I should really be working on Paradise Problematic. Oh well. New chappies for that'll be up soon anyway. Dalek week on deviantart calls! This story was for the bonus prompt, potato.

Her skirts billowed out behind her as she ran toward the bluff, tears streaking down her face.

Curse the heavy fabric that wrapped itself around her legs and made it feel as if she were running through water. Curse her hair, long and flowing and golden. Curse the potato in her hand, grown by her mother and waiting to be peeled by her and served to her family, waiting to bind her to the kitchen forever.

Her aunties and mum expected her to be happy with this fate. But she was not, and never would be. Why couldn't they understand that? For that matter, why had they succumbed to this lifestyle themselves?

She reached the edge of the cliff fell to her knees, still weeping. The barking picture of a damsel in distress! She tore off part of her dress, wiped her eyes furiously with it, and stared at the offending vegetable still in her grip.

"Deryn Sharp!" Her mum hurried toward her, her hand-embroidered flowery apron bunched in her hand.

Deryn scowled and stood up, ready for a continuation of the fight she had just stormed away from.

"No, mum! I've got more to offer than peeling your barking prized potatoes!" She hollered. With that, she turned and flung the potato off the cliff, not bothering to watch it spin away into the green, hilly landscape that spread out before her. Instead she returned her glare to her mum, who was staring at her with an exasperated look on her face.

"Well even so, you didn't have to go and waste a perfectly good source of nourishment!"

Deryn threw up her hands and began to pace back and forth.

"I can't LIVE like this," she began, gesturing wildly. "In the barking house all day, cooking and cleaning and COOKING AND CLEANING and looking for a DAFT BOY to moon over before I go to cook and clean in HIS barking house! Then I have his CHILDREN that I have to look after until they grow up and if they're BARKING GIRLS then they'll have to do the SAME SODDING THING! I. WON'T. DO IT! YOU CAN'T MAKE ME!" She stood there, panting. A strand of hair blew into her mouth and she spit it out, clawing all the locks of it back from her face.

Her mum addressed her calmly. "I know, Deryn."

She froze, hands still in her hair.

Sighing, her mum went on, "Just go with your brother. No point in trying to argue with you. You're as stubborn as your father."

As she turned away, a wide smile spread across Deryn's face. She ran and gathered up her mum in a tight hug.

"Thank you!" She ran off to find Jaspert, glancing over her shoulder just in time to see her mum shaking her head at the ground.

Deryn kept running as her grin bloomed into a glorious peal of laughter. She threw her head back and wooped! at the sky.

She was done with potatoes: her adventure could finally begin.