This morning I went into the village to stock up on cold and flu remedies and decided to walk around the minster. As I passed through the cemetery, I saw a microwave oven on top of a grave.

Some people leave flowers. Others leave microwaves.

Happy Birthday, fanged_angel!!!!

Due to RL stress and a very large workload this month, I'm not going to be around on LJ or Twitter for at least two weeks.

To those I beta for, it's still okay to send me your fics and I will get to them as soon as I can.

I owe emails to a couple of people and likewise will get to those when I can.

See you on the other side.

Title: The Moon in Water
Fandom: Onmyoji
Pairing: Seimei/Hiromasa
Rating: PG13
Prompt: #18 – full moon @ story_lottery
Summary: Seimei breaks a taboo during The Godless Month.
Word count: 1179

The Moon in Water

Hiromasa woke to the sight of the full moon, bone-white and frozen, through the slats of the bamboo blinds. Blinking at the light, he rolled over beneath the heap of layered robes and discovered he was alone.

“Seimei?”

He whispered the name, conscious of the fact that Seimei seemed able to hear his words from half the city away; but when he received no response, Hiromasa untangled himself from the bedding and crawled out onto the floorboards. Immediately he shifted back onto the sleeping mat, the chill of the floor startling him into full wakefulness.

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Title: The Bell
Fandom: Onmyoji
Pairing: Seimei/Hiromasa
Rating: PG
Prompt: #11 – thunder @ story_lottery
Summary: When the largest bell in the world is installed at the Kamo shrine, Seimei is concerned.
Word count: 2134
Notes: I seem to have written a fable of sorts. How very Pu Songlingian.

The Bell

In retrospect, the whole thing was doomed from the very beginning. Casting the largest bell in the world was hubris. Installing it at the Kamo shrine was ludicrous. Inviting the entire of the court to its inaugural ringing was utter insanity.

When the Bureau of Divination met for the first time after the New Year, Seimei made his opinions known. His colleagues had exclaimed at his cynicism and expressed their dismay at his attitude. Didn’t he know that the bell was a great and worthy work? Couldn’t he see that the dual shrines would benefit from such a wonder? It was not just for the glory of the deities and the ancestors, or for the purpose of attracting more pilgrims to the shrine—it was also, they clucked, a way to ensure protection from demons.

“Indeed,” said Seimei, and bowed to his colleagues before getting up and strolling out of the meeting. He paid no heed to the startled squawks of protest he left in his wake.

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Title: Chrysalis
Fandom: Onmyoji
Rating: PG
Prompt: #23 – chrysalis @ story_lottery
Summary: When Hiromasa discovers a chrysalis husk in a box, Seimei explains the secret of Mitsumushi’s origins.
Word count: 2343
Notes: According to Seimei in Onmyoji, Priest Kukai (who established the Shingon sect of esoteric Buddhism in Japan) brought Mitsumushi back with him from Chang'an.

Chrysalis

Hiromasa was bored. He leaned back where he sat, clasping his hands around his ankles, and stared from the floor up to the ceiling. The entire of the north-facing wall of Seimei’s study was covered in maps, charts, diagrams, and spells. Where the good people of Heian-Kyo might hang an elegant piece of calligraphy, Seimei had plastered a set of pages torn from an arcane volume and annotated with slashing red ink.

Heaving a discreet sigh, Hiromasa rocked forward and onto his knees. A quick glance towards the low writing desk showed Seimei still frowning over a constellation chart and a page of figures and scribbles. His forefinger, stained with black ink, tapped against the page, leaving greying smudges upon the paper.

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Happy Birthday, sandrine!!!!
(apparently you share your birthday with Kimi?????? Never mind :p)

Happy birthday, slippery_fish!

Back from holiday. Proper post to follow when I am not so damn tired.

Winner of Weirdest Dream of 2009 - I dreamt I had incredibly hot sex with Fernando Alonso. Really, really good sex. And then I ate him with pasta and chorizo in red wine.

During the dream I was thinking 'Why am I eating this with pasta?' Yes, it was the pasta that was wrong, not the cannibalism. Btw he tasted really good.

So diagon and I were discussing the possibility of going to Greece next year. The last time I went to the mainland was in 1998 for drunken funtiems serious academic research. Last time I went to Crete was 2000, and though I'd dearly love to go and see the Scary Batshit Cave of Human Sacrifice again, I really crave the mainland. I want to go to Nauplio and Corinth and Delphi and Epidauros. I want to wander around the Agora and the Kerameikos and hear the frogs shouting brekekex koax koax. I want to see the Goulandris and the Benaki and the NM and the new Akropolis Museum. I want to scoff wonderful Greek food and drink Naxian black wine and thick, syrupy coffee chased down with ouzo. Most of all, I want to see that incredible light that you only get in a certain part of the Mediterranean.

Last night I decided to see how much Greek I remembered from my long-ago studies. Answer: Not very much. At least I still know how to swear and ask the way to the chemist/cinema/airport, along with 'Excuse me, you dropped your newspaper'.

Well, you never know.

lf you are a disregarded entity with a single owner who is a foreign person and you are not claiming treaty benefits as a hybrid entity, this form should be completed and signed by your foreign single owner.

Er...?

So I have this one page form to fill out for the IRS and it has eight pages of instructions that all read like that. Lovely.

Oh, and my left shoulder is completely out of alignment. I actually feel sick with pain because it's grinding in the socket. Ibuprofen and bed, methinks.

Not really.

Just wanted to say Nels looked extremely hot in his suit today. Oh boy. And why did Fernando turn up at court dressed like a grandpa? That cardigan - so not flattering.

Massive LOL at Flav's ban extending to those he manages.

However, biggest laugh of the day is Nels' Mills & Boon-style narrative, thus: "I found myself at the mercy of Mr Briatore. His true character, which had previously only been known to those he had treated like this in the past, is now known [...] it is clear to me that I was simply being used by him then to be discarded and left to ridicule."

A promising career in romance writing calls to the tempestuous young Brazilian!

Title: Sacrifice
Fandom: Watchmen
Rating: PG13
Summary: This is how it all began, past and future revealed and concealed, and a character formed in the bowl of a bronze tripod.
Notes: Written for meiou_set as part of the Fall Fandom Free For All with the request ‘Adrian as a teen’. I’ve mixed comic book and movie canon, borrowing Matthew Goode’s interpretation of Adrian as the son of a Nazi. This is another excuse for me to ramble on about Hellenic oracles, this time Delphi. Alexander offered sacrifice at Delphi as a young man, continuing a tradition set by his father Philip. The story about Alexander mistreating the Pythia is very likely Roman slander, though Clavel takes it as fact. The reference to Croesus and the oracles is from Herodotus I.46ff; the quote on circumstance is from VII.49.

Sacrifice

His father is obscenely rich. Adrian never asks where the money comes from, though he knows it has something to do with Brazil and the old boys’ network. Their wealth sometimes makes his mother wring her hands and dab at her eyes with a lace-edged handkerchief. Whenever she’s upset, her accent slips. Her imperfect English takes on the tones of the Rhineland. Adrian’s father gets angry with her on those occasions. He beckons her out of the sitting room, leaving Adrian perched on the edge of the pale green velvet-upholstered sofa with its perfect white antimacassars.

Adrian doesn’t listen to their arguments. He watches television instead, the flickering black and white of images from around the world a shadow-play for his senses. Television is so much more real than his family.

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Title: Seduction
Author: glitterburn
Fandom: Onmyoji
Pairing: Seimei/Hiromasa
Rating: PG13
Summary: How do you make someone fall in love?
Word count: 1082
Note: Written for prompt #17 – mayfly - at story_lottery

Seduction

“How do you make someone fall in love?” Hiromasa asks.

It’s late summer, autumn now more than a distant dream. The end of the day is drowsy and the air shimmers with heat despite the approach of evening. Cicadas whirr in the trees, their music lending the situation a sense of unreality. Butterflies – not as bright or colourful as Mitsumushi – dip and weave amongst the tall grasses. A mayfly hovers, its movements erratic, its long tails quivering. The sky is darkening with dusk, a wash of grey tinting the pale, endless blue.

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...I would just like to say o_O

I was feeling a bit crappy this morning (lack of sleep for five days running) so I was going to curl up and re-watch some NCIS and gather my energy for tonight (going out raving in Leeds with Chris Moyles LOL). But then! The postman came, bringing me four back issues of F1 Racing that I bought off ebay for purposes of leering and perving research. I ditched a bunch of them before going to NZ and I wanted to re-read an old interview with Fluff, so fortunately I was able to get my hands on a copy.

I'm off to lick the pages read.

ETA: Had a few LOL moments where things I'd invented for the Fic o'Doom actually turned out to be true or had odd parallels; one 'ooooh interesting' moment randomly connected to my thesis and which made my mind flip in an AU direction; and re-reading the 2006 interview that made me like Fluff in the first place was very interesting. He was much more butch back then - he's prettier now.

Title: Washed Up
Author: glitterburn
Fandom: Whitechapel
Characters: DI Joseph Chandler, DS Ray Miles, DC Kent, DC McCormack
Pairing: Vague implication of Chandler/Kent
Rating: PG13
Summary: They’re all waiting for the chance to lay the ghosts to rest.
Word count: 1314
Note: Written for prompt #8 – the tide @ story_lottery. While looking for a likely site for a corpse to wash up, I came across a horrifying statistic – a body is found every week along the 213 mile stretch of the Thames. One body every week, most of whom are never reported and never identified. There’s an article from The Guardian newspaper from December 2004 on the subject that makes for grim but fascinating reading.

Washed Up

When they closed the copycat Ripper case and rubber-stamped it at HQ, Chandler knew it wasn't really over. He shared with his team the same opinion he’d shared with Commander Anderson – that if they monitored all the suicides in the Metropolitan area for the next two weeks, they’d find the killer.

Anderson told him to forget it, but for the team it’s unfinished business. Chandler doesn’t encourage them, but he doesn’t tell them to stop, either. His men have contacts all across London, and they’re like terriers after a rat.

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