Clare-Dragonfly

She clutched his hand. Her hand felt hot and dry to his touch. “Don’t let me go alone. I can’t go alone.”

He squeezed her hand back. “Don’t worry, Mama. I won’t let you be alone.”

“You promise? I won’t have to be alone?” The spots on her skin, the second-to-last stage, were faded; the last stage of the disease was almost to an end. The shaking, the fever, the paranoia.


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Title: The Rightness of Rain
World: The Wasteland
Word count: 454
Rating: G
Prompt: Thimbleful Thursday: right as rain


Redhe pedaled her bicycle as fast as she could, heedless of the slick the ground was turning into under the deluge. She was too happy, too bursting with energy, to slow down.

The rain poured from the sky and plastered her hair to her face and her clothes to her body, probably ruining the pretty dress she’d worn to town. It chilled her, making the hairs stand up on her arms and her toes pinch. It fell into her eyes and made it hard to see.( Read more... )

Title: The Fork in the Road
World: The Wasteland
Word count: 661
Rating: PG
Prompt: rainbowfic Tyrian Purple 7, three seeds; Heart Gold 29, Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction. - Saint-Exupery; darkfantasybingo crossroads
Notes: I sure seem to write a lot of Wasteland stories about people wandering and finding nothing. Well, I guess there's a reason I called it The Wasteland.


They had been walking this same road for days—for weeks—for months.( Read more... )

Title: The Horizon
Word count: 500
Rating: G
Prompt: inkstains contest 65: horizon


She keeps her gaze fixed on the horizon.

It’s all she can do, the only place to look. She has to keep walking. She knows that somewhere, far ahead of her, is somewhere she can go, somewhere she can be safe.

Or at least she believes so.( Read more... )

Title: Flowers for the Queen
Word count: 1,421
Rating: G
Prompt: rainbowfic: lilac, origfic_bingo B2, death
Notes: So I finally manage to write something about the characters in the main Queen of the Wasteland story... and it's Taia's funeral. ::facepalm:: And I still managed to get away without naming most of the characters!


3. rose
Taia Lucifer was my mother.( Read more... )

Title: Needle and Thread
Word count: 1,501
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: rainbowfic Tyrian Purple 26, black sails; Heart Gold 22, It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. - Samuel Butler; novelty bead prompt from bookblather, Don't say every chance is lost, / Please don't say anything at all - Vienna Teng, Augustine
Notes: This story takes place several generations after the apocalyptic event.


Aina was sitting in her room, carefully working up the side seam on her new dress, when the knock came on her door. She looked up swiftly, automatically pulling the needle through the last stitch. Her sister entered without waiting for a response, and said, “They’re coming back.”( Read more... )

Title: Through the Snow
Word count: 419 (incomplete total: 610)
Rating: G
Prompt: aldersprig's: Shoveling a path to the world.
Notes: This takes place two or three years after Harvest Day, and further into the winter.


Mama was sick. She said she wasn’t, but Tarnik knew better than that. Her belly and her feet were all swollen up, and she didn’t want to get out of bed. She kept making Papa bring her cups of tea and bowls of soup. Tarnik remembered how Papa had brought him lots of tea (even though he didn’t like tea) and soup the last time he had a cold.( Read more... )

Title: Harvest Day
Word count: 1020
Rating: G
Prompt: aldersprig's: Rampion and The neatest thing I figured out when we started growing our own herbs is WHY parsley and sage are Thanksgiving herbs - they're still alive, even in a good of snow.
Notes: I didn't call it Thanksgiving because this is the Wasteland, and while their culture is very much like ours it isn't exactly the same (hence the weird names). Apparently, rampion has an edible, turnip-like root. Who knew? This piece may or may not have more to it.


It was Harvest Day, and Vulai was determined to celebrate.

Even if the harvest didn’t happen at the same time anymore. Even if there was nothing to harvest. She still had a calendar, though it was one she’d made herself (the last mass-produced calendar she’d been able to find had been three years ago); she knew the date, whatever the weather was doing. Today, close to the end of November, when once the trees might have been brown and red and the skies grey but closed, was a holiday once beloved by the entire nation. Vulai, at least, still loved it.( Read more... )

Title: Awakening
Word count: 1,042
Rating: PG-13, I guess, for death
Prompt: inkstains contest 43: alone at the end
Notes: Depressing! Whee!


One morning Deri woke up and she wasn’t coughing anymore.

It was almost hard to believe. She pushed herself all the way upright—she’d been sitting half-up anyway, pillows and a blanket piled behind her, to help with her breathing during the night—and took a careful breath. Then she let it out. There was no tickle in her throat, her lungs didn’t spasm. She took a deeper one. She still didn’t cough.

A smile spread its way across her face, something she hadn’t thought she would feel for a long time, if ever. She must have beaten the illness. She’d been sick for weeks; she had, quite honestly, expected to die.( Read more... )

Hi and welcome to my Dreamwidth journal! The main thing I post here is original fiction.

My work is posted with varying degrees of privacy. If nothing is listed after the summary, it is a public piece. If it says "locked," then you must be on my access list to read it (usually this is because I want to keep rights of first publication intact). If it says "sponsor this," then the beginning of the story is public, with the rest of it waiting to be unlocked for a donation!

( The Many Worlds of Clare K. R. Miller )