![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
That trick-or-treat meme!
You know the drill! Prompt me, and I'll write a snippet of fic for your candy bag. (Y'all should know the fandoms I write in now, and if you want an original snippet, I'll be happy to provide.)
Additionally, as I'm now staying with the former editor of a podcast, I have access to a fancy microphone which is no longer being used in the household. So if you'd like me to read something – say, up to 500 words? Flashfic, snippets of fic, my fic, your fic, poetry from around the web, Shakespearean monologues – you may request those, too!
Additionally, as I'm now staying with the former editor of a podcast, I have access to a fancy microphone which is no longer being used in the household. So if you'd like me to read something – say, up to 500 words? Flashfic, snippets of fic, my fic, your fic, poetry from around the web, Shakespearean monologues – you may request those, too!
no subject
no subject
Although Petra is terrible at acting relaxed.
Petra had all her attention on the small-scale model that was taking shape under her fingers: chambers and corridors of fractal complexity, energy shaping the smart material as she eked power from of the new generator humming beside her desk. Which meant that she didn't notice, for a few moments, that someone had come into her quarters. And said someone didn't do much to draw attention to himself before sidling up to the other side of her desk, because he didn't seem to believe that the walls and doors actually indicated any sort of separation between their living areas and made himself as home here as he did in his own rooms; it was an oddly Su habit, for someone generally so critical of the Su.
"Busy?" Nash asked, and Petra jumped. A crack of electricity burst out of her hands, carving branching fractals into the smartmat. She looked up sharply, and Nash held up his hands. "Just thought I'd come over for dinner."
Petra stared at him for a moment, then shook her head. "I don't–"
Nash turned, gesturing back to a parcel at the door. Petra followed his gesture with her eyes, and sat for a moment, processing.
Right, she thought; leave it to Nash to be always prepared. Carry everything he'd need for a dinner on his person. At least when he was invading her space for it.
She shook her head, and reached over to shut off the generator so she could think more clearly. Electricity was electricity, and the energy she pulled from the generator shouldn't have felt any different than the electricity gathered from the storms and stored in banks beneath the colony. But it did. It always left her feeling drained and a little fuzzy-headed, and that was almost enough to turn her into a Su traditionalist, insisting that any power that didn't come from storms was anathema.
But this little human artefact was her power, to do with as she wanted, without oversight or approval from the Su hierarchy. And even if that just meant making little models on the abused surface of her desk, that was worth it.
Nash had apparently given up on waiting for a response or an invitation; he'd turned back to pick up the parcel. Then he headed over to the little alcove of food-preparing equipment which never seemed to make it back to his quarters.
"You know," Petra said, "I got the impression from your friends on the ship that natural human law means I do the cooking."
Nash looked unimpressed. So unimpressed, in fact, that Petra couldn't see his expression change at all. "Yeah. The thing is, I don't want to be poisoned."
Petra growled, just a little, down in her throat. "Storms, Nash, I'm not going to poison you."
"No," Nash said, peeled open the parcel with a pointed look in her direction. "You wouldn't intentionally poison me. Important distinction."
Petra's hand moved over the model, and she almost wiped it clean. Then she moved her hand away. After six models in this vein already, she might as well admit that it wasn't a passing preoccupation, and that she would be returning to it.
"Besides," Nash said. "You have enough on your mind."
"I have nothing on my mind," Petra said, flattening her hand on the desk. The model and its lightning scar sat uneasily in the corner of her vision. "No projects. No plans. Nothing."
Nash set aside a smaller parcel of something vibrantly green, and turned to face her. "You know," he said, almost conversationally, "you're allowed to miss her."
All the muscles of Petra's back went stiff.
Then she took a deep breath, relaxing those muscles one by one. They didn't make it all the way to relaxed, but it was better than nothing. "What is this? The Nash Carder Psychology Dinner Hour?"
"There's a name I hadn't considered," Nash said. "Stop deflecting."
"I miss her," Petra said, every word crisp like a join between two hallways. "This is not news."
Nash watched her, just a second or two too long for Petra to think Nash believed her. Then he shrugged – an easy, careless shrug of one shoulder; patent Nash, the same thing he did when he was acting like he didn't care about something – and turned back to his food. Pulled some kind of old Earth-pattern knife out to chop it. "Heard from her?"
"I assume," Petra said, "her attention is elsewhere." She paused for a moment, turned back to the model colony. "Mine would be."
Really, hers already was. A whole colony away.
Nash had spent more time in the human history of this place than Petra had. He'd have a better idea if, when the ship first arrived, they'd found more than one set of signals from the ruined surface; if they'd had any idea that they were making a choice when they brought the ship down. So far as Petra knew, there had been one known colony, and only one. Humans on this planet lived in the slowly-sprawling network of tunnels and modules and corridors that they only knew as the Colony, and any further Su civilization had vanished in the same ecological disaster that had rendered life outside the colony impossible.
But of course, the Su were resilient. Not terribly adaptive, but as adaptive as they needed to be. And the Su, upon learning that there was another colony close enough to make contact with, hadn't batted an eyelid – not that they had eyelids. They'd simply moved on with the business at hand.
Which, of course, because it was the Su, was a hierarchical dispute.
So now Petra knew that a hierarchical dispute was the closest the Su came to outright war. And of course, they needed Fathers there as a show of might and influence, and of course, Ilen wasn't just a strong Father in her own right but an example of what the Fathers of this colony could do. And of course, Petra wasn't about to say anything and put her head on the chopping block. She wasn't a complete idiot.
Nash, though, didn't really care about the Su's good graces – at least, not beyond keeping them at a point where they decided not to kill him. "On Su business," he said, though he said it in the direction of the food. "I bet she'd take time out to hear from you."
Petra growled, back in her throat. That was the problem with Nash: after all this time, he still made those distinctions. "Su business is human business," she said. "And human business is Su business, and I'm not going to distract her from either one. Storm and blast. You want to think about what's going to happen if the other colony comes out dominant? A whole superior politics that's never dealt with humans before?"
Nash shrugged. "I assume they'd just delegate human-handling to their new underclass," he said. "And our Su would be the ants that tended the aphids."
Petra stared at him.
After a moment Nash realized what the awkward silence was this time, and said "...Earth insects. I'll explain later."
"You need to stop applying Earth logic to our situations," Petra grumbled. "That's how bombs start going off."
"And you need to eat," Nash said, failing to rise to the bait. He opened a bulb of some liquid and dumped it into one of his inscrutable devices, which hissed and sent up a billow of steam. Petra shifted marginally further away from it in her chair. Nash picked the whole thing up and carried it, still steaming, and without any regard for the logic of scalding liquids, straight to her desk. Then he dropped a spoon into it with a look of triumph, and said, "So eat."
no subject
I'm so glad you came back to fill this prompt, because it is really lovely to get a bit more of them!