Last Ten First Lines Meme

[igenlode]

Meme from lost via pedanther: List the first sentence (or two if the first sentence is short) of each of the last ten fics you posted.

Should be interesting, since I came to the conclusion when doing the Year in Review meme that first lines weren't really my strongest point! (NB: looks as if it's about time I did another one of those, since the last one was well over a year ago...)

1. The two voices rise entwined, powerful tenor and soaring passionate soprano, their notes embracing one another with an ardour that more than matches the caresses on stage. (An Unfair Advantage, POTO musical)
2. It was strange sometimes how things turned out, Dar Ogar thought, leaning on the counter and observing his customers. (Blue Remembered Hills -- yes, really, the final chapter was only posted in May this year! -- POTO novel/Blake's 7 crossover)
3. Erik sees faces, sometimes, in the dark.
   He sees many things in the shadowed passageways of his home, the domain he has claimed for his own, and not all of them are real. (Annoyance, POTO novel: Writers Anonymous challenge entry, prompt word 'annoyance")
4. All around her masks nodded and wagged grotesquely, and garish costumes mocked at convention: women in clinging breeches, men in exotic robes and peacock-bright motley, capering like animals or feigning the jerky movement of automata, or simply crowding too close as the eddies of the dance caught her up and swirled her away. (Shall We Dance?, POTO musical)
5. It was still cold in this first spring of the war, despite the afternoon sun, and a bitter wind crept over the Paris rooftops and rattled the long shutters of the Hôtel de Chagny. (In Regret, Always, Love Never Dies)
6. She would sing for Erik one last time. One last time — and then vanish at once. That was what Christine had arranged with her fiancé, and that was how it would be. (Imprisoned by Fear, translation of POTO novel-based fic in German)
7. The worst of it, Ashley thought, with the rueful withdrawn smile that was as much for his own frailties as those of the world about him, was that he understood all too clearly just what his cousin Charles was going through right now. (Scruples of Honour, Gone With the Wind novel)
8. "What do you mean, the Daaé's disappeared?"
   John McWhirter was a big man with gray in his wiry black beard, but his voice had cracked into a schoolboy's high-pitched incredulity, and Jos winced. (The Daaé Case, Love Never Dies)
9. Joseph Buquet was no saint, that's for sure. But for all his curses he took good care in his work, and I think he was fond of me. (The Man Who Knew Too Much, POTO movie)
10. It was a cold, grey afternoon outside, and the neatly-clipped trees in their huge pots — each almost as tall as the boy who stood gazing out at them through the long windows — stretched away from the chateau towards an empty fountain that held only a thin layer of ice. (Christmas as it ought not to be, POTO novel)

And those ten take us right back to Christmas 2016; I've published relatively little in the last nine months save a few one-shots, which is directly connected to having started the must-get-a-name-soon Swedish story/novel in November 2017 :-p)

I'm actually very, very vaguely toying with the idea that the latter might be publishable...

Comments

[betweensunandmoon]

I like the ones from "Annoyance" and "Shall We Dance?" the best. :D