He's not really the nickname type--part of his pomposity is that he's very serious and formal. But anyway, I'm now leaning toward using Sebastian and trusting my readers to figure out I've given him one of the standard Regency warrior-hero names ironically.

The Sebastian I know is pretty pompous. I mean, for a fourteen year old.

So. As it turns out, I couldn't do the place drabble. Funny that something so straightforward would be the one I couldn't handle. After some deliberation, though, I do want you to be able to read it. Should I post it in the Annex anyway? Should I post it here? I'm likely to take it back down after a bit either way.

For now, I'll stick it in my regular lj. (I unlocked it. Might as well. For the moment.)

(Just as an aside, I always enjoy naming characters, but it's part of the reason DH and I had so much difficulty coming to an agreement on naming a child--I'm used to knowing what kind of person someone is before I name them, so it felt strange to have to pick a name before I knew what kind of person I was assigning it to.)

Well there's always the theory the child lives up to--or lives down--the name.

Sorry for being so pokey today. However!

Challenge #2 is now closed.

(For future reference, all challenges will be saved in the "Memories" section of the LJ community.)

This week's challenge comes from Deb. The theme is "memory." BUT! What I want you to drabble about isn't necessarily the memory itself, but rather, about whatever it is that evokes the memory. Proust's petite madeleine that brought forth a deluge of memories. The way the light hits the floor at a certain time of year makes you remember the summer you broke your leg and had to stay inside, which is when you read all the LOTR books, including the Silmarillon.

Tie the memory together with what evokes it. And drabble, drabble, drabble!

(Deb, if I didn't describe it correctly, PLEASE tell me, so I can amend.)

Damn, woman, you left me a head-scratcher.

Susan, Benedick. It's pompous, and it's got "dick" biult right in. Modern readers will catch that, if subconsciously -- "Benedick is a bit of a dick."

But I'm immature.

I'm trying to think of memories to. Imay just have to cruise tonight until one hits me.

Maybe not.

Some people don't have LJ, and I'm egotistical enough to share.

They open the door to the cellar of the centuries-old boarding house in Philadelphia. I close my eyes and breathe deeply. Cold, damp, sharp, earthy. My guide shivers: "I hate that smell."

But I'm back fifteen years, at the other end of Pennsylvania, in the stone-floored cellar of the house I grew up in. Canning jars from an unknown decade sit on stone shelves, draped in cobwebs. The spiders have a pedigree as long as my own in these hills. The dogs follow me down and snuffle in the corners.

I take another deep breath. "Smells like home."

First one, not guts-having enough to post it to LJ.

Phantom limbs.

Maybe this is what it's like. Turn a corner, see a mother with a babe of no more than two, three weeks. If that. So young he or she still curls through instinct like a pillbug or an armadillo, limbs drawn up and in to protect itself against the world. Phantom tugs. Feel the warmth and weight, the unfocused squirm, all of it.

Sweet sweat smell. Looking into alien eyes, too wide, too dark, too old, too new. Needy. Unfocused. All seeing.

Phantom lives.

There. Not there. Real. Not real. Personal shrapnel. Unhealed wounds.

Loss and longing, intertwined.