Emily (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
iluvroadrunner6) wrote2019-12-22 03:37 pm
iluvroadrunner6) wrote2019-12-22 03:37 pm
Entry tags:
tumblr prompts { 2020 } prompt-a-palooza
Basically, I've been saving a bunch of writing prompts and when I went to clean out my likes and I've decided to write something for each of them at some point in 2020. Probably after I do the next draft of Paladin? Don't know yet!
Anyway, prompts will be linked with the fics, feel free to track if you're interested, IDK who is even following my journal anymore but enjoy.
#013 ~ freedom ~ original ~ 2,170
The one upside to my predicament is that every ten years, I get to reinvent myself.
“What do you think?” I ask, looking at myself in the mirror positioned on the back wall. Long dark hair hangs in lazy curls around my shoulders, and makeup covers my face designed to make me look older than I physically am. But, after a certain point, there’s only so much that contouring can do, and I eventually return to Carson. “Am I more of a Madison or a Taylor?”
Carson’s warm brown eyes lift from the paperwork in front of him and study me carefully. It’s after hours. The tattoo parlor closed hours ago to make room for his more shady clientele. Carson’s been providing me with new identities for decades now. We made friends in the early seventies, and he’s been my hook up ever since. I’ve had five different names and five other lives, and while he isn’t any closer to understanding what it is I’m going through, he’s the closest thing I have to a true friend.
I don’t know what I’m going to do when he eventually dies, but that’s a bone for me and his pack-a-day habit to pick later.
“Personally? I don’t think you’re blond enough or wear enough pink for either of those options.”
“I could go blond,” I protest, trying to imagine myself with platinum locks to offset the hipster-grunge look that’s done well for me in this particular decade. “I’ve never been a blond. It might be fun to try.” The benefit of having all the time in the world is that I can try everything. Nothing is permanent. Nothing ever was designed to be.
Except for me – but that isn’t so much design as an unfortunate accident.
Carson snatches my phone off the counter to go through the list of baby names I’m scrolling through from 1999, my new birth year to be a newly minted twenty-one-year-old. I look a little young for twenty-one – a side effect of only being seventeen when a spell preserved me for all eternity against my will – but I could pass if I managed my makeup well. What I couldn’t do is pass for is thirty, by any means, and my old identity, Brittany Folsom, is starting to push that with her 1989 birth year.
“Olivia.”
I raise an eyebrow, skeptical. “Olivia?”
“It’s classic. Maybe you could try being a competent professional instead of a lawless heathen.”
I gasp dramatically, one hand moving to my chest as though the heartlessness of his words has shot me. Having too much responsibility isn’t always a good thing, depending on how quickly I may need to disappear at times. Also, corporate life is smothering. I would never.
Still, Olivia isn’t wrong, as far as names go. I try it out a few times. “Olivia. She sounds rich, honestly. Olivia, Olivia, Olivia …” My eyes land on the concert poster on the other end of the room. “Manson?”
Carson glances over his shoulder to follow my eye line and laughs. “At least it’s not ‘Marilyn’ or ‘Charlie’?”
I shrug. “It’s good enough for me.” I scribble the name into the name field and give one last glance over my information before passing the clipboard back to him. “That should be everything. Half now, half when you’re done?”
“You know me so well.”
I pull out my wallet, counting out the necessary cash from my recently emptied bank account before handing it over to him. “Give me a call when it’s done.” I shut down my phone number last, likely a few weeks after activating “Olivia’s” new burner phone. I’ve already given my two weeks’ notice at my job as well as my apartment. And soon, I’ll be in a new city, becoming someone completely different.”
“It’s going to be a shame to see Brittany go,” Carson comments as he looks everything over. “I liked her a lot.”
I glance back at him as I reach the door before giving him a small smile. “Who knows? You might like Olivia even more.”
New York City suffers a quiet drizzle, the kind of rain where it’s as though Mother Nature can’t decide if it wants to start a downpour or not. Some people might call it a misting. I think of it as being indecisive. My heavy boots thud against the sidewalk as I quickly make my way through the streets, heading down to the subway so I can take the L train back to my apartment. It’s a quiet night – there are people still buzzing about as it’s not quite midnight yet, but not the crowds of travelers and tourists that make navigating the streets a nightmare.
Not that I’m ever uptown during the day much anymore, but I also remember when Times Square used to be a wretched hive of scum and villainy, as Obi-Wan Kenobi would likely put it. People like me, who wanted shady things done for nefarious reasons, could much more easily come and go. Now, it’s all clean and tourist-friendly, which makes daytime escapades a lot more complicated.
As I come up to the corner, I see the pedestrian signal changes from “DON’T WALK” to “WALK,” and the woman with a roller board and I begin to make our way across the street. She walks fast, pulling ahead of me as she has somewhere to be, which I didn’t blame her. I keep walking at my usual pace, which is why I see it before she does.
Even a packed town like New York City always has someone who drives like a maniac. People would love to blame maniac drivers in some regions of the country – New Jersey, Massachusetts, etc. But I’ve been around long enough to know that they are everywhere. They drive with reckless abandon, like they have to save the world or something, and take much care in where they’re going.
I don’t know anything about this driver. Maybe he genuinely had somewhere to be. Maybe his wife was giving birth, and he needed to get to a hospital. All I know is that a pair of blinding white headlights rounds the corner, and Rollerboard ahead of me isn’t moving fast enough. She sees the light, turning towards it like a deer in the headlights, and then she freezes.
If she doesn’t move, he’ll kill her. That’s irreparable. There’s no coming back from something like that. So, instead, I decide to do the noble thing. I choose to let him kill me instead.
I charge forward, without even thinking. I tip my shoulder and slam all of my weight into the woman’s back. It sends her flying into the clear part of the crosswalk. I’m not fast enough to clear myself from the same danger, however. The lights bear down on me, and the last thing I hear before the grill strikes me in the chest is the sound of her suitcase crunching under his tires.
This is going to hurt.
Once upon a time, a girl grew up in the region that you now call England. It was a lovely, green, slightly damp place, and she loved it very dearly. She also loved a boy very dearly, and he loved her.
His name was Halifax.
He was a fledgling wizard, still coming into his power. He wooed her with colorful design and making lights dance in the sky, and whispered the wonders of the world in her ear every night as he lulled her off to sleep. She dreamt of places beyond their home, areas that they would hopefully someday finish together. However, the one magical secret he never told her was the bond of her family’s blood to the land.
See, she was the daughter of Chieftan, the descendant of one who had made a pack with an unknown entity many decades earlier. That great-great-great-great-grandfather sold her for power and security without even blinking an eye, and on her seventeenth birthday, that deal came due. She was to die to maintain their connection to the land and secure their power for many more decades until another daughter came along, and they could use her to reinforce the pact.
Halifax told her that there were particular rules to this specific trial and that he would find her a way out of it, only his way out wasn’t a “way” at all. He found the loophole in the contract. To seal the pact, the eldest daughter of the current chieftain had to die. If her body did not rest in the heart of the green hills forever, the deal would be broken. So he made it so that the girl couldn’t die, preserving her precisely as she was forever and eternity.
Once upon a time, that girl used to be me.
I say “used to be” because centuries twisted and turn you, and were it not for my reflection in the mirror, I wouldn’t even remember what her appearance. Cosmetic changes don’t even stick. I can’t dye my hair or get a tattoo because while it would last, for a time, the next time I died, everything would revert to the girl I used to be.
And it's as that girl that I awaken to the worried face of Halifax hanging over me.
“Hello, my love.”
Good. Halifax is learning not to call me by that name anymore. Still, I sigh as I swing my legs over the edge of the shale rock. I always see Halifax every time I awaken. The curse he put on me, to save my life, wasn’t without consequences. If he wished for me to live forever, then he needed to witness every time I bore the brunt of this curse – even long after he died.
Then again, alive and dead tend to be somewhat flexible terms in the land of magic. It’s all about where to reside, rather than the actual status of your soul.
“Halifax.” I stretch out my back, trying to relieve myself of the soreness that shouldn’t matter because I’m dead, albeit only temporarily. “I was hit by a truck.”
He flinches, but it saves him from having to ask me how I died. That is part of the curse too. Then he looks confused. “What is a truck?”
Explaining modern transportation to a man who didn’t live to see the Industrial revolution is always a little harder than it sounds. I pause, trying to figure out the best analogy. “It’s a metal wagon that propels itself forward with an engine. It can go very fast, which is why it can easily kill people.”
Halifax nods as though he understands, but he indeed doesn’t. And I don’t blame him. He never had to see the world grow and change before his eyes. He only finds himself with the glimpses that I can give him.
“But I saved someone’s life,” I continue with a small smile. “So, it was worth it.”
A small smile crosses his face. “It’s good to see that your selflessness hasn’t left you.”
I shake my head. “You made me unkillable. I might as well do something good with it.”
Halifax nods before reaching forward and taking me by the shoulders. “We don’t have much time. I don’t know how quickly you would heal, and while I would love for you to tell me more, there are more pressing matters.”
I frown, unsure of what could be more pressing given that he’s dead and all. He has ample time for research and learning new things, and he’s had centuries to do so, but it’s been ages since he’s spoken to me with this much urgency. Something must be wrong.
“What is it?”
“I think I’ve found a way to break the curse.”
For a moment, I feel like my legs are about to come out from under me. My knees feel like jelly, and I try to steady myself on Halifax’s shoulders. I could escape this frozen moment, be free of a life I’ve been trapped in for centuries, finally. Finally, he’s found a way to correct his mistake.
“I could kiss you.”
“And I would very much love that, but time is of the essence.” He holds me steady, looking deeply into my eyes. “I’ve been doing my research, and it seems as though it all goes back to the demon you evaded all those years ago.”
“What do I have to do, Halifax?” I can feel the darkness starting to creep around the corner of my eyes, meaning I wasn’t sure if I would have the time. That kind of darkness means I’m returning to the real world, and I needed him to spit it out quickly.
“First, I need you to go back to –”
My hands scrambled for his shoulders as the darkness came for me dragging me downwards and back into the real world.
Unfortunately, before I can hear any more than that, I wake up.