21 first and last lines meme

[springgreen]

That meme about the first lines of your last 21 fics, with last lines added because I saw that elsewhere and thought it was interesting.

1. Liselle hadn't known a war was ongoing until the red tide of it had passed, Terreille's Blood nearly all dead in one overwhelming strike.
   
2. "Okay, ma," I said, holding my hand out for the keys.
   
3. When she is born, she is named Layla for her mother's skill and her father's devotion: the literary scholar and poet dedicating a thousand-plus nights to folklore and oral tradition and personal embellishment spun out by the one he loved best, the pile of tokens drawn from each tale accumulating each night.
   
4. Gyeongseong was not the smallest of cities, which made gossip difficult to keep track of, but Cha Song Ju was the proprietress of Myeong Bin Parlour, and Myeong Bin Parlour was not the smallest of gisaeng houses.
   
5. Natty Cooper, man on the moon,
   Whispered "gold" and laughed like a loon.
   
6. Why this mission, out of all the ones she was given, was the one line she couldn't cross, Nikita will never know.
   
7. I thought something would change.
   
8. I was born in a land of lush green, surrounded by the sea and the humid salt air.
   
9. this is how a river becomes a dragon
   
10. Hell is a land of the deep silences of the once-living, now frozen in time.
    
11. Ash brooded in the shadows of the club, and quite becomingly so, he was certain.
    
12. She felt them dying.
    
13. Every morning, Eva pours herself a glass of Scotch, sniffs and lets the alcohol vapors tempt her, then upends the contents in the kitchen sink.
    
14. The mountains were as he remembered: thoroughly unremarkable and no different from the many other mountains he had visited.
    
15. At this very moment, young Emerson was 9 years, 37 weeks, 2 days, 11 hours, and 46 seconds old, and he had just learned how to knit backwards-that is, to tink.
    
16. Listen, and I will tell you how Monkey comes to America.
    
17. These were the memories he didn't have of Sei: growing up, growing different, growing apart.
    
18. Rivas hadn't seen Chely for over a year, but then, he hadn't seen anyone who wasn't an Institute employee for over a year either.
    
19. He first showed up when I was a novice, still unsure of my calling, though the nuns and the orphanage were all I knew.
    
20. The studio is bathed in gold, the afternoon sunlight streaming through the top windows to illuminate the honey-pine floor.
    
21. It is a day in March, the last day in March.
    

1. Liselle smiled viciously as she stabbed another Warlord and watched the light in his Jewels fade; if none would watch over the landen, they would have to carve their own dreams out in flesh and blood.
   
2. And thus, with magical provisions in my boat and a quietly interesting companion in hand, I embarked on what would be the first of my adventures.
   
3. "Sister," Scheherazade begins, and Layla knows what her next words will be: "tell me a story."
   
4. But it was done, and she could only hope that the blood on Na Yeo Kyeong's hands would wash off, that the bruises from beatings would slowly fade, and that in the end, this sacrifice too would be worth it.
   
5. Black hair spilling from tricorne hats.
   
6. They're each other's worst enemies, but they'll be everyone else's first.
   
7. Nothing had changed at all from that last, magical summer. My summer. (cheating and sticking in two sentences!)
   
8. I have many homes and many selves; one world alone is not enough to contain me.
   
9. And around every corner was a new story just waiting to be found.
   
10. And slowly, so slowly, the queen smiles gently at him, and she finally lets him inside.
    
11. He wondered how much of Darcy's letter (the second one, of course) he could crib before Mary-Lynette called it plagiarism instead of clever reference.
    
12. The line between human and monster was thin indeed, but Galatea had never thought it could be crossed both ways.
    
13. She doesn't deserve the thanks, not yet.
    
14. It was only he who had changed.
    
15. His detective skills now honed to a needle-sharp point, young Emerson was free to create-to knit, and not to tink.
    
16. This is how Monkey comes to America: on the tongues of you and I.
    
17. These were the memories he didn't have of Sei: growing different, growing apart, growing into themselves.
    
18. Just like him.
    
19. P.S. I did not blow anyone up today.
    
20. "Don't dance like me," she says as she drops a cool kiss on Ahiru's forehead.
    
21. He's already granted it, and more.

Not much insight here, except that I like last lines better than first lines, and I really like paralleling my first and last lines. Unsurprisingly, I also like last lines that are the punctuation to the entire fic, which probably only works because mine stories are so short in general. The first lines I like best are either the ones that set up the voice for the story or the ones that set up a reference for the last line.

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