(no subject)
I'm now cooling my heels in Chicago at my grandparents' house. Not much happening right now.
I think I'm gonna do NaNoWriMo in July to save myself some irritation and bother. I've got a plot more or less ready for it, or I could finish last year's attempt. I need to write a novel this year, but there's no real need to write it in November. Most of the fun of NaNoWriMo in the first couple of years was tooling around and asking silly questions on the forums anyways.
Long-haul train travel in coach isn't exactly comfortable, but at my age I'm perfectly used to sleeping in odd nooks. I have to say that most of the rest of the world does cattle-class much better... prison-style bunk racks versus seats that don't recline enough to matter. I mean, the seats are great right up until you decide to go to sleep for the night... I slept on my arm the first night and it was numb from the neck down when I woke up.
Not much happening right now 'cept watching terebi with grandma. She seems to spend half of her time watching decent stuff like Star Trek and CSI and the other half watching the game show network. >:/ Well, I suppose I could go sit at the kitchen table.
Anyhow, I'm in the last few days of my jet lag, according to the one-day-per-time-zone-crossed rule.
Got bored last night while watching interminable rounds of Family Feud with grandma and typed up a scene I came up with on the train. For posterity:
Andrina found herself immobilized by a torrent of emotions as she watched Garetta advancing towards her and Sayuen, with his hand braced on the hilt of his sword and the veins standing out on his wrists and forehead. His face was indescribable--but she thought, in the split second of clarity she found amidst the maelstrom in her mind, that his expression must have been the same as the one she wore sometimes when the world compressed itself into a fragment of iron-hard fury in her chest.
She took an unsteady step backwards, her foot crunching on broken glass, and instinctively placed her own hand on the handle of the knife strapped to the small of her back. She saw Sayuen hesitate and flinch away from Garetta, but then like a force of nature Garetta had his hands around the other Weathermaker's neck and lifted her clear off of her feet. It wasn't much like you saw in the films. Sayuen was a full head taller than Garetta, and skinny as she was, he still didn't have the strength to simply hoist her up, so he had to brace the length of her body against his and stagger under her with his feet apart and his back arched to find a center of balance.
His grimace twisted and his face reddened, until Andrina could barely recognize her apprentice. And he began to scream.
"Scum! Ignorant twit! You deserve little better than death, you unholy excuse for a sentient, let alone to be a Lord of our Temple! What gives you the right to stand above this colony and do the things you do in the name of religion? Dirty rapist! You-- all of you! You'll all end up in the same hell, you and Inga and my sister!"
She didn't struggle, but the noises she made told Andrina that she certainly could not speak. As Garetta's tirade continued, becoming ever less coherent as fury stole away his articulation, the Dragonweller's feet began to jerk involuntarily. From what Andrina knew of Sayuen's strength, it outstripped Garetta's by far, but for some reason her rival wasn't even trying to escape the strangling grip.
Andrina felt her own limbs jerk once; painfully, she came back to herself out of the crippling breathless haze Garetta's shocking entrance had sent her into.
"Put her down!" she barked. "Now!"
Garetta responded instantly; Sayuen dropped like a sack of rice. Her legs buckled under her and she fell sideways before Garetta's feet, gasping. Garetta's hands fell slowly to his sides and he too gasped. His face was still ugly with rage. Sayuen tried to squirm away, but at the last, Garetta aimed a vicious kick towards her exposed gut. She jerked on the tiled floor and choked and retched.
Andrina fixed her apprentice's eyes with her own and did her best to ignore Sayuen's groans. Garetta paled, and his expression melted away into passivity.
Andrina turned away without a word, and Garetta in his usual manner automatically followed. From the sounds of his footsteps, he must have simply stepped over Sayuen's slowly writhing body, and Andrina winced. He caught up with her, and she thought that at least he did so with some semblance of dignity; like a monk and not a trained puppy.
He hoped desperately for her to say something, but her strides were long, silent, measured, and, if anything, calmer than usual. His thoughts jumbled together and tripped over each other, and for a moment he wondered at his own actions. His rage had been drained away in truly an instant, leaving nothing at all to explain the outburst.
He followed his master across the open-domed plaza. Their path was littered with scorched fragments, debris, and broken glass. The lights above were flickering, and through the bombed-out dome, the lower south city was barely visible: half of its electricity was out. The border of the darkness followed the distinct line of Maiychervunag Avenue, even down to the little jag that accommodated the corner of Bapgulol Park.
Andrina walked until she could knew she wouldn't see Sayuen when she turned around, and she stopped, and if Sayuen had gotten up, she wouldn't see them. She cocked her head downwards and to the side, let her eyes drift shut, and breathed deeply of the smoke-filled air. Interestingly, her eyes stung worse closed than they had open. It occurred to her with a flicker of guilt that perhaps she should have stayed a moment to make sure her rival wasn't going to suffer some sort of seizure as apparently she was prone to having. She couldn't bring herself to go back now that she'd walked away.
"You were perfectly aware that kicking a person in the solar plexus can be fatal if done with sufficient force." It was a statement rather than a question; Garetta's monastic training would have covered such things in excruciating detail, just as hers had once, long ago.
Garetta seemed to fall apart once again; lately, he had been doing little else but falling apart and putting himself back together. This time, he did so almost silently. Andrina didn't look at him, but she could imagine tears making tracks down her apprentice's soot-smudged face. She kept herself level and neutral, patiently waiting for him to say something. It wasn't in his character to try and justify his actions, but at this point they were both so far outside of their polite little cloistered existences that anything was possible.
"I knew," he whimpered at last. His shoulders shook.
Her reaction belied her earlier inability to move: she launched herself at him and caught the front of his habit in tight bony fists. She mimicked his movement and lifted him high, but she was strong enough that she didn't have to stagger under him. He had the grace to look down at her utterly shocked.
"You are not a killer," she growled up, just a hand's breadth away from his face. "And I am not a rape victim."
Anyhow three cheers for lack of context. As well as lack of editing. Come to think of it, I still have a half-finished scrap in my second notebook to finish.
It's really too bad that my grandparents have this sweet surround-sound setup and grandma uses it to watch old quiz shows from the seventies... :p
I think I'm gonna do NaNoWriMo in July to save myself some irritation and bother. I've got a plot more or less ready for it, or I could finish last year's attempt. I need to write a novel this year, but there's no real need to write it in November. Most of the fun of NaNoWriMo in the first couple of years was tooling around and asking silly questions on the forums anyways.
Long-haul train travel in coach isn't exactly comfortable, but at my age I'm perfectly used to sleeping in odd nooks. I have to say that most of the rest of the world does cattle-class much better... prison-style bunk racks versus seats that don't recline enough to matter. I mean, the seats are great right up until you decide to go to sleep for the night... I slept on my arm the first night and it was numb from the neck down when I woke up.
Not much happening right now 'cept watching terebi with grandma. She seems to spend half of her time watching decent stuff like Star Trek and CSI and the other half watching the game show network. >:/ Well, I suppose I could go sit at the kitchen table.
Anyhow, I'm in the last few days of my jet lag, according to the one-day-per-time-zone-crossed rule.
Got bored last night while watching interminable rounds of Family Feud with grandma and typed up a scene I came up with on the train. For posterity:
Andrina found herself immobilized by a torrent of emotions as she watched Garetta advancing towards her and Sayuen, with his hand braced on the hilt of his sword and the veins standing out on his wrists and forehead. His face was indescribable--but she thought, in the split second of clarity she found amidst the maelstrom in her mind, that his expression must have been the same as the one she wore sometimes when the world compressed itself into a fragment of iron-hard fury in her chest.
She took an unsteady step backwards, her foot crunching on broken glass, and instinctively placed her own hand on the handle of the knife strapped to the small of her back. She saw Sayuen hesitate and flinch away from Garetta, but then like a force of nature Garetta had his hands around the other Weathermaker's neck and lifted her clear off of her feet. It wasn't much like you saw in the films. Sayuen was a full head taller than Garetta, and skinny as she was, he still didn't have the strength to simply hoist her up, so he had to brace the length of her body against his and stagger under her with his feet apart and his back arched to find a center of balance.
His grimace twisted and his face reddened, until Andrina could barely recognize her apprentice. And he began to scream.
"Scum! Ignorant twit! You deserve little better than death, you unholy excuse for a sentient, let alone to be a Lord of our Temple! What gives you the right to stand above this colony and do the things you do in the name of religion? Dirty rapist! You-- all of you! You'll all end up in the same hell, you and Inga and my sister!"
She didn't struggle, but the noises she made told Andrina that she certainly could not speak. As Garetta's tirade continued, becoming ever less coherent as fury stole away his articulation, the Dragonweller's feet began to jerk involuntarily. From what Andrina knew of Sayuen's strength, it outstripped Garetta's by far, but for some reason her rival wasn't even trying to escape the strangling grip.
Andrina felt her own limbs jerk once; painfully, she came back to herself out of the crippling breathless haze Garetta's shocking entrance had sent her into.
"Put her down!" she barked. "Now!"
Garetta responded instantly; Sayuen dropped like a sack of rice. Her legs buckled under her and she fell sideways before Garetta's feet, gasping. Garetta's hands fell slowly to his sides and he too gasped. His face was still ugly with rage. Sayuen tried to squirm away, but at the last, Garetta aimed a vicious kick towards her exposed gut. She jerked on the tiled floor and choked and retched.
Andrina fixed her apprentice's eyes with her own and did her best to ignore Sayuen's groans. Garetta paled, and his expression melted away into passivity.
Andrina turned away without a word, and Garetta in his usual manner automatically followed. From the sounds of his footsteps, he must have simply stepped over Sayuen's slowly writhing body, and Andrina winced. He caught up with her, and she thought that at least he did so with some semblance of dignity; like a monk and not a trained puppy.
He hoped desperately for her to say something, but her strides were long, silent, measured, and, if anything, calmer than usual. His thoughts jumbled together and tripped over each other, and for a moment he wondered at his own actions. His rage had been drained away in truly an instant, leaving nothing at all to explain the outburst.
He followed his master across the open-domed plaza. Their path was littered with scorched fragments, debris, and broken glass. The lights above were flickering, and through the bombed-out dome, the lower south city was barely visible: half of its electricity was out. The border of the darkness followed the distinct line of Maiychervunag Avenue, even down to the little jag that accommodated the corner of Bapgulol Park.
Andrina walked until she could knew she wouldn't see Sayuen when she turned around, and she stopped, and if Sayuen had gotten up, she wouldn't see them. She cocked her head downwards and to the side, let her eyes drift shut, and breathed deeply of the smoke-filled air. Interestingly, her eyes stung worse closed than they had open. It occurred to her with a flicker of guilt that perhaps she should have stayed a moment to make sure her rival wasn't going to suffer some sort of seizure as apparently she was prone to having. She couldn't bring herself to go back now that she'd walked away.
"You were perfectly aware that kicking a person in the solar plexus can be fatal if done with sufficient force." It was a statement rather than a question; Garetta's monastic training would have covered such things in excruciating detail, just as hers had once, long ago.
Garetta seemed to fall apart once again; lately, he had been doing little else but falling apart and putting himself back together. This time, he did so almost silently. Andrina didn't look at him, but she could imagine tears making tracks down her apprentice's soot-smudged face. She kept herself level and neutral, patiently waiting for him to say something. It wasn't in his character to try and justify his actions, but at this point they were both so far outside of their polite little cloistered existences that anything was possible.
"I knew," he whimpered at last. His shoulders shook.
Her reaction belied her earlier inability to move: she launched herself at him and caught the front of his habit in tight bony fists. She mimicked his movement and lifted him high, but she was strong enough that she didn't have to stagger under him. He had the grace to look down at her utterly shocked.
"You are not a killer," she growled up, just a hand's breadth away from his face. "And I am not a rape victim."
Anyhow three cheers for lack of context. As well as lack of editing. Come to think of it, I still have a half-finished scrap in my second notebook to finish.
It's really too bad that my grandparents have this sweet surround-sound setup and grandma uses it to watch old quiz shows from the seventies... :p