I was a bit shocked by the overwhelmingly positive reaction to Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Boob Works. Originally I had intended it to be a one shot, but with so many people saying they’d like to see more, I’m revisiting that idea. Will there be more chapters? It’s hard to say. There’s certainly more that can be done with these characters, but one thing that I take very seriously is the idea that there is a kind of trust between the writer and the reader. I am always humbled when people enjoy something I create, and I want to make sure anything I put out is as good as it can possibly be.
That being said, it’s back to my magician’s workshop to see what other mischief Shiro, Saber, Rin, and the recently well endowed Illya can get up to. In the meantime, I’ll be releasing a few odds and ends here and there while working on other things. For today, here is a short short I originally put out some years ago on a now inactive site called Wilted Rose. It was the first story of mine to ever win any kind of prize, and I hope you enjoy it.
Fire . . .
A fan fiction by Ammaranth
The young woman sat up late, into the dark watches of the night, when nothing stirred, and there would be none to watch her. The room was cold. Her eyes were cold. Her arrows were cold — especially their steely tips, where they sat in the quiver beside her. Who would have guessed that within her burned a fire? Or of the countless hours she had spent, standing beneath the waterfall, trying in vain to quench it?
She reached into her sleeve, and taking out a shell, began to paint her face. The room looked cold in the light of the single candle, reflected in the frost face of the mirror, but the red rouge gave her pale lips a hint of warmth.
* * * * * * * *
“When I die, you must take the jewel, and burn it, along with my body . . .”
The words were strange to the little girl — full of incomprehensible horror. To the old woman, they were stranger still. She could still hear the roaring of the flames, lamenting over her sister’s funeral pyre. She’d never forgotten the sight or the sound. Or the smell. Afterwards, they collected the ashes. The place where they burned her sister’s body remained hot for days.
* * * * * * * *
The priestess knelt beside the water. She touched her chest, feeling the place where the wound had been. For now it was closed, but who could say for how long, or when, or if it might reopen? She was neither young nor old, but her body was the same as it had been back then. It had the same shape, the same smell. It wore the same clothes. The only difference was that now it held no heat; she had no warmth. Outside, her body was cold.
But within still burned the fire.
November 14th, 2009 on Wilted Rose
Winner Second Place weekly writing prompt
Ammaranth 