Friday: Cartography

[with-rainfall.livejournal.com]

Hello, everyone. I’m with_rainfall and today's theme - rather late, sorry— is cartography. Prompts must involve the creation of physical and/or electronic maps (including star charts, globes, etc.). The characters merely using a map doesn’t count, unfortunately.

Just a few rules:
No more than five prompts in a row.
No more than three prompts in the same fandom.

Use the character's full names and fandom's full name for ease adding to the Lonely Prompts spreadsheet.
No spoilers in prompts for a month after airing, or use the spoiler cut option found here.
If your fill contains spoilers, warn and leave plenty of space, or use the above mentioned spoiler cut.
Prompts should be formatted as follows: [Use the character's full names and fandom's full name]
Fandom, Character +/ Character, Prompt
Some examples to get the ball rolling...
+ Any, any, maps to imaginary lands
+ Realm of the Elderlings, Sedric Meldar/Carson, mapping a new area of their home

We are now using AO3 to bookmark filled prompts. If you fill a prompt and post it to AO3 please add it to the Bite Sized Bits of Fic from 2021 collection. See further notes on this new option here.

Not feeling any of today’s prompts? Check out the just created Lonely Prompts Spreadsheet. For more recent prompts to write, you can also use LJ’s advanced search options to limit keyword results to only comments in this community.

While the Lonely Prompts Spreadsheet and LJ's advanced search options are available, bookmarking the links of prompts you like might work better for searching for in the future.

theme = cartography

Comments

[templefugate.livejournal.com]

Disney, Rapunzel, mapping the stars

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

Star Trek (any) any, stellar cartography is excited for a new region of space to map out

Fill -- Voyager, Seven/Janeway (unrequited or pre-slash)

[canonisrelative.livejournal.com]

(Um. I truly meant this to just be a gen or if-you-squint conversation between Janeway and Seven about traversing the unknown. Oops.)


Kathryn strides into Astrometrics, already beaming before the doors slide shut behind her.

“Is this it?” she asks, mounting the steps and coming to stand beside Seven.

“Indeed.” Seven’s fingers fly over her console, the low light of the workstation reflecting dully off her left hand. Kathryn stands patiently at her shoulder, watching her work in silence. At last, Seven falls still and Kathryn looks over to watch the way her eyes flick across her various work screens, double-checking and correlating, and sees the moment when the barest hint of a pleased smile touches the corner of her mouth. Biting her lips against her own smile, Kathryn looks up as Seven begins streaming the assembled data to the holographic screen. The starfield blooms into being all around them.

“It’s strangely beautiful, isn’t it?” Kathryn asks, waiting a beat before sliding her eyes over to catch Seven’s.

They’ve been doing this dance long enough that Seven doesn’t leap straight in; she’s grown patient, too, in her way, though the eloquently arched eyebrow speaks also to her growth in other areas. A certain capacity for sass comes to mind. Kathryn quirks a half-smile and turns back to the screen.

“No matter how many times we do this,” Kathryn says, speaking to the rippling equations that describe Seven’s best estimation of what they’ll face over the next several weeks of their journey, traversing a section of space that has remained uncharted by any of its highly populated neighboring systems. “No matter how many times we do this, there are still moments that take my breath away. When it hits me what an extraordinary journey we’re on, the things we’re seeing for the first time, this kind of unprecedented exploration, it…”

“It fills you with…wonder,” Seven says, her voice uncharacteristically hesitant, eyes fixed on a point on the far side of the room.

“Yes.” Kathryn turns to her, leaning one hip against the railing and looking up into her face. Seven’s lashes cast long shadows on her cheeks in the low light and as she watches, Seven’s lips twist oddly; she’s biting the inside of her cheek. Such a human quirk, Kathryn resists the urge to press her fingers to her breastbone against the sudden pang there. “Yes,” she says instead, “I suppose ‘wonder’ is the perfect word to describe the feeling.”

Seven nods, and tucks her chin for a moment before turning only her head in Kathryn’s direction, the rest of her body still poised over her console as though it’s her link to keeping this conversation on solid ground. “I have found…the more I seek out, the more in touch I become with my…human nature…the more I have come to accept that the state of wonder is not only an unavoidable element of the human experience but also intrinsic and…necessary…to an individual’s wellbeing.”

The moment stretches. If Kathryn has any coherent thought it’s simply that she cannot bear to be the one to break it. This tenuous connection between them seems, at time, as fragile as a pane of glass, to be shattered with a word. Then Seven’s lips part, as though she is about to speak, and she is so unspeakably lovely that Kathryn thinks, quite clearly, I could look at her forever, and that’s when her sense of self-preservation kicks in.

“One, well, one wonders,” she says, giving a crooked smile to acknowledge her bad play on words, “what experiences might have inspired such a state of wonder in you, Seven.”

Re: Fill -- Voyager, Seven/Janeway (unrequited or pre-slash)

[canonisrelative.livejournal.com]

Seven blinks, and like that her focus has turned back to her duty, snapping the moment in two as her metal fingertips tap out commands. “I find the experiences difficult to put into words, Captain,” she says, distant and controlled. After a beat she tilts her head, looking sideways at Kathryn who has straightened up under the weight of that word, captain, brushing out a crease in her uniform. “Perhaps with time I will find value in attempting to articulate them. In that event, perhaps I will also find value in sharing them with you. I believe I will finish my work here within the next two-point-seven hours, at which point I will review the data with Ensign Kim. Was there anything else, Captain?”

“No, nothing else,” Kathryn says quietly, letting her eyes linger for a last, long moment over the star systems and nebulae that Seven has so painstakingly charted. “Excellent work, Seven. As always.”

Kathryn lays her hand briefly on Seven’s shoulder before she turns and makes for the door.

Leaving Astrometrics for the bright lights and bustle of the corridor outside often makes her feel like she’s waking up from a dream. Today she feels like she’s sleepwalking, heart and soul lingering in a dreamworld while her body makes its way back to the bridge.

Re: Fill -- Voyager, Seven/Janeway (unrequited or pre-slash)

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

This was lovely thank you.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

Prodigal Son, any, the killer is drawing them maps to his dump sites and taunting them

[classics-lover.livejournal.com]

Dragon Age, author's choice, Mapping *region in Thedas* by noting down all the places they stopped/kissed/cuddled/ate/drank/etc. Sponsored by the Viscount of Kirkwall who ships it.

[classics-lover.livejournal.com]

Good Omens, Aziraphale/Crowley, Aziraphale likes making maps on parchment/papyrus/paper, Crowley's more of a make a trail of breadcrumbs/loose thread in a labyrinth type of being. They make it work

[classics-lover.livejournal.com]

Doctor Who, any Doctor (+ Companion(s)), the Doctor has made a secret map in their mind made up of all their companions and the places/times they visited — it is used sparingly, but it is there

[classics-lover.livejournal.com]

Good Omens, Aziraphale(+ Crowley + any), Aziraphale's bookshop is at the centre of Soho, and is the focal point of all maps of the safest places in London for queer people since it was built in the late 16th Century.

[classics-lover.livejournal.com]

Mass Effect or Star Trek, any, "It's uncharted!" "Until we chart it!"

[trkspwrs.livejournal.com]

GREAT

[emmatheslayer.livejournal.com]

Buffyverse, willow Rosenberg/Daniel oz Osborne charting birth signs