comment_fic | Wednesday: the Veil

bleodswean.livejournal.com posting in

Hello, everyone. I’m

bleodswean and today's theme is the Veil. As we "mark the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter or the "darker half" of the year" (Samhain), today's prompts are related to the mysterious time between. Everyone has done a great job with these seemingly similar prompts! We are halfway through the week and today marks that halfway point as we prompt one another with to explore the dimensions beyond death, before death, and between lives.

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 spoiler cut.
If there are possible triggers in your story, please warn for them in the subject line!

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...
Penny Dreadful, Vanessa/John Clare, Vanessa has a sudden desire to move past the cerebral and into the physical exploration of the meaning of existence.
The Matrix, Neo/Trinity, Neo finds a way to bring Trinity into the mystery that is God’s Waiting Room.
Harry Potter, Sirius Black, he has one day each year to spend on this side of the Veil

We use 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 2017 collection. See further notes on this new option here.

Not feeling any of today’s prompts? Check out Lonely Prompts Spreadsheet 1 (not very current), Lonely Prompts Spreadsheet 2, or the Calendar Archives, or for more recent prompts, you can use LJ's advanced search options to find prompts to request and/or fill.

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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

bleodswean.livejournal.com

Penny Dreadful, Vanessa/John Clare, Vanessa has a sudden desire to move past the cerebral and into the physical exploration of the meaning of existence.

From:

tigriswolf

I somehow just noticed this icon and holy wow, it's creepy. But I can't stop watching it.

From:

bleodswean.livejournal.com

The Matrix, Neo/Trinity, Neo finds a way to bring Trinity into the mystery that is God’s Waiting Room.

From:

bleodswean.livejournal.com

Harry Potter, Sirius Black, he has one day each year to spend on this side of the Veil

From:

bleodswean.livejournal.com

Riverdale, Cheryl Blossom, Cheryl wants to hold a séance.

From:

bleodswean.livejournal.com

Macbeth, Macbeth/the Weird Sisters, Macbeth wants to see the prophecy with his own eyes

From:

4bdnsn0wflake.livejournal.com

Author's Choice, any character(s), how souls pass the time as they wait to be reincarnated

From:

bleodswean.livejournal.com

It didn’t happen often. But it had happened and he wore a small leather pouch on a string of gut around his neck hitting him just in the center of the solar plexus. Inside the pouch were less coins than a man had fingers on his left hand. That’s how many times he had let his heart wander into the foreign land of, well what else could he call it but love. A place to be visited but not lived in. The coinage ranged from a flat worn bit of bone disc, to a silver ducat, a copper pence, and now an American bullion.

That one he had in the palm of his hand, the weight of it true. The soul disappearing into the grey aether while he stood watching, one foot on the beach of ground bone sand and the other up on the prow, the unfamiliar feeling of forlornness moving through him, precipitated by the soul’s leaving.

He kept the payments because passage for these four had been circumvented, or stalled rather. Instead of the crowded boat, the creaking weight, the sighs as each soul shrugged off its human coil and became mute and silent, waiting to be ferried across the Styx, to the unknown other side where they would disembark and await the moment they were beckoned by Persephone to the banks of the River Lethe. That craft-less waterway. A thickened surface under which each shade became lost to his own past, beneath which the river washed away all memory before carrying the soul to the seas. To be caught once again by the fisher of men.

Four times in an eternity, a soul had somehow attracted his darkened eye. Out of the push of the crowd, somehow alone on the crowded bank, the desolation of a life that had ended. Endings always tugged on his heart strings but these four had been less final in their stature, their demeanor, their presence. They had retained an individuality he didn’t often see, shimmering while others shed, they were as though light, while others were already shadow. He saw them and unbelievably they looked back. And saw him.

Uncharacteristically, each time he had climbed out of the boat and pulled the bow upstream, then stood aside for the lone passenger. It was difficult to pole the craft against the flow of humanity, upstream to a pier where he would lash it tight and offer a hand to the traveler and then they would wander into the elysian fields. Partake in vivid colours and warmth, perfumed sunlight, and they would while away hours that were out of time so really couldn’t be measured as hours. It was as though he had taken the soul into an immortal place where perhaps aeons passed over and around them. He wasn’t sure exactly how that worked.

But then the soul would begin to whither in his embrace and he would carry it, bridal style, back to the pier, into the boat where it would lie curled on the bottom, eyes closed, mouth smiling, and he would give passage and bid adieu. Waving into the abyss.

From:

4bdnsn0wflake.livejournal.com

This is absolutely stunning.

So beautiful, and such a creative vision.

I love the phrase "perfumed sunlight".

Thank you so much for this!

From:

4bdnsn0wflake.livejournal.com

Author's Choice, any character(s), a day in Purgatory is worse than a lifetime in Hell

From:

bleodswean.livejournal.com

THAT is something amazing!!! I would love to see you write to your own very thought-provoking prompt!

From:

4bdnsn0wflake.livejournal.com

Ha, well, I didn't really have a fill in mind, but maybe someday...

Thanks for liking my prompt!

From:

jdl71.livejournal.com

They were dead, that was the only thing they were sure about. They remembered fighting to the bitter end, trying to give Sam and Dean time to get out. Trying to protect them from that bitch Meg and those hellhounds. They had made the choice to sacrifice themselves. Jo was already mortally wounded, wouldn't survive the hour, let alone trying to escape. And well, Ellen couldn't let her little girl go without her. Those Winchester boys had to survive to fight another day. No regrets. That was the other thing they were sure about.

But now, they had no idea what was going on or where they were. They looked at each other, mirror images of confusion on their faces. They weren't in Heaven, no stuck up ass with feathered wings walking around. And this wasn't Hell. The lack of pompous black eyed demons clued them into that. There was only one other place they could be. Purgatory.

Jo and Ellen looked around seeing the harsh wilderness before them. No where to run to. No place to hide. No source of food, protection. A place of no escape. A place where you had to fight to survive, even though they were already dead. Because if you died here, you ceased to exist. There was no coming back from that death. And immediately they both wished they were in Hell. This was worse than Hell and they hadn't even been here an entire day.