[Drabbles, 100% OJ] Sora Collection

Genre: All sorts

Length: 100 words each

B/D: This is the drabble collection that Traditional would have fit into, had it not grown into its own thing. Since Sora is my favourite, she's the star, although other characters pop in and out. I do love making these -- they're so moreish, and they always provoke more ideas and get me in a working mood.

1. Stargazer

An eye to the telescope. A flask of tea. A canvas of stars.

“Up and to the left a little. A little less. There. See it?”

Sora murmurs in appreciation, and sets about finding the next star. Suguri smiles as she watches, and sips her tea.

“You make me laugh, though,” she says, easily. Unguarded. “There’s no need to rush. The stars won’t run away, you know.”

A pause. Sora’s eye does not leave the viewfinder. “Everything else… went away. The stars are no different.”

Suguri, standing under a sky that is so much larger than herself, has no answer.

2. Dancer

Quick, elegant steps. Balance made effortless through practice. A dancer’s soul sleeps within Hime, and next to it, Sora feels like her own motions are slow, clunky, complicated.

“Muuu… You’re always dancing with Suguri. What’s so great about it?”

“Oh, it’s lovely exercise.”

Sora frowns. There must, she says, be something more to it than that. Some secret. Some art.

“Mm… how do I put it?” Hime asks, a finger at her lips. “To dance… is to approach something you want, circuitously.”

A strange answer.

“So?”

Hime lets the smile play across her lips. “So, we dance often… and together.”

3. Dignity

She stands, straight backed and proud, chin level, eyes forward. Her gaze is steady. Today, she will face the world without hesitation. Today, the day is hers.

“Nath, Nath,” Sora says, tugging at an empty sleeve. “You have a cat on your shoulder.”

The cat has been there all day. The cat climbed up to her balcony and let himself into the apartment. The cat digs his claws in when she tries to shake him off. The cat is licking her eyebrows.

“Yes,” she says, stiffly.

“It looks good on you.”

The cat, quietly, begins to purr.

“Yes,” she says.

4. Recital

A girl with an open face takes the stage, violin in hand, fingers trembling on the bow. Her first performance. The scariest moment of her life so far, when she surrenders herself to the song.

She finishes, to applause. She entered as a girl. She left as a musician. A flawless transformation.

“You didn’t like it?” Hime asks. Sora’s hands aren’t moving, clutching the fabric of her dress.

She feels wistful, without knowing why. “I wish I could play the violin,” she says, and it feels right.

“You still could, you know.”

She shakes her head, sadly. “Not like that.”

5. Discipline

Her hands are quick and steady. Sharp motions, honed by practice. Disassemble, clean, lubricate, wipe, reassemble. She knows every nook and cranny of every weapon; they are old friends, friends that have saved her life. Friends she won’t abandon. Friends she can’t escape.

Her mind wanders as she works, flitting to old memories, things she wanted to say, to do, things she still desires. Calm steals over her. Not everything from the war is bad. Only the people. Sometimes not even them.

At her workbench, she feels safe in a new, foreign world – and ready, if necessary, to defend it.

6. Shrug

Sora is not a straightforward person. As a rule, she doesn’t answer questions.

So when she comes hurtling out of the kitchen and does a combat roll across the living room, neither Suguri nor Hime really pay attention. It’s easier just to make a guess and assume it’s right.

“Combat practice.”

“Fleeing from a wasp.”

“Hedgehog appreciation day.”

“Oh, that’s a good one.”

“Thank you, Suguri.”

It is only when a ghastly scent hits her nostrils that Hime finally looks up and wonders what, exactly, is burning.

Sometimes, Sora is quiet and mysterious.

Other times, her hair is on fire.

7. Preference

It’s an easy snatch. A woman distracted by her child, a purse on a thin strand. A jerk of the hand and he’s off at a sprint, clutching the purse to his chest. One second. Two seconds. Too far away to catch.

And yet, she falls into step with him so easily – the girl with the blonde hair. She taps him briskly on the head – like cracking an egg – and the world dissolves to black.

A distant voice shouts: “Mommy, look! She must be a superhero!” Sora smiles, but doesn’t correct them.

Better a super hero than a super soldier.

8. Dreamer

“Nath?”

A cloud moves lazily in front of the sun. Sora’s voice is lazy, too, but Nath can taste the trouble in it.

“Mm?”

“You ever feel as though maybe you didn’t actually wake up today, and you’re just having a really good dream?”

Aha. I was expecting this, she thinks.

“Why?”

“...No reason.” A lie carved out in wood.

Nath lies back in the grass, and arranges her reply with closed eyes. “Honestly? I sometimes feel the opposite. That everything before was a bad dream, and I just lately woke up.”

Sora says nothing; the cloud overhead quietly disappears.

9. Bickering

Hime and Sora are bickering. Again. It amazes Nath how they can be squabbling like children one moment and thick as thieves the next. It’s always about such insignificant things, too. What’s the best candy bar? What’s the best method of wrapping bread so it doesn’t go stale? What counts as a sandwich, and what does that say about your personality?

“They don’t actually care about what they fight over. Not really,” Suguri says, when Nath brings it up. “Hime is just… giving Sora the chance to be a kid.”

“And Sora?”

Suguri shrugs. “I thought you might tell me.”

10. Chains

She is fire and brimstone, and the world will suffer her because that is her purpose. No other future was ever possible. This is fate, written in the stars which she will scoop up and hurl down upon the wreckage of the world. The sky is steel-grey, like prison bars; there is no freedom here. It is all predetermined. She is helpless to stop it, even if she tried.

Her final obstacle, the girl with golden hair, is waiting. Waiting to be broken – her body, her will. Hoshino Reika smiles at the thought.

For there is nothing she cannot break.

11. Obligation

We must. I must. You must.

These are the foundations on which war is built. An army is a group of people who feel they have no choice. There are things they must defend. Orders they must follow. Values they must protect.

Those values have brought her here to face a girl she could have called a friend. A girl who does have a choice.

“Sham. We don’t have to do this.”

The voice is low, the sword drawn. Desperate. But she is desperate, too. There is nothing left, save two words which echo in her weary heart.

“We must.”

12. The Price

Alte lived, although she dearly wished she hadn’t. Picked up after the battle – by her side, thank goodness. Although there’s little difference between the two.

At first, the questions are gentle. Prodding. How’s your memory? Can you walk?

But soon the voices are harsher, more insistent. Why did you self-destruct? Do you understand how much time and money we’ve invested in you?

And then, finally, the knives come out. If you were going to kill yourself, why not do it properly? Do you realise that monster is still alive?

The soldiers leave her. But the questions – the questions never will.

13. Remembered

Rain falls outside the window. In her hand is a book, bound in leather, that she took from Nath’s shelves. It is full of poems from the great war, and others since. Some are jaunty, others morose and lyrical. All have an undercurrent of pain, of regret. This should not have happened. Why did we let it?

She feels like she understands these people. That she is honouring them. But her favourite poems are the ones after the war – the ones that speak of hope, heroes, laughter.

It is only later that she realises some of them are about herself.

14. Scheherazade

Rocky mountains, rolling deserts, stormy seas; it seems there is nowhere that Nath has not been, nothing that she has not done. She has seen the yoke of tyranny being broken. She has seen people at the moment they fall in love. She swears she once saw a ghost.

These are all things Sora hungers for. Things she missed out on in her long sleep. One day, she’ll find them. But not yet. Right now she has greater needs – comfort, friends. A home.

Adventure can come later. Will come later. For now, she’ll settle for one more story before bed.

15. Employment

She doesn’t have to work. Nath and Suguri have both said it, and they both mean it. She’s not unemployed, they tell her. She’s retired.

But she still wonders what it would be like to have a job. It would probably eat away at sleep time, which is the most important time.

Her dream job, she’s decided, is to be a scientist. Not just because she could improve people’s lives. Not just because she’d look great in a lab coat.

But because she knows that, but for one scientist 10,000 years ago, the world’s fate might have been very different.

A/N: I may end up doing more Sora drabbles in the future, but for now I'll give her a rest, and maybe focus on somebody else next time.