BONUS ROUND 4 - FOOD
Jun. 30th, 2025 07:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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In this round, we want to see prompts inspired by food!
Fills can be in any format, and you can fill your teammates prompts, but you cannot fill your own prompt.
You can post as many fills and as many prompts as you want!
for your prompt post title, please use the following format:
PROMPT: TEAM [TEAM NAME]
for your fill post title, please use the following format:
FILL: TEAM [TEAM NAME]
to participate, reply to this post!
Fills can be in any format, and you can fill your teammates prompts, but you cannot fill your own prompt.
You can post as many fills and as many prompts as you want!
for your prompt post title, please use the following format:
PROMPT: TEAM [TEAM NAME]
for your fill post title, please use the following format:
FILL: TEAM [TEAM NAME]
to participate, reply to this post!
PROMPT: TEAM RWBY
Date: 2025-07-02 04:21 am (UTC)FILL: Team Magical Girls
Date: 2025-07-07 11:17 pm (UTC)She has always wanted all her life. Perhaps it should be no wonder when Hagar sees one of her master's gods, and it is the one who embodies having not.
Her first glimpse is when they're fleeing into the wilderness. Hagar is preparing food, for even though they have little, they've received surprise guests who must be treated accordingly. She's stoking a fire, waiting for the embers to be hot enough to boil water, when she sees the god.
Riding a horse black as midnight, scales clutched in her hand, the god is an ugly thing. She wears robes finer than any pharaoh's, sits upon a saddle that must cost a fortune, yet her hair is barely a few strands attached to her scalp, her skin is stretched too tightly over a wiry frame, and her eyes. Oh, those eyes. In them, there was a power beyond compare.
She reminded Hagar of how she thought she herself might look in a few years' time upon hearing her masters' decision to flee beyond civilization. Hagar doesn't think such things anymore, the same way she doesn't think about the sun rising in the morning. Now, though, she thinks about it again, and she thinks she would gladly accept such a fate in exchange for power.
"That's not enough food for four people," says the god. Her voice is raspy, that throat must be dry as the desert they're in.
What should Hagar do? She knows the rites of her master's priesthood are forbidden to women, can't recall her own peoples' ways. But it would not do to leave a god without an offering.
So she takes the cooking stomach filled with water and raw ingredients, and she holds it out to the god. "I will go without eating tonight so others may have their fill. However, they would accept share in my hunger, I am certain, if you desired our meal for yourself."
To Hagar's surprise, the god throws her head back and laughs. The music of an instrument that's never known a droplet of moisture. "It is the way of this world that the powerful find themselves escaping my clutches, is it not? How wonderful it would be to change that for a night. You tempt me. But no, those guests are from a higher power than I."
The god sticks her hand in the stomach anyways and pulls out a bit of gristle. She puts it on the scale, and she gives Hagar a knowing look before riding away. When she's disappeared, the coals are the perfect temperature for boiling.
It's years before they meet again. This time, Hagar is with child.
The god doesn't take her by surprise. She chooses to approach slowly on her mount, plodding towards her at such a rate that Hagar takes her for a mirage at first.
"My, my," the god comments. "How you've changed. Grown, even, though the world continues in its ways. The powerful don't stop at merely taking from outside you, do they?"
Hagar puts a hand over her stomach. "My master desires an heir, and my mistress took too long."
The god's eyes meet hers, steal the thoughts straight from her mind. "It's too late for you to lose it now, you know. It'd wreck your body."
Tears don't spring to Hagar's eyes. She's lived in the desert too long for that. "Then I have a few months left before I return to laboring."
"Ever the opportunist, I see," says the god. "Why don't you ask me for a favor?"
"No," it's a quick, blunt response. Rude, even. Hagar almost starts to compose herself, then sees the approval in the god's expression. "I need no evidence of your power, nothing that another person can discover, and I don't wish to be in your debt. Only- these moments between us, they will be forever seared into my memory. And nobody besides me shall have them."
And the god actually grins at her. Yellowy, rotted teeth like Hagar's own. She nods, and then picks up a handful of sand that she places on her scale.
They sit together in silence for the rest of the afternoon. The horse rests its head in the god's lap, and she allows Hagar to stroke it. Hagar falls asleep without meaning to, and when she awakens, the god is gone.
The third and final time that they meet, Hagar weeps. No amount of years in the wilderness could've prepared her for this. Abandoned by the people who'd owned her in this desolate landscape, and for what? Her son's laughter? Her precious boy, the child they'd forced on her and never been good enough, lay asleep just out of her sight. Hagar cannot make herself watch if he awakens or not.
Then, a hand on her cheek. A cold, skeletal finger brushes away her tears. Hagar looks up.
"Why do you weep, poor thing?" asks the god. "Today, your fortunes finally change for the better, and you are freed from your tormentors."
The god deposits a teardrop on her scale. Then she presses her finger to the other side of the scale. Suddenly, they stand in an oasis. The god presses her finger again, and there is a hut built around where Hagar left her son. Another press, and the scent of a ready-made meal fills the air.
"This world is content to play deaf to the pleas of the starving," the god says. "Today, it is otherwise. Speak, dear one."
And Hagar is heard.