NaNo-ish Thing #1
She hated that the most. If he didn’t want to play with her, he could just say so! Did he think she didn’t see him looking right at her? There was nothing to do but make her hiding places more obvious. They both enjoyed it more when Adelai was the seeker, but they couldn’t ignore the rules. She had to have a go at hiding sometime.
Adelai folded her hands over her stomach and listened to the rain outside, twisting her fingers together with its insistent drumming. Later there would be puddles to play in and toady boggles to catch, though she should probably change out of her yellow dress first.
She counted to seventy before Luca poked his head through the music room’s double doors. He checked behind them before moving on to the curtains and the fireplace. Adelai rolled onto her stomach and scootched forward on her elbows, staring after him incredulously. He pulled up the window seat’s hinged lid and rifled through spare blankets and cushions before dropping it with a loud crack, sighing, and storming out of the room. She scrambled to her feet, ducked out from under the piano, and ran to the doors.
“You’re not even trying!” she shouted, angrily stomping her foot after him. Luca shot six inches into the air and jerked around to face her, wide-eyed.
“I just looked!”
“You did not! I was right under the piano! You had to’ve seen me!”
“I didn’t!”
“Stop lying!”
“I’m not!”
Their voices climbed steadily until they were shrieking in each others’ faces. A maid bustled out of the atrium down the hall, her hands half-raised in a frantic shushing motion. Luca stepped in towards Adelai and shook his head once, sharply. She bit down on the inside of her cheek, swallowing another yell. Father and Mother were at work somewhere in the house, and the staff members were under strict orders to keep the noise down.
Luca grabbed her elbow and walked her back towards the music room, away from the anxious maid. Adelai let him, though she was still fuming.
“I don’t want to play this anymore,” he said as soon as they were safely around the door. Adelai glared her irritation at him as hard as she could. She hoped he could feel it buzzing around his head like a cloud of gnats. “What d’you want to do, Addy?”
“Can’t go outside,” she said grudgingly, obliged to reply. “You’ve got ‘rithmatic lessons before lunch.”
“But I don’t really want to do those either,” Luca shrugged with easy ambivalence, and Adelai grinned despite herself. Their parents hired the finest tutors, but Luca seemed to always fly two steps ahead of their lessons. Their Father personally oversaw his Artifice studies, and proudly proclaimed his son’s instinctive skill to anyone who’d listen. Arithmetic, literature and history came as naturally to Luca as breathing. He even plowed through the deadly boring etiquette drills. He was miserable at music and dance, but Mother would shrug and say that no one could be good at everything. So long as he attended his Artifice lessons regularly, their parents simply looked the other way. What did it really matter if he could hold a tune, so long as he could meld raw solids into goods?
“We should go for a ride!” he declared, his whole face lighting up at the prospect.
“In the rain?” Adelai wrinkled her nose at him and climbed up on the window seat. The rain coursed down the diamond-panes in wavering rivulets.
“You’d love it,” Luca assured her, ever the worldly eleven-year-old. “You’ve never been so muddy in your life, Addy. It’s the best thing ever.”
“But I’ve never ridden by myself before,” she pointed out, “and Partner can’t carry us both. He’s too fat. He’d prob’ly have a heart attack.”
“He is not fat,” Luca huffed, “He’s just…he’s really stout.”
Adelai giggled. Their Mother always said grandma Carlita was ‘stout’, and sometimes they had to open a room’s double doors to get her through. On a good day Partner, Luca’s pony, might manage more than a sedate canter, but the poor old thing didn’t have too many good days anymore. She knew Luca secretly wanted a horse of his own, but he was too loyal to Partner to ask Father. She suspected Father knew, and rather approved.
Partner shared the stable with a half-dozen draft horses, two brood mares and a single prized stud. Adelai was way too small for one of the draft horses, and neither of them was stupid enough to suggest that she ride their Mother’s prized breeders.
“Can’t, anyway,” she shrugged, “Daddy says I don’t get my own pony ‘til all my baby teeth fall out.”
Luca rocked back and planted his hands on his hips, eyebrows disappearing behind his ruffled hair. “Well that’s dumb,” he said. “You oughta learn how to fall before you get all your permanent teeth in, so’s you don’t knock any out.”
Adelai considered that a moment. His logic, she had to admit, was flawless. But there were rules to consider. “Doesn’t matter,” she said, “Mama won’t let us out in the rain, even if I did have a pony.”
“How would she catch us?” Luca was cranky and, apparently, in no mood to be de-crankified. Adelai rolled her eyes and pulled at one of her curls, watching absently as it sprang back into place. Her brother folded his arms behind his head, brooding to himself. He glared out the window, eyes tracking the rain as it ran down the glass. Adelai stifled a yawn.
“I could make you a pony!” Luca sat up on his elbows, a manic grin splitting his face. Adelai shrank back into the throw pillows, wide-eyed.
“You wanna what?”
“Come on!” Luca grabbed her wrist and leapt off the seat, towing her along. Her socks slipped on the hardwood floor as he dragged her towards the library. She managed to get her feet under her as they ran, taking two steps to his every one.
Their Father encouraged them to spend time in the library. No books there were restricted to them, although she was sure her parents kept some stashed away in their room. She and Luca spent nearly as much time sprawled among the shelves as they did playing. Intense study was required to be a truly top-notch Artificer. Luca took his talent very seriously, and Adelai read the books he recommended in preparation for the day hers would emerge. He might not be very good at hide-and-seek, but when it came to their family’s craft, her brother’s word was as good as law to her.
“Most of the other disciplines think we’re just craftsmen,” he sometimes snorted, “But I don’t see what’s so great about just being able to work with one element, or read somebody’s mind, or pop yourself halfway across town. I mean, at least we do something useful.”
That was true, and something Adelai took a great deal of vicarious pride in. There wasn’t a Family throughout the whole of Siun that didn’t wear her father’s or grandfather’s jewelry, that didn’t furnish their houses, so much bigger than Adelai’s, with mother’s glasswork and lights. Those other Families just didn’t realize how much work went into Artifice, that was all. Adelai sometimes boggled at the amount of arithmetic and chemistry involved in coaxing a single ruby from aluminum oxide and chromium. She didn’t think she could ever stuff it all into her brain, though not through lack of trying. Luca rarely spent time in the library alone.
She hunted and pecked through the shelves at her brother’s request while he stacked the materials atop a large, heavy reading table he’d claimed as his base of operations. Soon he’d completely disappeared behind them, silent but for the dry scritch of flipping pages. Adelai climbed into a chair and reached for the leather bound book atop the stack nearest to her.
“Don’t. I need that,” Luca said absently. She snatched her hand back to her lap and sulked
“Tell me what you’re lookin’ for. Maybe I can help read!” There was nothing Adelai liked better than when Luca shoved a book into her hands. His enthusiasm was so contagious.
“I told you,” his reply came short and clipped from behind the barricade, “I’m gonna make you a pony.”
“I didn’t know you meant it for serious,” Adelai climbed up on the table and peeked over at him. “You can’t hide this kinda thing from Mother and Father. They’d have to notice another pony. I mean, where are you gonna put all the raw stuff? They’d notice! We’ll find something else to play, okay?”
But Luca wasn’t listening. He opened a large, flat book of anatomical studies and laid it out before him. He flipped through until he found the layers of a horse, stripped away one by one. There it was without skin, again without muscle, a diagram of only the nervous system, only the bones, only the placement of the organs within an equine silhouette.
“The skeleton alone is going to take pounds and pounds of calcium and rock salt, and it all has to ossify right. And there’s the blood vessels to think about, those’re gonna take massive amounts of protein…fire and water, fire and water…” he trailed off, mumbling to himself.
“Come on Luca,” Adelai begged, “That’s really advanced constructing! Artificers who make animals and stuff usually do little ones!”
“The animation,” Luca muttered, already sketching out skeletal models on a pad of scratch paper. It was vital for an Artificer to have a perfect mental image of his work before he went into it. “That’s tapping directly into the Ether. Most Artificers are too scared.”
“Scared’s got nothing to do with it!” Adelai smacked a small fist against the table. “Ether’s dangerous by itself!”
“I don’t see how come,” Luca glanced up from his notes, skepticism twisting his mouth. “We’re made up of it before we’re born and we go back to it when we die. It’s what we use to fuse components when we craft, it’s what the Workers use to move and change their elements. We use it all the time!”
“But not straight on!”
“Yeah, but how different can it be?”
Adelai folded her hands over her stomach and listened to the rain outside, twisting her fingers together with its insistent drumming. Later there would be puddles to play in and toady boggles to catch, though she should probably change out of her yellow dress first.
She counted to seventy before Luca poked his head through the music room’s double doors. He checked behind them before moving on to the curtains and the fireplace. Adelai rolled onto her stomach and scootched forward on her elbows, staring after him incredulously. He pulled up the window seat’s hinged lid and rifled through spare blankets and cushions before dropping it with a loud crack, sighing, and storming out of the room. She scrambled to her feet, ducked out from under the piano, and ran to the doors.
“You’re not even trying!” she shouted, angrily stomping her foot after him. Luca shot six inches into the air and jerked around to face her, wide-eyed.
“I just looked!”
“You did not! I was right under the piano! You had to’ve seen me!”
“I didn’t!”
“Stop lying!”
“I’m not!”
Their voices climbed steadily until they were shrieking in each others’ faces. A maid bustled out of the atrium down the hall, her hands half-raised in a frantic shushing motion. Luca stepped in towards Adelai and shook his head once, sharply. She bit down on the inside of her cheek, swallowing another yell. Father and Mother were at work somewhere in the house, and the staff members were under strict orders to keep the noise down.
Luca grabbed her elbow and walked her back towards the music room, away from the anxious maid. Adelai let him, though she was still fuming.
“I don’t want to play this anymore,” he said as soon as they were safely around the door. Adelai glared her irritation at him as hard as she could. She hoped he could feel it buzzing around his head like a cloud of gnats. “What d’you want to do, Addy?”
“Can’t go outside,” she said grudgingly, obliged to reply. “You’ve got ‘rithmatic lessons before lunch.”
“But I don’t really want to do those either,” Luca shrugged with easy ambivalence, and Adelai grinned despite herself. Their parents hired the finest tutors, but Luca seemed to always fly two steps ahead of their lessons. Their Father personally oversaw his Artifice studies, and proudly proclaimed his son’s instinctive skill to anyone who’d listen. Arithmetic, literature and history came as naturally to Luca as breathing. He even plowed through the deadly boring etiquette drills. He was miserable at music and dance, but Mother would shrug and say that no one could be good at everything. So long as he attended his Artifice lessons regularly, their parents simply looked the other way. What did it really matter if he could hold a tune, so long as he could meld raw solids into goods?
“We should go for a ride!” he declared, his whole face lighting up at the prospect.
“In the rain?” Adelai wrinkled her nose at him and climbed up on the window seat. The rain coursed down the diamond-panes in wavering rivulets.
“You’d love it,” Luca assured her, ever the worldly eleven-year-old. “You’ve never been so muddy in your life, Addy. It’s the best thing ever.”
“But I’ve never ridden by myself before,” she pointed out, “and Partner can’t carry us both. He’s too fat. He’d prob’ly have a heart attack.”
“He is not fat,” Luca huffed, “He’s just…he’s really stout.”
Adelai giggled. Their Mother always said grandma Carlita was ‘stout’, and sometimes they had to open a room’s double doors to get her through. On a good day Partner, Luca’s pony, might manage more than a sedate canter, but the poor old thing didn’t have too many good days anymore. She knew Luca secretly wanted a horse of his own, but he was too loyal to Partner to ask Father. She suspected Father knew, and rather approved.
Partner shared the stable with a half-dozen draft horses, two brood mares and a single prized stud. Adelai was way too small for one of the draft horses, and neither of them was stupid enough to suggest that she ride their Mother’s prized breeders.
“Can’t, anyway,” she shrugged, “Daddy says I don’t get my own pony ‘til all my baby teeth fall out.”
Luca rocked back and planted his hands on his hips, eyebrows disappearing behind his ruffled hair. “Well that’s dumb,” he said. “You oughta learn how to fall before you get all your permanent teeth in, so’s you don’t knock any out.”
Adelai considered that a moment. His logic, she had to admit, was flawless. But there were rules to consider. “Doesn’t matter,” she said, “Mama won’t let us out in the rain, even if I did have a pony.”
“How would she catch us?” Luca was cranky and, apparently, in no mood to be de-crankified. Adelai rolled her eyes and pulled at one of her curls, watching absently as it sprang back into place. Her brother folded his arms behind his head, brooding to himself. He glared out the window, eyes tracking the rain as it ran down the glass. Adelai stifled a yawn.
“I could make you a pony!” Luca sat up on his elbows, a manic grin splitting his face. Adelai shrank back into the throw pillows, wide-eyed.
“You wanna what?”
“Come on!” Luca grabbed her wrist and leapt off the seat, towing her along. Her socks slipped on the hardwood floor as he dragged her towards the library. She managed to get her feet under her as they ran, taking two steps to his every one.
Their Father encouraged them to spend time in the library. No books there were restricted to them, although she was sure her parents kept some stashed away in their room. She and Luca spent nearly as much time sprawled among the shelves as they did playing. Intense study was required to be a truly top-notch Artificer. Luca took his talent very seriously, and Adelai read the books he recommended in preparation for the day hers would emerge. He might not be very good at hide-and-seek, but when it came to their family’s craft, her brother’s word was as good as law to her.
“Most of the other disciplines think we’re just craftsmen,” he sometimes snorted, “But I don’t see what’s so great about just being able to work with one element, or read somebody’s mind, or pop yourself halfway across town. I mean, at least we do something useful.”
That was true, and something Adelai took a great deal of vicarious pride in. There wasn’t a Family throughout the whole of Siun that didn’t wear her father’s or grandfather’s jewelry, that didn’t furnish their houses, so much bigger than Adelai’s, with mother’s glasswork and lights. Those other Families just didn’t realize how much work went into Artifice, that was all. Adelai sometimes boggled at the amount of arithmetic and chemistry involved in coaxing a single ruby from aluminum oxide and chromium. She didn’t think she could ever stuff it all into her brain, though not through lack of trying. Luca rarely spent time in the library alone.
She hunted and pecked through the shelves at her brother’s request while he stacked the materials atop a large, heavy reading table he’d claimed as his base of operations. Soon he’d completely disappeared behind them, silent but for the dry scritch of flipping pages. Adelai climbed into a chair and reached for the leather bound book atop the stack nearest to her.
“Don’t. I need that,” Luca said absently. She snatched her hand back to her lap and sulked
“Tell me what you’re lookin’ for. Maybe I can help read!” There was nothing Adelai liked better than when Luca shoved a book into her hands. His enthusiasm was so contagious.
“I told you,” his reply came short and clipped from behind the barricade, “I’m gonna make you a pony.”
“I didn’t know you meant it for serious,” Adelai climbed up on the table and peeked over at him. “You can’t hide this kinda thing from Mother and Father. They’d have to notice another pony. I mean, where are you gonna put all the raw stuff? They’d notice! We’ll find something else to play, okay?”
But Luca wasn’t listening. He opened a large, flat book of anatomical studies and laid it out before him. He flipped through until he found the layers of a horse, stripped away one by one. There it was without skin, again without muscle, a diagram of only the nervous system, only the bones, only the placement of the organs within an equine silhouette.
“The skeleton alone is going to take pounds and pounds of calcium and rock salt, and it all has to ossify right. And there’s the blood vessels to think about, those’re gonna take massive amounts of protein…fire and water, fire and water…” he trailed off, mumbling to himself.
“Come on Luca,” Adelai begged, “That’s really advanced constructing! Artificers who make animals and stuff usually do little ones!”
“The animation,” Luca muttered, already sketching out skeletal models on a pad of scratch paper. It was vital for an Artificer to have a perfect mental image of his work before he went into it. “That’s tapping directly into the Ether. Most Artificers are too scared.”
“Scared’s got nothing to do with it!” Adelai smacked a small fist against the table. “Ether’s dangerous by itself!”
“I don’t see how come,” Luca glanced up from his notes, skepticism twisting his mouth. “We’re made up of it before we’re born and we go back to it when we die. It’s what we use to fuse components when we craft, it’s what the Workers use to move and change their elements. We use it all the time!”
“But not straight on!”
“Yeah, but how different can it be?”