hidden_variable

I wrote two things recently! In a departure from my usual habit of rambling on for 10-15k, these are both fairly short—really short, in one case.

For Half a Moon, the prompt “The Scholar” immediately made me think of The Incandescent. One of the things I really enjoyed in the book was the description of everyday campus life at a magical school—or, more precisely, a very realistic school that happens to include magic among its subjects. I will take any amount of quotidiana relating to demons in an educational setting. My fic is set slightly pre-canon, or possibly in the early days of canon, a few weeks into the academic year. It is, however, somewhat spoilery about something that is revealed later in canon.

A Creature Was Stirring (2184 words) by hidden_variable
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Incandescent - Emily Tesh
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Sapphire "Saffy" Walden, Lilly Tibbett (The Incandescent)
Additional Tags: magic in academia, Demonic Possession, Office Supplies, Mice, no mice were harmed in the making of this fic
Summary:

Chetwood faculty are reminded not to store food in their offices, as this may attract unwanted pests. Any actual or suspected cases of demonic possession, no matter how minor, should be reported at once to the Director of Magic, in person or via the campus web portal.

Part of the inspiration for this story was an actual incident of finding a mouse in my office years ago. The initial setup was almost exactly as in my fic: I got a bag of candy from some campus event, left it in my office and forgot about it. Some weeks later my printer complained of a paper jam, and I opened the paper tray to find bits of candy wrappers everywhere. Later that day, I was startled by a noise that proved to be a gnawed hunk of Tootsie Roll dropping onto my desk. There’s a fabric-covered vertical panel at the back of the desk to cover cables and things, and I could hear something scrabbling around in the space between the panel and the wall. Then I saw a small whiskery face peering out from the bottom of the panel, presumably looking for its Tootsie Roll.




My second short fic is a drabble—first one I’ve ever written. It’s based on an idea that occurred to me during Yuletide, when I was requesting fantasy snake fight crossovers. But I couldn’t exactly write a Yuletide treat for myself. It was self-contained enough that I decided I could fit it into a drabble, which was kind of a fun exercise, and I submitted it for Seasons of Drabbles, which is now de-anonymized.

A Matter of Taxonomy (100 words) by hidden_variable
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: FAQ: The "Snake Fight" Portion of Your Thesis Defense - Luke Burns, Derkholm Series - Diana Wynne Jones
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Deucalion (Derkholm), Corkoran (Derkholm)
Additional Tags: Drabble, magic in academia, Dragons
Summary:

Corkoran faces an administrative conundrum at the University. Deucalion is no help.

I think this could be read without knowing canon for Derkholm; all you really need to know is that Deucalion is a dragon, while Corkoran is an inept temporary head of a magical university.