Ostensiblywhump - The Drawer Where I Keep My Barbed Wire

Voltaic Refeeding

Augusnippets day 3: thunderstorm | blizzard | heat wave

Word count: 499

Trigger warnings: mentions of eating, electric shock, burns, blood, fear of death

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Camlanns were born attuned to the elements. Magic wove them into being just as much as DNA, and they needed magic just as much as they needed food or air. This was easy, for some—if you were attuned to earth, wind, plants, water, physics, all you needed was to touch it to feed on the ambient magic, and you were set.

For Ruika, attuned to electricity, that was harder. Tal had told him that there were people thinking about using electricity to power lights and heat in a house, but for now, fire magic was used to bring fire, light magic to produce light. Outside of combat and nastier warding styles, no one had really incorporated electricity into their life, and Ruika did not want to get in the practice of getting beaten up by wards or people just to try and keep himself healthy.

So, when summer rolled around, the air turning souplike and clouds becoming dark with the promise of rain, Tal whipped out all his governmental real-time storm maps, Piri rented a mobile, and the three of them went storm-chasing.

Lightning was an excellent source of electricity for Ruika. Electricity naturally bent towards him, knowing he was a home for it, which was great when he was fighting lightning mages and even better when he wanted to get struck multiple times in one storm. The rest of the time, Piri and Tal set up warded spheres to catch lightning, to feed him for the rest of the year when storms were rarer. It really was the best way to keep his magic stores from withering and him dying of starvation!

It also, Ruika reflected, hand raised to the roiling sky and shaking, just could be really very dangerous.

His ears had ceased to hear anything but a high-pitched, screaming whine. He was somewhere between feeling nothing but tingling numbness and like he was about to explode, the telltale sign that he’d eaten a little too well, and like a starving person gorging themself, that was going to have some immediate, horrible consequences. Distantly, he knew he was burned all over to the point of burst, bleeding blisters, even if he couldn’t feel the blood trickling over his skin.

Somehow his arrhythmic, rabbit-quick heart found it in itself to leap in fear when his smearing vision managed to catch a flicker of light in the billowing darkness above. The three strikes in quick succession before had destroyed his ability to withstand any more voltage. If he got struck again—

The world went white.

He registered his vision jarring—had his knees given out? He couldn’t care, around the agonizing numbness, around the sight of a copper, spiky rod above him, now sizzling with the heat of catching lightning before he could. He saw a blur of red—candy-red, Piri-red. Oh, she’d put the lightning rod there.

And then any coherent thought was lost to the blinding torture of a brick-red, Tal-red blur picking him up and sweeping him away.

Hare and Kit

Augusnippets day 9: hypothermia | overheating | dehydration

Word count: 496

Trigger warnings: implied/referenced death, description of corpses, implied/referenced child death

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“You,” Archaios says, “are not just shivering from pain, are you.”

The child, predictably, shivers in response.

“Fuck,” Archaios says, and picks up speed. “Look, in my defense, you were getting shredded from the inside-out by curse energy, I had other things on my mind! Like keeping you un-shredded! I forgot that humans are—squishy! Don’t like being cold! Fuck!”

Because he’s reveled in blizzards before, only to come across blanched, stiff corpses, squirreled in little snow-dens that they thought would save them. He’s tried to save ones that were still breathing by feeding on their cold, hoping that drawing it away would help keep them warm. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t.

“I hate doing that on children, you know?” he murmurs into the child’s forehead. “It’s filthy, feeding from the young. And you shouldn’t have to be so close to death, anyways. You should—”

Be with your parents, laughing and loved, free of curse marks, not small and alone. Be warm.

Too many things this child should have instead of some inhuman hermit that came upon them by happenstance; it all crowds Archaios’ throat and clogs there.

His next step echoes, warps; his own wards welcome him as he slows his run into the cave to a purposeful stride. He has pelts stored away, despite his best efforts to foist everything he hunts on humans that actually need it. Humans always bundle themselves up in the cold, surely those will help.

He has two pelts … well, one is a cloak. He wraps that first around the child, then the second, until only the child’s pale face and baby wisps of their white hair show. Then—and this is the hard part—he sits back until only a comforting hand is touching the swaddled child.

“Fenn always told me my skin was icy,” he tells them. “I don’t think holding you will help, no matter how it’ll make me feel better. But ….”

He’s bundled up the child, stopped touching them with his cold hands. Is there anything else? How will he know this is helping? How soon? He’s always known his knowledge on humans is essentially a dark, unknown chasm, but never has it yawned deeper, faced with a child he must save.

“Maybe,” he starts, then looks at the black marks crawling up the child’s cheeks, and stops. Bringing this child to humans, to anyone that knows better, will only get them killed.

Then a realization clicks, followed by his heart dropping.

“Fire,” Archaios says. “You need fire. Except I … I don’t know how to light one.”

He’s never really needed it—he needs cold, not heat. And he’s never committed to saving a cold victim like this child, so he’s never thought of it before.

Wait, no. He has.

He sighs and heaves himself up. “I hope Tiana forgives me,” he mutters. “And you. For using a practice meant to invite ambient magic to light funeral pyres for you.”

He goes to find sticks.

Have your whumpee break down crying into whumpers shoulder. Let them fall apart against the only person who knows how much pain they’re in.

Dialogue Prompts for Stoic Whumpee™️

“It’s not a big deal. They didn’t do much.”

“The scars are none of your concern. Don’t look at them if you don’t like them.”

“What happened? Nothing. Nothing worth complaining about.”

“Hey, hey, are you with me? It’s okay, take a deep breath. I know what to do— you’re going to be okay.”

“I don’t like short sleeves. And I don’t like your questions.”

“I didn’t flinch then and I didn’t flinch now—fuck—fine— when someone raises their hand close to my face, what do you think i’m going to do?”

“At one point, it was just me and the cliff. And the wind. Loud, that night. But—well, I’m still here, aren’t I?”

“I’ve said too much.”

“If I’ve learned one lesson, it’s that trust should be sparsely given. Remember that, my friend, next time you try to leave a knife in my ribs.”

“When we go in there, I’m going to act different. Yeah, it’s all bravado. We’re going to pretend we like the bastards, and then we’re going to rob them.”

“Shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You never did.”

Break Rocks; Breaktime

Augusnippets day 5: drunk caretaking | concussed caretaking | feverish caretaking

Word count: 495

Trigger warnings: implied/referenced vomiting, injury, minor blood, implied/referenced slavery

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“Wakey wakey, eggs ‘n bakey!” Brier chirped quietly.

With a jolt, Karmic finally came to, eyes snapping open wide and pupils … probably slitted to nothingness, since she couldn’t see them. His thin sleep cocoon raced away in a rush of frost, but his instinctive attack stopped, the consequences of how he’d twitched catching up. He didn’t do anything so loud as groan or curse, but his face said everything about how heavily he regretted waking up.

“Brier,” he said after a strained moment. He was starting to categorize all the bumps and scrapes he had—she saw his fingers flex subtly, then a cascade up his limbs as he made sure all his joints were in working order. She also saw when he got to his twisted ankle, judging from his obvious wince.

“Hi, Karmic!” Brier murmured. “Checked you for internal, spinal injuries, you’re good. No breaks in your ankle, just sprained. No lumps on your head. Your pupils are the same size, too! You’re not gonna vomit or kill the sun, right?”

“No,” Karmic said, rolling his shoulders, then stared sulkily at his turtleneck, which was slightly torn, spattered with blood, and covered in rock dust. His gaze flickered over to Brier for a split second. “Fun fact about your head, though.”

“I think I slammed head-first into the ground,” Brier admitted. Nothing else would make ol’ reliable earth damage her so much. The concussion would go away in two days, sure, but it was impressive that she was concussed at all. “We got off lucky.”

(A sprawled, unmoving form; blood seeping into the river. Yes, they’d been lucky.)

“I’ll say,” Karmic muttered, now staring up the slope they’d tumbled down. “How did we get down here? And how am I …?”

“… Um. The metal mage could conjure magic-canceling shackles,” Brier said. One of her hands curled into a fist. “Another slammed you with a sleep spell instantly after.”

“Fuck,” Karmic spat. His hand aborted a movement towards his deep, obvious eyebags.

“We’ll fix it,” Brier said. Hopefully they could. A weakness to sleep spells because of lack of sleep aside, those eyebags really weren’t healthy. “The teleporter tried grabbing you when you dropped. And I ….”

(A burn, starbursting and charred on the side of a pale neck. Nightmares, hostility; a newfound hatred for small, locked places.)

“That’s a telling skill range,” she said. “So I threw a boulder. And accidentally caused a little rockslide.”

“A little rockslide, she says,” Karmic mocked, fingers ghosting up to make sure the collar of his turtleneck was intact. “Those fucking slavers”—his lips peeled back to reveal fangs—“better be alive.”

“Waiting for the guard to pick’em up!” Brier confirmed, pointing at three lumps of rock, then turned her sway at the motion into a turn, presenting her back. “Up! I’ll be your legs, you’ll be my brain.”

There was a mutinous pause. Then arms circled her neck—she hefted him up, wavered, then started walking.