Dat Butt
As you can see, I haven't managed to write a whole lot lately. Boo to me! I tacked on a few paragraphs today, but I was mostly too cranky to bother because I wrote a prompt for fic_promptly and when I went to post it, it was already filled and also, had nothing to do with the theme from that week. Feh, I suck. So I think I'm going to hang onto it and expand it out a little because it's pretty promising. But yeah, that made me cranky and I failed to write as much as I should have.
But the story is coming along pretty well in spite of all that. The supporting cast is mostly fleshed out, and I've been adding and subtracting characters. And Nicki is doing a wonderful job of drawing everyone for me! Here's the entry with Luthor, here's the one with Ewan, here's Mercy and Navrotska, here's a random woman from Janvey, Simon, Claire, Amelia, and Father Gabriel, and here's Danya and Stuart. Go look at them and tell her she's awesome! Because she really, really is!
And now, a few snippets.
Simon and Claire are brother and sister.
“Dinner is almost ready,” she said absently. “I roasted a hen.”
“It smells very good,” he allowed, folding his arms across his chest. “Where are your shoes?”
“My what?” Claire frowned and looked down, a brief expression of surprise flitting across her face as she noted her state of dress. “Oh bloody hell! I must have left them outside!”
“Don’t curse, Claire, you aren’t a dockhand,” Simon snapped, reaching out and plucking the book from her hands. It was one of the penny dreadfuls that they sold on the Quay, filthy nonsense that glorified violence and sensationalized men and women who were little more than common thieves. This particular novel was a favorite of hers, Romy & The Bridge. Simon couldn’t count how many copies of the awful thing that he had tossed into the fireplace. Briefly, he contemplated sending this one after all the others, but there was little point. She would only sneak out while he was working and buy a new copy.
Sighing, he closed the book and tucked it into his pocket, then gestured sharply for her to get off the table. She stared at him, heart-shaped face pale and sullen and framed by wisps of dark hair that had escaped from her bun. He stared back, reminding himself that she was still very young, barely old enough to marry, and that losing their parents had been much more difficult on her than it had been on him. He mastered his irritation and kissed her forehead.
“Why on earth are your shoes outside?” he asked. “Try to tell me without any expletives.” As he spoke, he moved to the oven to examine the pots perched on top of its hot surface to warm. There were sweet beans from Javoi - a treat that he tried to purchase for Claire as often as he could - and a loaf of fluffy brown bread wrapped in a towel to keep it warm. It would be a simple, but delicious, dinner.
Claire sees a fire and decides to check it out.
He caught up to her as she was scaling the stone wall that divided their home from the alley that it bordered. There was a gate, but Claire had chosen not to use it, instead hiking her skirts up and flinging herself at the wall. It wasn’t that terribly high and she was making good progress, but Simon had the benefit of both shoes and trousers, and he caught her as she prepared to drop down the other side of the wall.
“Claire!” he shouted. “What are you doing, girl? Fire is dangerous, you know that!”
“There might be someone trapped over there,” she protested, swatting at his hand, trying to free herself from his grip. “We have to help them! You’re a biomancer, aren’t you?”
“Not yet,” Simon answered, “and you aren’t on the fire brigade. Now get down off this wall and go back in the house right now.” Claire stared at him for a long moment, sullen and furious, the nodded sharply. Simon exhaled slowly and let go of her arm to peer back over the side of the wall. It wasn’t a long drop, six feet maybe. He could go first and then catch her.
He wasn’t aware that she was moving until she was over the wall, her bare feet slapping against the stones that paved the alley. He heard her curse, a word that she certainly hadn’t learned from him, and then she was off again. He sat for a moment in stunned confusion; that she had defied him was not all that shocking, as it was Claire’s default state of being. That she had defied him in a life or death situation, however, was too much to stomach. He stared after her, hardly willing to credit his own eyes, finally snapping out of his stupor as she hurried around the corner of the nearest building, leaving his line of sight.
Simon saves a girl from the fire. He's a biomancer.
A quick exam determined that all of her limbs were sound and thank God for that, because he hadn’t perfected the art of singing bones back together just yet. She had some minor cuts, some less minor burns, but he was primarily concerned with the way her breath wheezed whenever she inhaled. Simon drew a deep breath, closed his eyes, and tried to remember what his instructors had told him back at university. The power is there, you only have to reach out and touch it. Don’t try to memorize, don’t try to treat every case the same. The magic knows what it wants. Let it guide you.
Fine. That was easy enough, wasn’t it? Simon drew a deep breath and laid a hand on the girl’s chest. Let it guide him. Right. He closed his eyes, turned his mind inward. He’d heard it was different for everyone, but his tap to the Hollow - that repository of the world’s magic, from which every ‘mancer drew his or her power - felt like a tight ball of white light centered in his ribcage. He touched it with his mind, opening the conduit and feeling the full force of the Hollow’s healing river crash over him.
It was wild, uncontrolled, and for a moment he was lost beneath it. It was like that every time, and no matter how many times he tapped the Hollow, he would never get used to that one moment of helplessness, that conviction that this would be the last time. Stubbornness and training reasserted themselves before he could sink beneath those phantom waves, and he began to shape the spell.
Most of the magical disciplines relied on vocalization to direct the power, and healing was no different. His voice fell into a soothing sort of chant, almost a song but not quite, words and tones that rose and fell, guiding the powers along his intended lines. He opened his eyes to slits and watched it snake up from his fingertips, vivid white and visible only to him as it crawled into her open mouth and down into her lungs. It fed back to him, answering the questions that he asked with his vocalizations. She’d suffered from some smoke inhalation, but she would live as long as he cleaned it out. His vocalization changed, rising and falling, transforming the tendril from a diagnostic tool into a cleansing one. It sucked the smoke from her lungs, repaired damaged tissues, carried the poison out of her body. It only took him a few minutes, but by the time he sang the words of dismissal, he felt as though he’d been laboring over her for hours.
Now tell me how awesome I am!! ;)