total writing rut

[tielan]

So give me:
1. a character
2. a descriptive word
3. a time of day or a place

I will write at least 100 words about the scenario. It will not be a completed story, but a fragment.

Do not expect any kind of response if I have written you something before and you have not left even a basic thank-you.

Comments

[ticklie.livejournal.com]

1. Tagan (Teyla's father)
2. Tranquil
3. Daybreak, just as the birds wake.

Does that work for you?

[tielan]

He watches the slow dawnlight draw across his people's tents in the valley below. Behind him, the wind rustles through the leaves of the forest. Beside him, the wind ruffles through the strands of his daughter's hair. Above them, the birds cackle and chirp mockery and welcome to the new day.

Movement from his daughter turns his head. Teyla turns her face into the wind, letting it sweep the mass of her hair back from her features. A strong daughter, worthy of the leadership of their people; a proud Athosian, with the vision to take their people beyond where they have always lived.

His wife held their newborn daughter on her knees that first night, and her eyes had gleamed like stars in the ebony of her face. "Tegan, she will not be as our other leaders." And when asked how she knew, Eyala would only say, "Teyla has a destiny."

Tegan has seen no sign of his daughter's destiny; but he is well aware that fathers do not always see their children's stars rise - not when the Wraith cull among the people.

Ancestors grant that I see her outlive me. If they are kind, let them grant that I see her fulfil her destiny.

[greenconverses.livejournal.com]

1. Keller
2. awkward
3. Ronon's quarters

because I really want to see you write this 'ship! :)

[tielan]

Jennifer had time to yelp. That was all.

Then she found herself dragged into Ronon's bed, half-pinned beneath a muscled body that was in a fiery fever's grip.

Across the room, Major Lorne started towards her. Jennifer shook her head quickly. It had been difficult enough bearding Ronon in his quarters anyway - the man had a decidedly stubborn streak when he chose to exercise it.

She regretted the action a moment later as Ronon's mouth traced her throat, the bristles of his beard tingled on her skin, and his hand slid up her side, perilously close to her breast.

Her cheeks flamed into incandescence as her hands covered his. He seemed so large, so fierce, but his every movement was innately gentle.

"Doc?" Lorne had started across the room towards her, speaking in soft undertones. "You need help?"

A thumb brushed the curve of her breast, but she forced a smile to her lips and hoped that Lorne didn't know it was fake. "No, Major. Stay there." A panic was setting into her - not for what Ronon was doing, but for what he thought he was doing.

The fever had hit him hard - harder than just about anyone else in the city except Teyla. And Colonel Sheppard had carried Teyla up to the infirmary, her protests weak but steady. There wasn't anyone in the city who could carry Ronon.

"Mr. Dex..." Jennifer began, trying to breathe calmly as he shifted against her, heated muscle and terrifying strength.

"You're so cool," he rumbled, the words reaching her ears as he pressed his skin to hers, burrowing into her, as though he could bury himself - Oh, bad choice of words, Jen - in her.

"I need you to do something for me, Ronon." She kept her voice light and calm, even as his lips caressed her earlobe and sent shivers down her spine.

"Anything."

"I've got something for you to drink."

He lifted his head from her skin and his eyes were hazy, lost in a vision of something or someone who was no longer there. "It's going to taste horrible, right?"

"They usually do," she admitted. "Let me up?"

The question was cut short as his tongue stroked just behind her lobe. But he let her up. "Sure."

He watched as she handed him the antibiotics and the bottle of water. She sat by him as he swallowed the pills with suspicious obedience. And when she set the glass down on the side table and he reached for her again, she let him pull her back into the bed.

"Missed you, 'Lena" he muttered against the top of her head, growing drowsy.

Jennifer sighed, feeling a twinge of regret and disappointment - for him and for her - and let herself brush her fingers over his hair. "I know, Ronon."

Then she waited for him to fall sleep.

[ladyjax.livejournal.com]

1. John
2. exile
3. a planet that's the last outpost in Pegasus

(BTW - how is the trip going?)

[tielan]

He scrapes the beard-bristles from his cheek with one of Ronon's knives and grimaces as the blade shaves him a little too close. Gillette is a far-distant memory, Remington only slightly less so.

The shave isn't completely smooth, but there's no-one here to care. There'll be someone here to care tomorrow, though, so John shaves a little closer, until it's smooth enough to his satisfaction.

Water bubbles over the rocks, moss-slippery and ice-cold. It numbs his fingers and shivers his skin as he rinses off the blade and splashes water on his face.

John crouches by the river a few moments after he's put away his wash things, his fingers balancing him on the ground as he stares across the broad river. For a moment, the far bank with it's clumped bushes and swaying eucalypts vanishes, and what he sees is a city, rising shining above the sunrise waters.

Atlantis no longer stands bright but broken, its inhabitants are scattered, destroyed, exiled from where once they called home. They haven't heard from Earth in years now and hope is gone and dying.

He folds his things up in the small blanket, woollen-soft with tiny balls of nap forming on the warp and weft. Then he goes back to the cave which is the only home he's allowed - John Sheppard, no longer a hero but hated and feared.

What he brought down upon Pegasus, once considered forgiveable, is no longer acceptable. There will be no more Wraith, say the Council of Pegasus, and not all Teyla's persuasion can convince them otherwise.

She'll come to him tomorrow - a fleeting visit of a few hours. His salvation and his sting.

"Hello?"

The stunner is in his hand, automatically pointed at the speaker, even though he instantly knows it's Teyla. "Hey," he says, and puts the weapon down. "Sorry about that."

Her gaze drifts over him, and what she sees of him saddens her. "It is nothing."

John's shoulders tense, an automatic reaction to those words, said too often, meant too much. "I thought you were coming tomorrow."

"I am here now," she says, and the pain and relief rises in him so swiftly that the embrace surprises him as much as her.

"Yeah," he murmurs in her hair as her arms come around him and he is welcomed back into forgiveness, "you are."

[sjhw-tolerance.livejournal.com]

Sam

Missing him

Morning

[tielan]

Light crawls across the wall, molten gold, like honey in summer.

Sam sighs as her alarm heralds the start of her day and turns over in the bed that's both too small and too empty. She never thought she'd miss shoving him back over to his side of the bed - his tactility never stops, even in sleep - but she does. She never thought she'd miss the fight to reclaim the covers in the middle of a wintry DC night. She never thought she'd miss the cheerful morning lasciviousness that woke her at an hour far too early for play.

It brings a rueful smile to her lips - the idea of her, Sam Carter, not thinking.

The alarm - temporarily snoozed - goes off again, and she resigns herself to rising.

It's just another day in Atlantis without him.

[ubiquitous-girl.livejournal.com]

1. Elizabeth Weir
2. Blue
3. Home.

[tielan]

She'd like to believe that the shades of blue aren't the same, that the spires don't shine the way they do back home, that there are subtle differences in the architecture of this faux Atlantis.

But her Replicator-adjusted senses tell her plainly that the city is an exactly replica, that it's all in her mind - how ironic - that she is being foolish, emotional, obstructive.

They gave her life of a kind, and she's grateful for that. But this isn't home, and never will be.

[beatrice_otter]

Teyla
Dancing
Morning

[tielan]

The morning dawns to the distant beat of drums.

Teyla watches the blackness of the tent's interior give way to faint outlines. Her team-mates sleep peacefully beside her, within arm's length. She thinks that John might be awake, but Rodney is certainly asleep and Ronon is still and unmoving on his pallet.

She draws herself up as the drumbeats begin, far and echoing across the river. When footsteps rustle through the soft leaves, she slips out of the bed and stretches to ease muscles grown stiff with disuse.

Shadows fall across the canvas tent in the growing light, and Teyla goes to the opening. As her fingers unpick the lacings, she hears John rouse, alerted by her movement. "What's happening?"

"It is only the drum-dancing," she tells him. "You need not come."

He lifts himself onto one elbow, running a hand through his already-ruffled hair. "I...ah...I think I'll skip it. If that's okay."

Teyla smiles and slips out into the morning, already warm with the promise of heat. This will not take long - the summer dance is not so long that the morning meal is scanted.

Down in the silt plains along the river, the people are gathering around the fields in a joyous, thrumming dance of life and joy at the summer's coming. Fine silks and bright cords swing through the air as voices lift in the chants and hands clap together, or tap sticks, or beat on the hideskin drums that were the first thing Teyla heard upon waking.

Teyla pauses in the cool of the river, out of the way of those following along behind her, and looks at the celebration - of the fast-growing-harvest, of the seasons, of life itself, so precious in Pegasus.

Someone reaches down a hand to help her out, and she smiles up into a broad, dark face, accepts the offer of assistance, and is pulled up to the bank to join the dance.

The morning shivers to the beat of the drums.

[distant-cord.livejournal.com]

1. Teal'c
2. Sparkly
3. Victoria's Secret

[tielan]

Teal'c found the 'magazine' in one of the recreation areas of the base. He had noted that the women of the SGC sometimes sought company in this room, and that when there were few women on-duty, the room was often empty.

He meditated in his room, out of the way of others. But due to his primta, he needed less sleep than the humans in whose hands he had so recently placed himself. So there were times at night when he went wandering through the base, keeping to the public areas.

The reading matter intrigued him. Daniel Jackson had begun to teach him to read and write English, but he had no proficiency as yet. It would come with practise, said Daniel Jackson, no reason for concern.

Still, he was sufficiently schooled to read the lettering on the front of the colourful brochure. "Victoria's Secret". For a moment, he pondered whether it would be wise to read this 'secret', and he turned the brochure over.

His brows rose.

The woman on the back was dressed in a manner that Teal'c recognised as immodest by Earth standards, with much skin and flesh showing, and an inviting smile on her lips.

The clothing she wore must have been undergarments, for the lower half, at least, resembled the 'underwear' that the Earth people expected him to wear. He used the term resembled since the plain, black material item he had been given with his 'SGC clothing' - with holes for his legs to go through, and a stretchy waist - was nothing like the glittering silver lace of the item worn by the woman in the picture.

Indeed, these humans were most peculiar in their ways.

[inimicallyyours.livejournal.com]

Lorne, tired, mid-morning.

=)

[tielan]

It was only mid-morning and Lorne was tired of the mud.

One crashed jumper, one planetary EM field that blocks most of the signal from the gate, one team backtracking towards the gate.

One river delta and a whole lot of wading later, Lorne and his team were mired to the waist in mud, boiled from the sun that was considerably hotter now that it wasn't being filtered through the front screen of a 'jumper, and short-tempered from the wet, the mud, and the heat.

He was really tried of the mud.

[isaysquee.livejournal.com]

Curses! You've already got so many comments, but I'll try my luck anyway. ;)

Peter Petrelli
Blurry
3am in the morning

[tielan]

At three in the morning, the club is characterised by darkeness as much as light, from the hot steady burn of neon, to the temporary glitter of sequins and the gleam of skin. The silver slide of the pole matches the sweeping flash of the spotlight over Nikki's hair as she strips for the slavering men.

Leaning back against the bar, Peter watches with jaded eyes. The man he was four years ago would never have stood for his girlfriend working in a place like this.

The man he'd been four years ago was as dead as Nikki's husband and child.

Re: Perhaps something original?

[tielan]

There have been many who walked paths of doubt before him. He does not doubt that each forerunner thought his doubts unique, the most shattering to his faith.

But all have walked in the path of Judas Iscariot as well as Thomas; doubter, faithless, betrayer.

His own faith trembles but does not fail. He was taught not to fear a questioning; if his foundations were firm, then doubt was his proof, not his pitfall.

Sorry about the delay!

[wojelah.livejournal.com]

1. Teyla
2. antiquated
3. Dawn

[tielan]

Hm. Already had a request for Teyla at dawn - can I get a different time/place selection, please?

[neffitti.livejournal.com]

...Do not expect any kind of response if I have written you something before and you have not left even a basic thank-you...

*walks in, head hanging in shame*
This would probably me that you are speaking of, I am truly sorry for this. I read that lovely fragment you wrote in answer to my prompt and had every intention of leaving you a comment when I got home from work, but as usual RL and 2 kids crowd my brain once I’m home, and it totally slipped my mind, but reading yesterdays entry brought total recall. Please believe me when I say that what you wrote was really appreciated and liked very much. Once again I’m truly sorry and ashamed of my oversight.

[tielan]

Actually, it was based on an observation caused by someone else. But I appreciate you letting me know now. Don't do it in future! :)

[ticklie.livejournal.com]

1. Tagan (Teyla's father)
2. Tranquil
3. Daybreak, just as the birds wake.

Does that work for you?

[tielan]

He watches the slow dawnlight draw across his people's tents in the valley below. Behind him, the wind rustles through the leaves of the forest. Beside him, the wind ruffles through the strands of his daughter's hair. Above them, the birds cackle and chirp mockery and welcome to the new day.

Movement from his daughter turns his head. Teyla turns her face into the wind, letting it sweep the mass of her hair back from her features. A strong daughter, worthy of the leadership of their people; a proud Athosian, with the vision to take their people beyond where they have always lived.

His wife held their newborn daughter on her knees that first night, and her eyes had gleamed like stars in the ebony of her face. "Tegan, she will not be as our other leaders." And when asked how she knew, Eyala would only say, "Teyla has a destiny."

Tegan has seen no sign of his daughter's destiny; but he is well aware that fathers do not always see their children's stars rise - not when the Wraith cull among the people.

Ancestors grant that I see her outlive me. If they are kind, let them grant that I see her fulfil her destiny.

[greenconverses.livejournal.com]

1. Keller
2. awkward
3. Ronon's quarters

because I really want to see you write this 'ship! :)

[tielan]

Jennifer had time to yelp. That was all.

Then she found herself dragged into Ronon's bed, half-pinned beneath a muscled body that was in a fiery fever's grip.

Across the room, Major Lorne started towards her. Jennifer shook her head quickly. It had been difficult enough bearding Ronon in his quarters anyway - the man had a decidedly stubborn streak when he chose to exercise it.

She regretted the action a moment later as Ronon's mouth traced her throat, the bristles of his beard tingled on her skin, and his hand slid up her side, perilously close to her breast.

Her cheeks flamed into incandescence as her hands covered his. He seemed so large, so fierce, but his every movement was innately gentle.

"Doc?" Lorne had started across the room towards her, speaking in soft undertones. "You need help?"

A thumb brushed the curve of her breast, but she forced a smile to her lips and hoped that Lorne didn't know it was fake. "No, Major. Stay there." A panic was setting into her - not for what Ronon was doing, but for what he thought he was doing.

The fever had hit him hard - harder than just about anyone else in the city except Teyla. And Colonel Sheppard had carried Teyla up to the infirmary, her protests weak but steady. There wasn't anyone in the city who could carry Ronon.

"Mr. Dex..." Jennifer began, trying to breathe calmly as he shifted against her, heated muscle and terrifying strength.

"You're so cool," he rumbled, the words reaching her ears as he pressed his skin to hers, burrowing into her, as though he could bury himself - Oh, bad choice of words, Jen - in her.

"I need you to do something for me, Ronon." She kept her voice light and calm, even as his lips caressed her earlobe and sent shivers down her spine.

"Anything."

"I've got something for you to drink."

He lifted his head from her skin and his eyes were hazy, lost in a vision of something or someone who was no longer there. "It's going to taste horrible, right?"

"They usually do," she admitted. "Let me up?"

The question was cut short as his tongue stroked just behind her lobe. But he let her up. "Sure."

He watched as she handed him the antibiotics and the bottle of water. She sat by him as he swallowed the pills with suspicious obedience. And when she set the glass down on the side table and he reached for her again, she let him pull her back into the bed.

"Missed you, 'Lena" he muttered against the top of her head, growing drowsy.

Jennifer sighed, feeling a twinge of regret and disappointment - for him and for her - and let herself brush her fingers over his hair. "I know, Ronon."

Then she waited for him to fall sleep.

[ladyjax.livejournal.com]

1. John
2. exile
3. a planet that's the last outpost in Pegasus

(BTW - how is the trip going?)

[tielan]

He scrapes the beard-bristles from his cheek with one of Ronon's knives and grimaces as the blade shaves him a little too close. Gillette is a far-distant memory, Remington only slightly less so.

The shave isn't completely smooth, but there's no-one here to care. There'll be someone here to care tomorrow, though, so John shaves a little closer, until it's smooth enough to his satisfaction.

Water bubbles over the rocks, moss-slippery and ice-cold. It numbs his fingers and shivers his skin as he rinses off the blade and splashes water on his face.

John crouches by the river a few moments after he's put away his wash things, his fingers balancing him on the ground as he stares across the broad river. For a moment, the far bank with it's clumped bushes and swaying eucalypts vanishes, and what he sees is a city, rising shining above the sunrise waters.

Atlantis no longer stands bright but broken, its inhabitants are scattered, destroyed, exiled from where once they called home. They haven't heard from Earth in years now and hope is gone and dying.

He folds his things up in the small blanket, woollen-soft with tiny balls of nap forming on the warp and weft. Then he goes back to the cave which is the only home he's allowed - John Sheppard, no longer a hero but hated and feared.

What he brought down upon Pegasus, once considered forgiveable, is no longer acceptable. There will be no more Wraith, say the Council of Pegasus, and not all Teyla's persuasion can convince them otherwise.

She'll come to him tomorrow - a fleeting visit of a few hours. His salvation and his sting.

"Hello?"

The stunner is in his hand, automatically pointed at the speaker, even though he instantly knows it's Teyla. "Hey," he says, and puts the weapon down. "Sorry about that."

Her gaze drifts over him, and what she sees of him saddens her. "It is nothing."

John's shoulders tense, an automatic reaction to those words, said too often, meant too much. "I thought you were coming tomorrow."

"I am here now," she says, and the pain and relief rises in him so swiftly that the embrace surprises him as much as her.

"Yeah," he murmurs in her hair as her arms come around him and he is welcomed back into forgiveness, "you are."

[sjhw-tolerance.livejournal.com]

Sam

Missing him

Morning

[tielan]

Light crawls across the wall, molten gold, like honey in summer.

Sam sighs as her alarm heralds the start of her day and turns over in the bed that's both too small and too empty. She never thought she'd miss shoving him back over to his side of the bed - his tactility never stops, even in sleep - but she does. She never thought she'd miss the fight to reclaim the covers in the middle of a wintry DC night. She never thought she'd miss the cheerful morning lasciviousness that woke her at an hour far too early for play.

It brings a rueful smile to her lips - the idea of her, Sam Carter, not thinking.

The alarm - temporarily snoozed - goes off again, and she resigns herself to rising.

It's just another day in Atlantis without him.

[ubiquitous-girl.livejournal.com]

1. Elizabeth Weir
2. Blue
3. Home.

[tielan]

She'd like to believe that the shades of blue aren't the same, that the spires don't shine the way they do back home, that there are subtle differences in the architecture of this faux Atlantis.

But her Replicator-adjusted senses tell her plainly that the city is an exactly replica, that it's all in her mind - how ironic - that she is being foolish, emotional, obstructive.

They gave her life of a kind, and she's grateful for that. But this isn't home, and never will be.

[beatrice_otter]

Teyla
Dancing
Morning

[tielan]

The morning dawns to the distant beat of drums.

Teyla watches the blackness of the tent's interior give way to faint outlines. Her team-mates sleep peacefully beside her, within arm's length. She thinks that John might be awake, but Rodney is certainly asleep and Ronon is still and unmoving on his pallet.

She draws herself up as the drumbeats begin, far and echoing across the river. When footsteps rustle through the soft leaves, she slips out of the bed and stretches to ease muscles grown stiff with disuse.

Shadows fall across the canvas tent in the growing light, and Teyla goes to the opening. As her fingers unpick the lacings, she hears John rouse, alerted by her movement. "What's happening?"

"It is only the drum-dancing," she tells him. "You need not come."

He lifts himself onto one elbow, running a hand through his already-ruffled hair. "I...ah...I think I'll skip it. If that's okay."

Teyla smiles and slips out into the morning, already warm with the promise of heat. This will not take long - the summer dance is not so long that the morning meal is scanted.

Down in the silt plains along the river, the people are gathering around the fields in a joyous, thrumming dance of life and joy at the summer's coming. Fine silks and bright cords swing through the air as voices lift in the chants and hands clap together, or tap sticks, or beat on the hideskin drums that were the first thing Teyla heard upon waking.

Teyla pauses in the cool of the river, out of the way of those following along behind her, and looks at the celebration - of the fast-growing-harvest, of the seasons, of life itself, so precious in Pegasus.

Someone reaches down a hand to help her out, and she smiles up into a broad, dark face, accepts the offer of assistance, and is pulled up to the bank to join the dance.

The morning shivers to the beat of the drums.

[distant-cord.livejournal.com]

1. Teal'c
2. Sparkly
3. Victoria's Secret

[tielan]

Teal'c found the 'magazine' in one of the recreation areas of the base. He had noted that the women of the SGC sometimes sought company in this room, and that when there were few women on-duty, the room was often empty.

He meditated in his room, out of the way of others. But due to his primta, he needed less sleep than the humans in whose hands he had so recently placed himself. So there were times at night when he went wandering through the base, keeping to the public areas.

The reading matter intrigued him. Daniel Jackson had begun to teach him to read and write English, but he had no proficiency as yet. It would come with practise, said Daniel Jackson, no reason for concern.

Still, he was sufficiently schooled to read the lettering on the front of the colourful brochure. "Victoria's Secret". For a moment, he pondered whether it would be wise to read this 'secret', and he turned the brochure over.

His brows rose.

The woman on the back was dressed in a manner that Teal'c recognised as immodest by Earth standards, with much skin and flesh showing, and an inviting smile on her lips.

The clothing she wore must have been undergarments, for the lower half, at least, resembled the 'underwear' that the Earth people expected him to wear. He used the term resembled since the plain, black material item he had been given with his 'SGC clothing' - with holes for his legs to go through, and a stretchy waist - was nothing like the glittering silver lace of the item worn by the woman in the picture.

Indeed, these humans were most peculiar in their ways.

[inimicallyyours.livejournal.com]

Lorne, tired, mid-morning.

=)

[tielan]

It was only mid-morning and Lorne was tired of the mud.

One crashed jumper, one planetary EM field that blocks most of the signal from the gate, one team backtracking towards the gate.

One river delta and a whole lot of wading later, Lorne and his team were mired to the waist in mud, boiled from the sun that was considerably hotter now that it wasn't being filtered through the front screen of a 'jumper, and short-tempered from the wet, the mud, and the heat.

He was really tried of the mud.

[isaysquee.livejournal.com]

Curses! You've already got so many comments, but I'll try my luck anyway. ;)

Peter Petrelli
Blurry
3am in the morning

[tielan]

At three in the morning, the club is characterised by darkeness as much as light, from the hot steady burn of neon, to the temporary glitter of sequins and the gleam of skin. The silver slide of the pole matches the sweeping flash of the spotlight over Nikki's hair as she strips for the slavering men.

Leaning back against the bar, Peter watches with jaded eyes. The man he was four years ago would never have stood for his girlfriend working in a place like this.

The man he'd been four years ago was as dead as Nikki's husband and child.

Re: Perhaps something original?

[tielan]

There have been many who walked paths of doubt before him. He does not doubt that each forerunner thought his doubts unique, the most shattering to his faith.

But all have walked in the path of Judas Iscariot as well as Thomas; doubter, faithless, betrayer.

His own faith trembles but does not fail. He was taught not to fear a questioning; if his foundations were firm, then doubt was his proof, not his pitfall.

Sorry about the delay!

[wojelah.livejournal.com]

1. Teyla
2. antiquated
3. Dawn

[tielan]

Hm. Already had a request for Teyla at dawn - can I get a different time/place selection, please?

[neffitti.livejournal.com]

...Do not expect any kind of response if I have written you something before and you have not left even a basic thank-you...

*walks in, head hanging in shame*
This would probably me that you are speaking of, I am truly sorry for this. I read that lovely fragment you wrote in answer to my prompt and had every intention of leaving you a comment when I got home from work, but as usual RL and 2 kids crowd my brain once I’m home, and it totally slipped my mind, but reading yesterdays entry brought total recall. Please believe me when I say that what you wrote was really appreciated and liked very much. Once again I’m truly sorry and ashamed of my oversight.

[tielan]

Actually, it was based on an observation caused by someone else. But I appreciate you letting me know now. Don't do it in future! :)