BONUS ROUND 3 - GENRE FICTION

[a1c0bb]

this round is about writing prompts inspired by genre fiction, aka fantasy, crime, romance, horror, or sci-fi!

to submit a prompt or fill, reply to this post!

Fills can be in any format, and you can fill any prompt (even if it's your own or your teammates)!

for your prompt post title, please use the following format:
PROMPT: TEAM [TEAM NAME]
if you are participating as a vote-only member, use this format:
PROMPT: VOTER

for your fill  post title, please use the following format:
FILL: TEAM [TEAM NAME]
if you are participating as a vote-only member, use this format:
FILL: VOTER

Comments

FILL: TEAM OC

[tabby_shieldmaiden]

OC/OC, 968 words.

The desert seemed to stretch out for miles and miles, yet it was full of life. There in the corner, there were cacti growing in clusters. Off to the side there, a jackalope, hopping around against the setting sun. And there, there was a roadrunner. Not running about, but walking, pecking around the rocks and bushes. Yes, there was a lot of life in the desert, but not many people. Not except for that lone woman sitting on her horse, staring off into the sunset. Other than her though, there were no people around.

Or were there?

The lone woman got off her horse, and patted its side gently. “You wanna turn back now?”

“Hold on,” the horse replied. “The sun hasn’t fully set yet.”

They waited and waited. The air around them grew cooler by the minute. The last vestiges of pink and red in the sky faded into a greyish blue. And once the day had truly faded into night, the horse began to morph. Front legs became arms, snout grew inwards, and her mighty size shrank down, but only by a few inches. In the place of a horse, there was now a woman, and she turned to face the other woman with a small smile and folded arms.

“Right on the dot, I see.” The first woman grinned.

The woman who was once a horse laughed, snorted really. “Either I need to get my back checked, or you’re getting heavier.” She stretched, getting herself used to her new physical form.

“Well, is that really a bad thing Rachel?” The first woman asked, her voice bubbly like a soda. She flexed her forearms. “It’s all the muscle I’ve been building up at work.”

A smirk. Rachel remembered the frail, skinny girl she was when they first met. “I guess. But anyways, you wanna cook dinner now?”

“I’ll get the pot,” she walked off to the bags she had lain beside a big rock, and started rummaging through their belongings.

*****

“Eve?” Rachel looked up from the beans they were having. They usually ate in complete silence, only focused on eating as much as they could after long days of hard work under the boiling sun.

Eve looked up from her beans, mouth stuffed to the brim and plate nearly completely cleared. “Mm?”

“I’m just wondering,” Rachel began, as she began scooping up the last scraps of food on her plate. They were both clean eaters. One appreciated food out here where it was so precious. “But are you still writing songs?”

Eve played more instruments than any person Rachel knew. Her favourite to play - especially since they started working at the OK Corral as cow herders, and they got too far away from a place where pianos and trombones and clarinets were practical - being the guitar. Oh, Rachel could watch the way her fingers danced on her guitar all day. Half the time, Rachel didn’t even have any fingers. So she was always amazed at what sort of things other people had managed to be able to do with theirs.

Eve wrote hundreds of songs back when they were younger. Back when life was better for them, and they had the time to do those things. Since times grew tough, and they needed to work, Eve continued to get tons of ideas. But she rarely had the time to properly sit down, write them down, and pull together a song from out of her mind. When she did have the time though, she could compose some of the best music Rachel has ever heard in her life. And so she cherished those songs. But it’s been a while since she had heard Eve play.

Eve finished up her big bite of beans, and licked her bottom lip. “Heh, well, I’ve been trying to. There’s a song that I have sort-of composed right now. It’s well… very unfinished.”

Rachel set her plate aside. Licked clean, as usual. They could wash it up later, when they have access to some running water. “Well, I’d love to hear what you have now.”

Eve finished up her dinner, and then she set her plate aside. “Sure. Just let me go get Rae Strummer.” She had given all her instruments funny names. According to her, her guitar looked like a Rae, and she threw in the ‘Strummer’ to make the name sound more ‘complete’. Rachel always found that quirk of hers cute.

But in any case, Eve soon got her guitar out, and started tuning it. She could do it by ear, which she tried to teach Rachel how to do once. It didn’t quite stick, but hey, hard to practise when you’re a horse for most of the day.

“What’s this song about?” Asked Rachel, criss crossing her legs and making herself comfortable.

A strum. “You know how I wanted to write a song about us? This is it.” According to her, all the great cowboys had songs about themselves. But she wanted a song about the two of them.

And she wanted the song to make it explicit: they were in love, they loved each other, they dated and they kissed and she wanted her to be her wife. If someone else wrote that song for them, they might not write that fact about them. That fact may be brushed aside, written as something else. That song may be about a woman and her steed who turned into a woman by night, but it would not be about them.

If they wanted a song that was true to them, Eve decided, she needed to write one herself.

Rachel sat up a little straighter. “What have you got so far?”

Eve propped Rae Strummer up nice and proper, and began strumming softly the opening chords to a song about them.