Wild Roses fic prompt 085 "She"
Title: pennies
'Verse/characters: Wild Roses; the second Ian, Phoebe
Prompt: 085 "She"
Word Count: 272
Rating: all ages
Notes: follows previous, several months later. See here for one of the reasons she never demanded his presence, even in the middle of the wars when she had no way of knowing if he was alive.
He dropped himself into her territory at the place where dock met land, stepping out from nothingness onto weathered, slightly uneven wood, then to stone.
The path was the same, progressions of red-browns and sand-coloured small rocks between the larger stepping stones, and he kept himself there, avoiding the leggy branches of the plants lining the path.
He hesitated as he topped the steps to her front door, wondering if he should tap at the brass knocker or knock against the wood, and closed his eyes briefly as the door swung open.
She wasn't there, but coiled sparks jumped and crackled around his shoes as he stepped across the threshold. He followed them, through still familiar hallways, arriving--almost inevitably--in her kitchen, she herself seated at her kitchen table with a mug of steaming tea.
The pot waited on the counter, jar of molasses and spoons beside the cup he'd used the last time he was in this house. The tea was just barely finished brewing, tempered glass strainer sitting in a shallow steaming tannin-brown puddle in a saucer.
He poured, stirred, looked at her as he wrapped his hands around the mug.
"I was beginning to wonder if you'd died again," she said softly.
"No--"not yet "--not this time."
She gave voice to no reproaches at his absence, no looks over her tea that she might give an errant child. Just rose, her tea rising after her without a hand to guide it, crossed from wood to tiles to him. Kissed the corner of his mouth and whispered "Missed you, Tattersall," then passed him by, near silent footsteps heading for her kitchen garden.
'Verse/characters: Wild Roses; the second Ian, Phoebe
Prompt: 085 "She"
Word Count: 272
Rating: all ages
Notes: follows previous, several months later. See here for one of the reasons she never demanded his presence, even in the middle of the wars when she had no way of knowing if he was alive.
He dropped himself into her territory at the place where dock met land, stepping out from nothingness onto weathered, slightly uneven wood, then to stone.
The path was the same, progressions of red-browns and sand-coloured small rocks between the larger stepping stones, and he kept himself there, avoiding the leggy branches of the plants lining the path.
He hesitated as he topped the steps to her front door, wondering if he should tap at the brass knocker or knock against the wood, and closed his eyes briefly as the door swung open.
She wasn't there, but coiled sparks jumped and crackled around his shoes as he stepped across the threshold. He followed them, through still familiar hallways, arriving--almost inevitably--in her kitchen, she herself seated at her kitchen table with a mug of steaming tea.
The pot waited on the counter, jar of molasses and spoons beside the cup he'd used the last time he was in this house. The tea was just barely finished brewing, tempered glass strainer sitting in a shallow steaming tannin-brown puddle in a saucer.
He poured, stirred, looked at her as he wrapped his hands around the mug.
"I was beginning to wonder if you'd died again," she said softly.
"No--"not yet "--not this time."
She gave voice to no reproaches at his absence, no looks over her tea that she might give an errant child. Just rose, her tea rising after her without a hand to guide it, crossed from wood to tiles to him. Kissed the corner of his mouth and whispered "Missed you, Tattersall," then passed him by, near silent footsteps heading for her kitchen garden.