Beginnings.

The relative quiet of our sitting room, (relative, as Holmes was plucking at his violin, kindly refraining from his usual sawing as I was engrossed in a novel), was interrupted with the deliverance of a telegram for my friend. Holmes waved the ruffian toward me, his mind hundreds of miles from the room. I took the envelope and offered the lad perusal of our abandoned dinner table which he gladly accepted, stuffing his pockets with the tarts Holmes and I had neglected to eat. Then, with an "'Evening, Gents,' he departed.

Holmes did not rise from his seat, being, as I was aware, in a strange mood, so I stood to give the message to my companion. He took it from me with limp fingers, as though completely disinterested by the idea of communication, although after lazily opening the envelope and skipping down to see who it was from, his entire body stiffened with alertness, abruptly standing up just as I had retaken my seat.

The wooden chamber of his instrument rang with reverberations as it unceremoniously landed in his chair, its performer pacing around, muttering the message aloud.

"Urgent message for Sherlock Holmes. Suspect eluded…"

He clicked his tongue as he continued to read, before stopping dead to the left of the fireplace, his eyes positively glowing with excitement.

"Please come. At wit's end. Lestrade."

"Now wait just a minute, Holmes," I said, watching Holmes clutch the message with trembling hands. "What did the rest of the telegram say?"

"No matter, we must hurry!" he cried, crushing the paper in his fist as he rushed back to his room.

I scoffed and returned to my pipe, listening as Holmes began his process of packing (which consisted of throwing and banging things about) from behind his bedroom wall.

"Come, Watson!" Holmes shouted, throwing open the door to the stairs from his room and bounding down the seventeen steps – I could hear he had reached the foyer before I had even stood.

"Whatever it is, it must be ghastly to get you this wound up," I called, opening the door to the stairs from the sitting room as I collected my things.

"Watson!" he boomed, his voice ringing through the stairwell. "There isn't time for your badgering! Mrs. Hudson!"

I grinned as I heard Mrs. Hudson's indignant yelp from below, and as I threw on my coat, I thought to myself that it didn't really matter what the message had detailed, rather that it had come, and brought with it that which my companion craved – the beginning of a familiar cycle.

Obligatory First Chapter Author's Notes!
Welcome aboard my personal attempt at fulfilling a Fanfic 100 prompt table! I would like to take this opportunity to share some tidbits about the nature of this work and myself.

The stories will not be chronological, and for the most part they will be able to stand on their own. I'll be writing the prompts out of order as well, and if I do link some prompts together, I will note that somehow.

Each chapter will vary in length – I will try and get at least one good potato-eating sized chapter in this mix, hopefully more, but I imagine the majority of them will be between 50-1000 words. We'll see how things go.

The rating T is mostly for safety's sake; I doubt most of these stories will deserve it, but I imagine some will.

I have been known to update sporadically (as in seemingly never), and while my bosom friend graceofnight and author KCS whom I both deeply admire have inspired me as of late to write more, I cannot promise that I will remain diligent in my updates – please forgive me! Considering the short nature of these stories I will do my best to update on a semi-regular basis, and feel free to try and guilt me in to updating if I fall behind – it'll probably be effective. Reviews make me a happy writer! ;D

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy!