Challenge: Daily Scenes

September 2017

9/17/17

Skylight. 001

“Silver, what are you doing?” Wolf asked.

The other girl was flinging silvery fluid against the wall and drawing it back in precise movements, eyes narrowed darkly under thick furrowed brows. They didn’t really have names yet, nor know their own ages beyond that they were children—nor understand their strange new abilities.

And that was at the heart of Wolf’s question. Silver, so called for the substance flowing in and out of her arms with every moment, did not answer.

The little boy they’d started calling Sight sat down next to Wolf and drew his knees to his chest as he stared. He’d called her Wolf for reasons she didn’t yet fully understand, but it had something to do with the things he saw now that he couldn’t see colors and light and dark the way everyone else could.

“She’s punching holes in the world,” he said quietly.

Silver faltered then, a visible reaction, and Wolf stared at him.

“Everything the light touches,” he said, “it’s hers to keep or destroy.”

9/20/17

Skylight. 002

She has a name now. Skylight.

She settles into a rhythm of training, throwing her body into a full spin under lightning arcing from Light Show's fingers, catches herself imperfectly, nearly stumbles. She's up again, kicking and punching against Bridge, blocking Augment, but he hits her with one blow with the force of a truck or a hurricane and she's thrown hard several feet before hitting the wall and slumping.

"Unf." She groans as she tries to stand. Her entire back is a screaming ache, her shoulders protest, and her legs won't carry her up at all. She falls back down again and pants.

Augment pauses the session with a raised fist then drops down to crouch beside her. He doesn't touch her, but she flinches back anyway. "You okay?"

Skylight gives him a dirty glare for it. "I'll be fine," she bites out, then rubs her shoulder, but she doesn't try to stand again to underscore the point. She'd just embarrass herself.

Augment studies her wide-eyed for a moment, then nods and rolls back on his heels to get up again and start the rest of them back up. Skylight decides to wait until she's less winded before dragging herself to the edge of the training ring to wait them out.

9/22/17

Air. 001

West picks up his caseload from the front desk in the morning, like everyone else in Public Defense, only his are special, their literal name since Treaty Law went into effect between the Thorn Republic and the newly emancipated Western Territories.

"Minor ticketing offense, referred over from LE," the case checker told him with her usual perfunctory nod in the direction of the room someone had dropped his new client in or directed her to. "She challenged."

West glanced over, then back to the paperwork to the line he always checked on protected statuses. Former operative, not retired. He looked back over then.

He was the only certified lawyer in this particular office available to handle cases involving special type humans, who had certain additional protections and prohibitions under treaty law than regular type humans, who had no special abilities or powers. But he'd never worked with one of the former operatives who had established those laws in the first place.

She was pretty enough, stiff expression on her face, but he could see that she didn't hold herself stiffly, nor had she relaxed. Most clients sent to wait remained tense or mentally checked out while waiting for him to arrive, but she had done neither. Instead she stared in front of her while somehow striking him as utterly aware of her surroundings. A brief note that she was of mixed ethnicities, a warm shade of medium brown with hair twice as dark but straight enough. Not likely to have been bothered by ethnic or gendered discrimination in this city, but noticeable enough that he'd need to also rule that out.

"Law enforcement," he prodded absently, not really returning his attention to the case checker.

She

9/24/17

world in the peephole

She found the world in the peephole the day after the mailman dropped flowers off for Mother. Mother sniffed the carnations—“Pretty,” she said—then sighed and sent them back.

“They’re mighty expensive,” said the mailman, but Mother just shook her head.

He left, Mother shut the door firmly behind him then walked back into the kitchen, then little Matilda put her eye to the peephole in the door to see where the mailman went.

But she didn’t see the mailman. She saw a world of flowers thickly growing, a forest of flowers, and her mouth dropped open.

October 2017

10/3/17

Practice Makes Perfect (drabble), 100 words of morning kisses

Skylight was unusually warm when she woke up. She noted that Math's arms had wound snugly around her sometime in the night.

They were undercover. This was an act. At least outside their closed door it was.

She didn't bother to wake him before kissing him gently, trusting his instincts to be sensitive to the unusual.

It was a safe bet. He woke immediately, hand coming up to brace her. "Skylight?"

She drew back sharply at that, eyebrow raised. "Clearly, you need practice." He shouldn't have said her name.

"I guess I do."

She leaned down to kiss him again.