writing meme reposts 6
From this post.
('the tolling of a clocktower'; Cathedrals, Sanke)
The bells call again at dawn, long round tones to accompany the colours of sunrise.
Within the nest of blankets, the only salute to dawn and clocktower is a hand raised in rude salute, followed by a renesting of blankets to block noise and light.
---
('Fintain and the End of the World'; Wild Roses, Fintain and Lin)
"Daddy, play nice," she says as the door closes, and gives her--oh, liars' gods, lover--a long, wordless look of warning that conveys the same.
Her . . companion isn't human, Fintain notes as his youngest daughter flits away, responding to someone else's call. Human-like, enough to pass, but not human in the details, and not the sort of details that spoke of dragons.
He wonders--in lieu of wondering what the man had done to his baby girl--where they'd met.
"Don't hurt my baby girl," he says, unthinking, and his daughter's companion blinks.
"Am I allowed to hurt those who try to hurt her?" he inquires blandly.
He has to think about it for a second. "Don't kill anyone the King'll get pissed about when he finds out."
His daughter's lover nods, and for a moment he does look dragon, around the eyes.
Fintain really, really hopes that his daughter hasn't taken a page from his own books. This one's not playing by the same set of rules.
---
('gear jingling, horses stamping, leather shifting'; Wild Roses, Trickwood Unification, Belladonna)
There's a new noise to being around men. Not just the shift of leather and cloth against skin, and the smell of human sweat and gunpowder, but a new layer of muffled metal jingling as it was laid on or pulled off of animals, hooves stamping in impatience or message she's not yet accustomed to reading.
They're afraid. But they serve regardless. She wonders if there are lessons to be learned in that.
---
('the hiss of water, and the whistle of the rigging'; Death be not Proud, the Morrigan)
It's not her territory, this, she thinks as she leans out over the rail of the ship, listening to the hiss of water against the hull and the whistling of rigging high above her head. No lines for men to contest from, and for her to blur with steel and leather.
That's okay. It makes the lion whose company she keeps smile the way he must have when he was much younger, wide and sharp and wild. For that, she'd leave a world entirely.
---
('coral'; Witches' Horses [Falcon's Feathers], beginning)
Gold can be wrested from the stony girdles of planets, silver the same, beautiful workable metals. Cloth, though, cloth came from boyardoms, or carefully-tended terems or vezhi that could afford to clothe others than their own. The idea of wearing something that only came from faraway tropical seas made her head hurt, a little. That her sisters loved coral so, in all its many colours, white and pink and gray-streaked black, only made clearer the gulf between them.
---
('Isael and the smell of burning pine-sap'; Wild Roses, first war)
It's hard to sleep, unfamiliar woods around him and lying next to a fire made up of sappy wood and dead fir branches, snapping and crackling merrily away. He can't smell anything but the pine burning--which would bother him more if he were wolf-kin, but still bothers him.
He's not thinking about the man across the fire from him. Not tonight.
('the tolling of a clocktower'; Cathedrals, Sanke)
The bells call again at dawn, long round tones to accompany the colours of sunrise.
Within the nest of blankets, the only salute to dawn and clocktower is a hand raised in rude salute, followed by a renesting of blankets to block noise and light.
---
('Fintain and the End of the World'; Wild Roses, Fintain and Lin)
"Daddy, play nice," she says as the door closes, and gives her--oh, liars' gods, lover--a long, wordless look of warning that conveys the same.
Her . . companion isn't human, Fintain notes as his youngest daughter flits away, responding to someone else's call. Human-like, enough to pass, but not human in the details, and not the sort of details that spoke of dragons.
He wonders--in lieu of wondering what the man had done to his baby girl--where they'd met.
"Don't hurt my baby girl," he says, unthinking, and his daughter's companion blinks.
"Am I allowed to hurt those who try to hurt her?" he inquires blandly.
He has to think about it for a second. "Don't kill anyone the King'll get pissed about when he finds out."
His daughter's lover nods, and for a moment he does look dragon, around the eyes.
Fintain really, really hopes that his daughter hasn't taken a page from his own books. This one's not playing by the same set of rules.
---
('gear jingling, horses stamping, leather shifting'; Wild Roses, Trickwood Unification, Belladonna)
There's a new noise to being around men. Not just the shift of leather and cloth against skin, and the smell of human sweat and gunpowder, but a new layer of muffled metal jingling as it was laid on or pulled off of animals, hooves stamping in impatience or message she's not yet accustomed to reading.
They're afraid. But they serve regardless. She wonders if there are lessons to be learned in that.
---
('the hiss of water, and the whistle of the rigging'; Death be not Proud, the Morrigan)
It's not her territory, this, she thinks as she leans out over the rail of the ship, listening to the hiss of water against the hull and the whistling of rigging high above her head. No lines for men to contest from, and for her to blur with steel and leather.
That's okay. It makes the lion whose company she keeps smile the way he must have when he was much younger, wide and sharp and wild. For that, she'd leave a world entirely.
---
('coral'; Witches' Horses [Falcon's Feathers], beginning)
Gold can be wrested from the stony girdles of planets, silver the same, beautiful workable metals. Cloth, though, cloth came from boyardoms, or carefully-tended terems or vezhi that could afford to clothe others than their own. The idea of wearing something that only came from faraway tropical seas made her head hurt, a little. That her sisters loved coral so, in all its many colours, white and pink and gray-streaked black, only made clearer the gulf between them.
---
('Isael and the smell of burning pine-sap'; Wild Roses, first war)
It's hard to sleep, unfamiliar woods around him and lying next to a fire made up of sappy wood and dead fir branches, snapping and crackling merrily away. He can't smell anything but the pine burning--which would bother him more if he were wolf-kin, but still bothers him.
He's not thinking about the man across the fire from him. Not tonight.