[Wild Roses]
Title: return to oz
'Verse/characters: Wild Roses; Arianhrod
Prompt: 19B "time"
Word Count: 331
Notes: follows caught, will certainly be expanded and revised.
She was home in time to see the very first raspberries of the year, just long enough to let her mouth start watering in anticipation of what foods they'd make an appearance in, before Ulysse showed up in the harbour with a battered steel-shell riverboat and asked her to come upriver with him.
She could only assume the yelling had started, because Fintain and both of Brighid's sons were somewhere upriver, too.
Either that or Fintain was flirting with a dragon and Ulysse wanted help extracting their brother.
The redheaded dockworker who offered her a hand into the riverboat had oddly light eyes, and a smile that reminded her of her little brother at his worst.
There was an itchy sense of familiarity to him, made far worse when she looked back as the boat was pulling away from the dock. The man freed a hand from the rope he was coiling, kissed it to her, and disappeared.
She left handprints in the edge of the boat's side, when she finally managed to relax enough to let go.
Then she went and checked over every bit of the boat she could get at, trying to find the spells, the small curses.
When Ulysse asked what was bothering her, she answered truthfully "Nothing," because she couldn't find a single ice-kissed trick, on the boat, on her where she'd touched the fox, even on the riverbank they were passing--excepting spells obviously constructed for some commuter's use--and it made her twitchy.
She flinched when she saw red hair coming down the trail to greet them at the makeshift dock her brother tied them to, forced herself to relax when she recognised her little brother, cheerfully filthy and smelling of horses.
Please let it not be time for another war, she thought as she was picked up and swung around in greeting, both cheeks kissed and then set down so she could properly berate her brother for getting mud and dust and whatever else he'd been into recently all over her clean clothes.
'Verse/characters: Wild Roses; Arianhrod
Prompt: 19B "time"
Word Count: 331
Notes: follows caught, will certainly be expanded and revised.
She was home in time to see the very first raspberries of the year, just long enough to let her mouth start watering in anticipation of what foods they'd make an appearance in, before Ulysse showed up in the harbour with a battered steel-shell riverboat and asked her to come upriver with him.
She could only assume the yelling had started, because Fintain and both of Brighid's sons were somewhere upriver, too.
Either that or Fintain was flirting with a dragon and Ulysse wanted help extracting their brother.
The redheaded dockworker who offered her a hand into the riverboat had oddly light eyes, and a smile that reminded her of her little brother at his worst.
There was an itchy sense of familiarity to him, made far worse when she looked back as the boat was pulling away from the dock. The man freed a hand from the rope he was coiling, kissed it to her, and disappeared.
She left handprints in the edge of the boat's side, when she finally managed to relax enough to let go.
Then she went and checked over every bit of the boat she could get at, trying to find the spells, the small curses.
When Ulysse asked what was bothering her, she answered truthfully "Nothing," because she couldn't find a single ice-kissed trick, on the boat, on her where she'd touched the fox, even on the riverbank they were passing--excepting spells obviously constructed for some commuter's use--and it made her twitchy.
She flinched when she saw red hair coming down the trail to greet them at the makeshift dock her brother tied them to, forced herself to relax when she recognised her little brother, cheerfully filthy and smelling of horses.
Please let it not be time for another war, she thought as she was picked up and swung around in greeting, both cheeks kissed and then set down so she could properly berate her brother for getting mud and dust and whatever else he'd been into recently all over her clean clothes.