MadBard
Fandoms
Recent works
-
Tags
Summary
"A couple of days after the loops ended, Isa came to you with a thick, battered darkless cloak folded carefully and draped over his forearm. Someone had pulled it off of you after you passed out, after the Favor Tree, and you hadn’t yet found the courage to ask what had been done with it. He came in smiling sheepishly, showing you some of the near-invisible seams where he had repaired the slashes of paper and scissor attacks. The lining sang against your skin, soft and clean, his fingers raw when he handed it to you. You wondered how long it took to wash away the blood. Suddenly, you couldn’t think of anything to say.
(A few nights before, you had woken in the middle of the night to find him sitting by your bed, shoulders squared and hands tensed into fists, metal studs glinting on the knuckles. Like an enemy had tried to take something precious from him, and he was silently steeling himself to fight the Universe itself to protect it. You had wondered, half-delirious, how long it would take him to realize the enemy was looking up at him from your bed.)
Right here, right now, he holds you."
-
Tags
Summary
"You have died for them, and it doesn’t matter, and for that you are grateful. The dead don’t feel the warmth of food in their stomachs, nor can they hear or speak. The dead lie still, and you are not of their number.
You have died, and death could not keep you."
(Or: musings on what death means, when it can be undone in the blink of an eye.)
-
wrap the blanket over you, and keep your head within by MadBard
Fandoms: In Stars And Time (Video Game)
05 Nov 2025
Tags
Summary
Maybe she should just go back to the room. Take the leftover edge of Isa’s blanket, and try to get to sleep again. If she closed her eyes, maybe the tears would finally come, or else the burning would subside. If she closed her eyes, maybe she could find a better dream, one where the House she loved had never been unmade, and she could hold Siffrin’s hand as she guided her family down its halls without fear. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Maybe she was just tired of missing everything she'd lost.
Series
- Part 2 of In Echoes and Dreams
-
Tags
Summary
Standing there, wreathed by swirling dust motes in the overflowing shop, you feel yourself momentarily flung to the past. Odile hasn’t changed as much as the others, mainly settling into herself as the years passed by. There’s more darkless weaving through her hair now, enough so that after a drink or two she’s begun to joke about matching you in a few years. But in the dimness here, surrounded by leaning piles of antiques, you could imagine that the two of you just split off from the rest of the party to spend the afternoon together in companionable silence.
When you return to wherever you all are staying, Bonnie or Mirabelle will ask if you bought anything, and Odile will raise her book just enough so that they can read the cover, or else you will pull an odd trinket from your pocket, yet another souvenir to lose somewhere on the road to the King. For a moment, you exist in this strange half-space where all that Change has been undone, and you and your family are still on a journey with an uncertain ending. Then you blink, and it all comes back.
(On the anniversary of the King's defeat, Odile and Siffrin visit an antiques shop together.)
Series
- Part 1 of In Echoes and Dreams
-
Tags
Summary
She thinks about how easily nothingness can convince you it is substance – how a balloon can feel so solid in your hands until it bursts, how you never really know what’s inside something until you crack it open. Sometimes it’s egg yolk but sometimes it’s just foul air.
It took her so long to realize there was nothing inside her.
Recent series
-
- Words:
- 3,824
- Works:
- 2
- Bookmarks:
- 5