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Hooray for forced inspiration!
So, there's this creative writing contest being held by Maricopa Community Colleges. The submission deadline is November 7. I really want to enter. The problem is, I haven't had anything to submit.
To fix this, I looked through my hard drive, found a story I'd been meaning to make over (it was originally written as an alphabet story, which ended up being kind of restrictive), and voila.
So here's the first draft of a Zenithfic. How Acacia and Red met, and how she ended up taking him in. I'll try and clean this up tomorrow and get it all fluffed and pretty and ready to submit.
I love Acacia. She told me a couple of things in this fic she's never told me before. This is exactly the kind of trusting and constructive relationship I'd like to encourage with my muses, especially my orichara. ::pets Acacia::
Heavy, golden sunlight was streaming into the cab from the west. Acacia, with her seat reclined and her feet propped up against the dashboard on either side of the steering wheel, gave a long, luxurious stretch. There was a promising line of bruise cutting across her back where she'd been knocked against the table, and she was pretty sure she was going to have a curse of a cloud on her eye due to a honey of a punch, and there were a myriad little bruises and scrapes all over her body.
She happily ignored them all and soaked up the afternoon sunlight, adjusting the ice pack over her eye and sighing with deep satisfaction. All on her own, she'd tracked down, infiltrated, and arrested all four of the thugs. The injuries were a matter of course. Considering the odds, she was blessed proud she'd gotten away with so little and still pulled off the job.
Working solo suited her. Naturally, there were moments where she found herself fervently and colorfully wishing for a partner at her back, or the finely tuned team she had once commanded; but there was a certain satisfaction in getting jobs done alone.
Zenith. Her codename. The summit; the top; the highest point. The best. It had once referred to her team, and they had been the best in the agency. Now it referred to her alone, and she was still the best in the agency.
The bruise on her back started to complain; she grunted and shifted over, opening her unhurt eye and staring at the roof of the cab. The slitted pupil contracted to a thin knife-mark against the vivid magenta iris. She stretched again and yawned, closing her eye again.
At that moment, there was a knock at the door.
Acacia groaned and removed her feet from the dashboard, sitting up. Holding the ice pack to her eye, she got to her feet and opened the cab door. On the other side was her wildcard, staring with sullen green eyes from beneath dirty red bangs.
One corner of her mouth twitched upward in a smirk. "So, you've decided I'm worth talking to after all?"
He cast his eyes down, and finally shrugged. "Maybe."
"Great. Have a seat." Acacia jerked a thumb towards the passenger seat. The boy stared at it for a moment, before climbing into it and immediately folding up like a card table. Acacia rolled her eyes and set the ice pack on the dashboard.
"Or maybe you just want to sit out here and get some sun while ignoring me utterly." She settled back into her comfortable sprawl. "I can fly with that."
He probably wasn't a bad kid, she thought as she watched him. He was staring resolutely ahead, his hair unwashed and ratty, his face smudged with dirt. Sullen, and mean - but probably more by circumstance than by nature. A year or two of good living in a more caring environment would probably turn him around.
He'd been a most unexpected find in her bust. The little den of crooks had converted the basement of an old warehouse into a dwelling of sorts. There had been a small generator powering the lights, a refrigerator, and a little stove; bedrooms had been partitioned off with beaded screens; there was some dingy old furniture, probably stolen, lying around. There was even running water, after a fashion; accomplished by patching into the nearest water main. They appeared to have been eking out a comfortable, if meager, living. Acacia hadn't quite been able to understand why they were settling for that kind of existence, given the massive amount of money they had in one safe and the impressive stock of black-market drugs in the other - but that hadn't really been her concern. They were drug traffickers, thieves, and vandals; her job was only to root them out and apprehend them.
She hadn't noticed it until after she had the crooks subdued, but there had been five of the bedroom screens. After handcuffing the culprits, she asked why there were five screens and only four residents. They had said nothing. She had investigated.
And gotten a black eye for her trouble. She chuckled a little bit, prompting a suspicious look from the kid. He'd punched her a good one, and tried to run past her; not figuring on Acacia's fine reflexes. She'd grabbed his arm as he ran past and had him pinned on the ground before he could even yell.
The crooks had actually protested at that point, hollering to let the kid go at least, he'd never done anything. Acacia had handcuffed him anyway and then dragged the whole lot of them into her van.
But out of curiousity, she turned in only the four, and kept the kid hidden. He'd been most reluctant to talk or even act civil; she had finally thrown her hands up in disgust and let him know she'd be waiting in the cabin until he decided he could at least pretend to be a functioning member of society.
The fact that he was here now said a lot more about that than he himself had.
"This is some kind of car," he muttered finally; so muffled against his folded arms that she almost missed it. She turned her head to face him. Her first, slightly embarrassing thought was that the sun's setting light, shining against his red hair, made him look like he was on fire. "Do you live in here?"
"Yeah. Why not?" Acacia brought her seat up a little bit. "It's comfortable, and it beats renting a hotel room everywhere I go."
"It's got two floors," the kid continued. "I didn't know they made any kind of land vehicle with a second floor."
Culture shock was as good a conversation starter as any, Acacia figured. "A lot of Freeguns have them. They make great bases of operation. The size gets cumbersome once in a while, sure; but mostly just when you want to go under an overpass or something."
"There's even a toilet, how in the lands does that work?"
Acacia blinked, realizing that they were talking about the same thing, but didn't seem to be actually having a conversation. "It pretty much just flushes out onto the ground. Are you talking to me or at me?"
The kid sighed and shrugged. "I dunno." He paused. "It is a cool car, though."
"Thanks."
"What's a Freegun?"
"Short answer - freelance law enforcers." She produced a lighter and a pack of cigarettes from under her seat. "Mind if I smoke?"
He made a vile face. "Yes."
"Good." Acacia put them back. "I've been thinking I should try and quit. Do you want the long answer?"
The kid shrugged again and nodded. Acacia took a breath.
"The Freegun Agency was established about fifty years ago... and I can already see your eyes glazing over. Basically, some civic-minded rich guy got really sick of how the law enforcement just about everywhere was spread so thin, and decided to fix it. So he started hiring mercenaries from just about everywhere, from every race, and assigned them to travel around and help the police. We're not allowed to stay anywhere for more than about five months unless we're on assignment, in which case we can take as long as we need." She folded her arms behind her head. "The really fun part is that, to a certain extent, we can ignore local laws and protocol. We can't do anything really outrageous, like murdering people for no reason, but we don't have to bother with all the niceties; we do what it takes to enforce the law."
He made a face. "Wait, so how does anyone stop you from just being bullies?"
"We're required to make detailed reports to the Agency of everything we do on assignment." She grinned, exposing tiny, vestigial feline fangs. "If we neglect our reports, the Agency comes down on us like thunder. If we report doing something the Agency doesn't approve of, they do the same thing times ten."
"That makes the Agency sound like a bully."
"It does. But the thing is, the people in charge of it really do have people's best interests in mind. Shocking, but true."
"Mmm." The kid resumed staring forward and Acacia suppressed a groan.
"Hey, don't close up on me now. I've got a lot of stuff I want to ask you."
That was the wrong thing to say. The kid's eyebrows came down and his eyes narrowed and he curled up tighter. "Tough."
Acacia sat up straight. "Look. Let's do this friendly-like, okay? My name's Acacia. You?"
He opened his mouth, apparently thought better of what he was about to say, and a moment later said, "Red. Red Bycroft."
Acacia chuckled. "Red? Your parents aren't getting any points for creativity." He hunched still further, and she frowned. That had been another bad thing to say. She almost thought twice of asking her next question, but did it anyway. "You don't seem like a rotten kid. Why were you in with those thugs?"
He turned to look over his shoulder, where the last sunlight was fading. "They were all I had."
"No family or friends you could stay with?" Acacia asked in surprised. Red shook his head.
"All back home. And I can't go back there, now. I know those guys weren't good people, but they at least had something to offer. I earned my keep by cooking, and they let me stay with them and they didn't harrass me."
Acacia could hear the holes in his story, vast tracts of infortmation that he was leaving out, and decided that today was not the day they were going to get filled. Instead, she flicked the dome light on to compensate for the loss of outside light, and gazed contemplatively at the sunshield folded against the roof.
It had been a long time since she'd had any company besides her cigarettes and the car radio. The car was pretty big for just one...
And the kid had nowhere else to go.
"Well. I bet you this place'll be a lot more comfortable than that basement. You'll get to shower more than once a month, if nothing else."
Red turned his head sharply to face her. "Wait, are you saying I can stay here?"
"Sure." Acacia smiled benevolently. "If you like, I can even start training you in some basic combat and suchlike. We'll call it rehab so the legal-types can't complain. You can be a Freegun if you want. If not, that's fine too."
"You really mean it?"
"I don't say things I don't mean, Red."
He grinned then, big and wide and open, and Acacia suddenly felt cold. The kid had fangs. She did too, to be fair, but hers were dinky little leftovers, remnants of her race's evolution from felines to elves. They weren't really made to cut or pierce or tear anything. His were.
He was a vampire.
She found herself regretting that impulsive, generous offer; but now she was bound, and felt a sort of creeping horror as he got up, moved as if he wanted to hug her, but aborted the movement almost before it began and slipped out the door again.
It was, in many ways, an unfair paranoia. Vampires were far from the horrendous undead creatures of the night that folklore had always made them out to be; Red had disproven a lot of ancient horror tales just by sitting in the sunlight. But there was one thing those old myths had gotten right, the most important thing - they did drink blood. And she had just agreed to take one on and live alone with him in what suddenly seemed like a very small van. And wherever they went, a lot of the time she would be his only source of blood for miles around...
She couldn't think. She lit a cigarette and took a long, shaky drag.
Halfway down the cigarette, she suddenly laughed.
She had just remembered that vampires had notoriously keen senses of smell.
By the time she dropped the butt into her ashtray, she felt a lot calmer. He could probably already smell the smoke upstairs. She remembered the face he'd made earlier.
If nothing else, she decided as she left the cab and went up the stairs to the rather cramped sleeping level, he could help her quit smoking.
Since this is going to be entered in a contest, any comments and constructive criticisms would be really welcome. (She says, to the three or so people who read her journal. ^_^;;) I would really like to know how I can improve this before November 7... before November 5 or 6, ideally.
So please review and give C&C~~~ <3
To fix this, I looked through my hard drive, found a story I'd been meaning to make over (it was originally written as an alphabet story, which ended up being kind of restrictive), and voila.
So here's the first draft of a Zenithfic. How Acacia and Red met, and how she ended up taking him in. I'll try and clean this up tomorrow and get it all fluffed and pretty and ready to submit.
I love Acacia. She told me a couple of things in this fic she's never told me before. This is exactly the kind of trusting and constructive relationship I'd like to encourage with my muses, especially my orichara. ::pets Acacia::
Heavy, golden sunlight was streaming into the cab from the west. Acacia, with her seat reclined and her feet propped up against the dashboard on either side of the steering wheel, gave a long, luxurious stretch. There was a promising line of bruise cutting across her back where she'd been knocked against the table, and she was pretty sure she was going to have a curse of a cloud on her eye due to a honey of a punch, and there were a myriad little bruises and scrapes all over her body.
She happily ignored them all and soaked up the afternoon sunlight, adjusting the ice pack over her eye and sighing with deep satisfaction. All on her own, she'd tracked down, infiltrated, and arrested all four of the thugs. The injuries were a matter of course. Considering the odds, she was blessed proud she'd gotten away with so little and still pulled off the job.
Working solo suited her. Naturally, there were moments where she found herself fervently and colorfully wishing for a partner at her back, or the finely tuned team she had once commanded; but there was a certain satisfaction in getting jobs done alone.
Zenith. Her codename. The summit; the top; the highest point. The best. It had once referred to her team, and they had been the best in the agency. Now it referred to her alone, and she was still the best in the agency.
The bruise on her back started to complain; she grunted and shifted over, opening her unhurt eye and staring at the roof of the cab. The slitted pupil contracted to a thin knife-mark against the vivid magenta iris. She stretched again and yawned, closing her eye again.
At that moment, there was a knock at the door.
Acacia groaned and removed her feet from the dashboard, sitting up. Holding the ice pack to her eye, she got to her feet and opened the cab door. On the other side was her wildcard, staring with sullen green eyes from beneath dirty red bangs.
One corner of her mouth twitched upward in a smirk. "So, you've decided I'm worth talking to after all?"
He cast his eyes down, and finally shrugged. "Maybe."
"Great. Have a seat." Acacia jerked a thumb towards the passenger seat. The boy stared at it for a moment, before climbing into it and immediately folding up like a card table. Acacia rolled her eyes and set the ice pack on the dashboard.
"Or maybe you just want to sit out here and get some sun while ignoring me utterly." She settled back into her comfortable sprawl. "I can fly with that."
He probably wasn't a bad kid, she thought as she watched him. He was staring resolutely ahead, his hair unwashed and ratty, his face smudged with dirt. Sullen, and mean - but probably more by circumstance than by nature. A year or two of good living in a more caring environment would probably turn him around.
He'd been a most unexpected find in her bust. The little den of crooks had converted the basement of an old warehouse into a dwelling of sorts. There had been a small generator powering the lights, a refrigerator, and a little stove; bedrooms had been partitioned off with beaded screens; there was some dingy old furniture, probably stolen, lying around. There was even running water, after a fashion; accomplished by patching into the nearest water main. They appeared to have been eking out a comfortable, if meager, living. Acacia hadn't quite been able to understand why they were settling for that kind of existence, given the massive amount of money they had in one safe and the impressive stock of black-market drugs in the other - but that hadn't really been her concern. They were drug traffickers, thieves, and vandals; her job was only to root them out and apprehend them.
She hadn't noticed it until after she had the crooks subdued, but there had been five of the bedroom screens. After handcuffing the culprits, she asked why there were five screens and only four residents. They had said nothing. She had investigated.
And gotten a black eye for her trouble. She chuckled a little bit, prompting a suspicious look from the kid. He'd punched her a good one, and tried to run past her; not figuring on Acacia's fine reflexes. She'd grabbed his arm as he ran past and had him pinned on the ground before he could even yell.
The crooks had actually protested at that point, hollering to let the kid go at least, he'd never done anything. Acacia had handcuffed him anyway and then dragged the whole lot of them into her van.
But out of curiousity, she turned in only the four, and kept the kid hidden. He'd been most reluctant to talk or even act civil; she had finally thrown her hands up in disgust and let him know she'd be waiting in the cabin until he decided he could at least pretend to be a functioning member of society.
The fact that he was here now said a lot more about that than he himself had.
"This is some kind of car," he muttered finally; so muffled against his folded arms that she almost missed it. She turned her head to face him. Her first, slightly embarrassing thought was that the sun's setting light, shining against his red hair, made him look like he was on fire. "Do you live in here?"
"Yeah. Why not?" Acacia brought her seat up a little bit. "It's comfortable, and it beats renting a hotel room everywhere I go."
"It's got two floors," the kid continued. "I didn't know they made any kind of land vehicle with a second floor."
Culture shock was as good a conversation starter as any, Acacia figured. "A lot of Freeguns have them. They make great bases of operation. The size gets cumbersome once in a while, sure; but mostly just when you want to go under an overpass or something."
"There's even a toilet, how in the lands does that work?"
Acacia blinked, realizing that they were talking about the same thing, but didn't seem to be actually having a conversation. "It pretty much just flushes out onto the ground. Are you talking to me or at me?"
The kid sighed and shrugged. "I dunno." He paused. "It is a cool car, though."
"Thanks."
"What's a Freegun?"
"Short answer - freelance law enforcers." She produced a lighter and a pack of cigarettes from under her seat. "Mind if I smoke?"
He made a vile face. "Yes."
"Good." Acacia put them back. "I've been thinking I should try and quit. Do you want the long answer?"
The kid shrugged again and nodded. Acacia took a breath.
"The Freegun Agency was established about fifty years ago... and I can already see your eyes glazing over. Basically, some civic-minded rich guy got really sick of how the law enforcement just about everywhere was spread so thin, and decided to fix it. So he started hiring mercenaries from just about everywhere, from every race, and assigned them to travel around and help the police. We're not allowed to stay anywhere for more than about five months unless we're on assignment, in which case we can take as long as we need." She folded her arms behind her head. "The really fun part is that, to a certain extent, we can ignore local laws and protocol. We can't do anything really outrageous, like murdering people for no reason, but we don't have to bother with all the niceties; we do what it takes to enforce the law."
He made a face. "Wait, so how does anyone stop you from just being bullies?"
"We're required to make detailed reports to the Agency of everything we do on assignment." She grinned, exposing tiny, vestigial feline fangs. "If we neglect our reports, the Agency comes down on us like thunder. If we report doing something the Agency doesn't approve of, they do the same thing times ten."
"That makes the Agency sound like a bully."
"It does. But the thing is, the people in charge of it really do have people's best interests in mind. Shocking, but true."
"Mmm." The kid resumed staring forward and Acacia suppressed a groan.
"Hey, don't close up on me now. I've got a lot of stuff I want to ask you."
That was the wrong thing to say. The kid's eyebrows came down and his eyes narrowed and he curled up tighter. "Tough."
Acacia sat up straight. "Look. Let's do this friendly-like, okay? My name's Acacia. You?"
He opened his mouth, apparently thought better of what he was about to say, and a moment later said, "Red. Red Bycroft."
Acacia chuckled. "Red? Your parents aren't getting any points for creativity." He hunched still further, and she frowned. That had been another bad thing to say. She almost thought twice of asking her next question, but did it anyway. "You don't seem like a rotten kid. Why were you in with those thugs?"
He turned to look over his shoulder, where the last sunlight was fading. "They were all I had."
"No family or friends you could stay with?" Acacia asked in surprised. Red shook his head.
"All back home. And I can't go back there, now. I know those guys weren't good people, but they at least had something to offer. I earned my keep by cooking, and they let me stay with them and they didn't harrass me."
Acacia could hear the holes in his story, vast tracts of infortmation that he was leaving out, and decided that today was not the day they were going to get filled. Instead, she flicked the dome light on to compensate for the loss of outside light, and gazed contemplatively at the sunshield folded against the roof.
It had been a long time since she'd had any company besides her cigarettes and the car radio. The car was pretty big for just one...
And the kid had nowhere else to go.
"Well. I bet you this place'll be a lot more comfortable than that basement. You'll get to shower more than once a month, if nothing else."
Red turned his head sharply to face her. "Wait, are you saying I can stay here?"
"Sure." Acacia smiled benevolently. "If you like, I can even start training you in some basic combat and suchlike. We'll call it rehab so the legal-types can't complain. You can be a Freegun if you want. If not, that's fine too."
"You really mean it?"
"I don't say things I don't mean, Red."
He grinned then, big and wide and open, and Acacia suddenly felt cold. The kid had fangs. She did too, to be fair, but hers were dinky little leftovers, remnants of her race's evolution from felines to elves. They weren't really made to cut or pierce or tear anything. His were.
He was a vampire.
She found herself regretting that impulsive, generous offer; but now she was bound, and felt a sort of creeping horror as he got up, moved as if he wanted to hug her, but aborted the movement almost before it began and slipped out the door again.
It was, in many ways, an unfair paranoia. Vampires were far from the horrendous undead creatures of the night that folklore had always made them out to be; Red had disproven a lot of ancient horror tales just by sitting in the sunlight. But there was one thing those old myths had gotten right, the most important thing - they did drink blood. And she had just agreed to take one on and live alone with him in what suddenly seemed like a very small van. And wherever they went, a lot of the time she would be his only source of blood for miles around...
She couldn't think. She lit a cigarette and took a long, shaky drag.
Halfway down the cigarette, she suddenly laughed.
She had just remembered that vampires had notoriously keen senses of smell.
By the time she dropped the butt into her ashtray, she felt a lot calmer. He could probably already smell the smoke upstairs. She remembered the face he'd made earlier.
If nothing else, she decided as she left the cab and went up the stairs to the rather cramped sleeping level, he could help her quit smoking.
Since this is going to be entered in a contest, any comments and constructive criticisms would be really welcome. (She says, to the three or so people who read her journal. ^_^;;) I would really like to know how I can improve this before November 7... before November 5 or 6, ideally.
So please review and give C&C~~~ <3
no subject
But I do have a complaint. ^.^;;; Maybe it's because I'm so used to the Zenith-verse, but the piece has an very unfinished feel. Like it should go on but doesn't. While a very good work in terms of Zenith, is it really suitable for a short story contest when it feels more like a prologue than a stand-alone?
Then again, I have no idea of the guidelines for this contest, so don't ask me. XD And like you'd have enough time to do anything else!
So my final answer is, turn it in! Win a prize for me, nee? ^.~
no subject
I handed this to my dad for a second opinion, and he thinks it drags a bit, and would rather see what Acacia's remembering than what actually happens in the story. I can see his point, actually. For someone familiar with Zenith, like you or me, this is great exposition for how Acacia and Red met... but for somebody who knows nothing whatsoever about Zenith, it's not so interesting.
At any rate, I do think you're right about the unfinished feel. It is a prologue, so...
I'll look through my old files and see if I can't find something else I could pretty up for the contest. If I fail in that, I'll have to decide whether to (a) write the actual infiltration and fight scene, (b) do my best to make this one more stand-alone, or (c) write something else entirely.
Thank you very much for your review! It sparked thought, certainly. ^^