This was supposed to be a long one shot, but the event this is for ends in 20 minutes and this is the last thing seperating me and the bonus, so...
Random Drabbles it is.
Romance Awareness Day 8: You have a limited number of words, and you can only recharge when you're with your soulmate (when you use up your word count, you die)
Word Count: 313
i. journey
There was one thing that every single immigrant to the North American continent agreed on: it was weird.
As soon as you set foot onto the continent some weird markings would appear on your arm. Any local will explain to you — if you let them write it, that is — that this is your word counter. It is the number of words you can speak until you either met your soulmate and spend enough time with them to recharge or you die.
Alexander Hamilton had luckily enough overheard this before he actually set foot on the continent, because the resulting stream of questions would probably have reduced his count quite a lot, he would guess.
To say that he was a generally rather talkative person was such a gross understatement that they might as well have insulted him directly. How on earth is he supposed to rise above his station and prove his worth to the world (and himself, admittedly), if he had no chance to talk?
The only thing he could do was to learn to write fast and make as little mistakes as possible as to waste no time correcting them.
And so he started practising. As to not waste ink and parchment, he asked around the ship if anyone either wanted or needed him to pen a letter for the smallest fee Alexander still considered reasonable. Once that was exhausted, he turned to poems and plays that he hoped he would be able to sell once they reached the port.
The plays he tried to keep as silent as possible. That actually presented a challenge that was surprisingly fun.
He had done honestly all he could think of to prepare — he has tried and mostly failed to limit his speaking — and yet he can't help but feel woefully underprepared as the American Continent appears on the horizon.