quillsshadow

Light isn't drawn to the shop, with its jumbled inventory and dusty shelves. But Sayu is, and Light is responsible, and he finds himself looking over the shelves with boredom while she giggles and exclaims over tarnished silver and ugly costume jewellary.

He doesn't believe the pendent is the real thing. Of course he doesn't - it's as ridiculous as the urban legends about people finding lost works of art in jumble sales. It's only a copy.

But it's a very good copy.

The shopkeeper treats it like any other sale, without so much as a suspicious glance. Sayu buys dried flowers, meant to bring true dreams. Light buys the pendent, and sticks it in his pocket. He'll show it to his friends, later. Maybe give it to his latest girlfriend, if whoever she is is interested in these things.

He forgets it until he's undressing that night, and then he takes it out and looks at it.

The Lover's Locket. Placed beneath your pillow while closed, it will bring dreams of your destined beloved. Worn around your neck while closed, it will allow you to command them, so long as it is not opened. If it is...

He's never sure, afterwards, why he slid it beneath his pillow. Perhaps he just wanted an excuse to dream, for once. To pretend there might be more to his life than charms to protect from thieves and murderers, and cantrips to catch them.

His dreams that night are filled with glimpses of dark eyes in darker hollows, black hair over white skin, a wiry body beneath loose clothes -

The dreams themselves don't worry him. He's more disturbed the next day to find how clearly he remembers them.

He has no idea that a continent away, the world's foremost lawmage is panicked over foreign magics that have slipped through holes in the weave of his protections to steal sight of him.



Weeks later, the two will bump into each other in the streets of Light's city. Light, recognising his dreamed lover-to-be, will act on impulse as sure as long-built plan. "Ah! -Wait, I have something for you."

The lawmage will pause, wondering if this is a trap or if the beautiful stranger has merely mistaken him for someone else. Light will bring out the pendent, that he has kept with him since his first and only night of dreaming, and slip it over the lawmage's head. "For you.

"Master."

Light will barely be aware of his creeping terror as the pendent smothers his will beneath its power. If the pendent allows you to command your destined beloved, then surely it would be better to put it around their neck and learn if you are theirs before making any plans for a relationship.

The lawmage will hide the pendent under his shirt and bring Light to his mentor, expecting to learn that this is some failed attempt at enslaving him, something easily repaired.

The pendent - Lover's Locket, a masterwork long lost, long hoped destroyed - will prove to be no mere forgery but the real thing, attuned to the Fates of hearts, able to define the tangled threads of emotion and unnaturally strengthen them so that a lover's mind becomes trapped and bound to their lover's will.

It will be more than a year before the lawmage will take the Locket from his neck, fearful and untrusting, but unable to silence the question in his mind of why this stranger would give himself over so utterly when he must have had some suspicion of the manner of person he was binding himself to.

Light will shudder, pride torn, faith bruised, and give him a simple ultimatum. "If you wish to keep me, allow me to wear the pendent." A cold smile. "Only for so long as you have, of course."

It will have more meaning than any wedding vow could when the lawmage will hand him the pendent silently, watching without protest as he puts it around his neck, making no effort at resistance of the power of the Locket as his own mind is chained and bound.

Light will still hold him for as long as he was held, of course. But after, the two of them will open the Locket.

And release all hold its power has on them.

So, it turns out that if you save a story as a draft and wait a while to post it, it gets backdated to when you made the draft.

By which I mean, the Death Note Lupercalia fic I wrote is on my account behind Dark Prompt Porn Snippets.

(The other fic is a Girl Genius ficlet, if anyone wondered. Go read Girl Genius (it's a webcomic), it's really good!)

I can't be the only one to read this and immediately think, "L's first attempt to get himself permanently banned from the kitchen."

Right?

I came across a thing about personal tropes. I thought I didn't have any, and then I looked at my stories: hand-holding. Though I tend to phrase it as fingers tangling. From Depravare through to Wedding (Dress), every time I want an understated demonstration of affection I go with this.

Now I'm wondering two things:
1 if I overuse it, and
2 if I have any others that I haven't noticed...