her.

 “I haven’t poisoned it.” Astoria says, her eyes smiling.

“Go ahead and eat.” The alchemist says, continuing to poke at the bronze substance from earlier, writing something on the strange rough paper. “I’ll eat when I’m done.”

“She refuses to type out her notes.” The assistant says. “Says she likes the feeling of paper better.”

 --

 “Does she possess any skill in combat?” she finally asks, after a week or two of Astoria’s visits.

“Nope.” Astoria says.

“Metallurgy?”

“Nope.”

“Does she do this all the time?” She says despairingly. She had long since began to suspect that the Agency was wrong and there was nothing this alchemist was capable of except boring her to death with constant dripping of liquids. Really, the only excitement was when she briefly set fire to some strange metal, but it flickered out just as quickly, far from enough to actively hurt anyone.

 “Yep.”

“So can she fight at all?”            Astoria’s eyes take on a keen glint, even as she stares into the distance. The alchemist had gone out, because she needed a sample of something or another, leaving her and Astoria alone in the lab, ostensibly to keep an eye on some of the longer running experiments. She had noted that, but she didn’t do anything interesting with the samples, so she hadn’t bothered continuing to update on that.

 “What makes you think that’s important?”

 --

           “So can you?”

           “Can I do what?” The alchemist says, blowing out a splint from where she had touched it to an odd bubbling purple liquid. The flask from her first day was sitting in the corner, catching the light. The purple had somehow come from the bronze from earlier, dissolving in some transparent liquid.

             “Fight.”

           “I can’t do hand to hand combat if that’s what you’re asking.”

           “So what do you do when you need to defend yourself in an environment when you have no weapons?”

             The glance that the alchemist shoots at her makes her think she’s been discovered. Perhaps she is obvious, but it’s been a month and there’s nothing at all that can be tied to the level of green flames that had consumed the whole stage, or the subsequent explosion of sound that had distracted the whole crowd.

             “What makes you think you’re ever in an environment with no weapons?” She merely sounds curious, as she dips her pen in the same blue liquid she had made up on the first day, and continues to write.

 --

           On the final evening with the alchemist, she simply nods at both her and Astoria.

             “Thanks for the time here.” She presses her fingers to the edge of her skirt. “Just, uh, okay, honestly they sent me here because they thought you had something to do with the fire at the Acheron Ball. But I don’t think so. And I’ve said so. All you’ve done is a lot of note-taking.”

             “That’s nice of you.” The alchemist says, placing a lighted splint against some of the notes she had discarded earlier. The paper catches fire. “I’ll see you around, I suppose.”

             As she walks out, she could almost have sworn the flames that touched the ink were green.

  --

           “Well, at least those notes got to good use when I delivered them over.” Astoria says, leaning over her sister’s arm. “And she didn’t even notice that the chemical was right under her nose.”

             “They still haven’t figured out who exactly stole the notes.” The alchemist merely sounded entertained by this.

             Astoria’s smile turned into a smirk. “Well, if you set the stage, someone had to perform, no?”

[writing-far-too-badly]

Set the Stage

Thank you for the prompt @flashfictionfridayofficial ! Brought back great memories of working behind the scenes on some shows

the ghost light is the only thing I see until my groping finds and flips the switch somehow the set-up goes without a hitch so closing up, I turn and lock the key the next day lighting shows us what will be the players come and quickly find their pitch the light ops finally find that evil glitch "you think we're ready now?' it's asked to me I look at what our hands have carefully wrought from where they sit, the painting looks like stone the booklet's turned, we're on the final page and just like that, the show we've finally brought and we leave then, the ghost light all alone and when we leave, the actors take our stage

[whatsthesound]

The Connells, "Hats Off" (Live in Columbia, S.C., 2022)

The mini-trend of bands who never released a live record in their heyday decades past but suddenly get a belated notion to release current recordings rolls on. (See also Fetchin’ Bones, Jason & The Scorchers and more)

As with those examples, The Connells’ recently released Set the Stage hardly captures the band at their peak. The recording is fine, but there’s just not the level of excitement and energy that one might find on a good bootleg from back when. On that score, it’s notable not a single cover is included though that was always a beloved feature of their sets in the day. This is simply inessential. You’re much better off taking a pass at Steadman’s Wake, the new studio album the band released in 2021.

[gastricotv]

Lunar Vacation | Set The Stage

[inkandpaperqwerty]

Posted another little story that takes place before my book, Cataclysm! A very young Ryan and Mack sit on a swingset and talk about the new, mysterious disease that's been going around. You can read it on AO3 and wattpad. I'd love to know what you think!

[linkeduniverse]

Dawn pt. 8

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