Shorty Short Story Hodge Podge

Short story 1:

Look at her. She always seems so bored, resting her chin in those graceful hands of hers... those delicate, wounded hands, how I'd love to just undo those bandages, give them a squeeze, hear her groan in that voice... Her gaze at me is forever the same, those dark eyes smouldering at me like blue flames whenever I speak and demand their attention... and those lips, ah, those lips I dream of, turned downwards in that permanent scowl she wears. Someday... oui, someday I shall make those lips open in surrender to mine, make that supple body, with its curves my eyes loves to dance upon, yield under me. Madrigal, Madrigal... the things you make me think... coming in to these meetings in those dresses, even with that cloak over you... curling your hair around those nimble fingers when you stare off into space... it makes me want to shudder in delight. Someday I will have you...

She replies to me, to my speech, and it's with her usual disgust and disdain, only very thinly-veiled. She does that purposefully, takes her refuge in audacity, says whatever she might think regardless of how she is later penalized. Such assertiveness... it only makes me want to conquer her more. To bend such a strong woman to my will, tame her, quiet her... it's such an intoxicating prospect... I can tell she knows what may be on my mind, her scowl deepening when my gaze lingers on her, her arms crossing in the defensive, tough way she has about her. Back down, back off, it says... but I only want to draw nearer. To challenge it.

I can't get her off my mind...

Crying erupted from down the hall, and the woman jerked out of her reverie, shaking her head and groaning. In the mirror, her eyes stared back at her, tired, tinged with green, even when she'd believed she'd ridded herself of all that magic weeks ago... this had been the fourth time she'd heard the voice, had zoned out and found herself being spoken to. But it was never in the present... always stream-of-consciousness, old thoughts from past times. Times that she could vaguely identify from the descriptions in the thoughts... it gave her a discomforting, out-of-body feeling to know what someone else had been thinking of at a time where she, too, had been. Especially these particular thoughts... these ones that would've made her outraged had she heard them. She felt like she wanted to hurl. Felt violated. This man had died but he was still in her head, and he wasn't leaving...

And it wasn't even his doing. Was it? She'd done this to herself, she felt sure... magic was of the soul. Taking it from someone like she had, albeit unknowingly, must also bring a trace of the soul with it... a trace of that person's life, adding it to her own. Could she get rid of it completely and truly? She couldn't wish more for that, but she hadn't the slightest idea. There wasn't a single person she could ask... it was something she was going to have to discover on her own. Something about what it meant to be "half-gone"... had some instinct kicked in to help her survive? To make her more fully alive...?

The tears and wailing were still going on, and she couldn't leave them be any longer--half-dead or not, her son's sobbing would always resonate deep in her, call her motherly side into action. Cadenza set aside her little projects, a few spells half-finished on her desk, and hurried down the hall, mind temporarily cleared of all but the need to comfort Marcus and attend to the cause for his crying. She pushed open the door and went to his side, sweeping him up into her arms, holding him close and gently and nuzzling him until the tears faded. She didn't notice that the green had left her eyes, that they were blue and pure once more. She only smiled as her little boy looked up at her with his own light ones and said, "Te amo Mae."

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Short story 2:

Excerpt from the Cataluna City Daily Tribune, September 28, 1754 edition:

Triunfo!

We have cleansed our lands of their wretched lot, and may all their survivors burn under the desert sun that is so very much like the hellfire they do not believe in and are inevitably bound for. All those that still resist are on their last legs and must surrender shortly.

estm. remaining in Airopa: 4,170