I am already in the "post a short fic that passes the bus test" stage, because this longfic will almost certainly not be done in the next twelve hours. What I need is an opening scene of about 1500-2000 words that can set the stage for the story to come, but also stand on its own as an answer to my recip's TOTALLY REASONABLE AND EXCELLENT requests.

Instead, all I have are about 6k of plot-dependent scenes and long strings of dialogue that happen much later in the story, and cannot be made to stand alone.

So this is fun.