Yvi

Should be writing one of the things I have deadlines for, but I'm fretting over it all instead. I feel like I have no real niche, as far as writing goes, like I'm a jack of all trades who does all of them with admirable half-assery and isn't particularly known for anything. On one hand, it's nice not to feel pigeonholed. On the other, it's annoying not to feel consistent. And then I get to over-thinking everything I type, which is about as far from productive as you can get.

So it's back to prompt_a_day to clear my head. Written in two minutes:

Prompt 322: Hidden in my closet

Down in the dirt-floored wine cellar of a tiny old inn where Anja bruised her fists buffeting on the iron-bound oak door. You can still see the scratch marks, my grandmother used to tell me. I never believed her, but I would lean forward on the rug and wait to hear more—her voice always went slow and eerie when she told these stories. Anja was the prettiest thing she’d ever seen, she would say, and all the grown-ups fussed over her and she made the best marks in school and pulled my grandmother’s hair during recess. Her parents owned the inn and never used the cellar, so she goaded the girl inside and locked her there for days at a time until she’d forgotten she’d done it. Anja was never the same once they’d brought her back out. She gave me a picture, black and white, two girls in the 1930s, one blond and downcast, the other freckled and smiling brightly. I keep it in my closet and don’t ever take it out. I didn’t ever think for a second that it was true, that my grandmother was capable of locking little girls up and blithely turning it into a fairy tale afterward, like some reborn creation of Hansel and Gretel’s witch. And then Great-aunt Tziporah told me, years later, when my grandmother was a white-eyed wisp in a wheelchair and even eerier in her obliviousness, yes, it was all true.

ETA: I love the stuff that comes out of get_house_laid. House and Cuddy get married and have deaf twins. And also sex. And it is all flagrantly non-sucky. Seriously.

Oh, oh, oh!

Vincit qui se vincit: He conquers, who conquers himself.

Wilson family motto.

I kind of want to work that into something.

Also, I was doing more freewriting and wound up pounding out something about freckles and constellations and Cassiopeia, which looks like a W, as in Wilson, only...I think someone's already written that before and I can't think who it is. It sounds sort of euclase-ish or maybe phinnia-ish, but I'm not sure. If anyone has any idea what I'm talking about, please let me know. I don't want to unwittingly start yet another plagiarism wank in this fandom.

ETA: Well, it is definitely not Licia, and I did find The Stars at Your Feet by topaz_eyes, which is good stuff but not the fic I'm thinking of. Narrow the field, narrow the field...