YURI SHIPPING OLYMPICS 2024 - BONUS ROUND 7

[a1c0bb]

For this round, we want to see prompts that are based on settings or locations! For your prompts, please provide a location or setting. It can be as specific or as abstract as you want, and can be in any medium you prefer!

POINTS - BONUS ROUNDS
For prompts: 10 points each (maximum of 150 prompt points per team per round)
For fills:
First 4 fills by any member of your team: 100 points each
Fills 5-10: 50 points each
Fills 11-20: 40 points each
Fills 21-50: 30 points each
Fills 51+: 25 points each

Comments

Prompt: Team Webcomics/Webtoons

[static_prevails]

Inside a character’s mind

FILL: Team Anime/Manga

[hopelessgemini]

Cinder dreams of being a child again, it turns out.

Winter wanders long, empty hotel corridor after corridor, following the sound of distant crying. She recognises where she is from the news years ago; the Glass Unicorn, the hotel that burned down in the middle of the night when she was twelve or thirteen. She never forgot it — they said they found human remains in the basement, the long-rotted bodies of what they were sure were the owner and her family.

Needless to say, she put the pieces together when she met Cinder. She understands the crying, really.

Winter walks until she doesn’t think she can anymore. The crying doesn’t seem to be getting any closer, and she’s sure that if she sits down Cinder — dream-Cinder, the part of Cinder that got lost in her own mind — will come and find her. They always seem to find each other. It was annoying, once.

She sits down against a wall and crosses her legs. The sound of her clothes rustling echoes.

“Cinder,” Winter says once, just so she can’t say she hasn’t tried, “it’s me.”

No response, of course. She wouldn’t do that. Her terrified child self wouldn’t do that.

Winter tilts her head up to look at the ceiling, at the shattered remains of a gaudy chandelier. There are thick black marks on the paint. The whole place smells of smoke, as do most things where Cinder is involved. She’s grown to like it.

“I’ve come to find you,” she says to the chandelier. “I won’t let you stay here. It isn’t fair.”

Something echoes back at her; a small, terrified sob. Winter knows Cinder better than to lurch towards the sound. She sits still, stares upward. Waits.

Eventually, something else moves. More cloth shifting, more footsteps — and then a child Cinder, small and wide-eyed, running. Winter stands up to meet her, breath caught in her throat, and catches her as she comes.

Cinder presses her face into her shoulder, making a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “Oh, G-d,” she says, “you came. You came for me.”

She’s so small. Her limbs are shaking with the effort of running. Winter drops to her knees and pulls her closer, practically crushing the two of them together. “Of course I came.”