it's there for the first times
So.
RushSimone.
It's back with a VENGEANCE.
I swear.
It's rewritten & the plot line is a little different, but I think this works better (with characterizations & such)?
I'm... unsure as to how this will come out, but I have every detail (basically) planned out in my head, after talking to so many people about it.
So this is the FIRST PART of the FIRST MEETING (originally the garden scene). I'm having trouble getting through it, so I'm posting this part piece by piece. Everything else after this will probably write itself, but this... this is just hard.
The list of dedications: hikari_adams, for giving me a push in the right direction & giving me faith that maybe I can get this published; Riz, for being there for the first time I planned out all of the details; Saraa & Les, because you two are who you are & I lovelovelove you two; & for anyone else who told me this wasn't a stupid idea.
Thanks for more than you'll probably ever know. :)
People are like grains of sand on the beach.
Simone shuffled around on her towel before snaking her arms around her bent legs, hugging them close & settling her cheeks between the hard bones of her knees. There are a few other girls still sitting on towels, their swim suits a lesson in modesty, but they're young- young enough that they're too shy to go join the girls Simone's age in their walking up and down in the water, searching for pretty stones and shells to bring home.
Her eyes return to the edge of her towel, gazing over the sand stuck in-between the threads of the cloth. Like snowflakes, they had their own structure, she suspected. Their details would have to be tiny, but how could she examine something smaller than the hair on her head? Reaching over to a space beyond the fabric keeping her tan skin from touching the sand, she grasped a handful of sand in a fist. Simone hissed at the heat packed into such small things but didn't let go. Turning her hand over, she looked at the thousands of sand pieces falling between her fingers. They all looked so uniform yet… there was no way they could be the same.
A shout by the boys huddled in the corner of rocks forming a cove drew everyone's attention- the older girls beach combing, the girls and mothers sitting up the beach, and the few young boys building a sand castle.
"Stop yelling," called over one of the mothers.
After a quick glance over their shoulders, the boys returned to huddle over something, their voices lowered to questionable confiding tones. Their movements were rather sneaky as they hid a small patch of sand in the middle of their circle, which drew Simone's attention more than anything else.
It was the curiosity under her skin that made her carefully draw herself off the towel and made her way over to where they were crouched over something in the sand. The way the wind blew her dress into a mess of white made it difficult for her to walk the hundreds of feet to where they were, but she did manage to hold her dress so it didn't become a makeshift sail under the wind's teasing power.
That was how Simone found herself in a rather strange position. Some of the girls from across the beach were looking at her, settling into their group and staring at the picture she made, her skirt picked at two points with her hands so it looked like a bubble around her body.
Blowing into the vague distance wasn't her idea of a good plan, of course, so she dealt with the looks and the not-so-quiet whispering.
Quietly, she stood by the group of boys. Their heads blocked any view she could have gotten from there so she inched forward, this gnawing need to know driving her forward. Nothing they did was purposeful- they were so entranced by whatever had caught their attention that it wasn't until Simone had gasped at her final view of the center of their circle that they paid her any mind.
It was a jellyfish.
Its body was the soft and sensitive outer shell she had heard about in stories from the older men in court from those "good old days". They had also described the way it had whip-like things- they said they were like arms- that looked like jelly. Nothing about it looked stable and, as she stared at it, she wondered how it held itself together. How did it not fall to pieces in the water? It seemed nothing more like water stalled between liquid and ice, lacking any way to propel itself through its wet home. Simone tried to picture its frail body moving in the water and completely failed.
"What are you doing?" It was one of the older boys in the group. He scowled at her. For a moment, she considered asking him his own question. He looked far more ridiculous than her in that squatted position of his on the beach. They all did, the way they had lowered themselves to almost eye level with the sand. In a way, it looked like they were subservient to her, but she forgot it nearly as soon as they began standing up together.
There were seven of them in all, ranging from perhaps eight to twelve.
Most of them she remembered from playdates when they were younger and they didn't know any better. Their minds hadn't picked up the falsities- the niceties- back then. It was all before they'd noticed how warily everyone in court held everyone else in their minds. There were no two sides in this chess game- it was all one for one's self and by the time Simone had lived in the court for five years, she'd picked up these little things. It was one for one and even if you formed some social tie with someone else, trust was completely out of the picture.
They were all around the castle at some point, which was why they were here. It was another one of those outings, to allow the mothers and children to mingle. Relax from the stress of politics (at least that's what her parents called it). But to be honest, there was no relaxing for anyone unless they were too young to know better. The mistrust was engrained in them after playing nice with fake smiles and shifty eyes for every other day of their lives.
With his dark eyes, the one boy who had spoken up was a god example of the young tainted people. Simone was pretty sure he was one of the king's sons, but she couldn't remember which one he was. They both looked so similar, from court gossip, and they were rarely with the lesser noble children, so no matter how much time she kept skulking around the castle, she would never get anything more than a sneak peek.
"I'm not doing anything," was her reply to the question. "I was just a little bit curious as to what all of you were doing." She bit her lip so she wouldn't say something stupid like "I'm sorry." What was there to be sorry for? Even if he was the heir to the throne, he couldn't make her not investigate something that caught her attention. Certainly he could her apologize, but what was the point of that?
He- whichever prince he was- gave her a derisive look. "Go away." There were words unsaid there, among them Simone suspected were "You are a girl. Go do something girly, like collect seashells." What was wrong with things like that, she didn't understand.
But no matter how she looked at it, it was a command from someone above her, and so she slowly turned away and walked away with her head still held high.
Like she'd previously thought, there was still a social ranking here.
What an outing this proved itself to be.
Pausing for a moment to glance behind her at the boys torturing the slowly dying creature, she looked uncertainly at her towel. Sitting on the beach didn't appeal to her much at the moment and sea shell collecting was not really her favorite thing to do.
Instead, she glanced at everyone not paying attention to her and found her eyes catching on the northern part of the beach. There was not much for her to see from her perspective as it was all sand, but she was curious to know the sand was hiding from her. When the little party of women and children had walked to the beach, they had gone down rocky steps on the opposite end of the beach, bracing themselves with care on the giant boulder resting there.
Simone made her way past miniature sand dunes till she reached the tall grass sticking up out of the sand before passing it into a field of flowers. They scattered themselves in all directions and, as she started going downhill, they grew in number until she found taking steps a little difficult.
But the blooms were beautiful and so she kept walking with care, not noticing how far, exactly, she was wandering away from everyone else.
That was her first mistake.
Her second was when she turned around to see if she could see the beach- she couldn't- and tripped over a prone body lying on the ground.
P.S. I have "Clockwork Angel" & "Possession". Be jealousssss.
RushSimone.
It's back with a VENGEANCE.
I swear.
It's rewritten & the plot line is a little different, but I think this works better (with characterizations & such)?
I'm... unsure as to how this will come out, but I have every detail (basically) planned out in my head, after talking to so many people about it.
So this is the FIRST PART of the FIRST MEETING (originally the garden scene). I'm having trouble getting through it, so I'm posting this part piece by piece. Everything else after this will probably write itself, but this... this is just hard.
The list of dedications: hikari_adams, for giving me a push in the right direction & giving me faith that maybe I can get this published; Riz, for being there for the first time I planned out all of the details; Saraa & Les, because you two are who you are & I lovelovelove you two; & for anyone else who told me this wasn't a stupid idea.
Thanks for more than you'll probably ever know. :)
People are like grains of sand on the beach.
Simone shuffled around on her towel before snaking her arms around her bent legs, hugging them close & settling her cheeks between the hard bones of her knees. There are a few other girls still sitting on towels, their swim suits a lesson in modesty, but they're young- young enough that they're too shy to go join the girls Simone's age in their walking up and down in the water, searching for pretty stones and shells to bring home.
Her eyes return to the edge of her towel, gazing over the sand stuck in-between the threads of the cloth. Like snowflakes, they had their own structure, she suspected. Their details would have to be tiny, but how could she examine something smaller than the hair on her head? Reaching over to a space beyond the fabric keeping her tan skin from touching the sand, she grasped a handful of sand in a fist. Simone hissed at the heat packed into such small things but didn't let go. Turning her hand over, she looked at the thousands of sand pieces falling between her fingers. They all looked so uniform yet… there was no way they could be the same.
A shout by the boys huddled in the corner of rocks forming a cove drew everyone's attention- the older girls beach combing, the girls and mothers sitting up the beach, and the few young boys building a sand castle.
"Stop yelling," called over one of the mothers.
After a quick glance over their shoulders, the boys returned to huddle over something, their voices lowered to questionable confiding tones. Their movements were rather sneaky as they hid a small patch of sand in the middle of their circle, which drew Simone's attention more than anything else.
It was the curiosity under her skin that made her carefully draw herself off the towel and made her way over to where they were crouched over something in the sand. The way the wind blew her dress into a mess of white made it difficult for her to walk the hundreds of feet to where they were, but she did manage to hold her dress so it didn't become a makeshift sail under the wind's teasing power.
That was how Simone found herself in a rather strange position. Some of the girls from across the beach were looking at her, settling into their group and staring at the picture she made, her skirt picked at two points with her hands so it looked like a bubble around her body.
Blowing into the vague distance wasn't her idea of a good plan, of course, so she dealt with the looks and the not-so-quiet whispering.
Quietly, she stood by the group of boys. Their heads blocked any view she could have gotten from there so she inched forward, this gnawing need to know driving her forward. Nothing they did was purposeful- they were so entranced by whatever had caught their attention that it wasn't until Simone had gasped at her final view of the center of their circle that they paid her any mind.
It was a jellyfish.
Its body was the soft and sensitive outer shell she had heard about in stories from the older men in court from those "good old days". They had also described the way it had whip-like things- they said they were like arms- that looked like jelly. Nothing about it looked stable and, as she stared at it, she wondered how it held itself together. How did it not fall to pieces in the water? It seemed nothing more like water stalled between liquid and ice, lacking any way to propel itself through its wet home. Simone tried to picture its frail body moving in the water and completely failed.
"What are you doing?" It was one of the older boys in the group. He scowled at her. For a moment, she considered asking him his own question. He looked far more ridiculous than her in that squatted position of his on the beach. They all did, the way they had lowered themselves to almost eye level with the sand. In a way, it looked like they were subservient to her, but she forgot it nearly as soon as they began standing up together.
There were seven of them in all, ranging from perhaps eight to twelve.
Most of them she remembered from playdates when they were younger and they didn't know any better. Their minds hadn't picked up the falsities- the niceties- back then. It was all before they'd noticed how warily everyone in court held everyone else in their minds. There were no two sides in this chess game- it was all one for one's self and by the time Simone had lived in the court for five years, she'd picked up these little things. It was one for one and even if you formed some social tie with someone else, trust was completely out of the picture.
They were all around the castle at some point, which was why they were here. It was another one of those outings, to allow the mothers and children to mingle. Relax from the stress of politics (at least that's what her parents called it). But to be honest, there was no relaxing for anyone unless they were too young to know better. The mistrust was engrained in them after playing nice with fake smiles and shifty eyes for every other day of their lives.
With his dark eyes, the one boy who had spoken up was a god example of the young tainted people. Simone was pretty sure he was one of the king's sons, but she couldn't remember which one he was. They both looked so similar, from court gossip, and they were rarely with the lesser noble children, so no matter how much time she kept skulking around the castle, she would never get anything more than a sneak peek.
"I'm not doing anything," was her reply to the question. "I was just a little bit curious as to what all of you were doing." She bit her lip so she wouldn't say something stupid like "I'm sorry." What was there to be sorry for? Even if he was the heir to the throne, he couldn't make her not investigate something that caught her attention. Certainly he could her apologize, but what was the point of that?
He- whichever prince he was- gave her a derisive look. "Go away." There were words unsaid there, among them Simone suspected were "You are a girl. Go do something girly, like collect seashells." What was wrong with things like that, she didn't understand.
But no matter how she looked at it, it was a command from someone above her, and so she slowly turned away and walked away with her head still held high.
Like she'd previously thought, there was still a social ranking here.
What an outing this proved itself to be.
Pausing for a moment to glance behind her at the boys torturing the slowly dying creature, she looked uncertainly at her towel. Sitting on the beach didn't appeal to her much at the moment and sea shell collecting was not really her favorite thing to do.
Instead, she glanced at everyone not paying attention to her and found her eyes catching on the northern part of the beach. There was not much for her to see from her perspective as it was all sand, but she was curious to know the sand was hiding from her. When the little party of women and children had walked to the beach, they had gone down rocky steps on the opposite end of the beach, bracing themselves with care on the giant boulder resting there.
Simone made her way past miniature sand dunes till she reached the tall grass sticking up out of the sand before passing it into a field of flowers. They scattered themselves in all directions and, as she started going downhill, they grew in number until she found taking steps a little difficult.
But the blooms were beautiful and so she kept walking with care, not noticing how far, exactly, she was wandering away from everyone else.
That was her first mistake.
Her second was when she turned around to see if she could see the beach- she couldn't- and tripped over a prone body lying on the ground.
P.S. I have "Clockwork Angel" & "Possession". Be jealousssss.