Seven virtues - kindness

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Kindness

It is a burden beyond telling to know that the world is going to end. Lauren weeps for mankind as they ignore the sermons of her leader, his pleas to repent and to give. Every day he preaches in front of the camera, strong and handsome enough to stop her heart, but the credit card pledges are paltry. A few hundred believers will not avert the fires of the apocalypse.

She takes a deep breath and pours the poison into the fresh water pumping station. She cannot prevent the deaths to come, but at least she can make them painless for a few.

Seven virtues - patience

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This is my favourite one of the seven. I would probably have put it first or last if we weren't doing them in a specific order this time.

Patience

William lines the tiles up one by one in a long serpentine of black and white, the spots forming an infinite mathematical equation that describes the universe in a way he doesn't quite understand. When it is finished he will know what no man was meant to and he will control everything. The world will know him as God and he will be merciful as they cower at his feet.

"Time for your medication, Mr Davis."

The opening of the doors sets the dominos to falling in a gentle ripple of numbers.

"Oops, was that me?" the nurse asks.

William sighs and sets the first domino upright again.

Seven virtues - diligence

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Diligence

The man shakes as I straighten his fingers and staunch the bleeding from where his fingernails used to be. "Shh," I murmur. "You must keep still."

Blood weeps from cuts all over his body. If he moves too much I won't be able to save him. I stitch every slice closed so that he can live another day. When I finish my fingers ache, but my lord will be pleased.

Tomorrow we start again, then the next day, and every day after that, until the man has told me everything he knows and we have all his friends too.

Seven virtues - charity

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Charity

The boy is delighted with the skateboard. "It has glow in the dark paint," I tell him. "Pretty cool, right?" Giving it away makes me feel warm inside, like it's the best thing I've done in a long time.

I go to different parts of the playground to give the X-box games away; don't want the same people to get everything. I want to see as many happy, smiling faces as possible. Every time someone thanks me I feel good.

Plus it will make it that much harder for my horrible, Barbie-beheading brother to get all his stuff back.

Bonus.

Seven virtues - temperance

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Temperance

Mark grins as he produces a bottle for the party. "I nicked the brandy. Mum will never miss it."

I take an interest in my lemonade as he pours the liquor into the punch bowl. It disappears, swallowed by the orange juice and cherryade.

He offers me a cupful. "You man enough?"

"You know we're not allowed." I'm sticking with lemonade.

"Stay home next time, loser." He drinks the whole cupful and takes more. His friends crowd round him, wanting some too. They don't even taste the pee I put in the brandy this afternoon.

Mark and his idiot friends 0 - loser little brother 1

Seven virtues - chastity

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Oh nightmare, for I am Not Ready For Kickoff. I wanted to have all my posts cued up and ready to go, but instead my first one is just going to scrape under the wire. They are all scribbled on paper - a weekend spent sitting on a hillside at Gatcombe Park writing microfic while watching the cross country was blissful - but I just got in and I'm going to be typing feverishly.

I plan to read all of the other stories, but I have just entered into an agreement with someone to beta read each other's manuscripts, so I may save the commenting for a few day's time. I am playing though, honest!

Titles went by the wayside this time - I'm just going to use the virtues as titles and call it done.

And so, off we go with:

Chastity

Dora strokes the cat sitting on her lap as she waits. "Now you have to be good. No getting jealous." He is about to lose his spot in her bed, his for too many years; guilt makes her squeeze him until he mews in protest.

She hesitates at the knock on the door, not wanting to appear flustered when she answers it, but the postman doesn't even look at her as he hands her the box and walks on.

She wonders if she should wait another year before opening it, but twenty years of chastity is too many to bear. Eventually, Mr Battery-powered becomes Mr Right.

Say what again?

I got a Versatile Blogger Award, courtesy of the sweet but evidently misguided Rebecca Clare Smith. I am somewhat stunned, since at the point I first read the words 'blog' and 'author platform' in the same sentence, I started to feel like I was under one and all the bloggity words evaporated from my brain. I just hoped they found new and loving homes.

Now apparently, as the recipient of this *holy crap I got an* award, I get to nominate more bloggers to receive the goodness, and also have to dish out seven previously untold facts about myself.

So, I point the happy finger of cool green and yellow iconage at.... Lissa for having some great discussion of the issues raised by Disney princesses as well as lots of other interesting posts.

On to seven facts about me. Um, okay, right, so... shut up, I'm trying to think...

1. I think steak and kidney pie tastes like pee. I'm not sure whether it's the power of suggestion or whether I am the only person who is aware of this. Seriously guys, can you not taste the urine? It's kidneys; processing pee is what they do.

2. My science brain and my fiction brain have a no-fly zone in between them. It takes at least half a day for the neurons to apply for the appropriate permissions and switch over. This is why I can only crack out a decent word count on holiday, with good old fashioned pen and paper.

3. I have an approachable face. This is the only reason I can come up with for why every time I go out surveying, somebody ambles over to ask what I am doing. They never ask my colleagues. Never. Actually, maybe I just look suspicious.

4. Boy, this is tough. Time for that good old fallback, environmental health. In my previous career, I discovered that in a microwave, cornflakes begin to smoulder and people begin to phone the fire brigade a long time before the larvae infesting them are more than mildly annoyed. I also learned that you cannot seal infested cereal in a plastic bag. Mealmoths laugh at plastic bags. And then they infest the laboratory and all the other samples.

5. I learned that I cannot kill. Not even to put something out of its misery. This made covering for the pest officers something of an embarassment. Unless you mean The Boy harm, you are safe from me.

6. I learned that nothing disturbs a man more than walking into the pub toilets to find a woman with a white coat and a clipboard. Good times.

7. I am a fair shot with an air rifle. Doesn't that make you happy about fact number 5? We won't mention the fact that when I fired something with some stopping power, I fell over backwards.