Ephemeron

are.” But the woman was unsatisfied: for she could see nothing in herself worth loving.

  “I will be someone else,” she decided.

  So the woman tried to change herself. She forsook the things and people that she loved in favor of those that hurt her; she painted a false smile onto her lips, that none might see her weakness; she fled from those who loved her, whom she could not understand. But always, at the core, she was the same woman: kind and gentle and as beautiful as the moon, beloved by all, and in her heart full of fear and shame and sadness.

  “What will change me?” she cried into the night. “What will turn me into someone other than who I am?”

  The night asked: “Is this truly what you wish for? Will you forsake all that you are?”

  “Yes,” cried the woman, “yes, a thousand times yes!”

  “There is one thing that might grant your wish,” said the night. “Swallow the tears of those who love you: that will change who you are.”

  This was a difficult task, for the woman hated to see them weep. She loved them as they loved her, and their pain was a deep wound in her heart. But she told herself it would not matter when she was someone else; it would be worth it; and she reminded herself of all the ways she felt she had been selfish all her life, and told herself that this would be the last time she hurt them. So she set herself to the task, painful as it was, and one by one she swallowed the tears of all those who loved her.

  That woman died then, the one who was kind and gentle and as beautiful as the moon, whom everyone had loved despite or because of her shadowed heart; and all the world grieved for her. Only she did not grieve for herself: for there was nothing left of her to do the grieving.

  Perhaps there is someone new standing in her place, now: someone not as kind or kinder, gentler or not as gentle, as beautiful as the sun or the stars or a mountain or a cat, with a different pattern of shadows in her heart – but what do we care of her? She is someone else, after all: and we have our grief to tend to.

  Blood and Brie

  Challenge #7: write a noir story featuring a non-human protagonist.

  Squeaks skirted the skirting board, holding tightly to his stolen Brie. He had killed a gerbil for the delicacy; the fur was still clinging to his paws. It had been worth it, though. Once, just once in their lives, he and his family would have a feast.

  A giant paw shot out of nowhere, pinning him down, and a thin claw extended across his neck. “Squeaks,” purred Detective Inspector Miss Whiskers. “I thought I'd find you here. I hope you're ready to taste justice.” She licked her lips.

  “I don't know what you're talking about,” squeaked Squeaks.

  “Come off it.” Detective Inspector Miss Whiskers resettled her paw, nearly crushing Squeaks' ribs. “Now, you have two options, citizen. Hand over the Brie – my, that smells delicious – and we'll say no more about it, eh?”

  “Or...?”

  Detective Inspector Miss Whiskers grinned wickedly, showing quite a lot of teeth, and licked her lips again. The look in her eyes said everything Squeaks needed to hear.

  Ashamed, and with a last pang of regret, he handed the cheese over.

  Detective Inspector Miss Whiskers took it from him delicately, barely grazing his paws with her teeth, and ate it while he watched – he still couldn't move. He thought of his wife. He thought of his children. He wondered where he was going to find them another meal.

  Then she ate him anyway.

  Damien

  The sweat trickles down his back, edging through the thin gap between his pack and his body. His armor is stowed now, but the heat is strong enough without it, and the black uniform doesn't help.

  He drinks deep and gives the skin a quick shake. Half empty, at least. They'll have to stop for water at the next river. That shouldn't be too far off – an hour, maybe – but he'd better not waste any, all the same.

  His men are stalking through the forest behind him, dealing with the heat in their own way. One or two of them follow his orders to the letter, suffering through it in silence. Others are marching with empty skins already: they wasted their water on hair and skin, trading heat for thirst. They know he will share his own water if it comes to it. Discipline is one thing, but he cannot leave his soldiers unable to march.

  Some have taken off their loose shirts and bound them around heads or waists to march bare-breasted. He can't blame them: the black doesn't show dirt or blood, but it's useless against the sun. The men risk the biting of insects and the scratching of thorns, and the chafing of their armor if they should need it, but they do not risk their lives. He lets the lapse in uniform pass.

  Two of them are talking with each other, laughing. That, he cannot overlook.

  He nods the others past him and slips around behind the pair. They are newlings, with no reason to trust him except their orders; but they must learn someday.

  He slides his hands between them and grips their arms, pulling them back, and nearly toppling them. The one on the right yelps, startled. He tightens his grip, shutting the man up.

  “If my hands had been a sword,” he says, “you would both be dead by now.”

  The left man scoffs. “We're days from the battle. No one will attack us but you.”

  The one on the right looks abashed, but neither remorseful nor afraid. The one on the left is defiant. He lets them go, steadies his stance, and stares them down.

  “Do you think our army is the only one sending its men to the battle? There could be soldiers anywhere in this forest. And if they have not heard your laughter – they will have heard that yelp.”

  The one on the right shuffles his feet and looks down: there is fear in him, now. The one on the left spits in the dirt, glowering. It is clear what he is thinking, but he dares not impugn his leader to his face.

  “I don't want your fear,” says their leader. “I want your watchfulness, and your silence. The others have moved past us, now: we are alone, and if the Light soldiers come upon us now we've little chance. So we'll go on, and we'll go silently, and we'll keep an eye to the shadows and an ear to the wind. It's your own life you're risking.”

  He moves on without waiting for a response, one hand on his sword. Behind him he hears a muttered curse, and then footsteps, but no more laughter.

  They reach the others without incident, and he takes his place at the front again. The men follow him in sullen silence: some loyal, others obedient, others grudging, but all of them tense and brooding in the heat.

  A twig snaps: not behind him, under the feet of his men, but above, in front. A tree creaks with weight. There are shadows in the bushes.

  He doesn't wait to puzzle them out. With one hand he is flinging his pack from his shoulders – there is no time to don the heavy chainmail he has carried all this way – and with the other he is drawing his sword, and a shout is ripping through his throat: “Draw!”

  An arrow whistles through the air: he ducks. The bushes erupt into Leaf soldiers dressed in green, and then he is fighting and dodging and slashing and always, in the back of his mind, calculating: there are seven of them, with the one in the tree, to his ten men; the Leaf men are armored while his are not; Leaf magick is all grappling vines, for which his men with their Dark magick are well enough matched; the enemy is all together in one clump, and his men are flanking them; he has good men and raw men, but all know what to do; and he knows his men would triumph, perhaps with wounds but without dying, if not for the archer.

  The archer. There is the threat he must deal with. None of his men can climb with a sword in hand, and the archer's tree is well-guarded. Without a shadow to aim for his Dark magick is useless. He thinks, cuts, dodges, kills a Leaf man. The heat of the sun is lost behind the heat of adrenaline.

  A chance: he fights his way around, ducking through the skirmish, until he has the tree at a better angle. There is the Leaf archer: a woman. There is her hand, quivering on the bow as she nocks another arrow. There is her shadow on the branch.

  He stands back from the fra
y, points, concentrates. “Consume!”

  Her shadow blackens, grows, surrounds her, devours her. She screams. Her bow falls to the ground.

  Around him the Leaf soldiers are dead or dying or running, and the sound of clashing swords is replaced with the buzzing of flies. His men are dripping with sweat and blood, but none are badly hurt, and they exult in the taste of victory: all but one, whose bare shoulder is pierced with an arrow. The defiant man. The one on the left.

  He eases the arrow from the soldier's wound, stitches it, and washes away the blood before bandaging him. It takes the last of his water.

  He will go the next hour without.

  Nameless

  Challenge #8: write a story which takes its first sentence from another person's FFM piece and features the name of yet another FFMer, and which thrice includes words from each of these lists: flash, flasher, flashers, flashing, flashed; viva, fist, fistpump, community, madness.

  (I took the first sentence from “The Black Hole” by glitterxgraphite, and the person whose name I took goes by NamelessShe.)

  He didn't sleep that night. Instead he lay with open eyes, breathing as shallowly as he dared, waiting and watching the visions that flashed through his mind:

  Nameless, she stalks him. Nameless, she hunts him. Her claws are red and sharp. Her smile is lips and teeth and black abyss, and she will swallow him whole: first his name and then his body and then his soul.

  He clutched at the bedsheets with