I Set Out To Write At Least A Little Bit Every Day In December And I Managed To Complete 27/31 Days!

You’re a demon. One day, you’re summoned into a living room, and an exhausted woman quickly rambles about needing to get to work and being unable to find a sitter before flying out the door. Now, you stand in your summoning circle, a toddler staring wide eyed at you.

for the last prompt:

“Don’t touch those books, sweetie. They have souls.”

Miranda hesitated with her fingers poised over a golden spine. 

“Excuse me?” she asked, wide-eyed and more than a little fearful. 

The librarian simply rolled her eyes, adjusting the hem of her coffee-colored sweater. “Did you not read the danger signs we passed?” 

Slowly, Miranda lowered her hands and laced them behind her back. “Thought that was another of Dougie’s pranks,” she murmured quietly. 

The librarian sighed.

“Miss Pickery-"

“I still don’t know why you hired my brother,” Miranda interrupted, eyes slipping back to the shiny, golden book she had been tempted to pull off the shelf. “He’s not exactly…bookish. Or terribly employable.”

“Well, he doesn’t attempt to touch the books with souls, for one,” the librarian replied. 

Miranda pressed her lips together firmly, attention slipping guiltily to the carpeted floor and catching on an oblong stain that the librarian gestured to with the toe of her heeled boot.

“And he doesn’t suffer the consequences of such misbehavior like my previous apprentice, Ronald.”

Miranda couldn’t help the startled gasp that left her as she drew her arms closer to the center of her body, head whipping back and forth in the narrow aisle to ensure no part of her was near any part of these…these murdering, soul-having books.  

Seriously, if Miranda had known about Ronald the Oblong Stain when she’d received her brother’s stupid email about checking out his “cool new job”, Miranda would have deleted it without a second thought. Unread, unreplied to, and un…un-in danger, Miranda thought sternly. 

The librarian frowned back at her, all sharp featured and unimpressed, like she was privy to Miranda’s imaginary word making.  

“U-um, so where is Dougie, anyway, Miss?”

“Late,” the librarian replied. She raised her right wrist to peer at a square watch wrapped over her sweater sleeve, the arms curved like octopus tentacles and spinning far faster than the plain, round one on Miranda’s own wrist. “Or perhaps early, depending.”

“Depending on what?”

“Oh, what I wouldn’t give to be conversing with Ronald, instead,” the librarian murmured to herself, causing a deep frown to appear over Miranda’s face. 

Oblong Stain-Man, one. Miranda, zero. 

“Well, he invited me here,” Miranda petulantly reminded the woman. “I’m still not sure why, but I doubt it was to kill me so is it possible for us to wait for him in a different section of the library? Maybe one without, you know, danger signs?”

The librarian gave Miranda a swift once-over, then peered up at the ceiling, expression unchanging. 

“No. Here will do.”

“Oh, okay,” Miranda whispered shakily. “I’ll just stay here and try not to turn into goo, then.”

“Oh, pish posh,” the librarian dismissed, waving her hand in the air. “That Evelyn has much more flare than that. She would have ignited you, most definitely.”

“E-Evelyn?” Miranda repeated, peering behind herself for other, potentially-murderous library patrons. Perhaps one carrying a blowtorch.

“The book you were going to touch,” the librarian explained. “She has quite a flair for the dramatic, that girl. Your death would have been very phoenix-like.”

Miranda eyed the golden-spined book with far more wariness than before. 

“Phoenix-like…” she echoed. “Like…as in I’d come back to life?”

The librarian’s nose scrunched. “As in you’d go up in a spark of flames and crumble to ash before you could say-”

“Mimi!” Dougie called out happily, appearing in a cart-like contraption over their heads. Dougie tugged gently on a hanging rope within his cart and the whole thing slowed to a squeaky stop.

Miranda eyed the small cylinder of metal attaching the cart to the track embedded in the ceiling with open skepticism. 

“Took ya long enough,” he said, smiling. 

“Took me-?!” Miranda began to sputter, only to be silenced by a hand from the librarian. 

“Douglas,” she greeted calmly. “Anything to report?”

Dougie’s smile turned slightly bashful, and he scratched the back of his head. “Not yes, Miss. But with Mimi here, things should be fixed in a snap!” 

“I fucking hate that name,” Miranda muttered darkly beneath her breath.

“Quit whining, girl,” the librarian said, not unkindly. “It’s time to go.” 

“Please,” Miranda agreed, quickly ascending the thin, metal stairs that had stretched out from Dougie’s cart like a particularly slow accordion. She would happily go anywhere to get away from Evelyn and Ronald and who knows who else. 

The librarian followed quickly after. 

“Where are we going?” Miranda asked, cringing at the grating noise emanating from the ceiling as the cart rocked jerkily back into motion. “To lunch?”

Dougie’s email had promised lunch. 

“Uhhh, not to lunch,” Dougie admitted, ignoring Miranda’s heavily disappointed sigh. “We need you to fix something, actually.”

“And it’s not a sandwich?” Miranda pressed hopefully. 

“Sorry, sis,” Dougie laughed. “It’s…uh, well it’s a little bit bigger than that.”

“These swinging death cages, then?” she tried next. Because they could use some serious oiling, but otherwise seemed mostly stable. Even if the eccentric design didn’t invite anything but distrust. 

Dougie pulled on the rope again as they entered a new room and Miranda brought her hands up to cover her ears while she peered curiously over the edge of the cart, still hoping in vain for a cafe or a bistro. 

What she saw instead was a massive, boiler-looking thing, with moving arms on just about every square inch of its rusting, bronze surface, rounded caps lifting periodically to release hissing trails of white steam. 

What really caught her attention, though, was the small door built into its base, boasting a massive dent and an odd array of talon-like scratches along its surface. And one scrawled out word. 

Miranda Pickery. 

“...well,” Miranda said slowly, hands falling to her hips as she quietly examined the structure. “Surely I’m not the only Miranda Pickery in the area. Total coincidence, really.”

The librarian’s wrinkly hand landed on Miranda’s shoulder, her other pointing towards the far end of the boiler room. 

Miranda followed her gaze to a large, hand-painted mural spanning the entire length of the flaking wall. The figures were all done in black, or perhaps a very deep blue, and nearly impossible to make out in the dim space. The orange light from the boiler only illuminated the lowest section, where there were rows and rows of what looked like people, carrying stacks of what looked like books, and a few, hanging, claw-like feet that suggested an array of birds above their heads. 

The librarian clapped and the space flooded with blue light. Hovering orbs lined the room like street lamps- above the boiler but below the cart- revealing a concerning amount of bookshelves lining this room, too. 

A concerning amount of bookshelves and Miranda’s likeness, that is, painted in the very center of the mural with such detail that any hopes of pawning off this mystery onto some other hapless sod immediately wilted and died within her heart. 

“Oh,” Miranda said dumbly. 

“Oh,” the librarian agreed. 

“So…” Dougie started, awkwardly clapping his hands together. “Lunch, anyone?”

WRITING PROMPTS - Library

A 24/7 library has no staff, but those who enter never think to steal.

"We can't make out! This is a library!"

A magical university has a library that changes its contents entirely whenever it hits midnight.

"Shh! Reading time."

A library is the only building unaffected by a massive earthquake.

"Where did you get that book?"

A group of academics decide they want to be buried alive in the cursed library that the government are burying.

"Don't touch those books, sweetie. They have souls."

through the ages 🍀

Lost for words | bi_focal

Tags: Bakugou & Izuku, post-war, introspection, friendship/love, fluff (could be read as gen or slash)

Summary: Where Bakugou feels guilty about their childhood, Izuku doesn't know what to say, and they find that they don't need many words to communicate, after all.

Izuku lets his gaze drop to Kacchan’s fists, instead, and finds them clenched so tight he’s surely leaving half-moon impressions on his palms. There’s no smoke leaking out between his bone-white knuckles but, then again, Kacchan has always had impeccable control of his quirk. And they had always communicated better with their hands, hadn’t they?

1,690 words

https://archiveofourown.org/works/56130106

(i'm pretty proud of this one, guys)

dynamight and izuku

Placebo memory redraws in bkdk part 2 🧡💚

If Katsuki fell asleep on Izuku during a movie, Izuku would be really torn between wanting to make sure Kacchan doesn’t miss the movie and enjoying the physical touch. And then immediately spiral if it was a boring date idea.

bus ride

hi!!! if ur comfortable: what's your favorite book of all time (and why), and if you had to choose between only being able to use escalators or only using elevators for the rest of your life, which would u pick?

hope ur having a nice day <3

hello! :)

this one stumped me for a minute but my favorite book of all time would have to be Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli (and ik how that sounds but stay with me here). It’s non-fiction but the prose is so beautiful and the author’s voice so clear that it doesn’t read at all like a textbook or a lecture, and it has such a warm, optimistic tone that I find it really uplifting and I re-read it sometimes when I need a pick-me-up.

im usually not much of a re-reader but it helps that this one is only about 80 pages. its also kind of nostalgic bc I picked it up when I was going through a rough time and it got me out of a very long reading slump.

overall I’m mainly a fiction reader but narrowing down my favorite of those feels pretty impossible

as far as escalators vs elevators, escalators are definitely much more fun but I’d hate to have to climb the stairs of a super tall building so for the sake of my poor legs I think I’d have to go with elevators

thanks for the ask! I hope you’re having a good day too <33

me as a writer

sometimes reading about bkdk being in love really gets me through the week