sword_logic | fic talk: jorts but make it fanfiction

i'd forgotten just how god damn hard it is for me to write something shorter. i am also very tired this week but in a good way. are drabbles the fic equivalent of jorts?

anyways.

the destiny fic i wrote this past week, albedo, ended up being 4,886 words long and it was the first short-form thing i've written in about a year, following the other two destiny fics i wrote last year following forsaken's launch. apsidial precession remains one of my favorite things i've ever written – i had an excellent time doing the actual writing, and i feel so confident in my quality of writing. on the flip side, though, i struggled with pruning to the point that that's the whole reason forfeit exists, and another doc with discarded snippets.

it's really hard to, like... not round things out and talk about them from every perspective. there was so much i still had left to say when i called albedo done. how shin felt about the nightmare showing itself as yor, why he decided to hunt it after saying he'd retire, how drifter felt about where he and shin stand after knowing shin stayed nearby after "leaving," my headcanon that drifter isn't affected by the nightmares because of the nine — but then it would have turned into a 10k-word fic and i would have had no action to push it along with, just paragraphs of dead-air introspection.

whereas, on the flip side, S11 au is the complete opposite — it is the paragraphs of introspection drawn out over 75k+ words and driven by (what i hope is) an appropriate amount of, like, vector action. coming back to S11 au felt like coming home. i wonder what my final word count is going to be. i don't know if i'll hit 100k, though that would feel like one hell of an accomplishment, but i do know that no matter how i slice this, it'll be my longest work. anyways, enough yapping, time to go write more.

I am running in the Dark and it clings to me like so many hands reaching out with claws that split apart into a perfect Mandelbrot set. Static fills my lungs and I cough up a river of Light that drowns me and as I drown I can’t get the rich brown dirt out from under my nails and it stains dark crescents into the tips of my fingers.

There is a man with me and I don’t recognize him anymore and I have never been more terrified. He tends the garden of carefully arranged Cabal, fat round heads poking out of the earth like overripe fruits. One of the heads turns to me and its eyes are nothing but a blinding void and it speaks in deep words like battery acid.

––THIS IS NOT A PLACE OF LIFE++

I open my mouth and nothing comes out. A shining white-gold Vex Minotaur wearing a Techeun’s robes puts a gentle hand on my shoulder and looks me kindly in the eyes and speaks again.

++WHY HAVE YOU COME TO CLAIM IT––

But I can’t, I can’t answer, because every time I try the man looks at me and smiles and another secret grows on him like a parasite. Claws constrict around my throat but I don’t know whose claws they are. They stroke my vocal cords with a threat plainly stated in a thousandfold voice.

There are overgrown hollow circuit-trees surrounding the plot and as the wind sighs through them it sounds like an Eliksni lullaby someone sang to me once but I can’t remember who it was and it terrifies me that the knowledge has been Taken to be shaped into another parasite. Words and names melt together until all I can see is BRAINSTAIN BRAINSTAIN BRAINSTAIN the alert flashes on the central console as we fly quicksharp maneuvers through this ring of ice and rock on a path we’ve flown millions of times before. The Harbingers gleam as they impact against that enormous dead hull and I count four, three, two, one, and the screams of an entire species rip through my head as my kith and kin are destroyed and I live each of their deaths in the span of microseconds.

Superheated metal glows red like blood on asphodelia suspended in the vacuum of space as Saturn’s gleaming ring splits in two with a piercing keen and I stare up at formations in the sky that should not exist. Rain falls in precise geometric patterns and the bronze-clad gardeners collect it on broad leaves like tongues. There is someone next to me whispering things into my ear, secret things no one else knows, and I cannot hear them. I watch as the garden grows into past and future split by deep ravines of present. A hand that is not mine gently sweeps flower petals off of my rifle and strokes my brow with a lover’s delicate touch and then settles to rest around my waist. It is unfamiliar and it is heavier than a neutron star. The air is still whispering words in lilting Ulurant and like this I am lulled to sleep, swaddled in secrets I do not understand.

When I wake, I am alone.

I tell Petra I still dream of the Garden.

She says she’s dreamt of it too.

I tell her, not like I have.