Augusnippets Day 3 - Tumblr Posts

Augusnippets Day 3: Thunderstorm

Fandom: EPIC/The Odyssey

Summary: When Telemachus was ten years old, thunderstorms became a common thing in Ithaca. He got used to them. As he walks around the palace, he learns that Odysseus had become terrified of them.

    Thunderstorms were a normal thing for Ithaca. Telemachus started to notice more of them when he was 10 years old. He used to fear them. Now he sits by the window and watched with lightning and closes his eyes as he listens thunder and the rain.

    It was a stormy night when the boy learned his father was scared of thunderstorms. Penelope has gone to visit Ctimene; someone Odysseus wasn't ready to see again after telling her about Eurylochus.

Listening to the storm, the prince walked around the halls of the palace like he's done since he was young. Stopping in front of his mother and father's room, he felt as if he should go inside.

Without knocking, Telemachus opened the door. Inside Odysseus sat in his bed. His sword was in his hands and his knees were to his chest.

"Dad? Are you okay?" Telemachus asked.

"They're coming." Odysseus said, his voice shaking.

Walking more inside the room, Telemachus approached his father. Odysseus jumped back, surprised by the movement. "who's coming?"

"The Gods." The king said, whispering. "They have come for me."

"It's just a thunderstorm." Telemachus approached his mother's bed and tried to sit down.

Odysseus swung his sword at his son.

"Dad, it's okay. Can you put the sword down?"

After a moment, Odysseus realized what he had done and pulled his sword away for his son. "I'm sorry." As he started to cry, Telemachus sat down with him.

"It's okay. Can I see that?" He gestured to the sword in his father's hands.

Nodding, Odysseus handed it to him. Then Telemachus put it down beside the bed. "The Gods won't get you here. I promise."

"You can't guarantee they won't." The king said softly.

"True, but it will be okay."

"Are you sure?"

"As sure as I can be. I'll be right here, okay? I'm not going anywhere."

Telemachus remembered what it felt like to be scared of thunder when he was little. Now his father was scared of it for a very different reason. Still, he knew that it was a hard thing to be afraid of. Only the gods can control thunderstorms after all.

"Okay." Pudding his knees back down onto the bed, Odysseus tied to relax.

"You know, I used to be afraid of thunderstorms too. I got pretty used to them. No one is going to hurt you here. You're home."

"I'm home." Odysseus repeated.

"Maybe try to sleep?"

"Yeah." Laying down, Odysseus closed his eyes. Telemachus went and sat by the rocking chair that was by a window.

"Thank you son. I love you"

"I love you too, Dad."

@augusnippets day 3

Blizzard/ Thunderstorm/ Heatwave

cold whump, frostbite, lost/abandoned

Whumpee turned his face against the wind, the white flakes in the air stinging his red cheeks. He pulled his jacket tighter to his body, crouching against the closest tree.

"Caretaker," he called into the roaring wind, barely able to hear his own voice. "Caretaker?! Where are you?" he screamed, his tears freezing on his own cheeks.

All he could see was a vast whiteness before him, dotted with a few grey trunks that faded into the haze of the snow.

"Please, Caretaker! Where are you?" Whumpee sobbed, burying his face in his hands.

His hands. Why didn't he wear gloves? The ends of his fingers were turning a deep black color. "No, no!" If he knew he'd get lost like this, if he knew about this blizzard, he would have dressed warmer.

Whumpee huddled against the tree's trunk, curling up.

"Caretaker... Caretaker, please..."

"It's... so cold..."

Voltaic Refeeding

Augusnippets day 3: thunderstorm | blizzard | heat wave

Word count: 499

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

——————(0)——————

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.