SASO Referees (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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sportsanime2016-07-21 08:53 pm
referees) wrote in sportsanime2016-07-21 08:53 pm
Entry tags:
Bonus Round 5: Myth & Lore
This round is CLOSED as of 7PM on August 4 EDT. Late fills may be posted, but they will not receive points.
RULES
- This round does not have prompts. Instead, we ask you to draw inspiration from the wide pool of mythology, fantasy, folklore, and fable. An urban fantasy or supernatural AU? A re-imagining of your favorite folk tale? Characters swapping ghost stories or playing D&D? As long as your fill in some way incorporates the fantastical and/or supernatural, it's welcome here.
- Your fill still has to be about a ship from one of our nominated fandoms. What ships you create work for is up to you, though.
- To submit your fill, simply leave it as a comment as a reply to this post.
- Remember to follow the general bonus round rules, outlined here.
FORMAT
Bonus round shenanigans all happen in the comments below. Brand-new works only, please.Required Work Minimums:
- 400 words (prose)
- 400px by 400px (art)
- 14 lines (poetry)
Remember, this is a NO-PROMPT round. Format your fill comment in one of the following ways:
| If FILLING: | If FILLING as a TEAM GRANDSTAND participant: |
FILL: TEAM [YOUR SHIP], [RATING]
| FILL: TEAM GRANDSTAND, [RATING]
|
Posts not using this format will be understood to be unofficial discussion posts, regardless of what they contain. They, like all comments in this community, are subject to the code of conduct.
SCORING
These numbers apply to your team as a whole, not each individual teammate. Make as many fills as you want!For fills:
First 3 fills by any member of your team: 20 points each
Fills 4-10: 10 points each
Fills 11-20: 5 points each
Fills 21+: 2 points each
All scored content must be created new for this round.
Etc.
If you're hunting through the prompts looking for what to fill, a good trick is to view top-level comments only.Have a question? Check The FAQ first. If you still need help, feel free to contact the mods. Happy fanworking!
FILL: TEAM IMAIZUMI SHUNSUKE/NARUKO SHOUKICHI, T
tags: cisswap, murder, ghosts; physical assault, choking
652 words
I used to read a lot of Alice Hoffman........
(For those worried about the physical assault tag: witch Imaizumi gets attacked, but kills her attacker. This is basically the shitty guy from Practical Magic, except Not Sisters.)
--
They didn't mean to kill that man.
It had been dark out, fireflies blinking sluggish and slow over the peppery scent of rosemary and lavender that grew heedless along the trail, and the wayward path that took so many twists and turns through the little dark green wood had been lit by nothing but the pale yellow glow of the harvest moon hidden deep behind the clouds.
(Strangers who passed through this town didn't know you were not to meddle with the hedge witches.)
(Strangers who passed through this town certainly didn't know how anger could flare so bright and so dangerous, if drunken hands were to attack the tall, dark haired girl who lived at the other end of the little dark green wood.)
“It was self-defense,” Imaizumi huffs, but she looks sick and drawn in the waning moonlight, and sweat sticks to her hairline even in the cold, mint-scented air. The man’s body is partially hidden in a wild, unchecked sprawl of peppermint, but it doesn't quite mask the iron scent of blood. And it certainly does nothing for the large roses and thorns that had sprouted stinging and green to spear through the man’s heaving lungs as he wrapped hands around Imaizumi’s neck, and Imaizumi had panicked as she could not draw breath with her back pressed hard against the cold wet dirt; and then the man could not breathe, either.
“We need to call the cops,” Naruko says, but she looks between the root trimming knife in Imaizumi’s trembling hand and the shivers that are shaking her thin shoulders even as she sets her mouth in a determined line, and Naruko feels suddenly too fierce in this moment; she knows what they'll say. She knows what they've always said, the hundreds of years they have tried to live here in peace, but the stories will not forget them. So instead, “Or I can help you.”
They bury the dead man at the back of the garden, and they plant agrimony under the freshly turned earth to keep the malcontent at bay, and sow nettle and cumin seeds into the grass that covers it to ward against the evil that lives in the heart of men.
--
“There's a dead man standing in our garden,” Imaizumi says the next morning as Naruko hands her a steaming mug of rosehip tea to calm her nerves. Naruko grins as she licks her hand and tries to smooth down Imaizumi’s bedhead, as she has always done for an untold number of years, each and every morning they wake up together, because who has time for the ugliness of men when Imaizumi is standing here in the new morning sun, beautiful even with a restless sleep making her messy.
“Men are such bullshit, they can never just take ‘no’ for an answer, huh,” Naruko replies, and she stands up on her tiptoes to kiss Imaizumi gently at the corner of her downturned mouth before going to drag the large specialty bag of salt out from the back of the pantry.
“My wife just wanted a little bit of peace and quiet,” Naruko says as she salts the earth where the dead man’s body is buried.
“It would have been nice if we could have had a little nettle patch here,” Imaizumi frowns as she rakes the bare patch of now infertile earth into a rock garden.
No one ever comes looking for the dead man, Imaizumi makes sure of that with the care for details that have let them survive for so long, and after a month of heavy autumn rain, nettles do grow around the rocks seated in the salted earth anyway, and lavender crawls around its edges, pure and new, and Naruko dries them both to make into Imaizumi’s morning tea, and the stories of witches who eat the hearts of unkind men continues to live on in the whispers of children.