Yay~ Writing~
So I'm doing something called 750 words, which is a site for writers that has you write at least 750 words a day and gives you stats on it after you've completed it. I'm giving it a go - of course, right before I head off to Thailand before I go do my coming of age ceremony. ^^; Ah well. This thing's kind of based of an RP I'm doing with someone else, but this is more like background story.
I am of course accepting constructive criticism.
Title: Ice Island
Words: 786
Rating: PG
In the Faerie Lands there is a lake called the Endless Lake. Its gray pebbled shores made of shards of slate lay so far apart from the other, obscured by rolling waves of fog upon the black water, that no one could ever see the other side from an opposite shore no matter how augmented their vision. No mud people, though they called themselves humans, ever laid their eyes upon its bleak shores although the Endless Lake could contend with an ocean in the awe it inspired from its vastness. No mud person could ever cross it, for the tranquil waters as smooth as glass belied the dangers that lay within them. The selkies, the merpeople, the lonely Lady of the Lake all resided there and many more who favored the taste of mud people blood.
Yet the lake had another infamous hallmark to drive anyone with common sense away. Every once in a while, when the fogs were lighter in the day, one could see immense jagged black spires drifting like a floating mountain out in the distance. Within the lake's treacherously calm black waters, there drifted the ice island of the House of Down: the ancestral home of the Earless of Down, an immense castle with walls of glassy smooth slate, so black that it drank in the moonlight. It sat on the back of an impossibly large turtle that fed off the algae and lakeweed flowers as it drifted through the Endless Lake. In daylight, snow fell from cloudy skies, falling in perpetuity on its shores and upon the House of Down, trailing after it wherever it drifted like blessings of rice. At night, the clouds parted for the moon's blessing, its shimmering silver light casting a sheer white glare off the snow and setting the ice island alight in its monochromatic glory.
Two large green eyes peered over the lip of a window, peeking between the iron works that kept the clear glass panes together. His breath puffed against the pane and a small finger drew a small picture of a bat. Those green eyes watched below as a group of young pages dashing out into the snow, bundled in ragged jackets and flowing scarves. The faelings shouted at each other as they played at being soldiers, fighting in the Great Wars against the denizens of the Bright Court.
The door opened up to the library and the small faeling jolted with fright, spinning around to see who had entered. It was only his tutor. The aged and hale scholar, a severe looking fae with dark eyes and a sharp widow's peak, looked at the faeling in silence until the boy returned to his seat. He sighed wearily, giving the faeling a pitiful look.
"Master Arthur, you must keep to your studies. Your lady mother would be very disappointed if she knew that you had been slacking."
Arthur hated that look. He glared at the aged fae with his green eyes through his choppy white-blond bangs. The tutor did not meet his eyes, no one ever did. At only 75 years old, the faeling already commanded a presence of a senior member of the Night Court. He dressed all in black with a high-collar velvet tunic with silver embroidery of nightshade blooms, velvet leggings, supple leather boots and gloves. His grim attire would look absurd on any other faeling as young as he with large eyes and chubby cheeks. However, he was the son of Lady Annowre, Earless of Down, one of the most powerful courtiers in the Court of Queen Vevila and the most accomplished battlemage in the Night Court. His father was of particularly less consequence, a sharp and spiteful creature that his lady mother took in for his looks. It was from his mother that he inherited all of his magical talent, his startling intelligence and his terrifyingly intimidating countenance.
Despite the weakness behind the halfhearted appeal, the faeling buried his nose in the book in front of him, opened up to a page of an intricately patterned rune. He studied the illustration intently, copying the strokes with a quill and parchment to the side of him, over and over again. He would have to be able to repeat the strokes and patterns without the aid of parchment when the time came. The faeling had no illusions that he was being groomed for lordship, hand-chosen from amongst his siblings, all of them elder half-brothers from different fathers. For no other reason than his eyes, the green eyes that he inherited from his lady mother.
His very survival depended upon his ability to deal with the family politics of the House. Their survival, as his father so often told him.