WRITING CHALLENGE #2

You guessed it, it's time for our second writing challenge! You have all month and feel free to enter with as many characters as you like! You do get cash money for it, but even if you didn't, come on! It's fun! If you recall, you just post a one shot below! This month, our writing prompt is:

You hide so much behind that smile.

dark, you can't come soon enough.
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save me one more day of misery

Alfie felt like he was drowning in his own mind. Everything was a sudden challenge and finding the will to push forward was growing impossible with his insides wrenching for no reason. Overthinking. Body aches. Lack of concentration. This was a lovely little thing called Depression. All he wanted to do was sleep. When Quidditch was barely an interest to him, he knew he had a problem, but he pushed it aside, dismissing the fact to him just not wanting to be around people in general. The public eye observing his every move this time of the year took a lot of energy out of him, which sucked, because dreading Quidditch season was something he'd never experienced before.

Love woes could be a contribution to that awkwardness, considering he decided to mix business and pleasure with now ex girlfriend Arianna James. He didn't think it would bother him as much as it did, but it truly did. Alfie regretted bringing her in daily, now that she was managing someone else on his team, he just couldn't seem to escape her. But that was simply the cherry on top of things. He could easily shrug off a a fizzled romance.

This looming darkness was an all too familiar war he had been fighting for many years. It came and went like seasons. When things were good, they were fucking amazing, he was on top of the world. But when they were bad? It was like his world was spiraling uncontrollably downwards and crumbling before his eyes. When in reality, nothing was happening. He was secure on the Ballycastle Bats, working hard day and night to keep himself in shape and agile, since he was undoubtedly getting older, his athletic time clock was ticking. His mind wasn't as strong as he tried to come off to his peers.

From the outside in it was hard to understand. There was no waking up one day and being 'cured', there was no choosing to be happy. Alfie had plenty of financial wealth, supportive teammates, a Professional Quidditch career of over ten years, plenty of people who cared deeply for him, but that still wasn't good enough to keep him from feeling like absolute rubbish. There was this constant lingering darkness inside of him, feasting on his insecurities ferociously. Every. Single. Fucking. Day.

Being a Astrology buff gave him a bit of comfort in times like these. Knowing that more than one planet was in retrograde made most people feel like their life was in a complete frenzy. Alfie was especially sensitive having Lycan blood, addictive personality, and reoccurring manic depression. The Full Moon was last week, leaving him drained and unfocused well into the new week, but he'd push through it with a smile.

It was easier to pretend like everything was okay.

Writing Challenge #2
469

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

He used to call me DN
That stood for deadly nightshade
'Cause I was filled with poison
But blessed with beauty and rage

Staring at the envelope made of paper in her hands, sitting on the railing of her balcony in a way that was far too precarious and dangerous considering the amount of alcohol she'd drunk that day, Ampi wondered for the millionth time why she still did this. It wasn't like she would change anything, even if she could. Things happened the way that they had to happen and she thought that was for the best. Things hurt, sometimes, and it can be bad but it can also be salvation. In her case, it had changed her into what she was today and she was proud of herself. Of what she'd accomplished, of what she'd done. And she was happy with her life, she couldn't have asked for much more, really. And yet, every month like clockwork, a thick envelope came to her, no name and no return address, containing things that she should leave it well alone but kept remembering. Kept finding out.

Taking a deep breath, Ampi tore it open and picked up the long piece of parchment. The words blurred in front of her eyes and she knew that she'd have to read it again later, to make sure she didn't miss anything. It was unlikely that anything life changing had happened in the past month, it wasn't like his life was all that exciting, but she still forced herself to do so. Penance? Remembering what she'd almost done, the life she'd almost condemned herself to? Who was she kidding, that had never been an option. Even if she'd wanted it...he wouldn't have offered. It was made clear to her plenty of times and she'd been too stupid to realise it before he'd walked away.

Her hand was carefully steady as she put the unread report away and picked up the photos that always came with the delivery. There were a dozen or so of them and the first one she picked up was like a knife to her heart. A baby, no older than six months, in someone's arms. Ampi was pathetically grateful that the woman's face didn't show. He smiled and blew bubbles, unaware of the camera registering the moment. All cheeks, dark eyes small. Clearly Sun-Woo's child, in every way. Ampi huffed a laughter and leafed quickly through the pictures. More of the baby, a couple of the daughter - now almost two. Three of Sun-Woo himself and they hurt somehow even more than his children's. None of the wife, whoever she was. That was the one thing Amparo had never wanted to know.

A knock on her door and- with a wave of her hand, the papers put themselves away and the envelope floated sedately to her lock box - where it would stay safe until she could allow herself this indulgence again. Not tonight but...soon. Fixing a smile on her red lips, her very own trademark, she hopped off the edge and steadied herself for a moment before walking towards the door.

All would be well and Ampi- she was alright. She had to be.

tags: writing challenge #2

words: 510

circumstances.
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we can try to bury our pasts but it will not change our futures

It was strange, the path her life had taken. If someone had told Meredith, years ago in her bright-eyed youth, the way her life would turn out in thirty or forty years, she would have likely laughed in that person’s face. She was meant to be a Healer. That was her calling. It was in her blood, and all that. Her father was a pharmacist. Her older brother had always wanted to do the same. A job to help people. A job where everyone would look up to you, eyes shining with gratitude. Meredith had always wanted that for herself, for as long as she could remember. There hadn’t really been a moment when that desire had come into doubt… until the war, of course.

Watching people die is hard. Watching them die right after you’ve healed them is even harder. But watching them kill after you’ve healed them… there is no greater conflict. It brings on this horrible, horrible question of whether you are just as much of murderer as the person that had just gone to great lengths to take a life. It was a question that haunted Meredith until she could no longer take it. It ruined Healing, to a point she could have never imagined. Not to say that she no longer felt joy when helping people. She did. Still did. But each act would now be followed by an inward cringe as she watched the person leave. A desire to know what they would become… and at the same time, a desire to not know.

The path to academia had illuminated itself, then, and Meredith hadn’t hesitated to follow it with rigor and determination and a somber look on her face. She worked hard. She smiled and won over anyone she needed to win over. Because that was the way Slytherins did things, anyways, and she was determined to have the life of fulfillment she knew she deserved. Despite the countless times anyone would try to get in the way of that. She was determined to separate herself from the past. From war and death. From lies and betrayal. And maybe abandoning Healing would help her do that. Maybe it wouldn’t. There really was only one way to find out, though, so Meredith dove head first.

Over twenty years since she had last seen him. It had been early in the morning, but Meredith hadn’t slept that night. The sun was just rising as he was leaving, and Meredith had to fight the urge to change her mind. But she couldn’t. Not when she remembered the fact that she had seen Idris’ name on those papers - those files that belonged to some Death Eater or other. Not when he had lied to her, after she had done nothing but wear her heart on her sleeve. She still went over that day in her head all the time, but that didn’t matter. No one would know that (except, maybe her mother, if she looked closely). No one would know that because people needed her. And the ones that didn’t need her were just waiting for her to slip up.

So it would be all smiles and cordiality from Dean Meredith Powell. There would be no reason to look beneath the surface.

Writing Challenge #2
559 words

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

try to figure
out where you mistepped,
Somehow you ended up alone
Headed towards regret

❧

She was still reeling over everything that had happened. It had almost been a month. How had it already been that long? So much had happened just in that short bit of time. The day that she had decided that she was leaving Tomàs had been one of the better days in her life. It was a silly thing, thinking that deciding to divorce her husband had been one of the best days of her life but it had. Rubi had been able to tell Santi that it was him that she wanted to be with. That he was her soulmate and she didn’t want them to have to hide their relationship in the shadows anymore. She prided herself on being a good person and she knew that Santi did too. It wasn’t like either of them to be in a situation like that one, and now they wouldn’t have to be.

That was what she had thought anyway.

But… she had made the mistake of asking Val for help. She didn’t know why she had trusted her with anything at all, but her sister had always been the straightforward one, to put it nicely. If anyone was going to have advice on how to leave her husband, it would be her. Instead, she’d used that ammunition to ruin… everything. Nothing was left. The election had come and gone--she had lost, unsurprisingly. The news had broken with too little time to even attempt damage control and she hadn’t been in the right state of mind to try it regardless. Tomàs had already gotten a lawyer. Divorces took a little bit of time, but somehow, she thought that her husband was going to get them through it was quickly as possible.

And she was going to let him. Of course, she was. Rubi knew that she didn’t have a leg to stand on. She had cheated. Proof of that was in the papers, everyone knew about it. He could ask for whatever he wanted in the divorce and she’d have to settle. She was the cheating wife.

He wanted full custody. She knew that already. It was something that she wanted to fight him on, but she wasn’t sure that she should. Miquel and Sofia surely deserved better than what she could give them. She didn’t deserve to have custody of them. She just… didn’t. Rubi didn’t think that Tomàs would cut her off from seeing them entirely but, he wanted full custody. Fighting him on that might end up with him actually making sure that she never saw them again and she didn’t think that she could bear that. If that meant giving him what he wanted now, then she would do it. She had to do it. It was the only choice that she had.

She had more to think about than just Miquel and Sofia now, though. She had found out for certain on New Year’s Eve. She was pregnant. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind who the father was. She had barely been with Tomàs as of late. It, funnily enough, felt… like she was cheating on Santi if she was with her husband. Rather backwards, but beside the point now. She knew that Santi was the father and she… didn’t know what to do about that. If there had been one silver lining to everything that had happened, she had thought that it would be them being able to be together. Not exactly in the way that they had planned, but with the truth out, they had no reason to hide. They could be with each other for real, like they wanted.

But she hadn’t heard from him. Not once. She had thought she’d hear from him the day that the article released… then she thought maybe he was giving her a couple of days to figure everything out. But when days had turned into weeks, she had started to worry. With no contact at all, surely something was going on. Had he only wanted her in the shadows? Was that part of the draw--the fact that she was married? Now that everything was out in the open, had he lost interest? Her mind had gone to the worst of scenarios. There was no good reason to not speak to her for weeks--Christmas had passed without a word.

After losing absolutely everything else in her life, she had been sure that she still had Santi. He loved her. More than anything in the world. That was what he had said. Even though it was a bad situation, even with their relationship exposed in the worst light possible, he loved her. She loved him. They would figure it out. She had been so sure. But the longer she’d gone without hearing from him, the more she’d wanted to just accept that she truly had lost everything. She wasn’t going to go crawling back to him to figure out what she had done, why he hadn’t checked on her, why he hadn’t written or come over or anything. She wasn’t going to sink to those levels. She wasn’t going to be pathetic.

But then that test had come back positive, and she had to tell him. Even if he didn’t want her anymore, even if it had been more about the challenge of being with a married witch than her, he deserved to know that she was pregnant. Keeping something like that from him was not an option, regardless of how she was feeling. It needed to be out in the open. Even if he wanted nothing to do with them, even if he did. It didn’t matter what his reaction was, it just mattered that he knew. It had taken a while for her to pluck up her courage, but finally, she knew that she couldn’t wait any longer. Rubi had decided to go to his house, that she would tell him in person. It was the only way.

She hadn’t written or let him know she was coming. She didn’t want to risk it, if he really didn’t want to see her. It was around dinnertime, that was why she was decently sure that he would be home. Rubi thought she knew his schedule well enough to think he’d be here. But who knew how much had changed in the past weeks? So, she approached cautiously, trying to stop herself from talking herself out of this. Then she saw movement out of the corner of her eye and found herself looking in that direction. The moment that she saw who was coming into the dining room, she couldn’t breathe. Val? What was her sister doing at Santi’s?

No good explanation came to mind, nothing made sense, and her mind was grasping for some reasonable explanation as to what her sister would be doing here. Nothing good. There was no way that she was here to try to help mend a relationship that she had helped to break. She wasn’t here to fix anything--she didn’t even know that Santi hadn’t been speaking to her. She didn’t know that there was anything to fix. She couldn’t stop looking, not even when she knew that her sister could look up and likely see her. It wasn’t as if she’d tried to approach the house without being noticed. She hadn’t known that she had needed to.

When Santi walked into the room, she didn’t know what she had expected and then suddenly everything clicked into place. Don’t look. She tried to convince herself to turn away, to leave before she saw something that she really didn’t want to. She felt outside of her own body, unable to stop herself from looking. She had to see it for herself. This was worse than any of the scenarios that she’d come up with in her mind. Worse than anything. He wasn’t--they weren’t… he wouldn’t have done that.

When he leaned down to kiss her sister, Rubi immediately felt like she was going to be sick. She took a step back, nearly stumbling, before she turned away from the window. He was with her. That was why she hadn’t heard from him. He was with her and she…

Her hand moved to her stomach, thinking of the baby growing inside her. She couldn’t tell him. He had chosen her sister. He had chosen Val, the person who had taken her secrets--their secrets, and told the entire country about them. She had broken up her marriage, ruined her career, and Santi had gone to her and let her take the only good thing she had left in her life. She loved him--Igual que ella no havia estimat a ningú més. He knew that. But he was here anyway.

As much as she wanted to cry, as much as she could feel tears forming in her eyes, she knew that she needed to be stronger than that. There was someone else counting on her now--and her baby would need her more than ever, now that she couldn’t tell Santi. Taking a deep breath, she blinked away the tears and walked away. She refused to look back.

January 1997 | Song Muse

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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