Words beneath a dappled sky

The results of a meme that has you pick five fandoms and assigns five random lines of poetry for the prompts. It was supposed to be 50-word snatches, but mine refused to shoehorn any smaller than standard drabble sized.

I chose All Creatures Great and Small, Doctor Who (One's era), LOTR, The Scarlet Pimpernel and Watership Down.

( Five drabbles under the cut )
.

Two drabbles recently gone by to tuck in here, one from a random generator list at DbyA that featured Eight/Jo in it's mixing:

Title: Eight Times better than Brazil
Characters: Eight, Jo
Rating: G
Summary:Coming back home can be mutual.

She was a little older and a little wiser in what risks she was willing to take with her life, or with her heart. He was a little older and wiser himself, and much in need of someone who could be there to lift his spirits, to bring him back to a joy of living, exploring.

And what a joy it had been, once more. How well they’d rediscovered now that the sweet spark had not been extinguished by the years. Together they were healed and renewed before a kaleidoscopic universe.

Besides, Jo had always loved the feel of velvet.

---

Title: You Look like a Queen
Characters: : Four, Romana II
Rating: G
Summary: Never judge a book by its cover. Or even assume it's a book. (prompt 324: gape)

The Doctor gaped. “Romana, you can’t keep changing bodies like that. It’s disturbing. It upsets the balance of the cosmos, confuses the fashion world. Wig-makers and plastic surgeons everywhere’ll be in revolt. The ginger hair is especially atrocious and whatever were you thinking deciding on that hideous collar?”

She raised her chin. “How dare you address me thus, sir?”

“Oh come, Romana. You don’t have to add the snotty, overbearing persona, I mean, just because you’ve made a horrible, immature decision and looked like Queen Elizabeth…” Someone small and blonde tugged at his sleeve.

“Doctor.”

“What, Romana?”

“I’m over here.”

--

Plugging along through longer WIPs I found a need to finish *something* hence a set of three drabbles to touch base with my neglected friend dw100.

First, my favorite of the batch:
Title: Hold Me
Characters: Ian, Barbara
Wordcount: 100
Summary: Just making their way through this adventure together, prompt 'tremor'.

( Hold Me )

A bit of humor -
Title: Next Time Just Order a Cake
Characters: Two, Jamie and Zoe
Wordcount: 100
Summary: These look a little too familiar. (Reference to ‘The Seeds of Death’, prompt bloom)

( Oh dear... )
And finally, a tiny bit that wants to turn into a tale but I'm tamping it down.
Title: Nearly Sweet as Water
Characters: Three and Jo
Wordcount: 100
Summary: Sheltered from more than the sun.
A/N: A brushing of Three-Jo fluff for starflower, prompt cool.

( It was a strange thing... )

For curuchamion, whose comment regarding her icon of Three with a blue penguin 'hat' on his head was that he was much more patient about having a penguin on his head than the Brigadier would be. I took this for a (tiny) writing challenge.

Egging On (a double-drabble)
--
“You’d not be pecked so much if you’d be quiet,” the Doctor rebuked mildly.

“You truly expect me to be quiet when there’s a penguin sitting on my head?” the Brigadier groused – again.

“If you want to be warm, yes.” The Doctor said softly. He looked up at the sky, taking care not to tip his own off. “As I said, they’re the only heat source we’ll find here. Just be glad their instinct to warm anything egg-shaped is working.”

The Brigadier shifted where he was hunkered in the snow, two large sleepy penguins against his back, and rolled an eye up at his unusual headgear. It clicked, honked and settled down over him again. “I’m not egg-shaped and when are those infernal snowmobiles going to get here? Ow. Ow!”

The Doctor smiled. Nearly all had now moved over to him, as he only occasionally made little penguin noises at them.

“This is ridiculous!” the Brigadier grumbled. “Ow!” His penguin, apparently just as fed up with it as he was, jumped off, shook its head at him and waddled away, the other two following. They added to the penguins circled around the Doctor, who watched him shiver and smirked.

--

Of course, Barbara and Ian's household could hardly be overlooked - but then, neither could his own former behaviour.

Irreconcilable Differences

Barbara gasped. “But we’ll never see him again!”

Ian frowned in concern, keeping a hand to his son’s shoulder.

“Bosh, of course you will,” the Doctor assured, bouncing confidently. “I’m much better at steering now.”

Barbara peered in at the tangled nearly unrecognizable mess that was the TARDIS. “Can it even be steered? Ian, look at it! There’s no way I’m going to let our son go off in that.”

“Oi!” the Doctor protested, insulted.

“Absolutely not, Doctor,” Ian stated. “John stays here. Who knows where he’d end up otherwise; remember you never did get us home.”

“Picky, picky,” he sighed.

--

Another for the "It will Come for your Children" series - I always favored the idea that after Season 6B the Doctor would have dropped Jamie off someplace safe, like at Victoria's house. ;-)

Appearance’s Sake

“What d’ye mean y’ saw a great blue box?” Jamie asked his son. The lad was nearly eye-to-eye with him but his imagination ran even higher.

“Just like in your stories!” the boy insisted.

“Did anyone come out of it?”

“Aye, a tall, strapping man. He said he wanted me t’ go with him.”

“Tall? Not a wee chappie, yea high?” Jamie measured with his hand, his brow furrowed.

“No. Then Mum said I wasn’t t’ go and chased him off with a hat-pin!”

Jamie nodded. Obviously an imposter, and Victoria always did have fine lot of common sense.

--

In the event of an Emergency...

Title: This is your Captain Speaking
Characters: Five, Tegan, the TARDIS
Wordcount: 100

A/N: For lost_spook, the prompt being Five, Tegan and Locked up as usual, all his fault.

--

She was locked in her room again, entirely his fault.

She always seemed so sensible and strong; he relied on her to maintain the ship’s balance. She was the Crew to his Captain, the one who kept the passengers in line.

Yes, they’d seen a few bad scenes. Wasn’t she trained to deal with emergencies? No handy inflatable ramps, but they weren’t needed. He even had peanut packets.

He nudged the TARDIS, hinting Tegan shouldn’t stay alone quite so long. He should be allowed access to tell her all the clever things he’d been thinking.

The door remained locked. Women.

--


With it comes the 'other one' that popped up while I was trying to write the above - it lacks the 'locked' prompt, but I found it mildly amusing:

I Think I Used to Work for Those

“I’m freezing my bazongas off!”

The Doctor glanced over, preoccupied with yanking on something in his hands. “You should dress warmer; Australian climate is a rarity in the universe.”

“It’s not like the entire universe plays Cricket either.”

He fell to pulling at the object with his teeth. “Oh, I don’t know. You’d be surprised the places it turns up.”

“What is that?”

“Peanuts! Just the right level of proteins and salt. Stops this Ice Virus from infecting any more villages. Except…I can’t seem to open it.”

“Give it here.” Tegan rolled her eyes. “I can save the world.”

--

Shoehorning them in

Title: Titles in a Box
Characters: Doctors One through Seven plus Nine with assorted companions
Wordcount: 1200 plus titles and commentary.
Summary: A collection in which all of the titles from the various Doctor's eras are gathered, stuffed or wrangled with varying intelligibilty into drabbles.

A/N: This was a self-challenge to see if I could wrangle all of the titles of each Doctor's era into drabble form and still (sort of kind of) make some sense. Some of them - such as Four most notably - needed more than one drabble to pull it off. I allowed for one "wildcard" leftover word that then became the title for each one.

Titles in a Box at Teaspoon

Titles in a Box at Ff.net