Peanut Butter Week : Air
Peanut Butter #3. Air and Soft Serve 15/50 : Cotton Candy #5. A Confession
with Cookie Crumbs, Gummies, and Malt
Story : knights & necromancers
Rating : PG
Word Count : 1488
Malt Prompt : summer 2011 (#3) "I feel that a true best friend would share this with their true best friend." - Chuck (Morgan)
Gummy Prompt : 500themes #30. A life of lies.
Cookie Crumbs : Happily Ever After and assorted other pieces
Wedding montage theme and rampant spoilers continue.
1257
“I bear my soul to you,” says Ilya.
Dalton catches the gleam of the golden ring for only a moment before her hand dives beneath the cloth coiled round both their arms. He’s too busy watching the brighter glow in those soft, dark eyes of hers that haven’t left his for a breath since the ceremony began.
“My world becomes your own,” she says, as the band slides into place along his finger. He can feel her own, cool and smooth, against his arm, now half of a matching pair.
“That from your eyes I have no need to hide.” As if it’s ever been any other way.
1259
Lips brushing Shasa’s ear, Sethan murmurs, “I love you.”
Shasa giggles, her whole body shaking against him. “I love you more.”
He nuzzles closer, sliding a hand firmly around her belly. “I love you more than I thought I could ever possibly love a woman.”
She frees herself from his grasp, rolling over to throw her arms around him with a delighted squeal of “Oh, Sethan!”
1260
“I have been waiting for love all my life,” says Ski, the bottle shaking in her hand. “And when I find it, I foul it up. I throw it away.” She can scarcely manage to get it to her lips anymore. “This is love…I think. If anything ever has been. And how do I treat it? I should have left marriage what it was, a business arrangement, a practicality. Should have done as I had planned before…before I met you.”
“Right,” says Rune, seated on the parapet beside her. He’s edging away, just a bit, with a hand creeping to the back of his neck. “You’d be happy back at court with a mess of little Terrels running about your knees.”
“It didn’t have to be Terrel, I suppose.”
“True. Your mother spent the last five years offering you more perfectly good men than-”
“That was after you.”
“How much of that have you-” Rune makes a swipe for the bottle as she continues to gesture with it, but she manages to avoid him and pulls it close to her chest.
“I loved you, you know.”
“Ski, you’re drunk.”
“Doesn’t mean it’s not true."
1261
“The father.” Mother presses, with a nod towards the baby scampering through the grass. “Who was he?”
“That is a question best posed to Lyssa, is it not?” says Ski, as Mother comes to sit beside her.
“I think not.”
Ski fidgets in her seat, playing with her skirts and avoiding her mother’s gaze. “What, you think I can keep track of Lyssa’s love life?” she says. “Are you expecting a list?”
Mother sighs and shakes her head. “Honestly, Masakari, what sort of fool do you take me for? Your little farce may have passed in court, but I am your mother. You will kindly desist with the lies. Who was he?”
Ski fingers the chain around her neck through the fabric of her blouse and swallows hard. “He’s dead,” she says.
1260's
Kairn’s still washing the blood from his hands when Lyssa gets back to the kitchen.
“Is Sham all right?” he asks, over the rush of the faucet, without so much as a glance over his shoulder as she comes up behind him.
“Fine,” she says, her hand settling on his shoulder. “He’s sleeping.”
“Good,” he says, still focused on his hands. It seems no amount of scrubbing will erase the stains from his fingers.
Lyssa’s grip tightens. “Are you all right?”
“I’ll be fine.” He’s digging at his nails with a brush and wishing he had such a way to scrub the images from his mind.
“Kairn?” His eyes are burning and his hands are shaking, but he just keeps scrubbing. “Do you want to talk about it?”
He flings the brush down in the basin and slams the handle on the faucet down. “No, I’m not all right,” he says, clamping his hands over the rim of the sink so he won’t have to face her. “And I don’t want to talk about it. I want it all to go away. I want to go home.”
1267
Tristan stands beside the desk, arms folded across his chest, quietly watching as Sethan draws form after frantic form for several minutes before he finally asks, “How often does she… speak to you?”
Sethan ignores him, holding up the newest sheet to frown at the lines scrawled on it before tossing it aside and beginning another.
“Is it always the screaming, or does she just like to have a nice chat sometimes?”
The new form is half done and Sethan has yet to say a word.
“Is she talking to you now?”
He finishes this page and tosses it aside as well.
“Sethan?”
The ink blots and Sethan crumples the new page. He’s about to reach for another, but he stops with a sigh. “It varies,” he says. “Sometimes she’s like a blathering five-year-old, telling me every bit of nonsense that’s popped into her head. Sometimes she’s screaming like something’s torn her in two. Sometimes… sometimes she’s blessedly, peacefully silent. And that,” he sweeps a hand over the mess of discarded pages, “is when I try to get things done. “
1277
“See, funny thing about that,” says Lyssa, and she’s wishing more than anything that she had a bottle of something hard right now. “You’re right; she’s not yours.”
“Yeah, real funny.”
She catches Rune by the arm as he turns away. “I’m not done.” The look he gives her says he is.
“She’s not mine,” says Lyssa. “See, it’s complicated-” she blunders on, as he pulls away again.
“Why don’t you stop now and save whatever little dignity you have left?”
1277
They’re seated on a bench, side by side, across from the bier that holds the still lifeless body of Sethan’s construct. In the grey morning light, the doll is all the more disturbing, with its rubbery pink flesh and vacant eyes, and Sham finds he can’t take his eyes from it for fear it might do something. What a fabricated woman is likely to do on its own, he hasn’t managed to put his finger on yet, but he’d rather it not happen while he’s turned the other way.
“Uncle Kairn?” he says, because he still hasn’t quite made up his mind about the day’s agenda. “All those years we were hiding. Were you really keeping my father away from me? Or were you keeping him away from you?”
The man beside him turns, one shaggy brow raised. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Sham shrugs, unsure how to put it into words. “He says jump, you ask how high. He brings out this…this thing and tells us we’re going to put a god in it. And you tell me it’s my choice, but you… you want me to do this, don’t you?”
Uncle Kairn sighs, and that one breath speaks of years of exhaustion. “If it will save him…” he says, more to himself than to Sham.
“That’s where you were the last five years, isn’t it? With him? Building this?”
His uncle only nods.
“So, what is he, Uncle Kairn? Is he my friend or my enemy?”
Kairn sort of laughs at that, like he’s not really sure what else to do. “I suppose he’s both.”
1278
“Take it.”
Ski stares at the sword held flat in front of her - Rune’s sword. She wonders if he’ll just take it back if she ignores it long enough. Instead the hilt bobs impatiently under her nose .
“Look,” Rune says sternly, “it’s bad enough you’re not going to save your sister. She has your daughter now.”
She snaps to attention at that. Barely even thinking about the sword anymore, she whirls around to face him.
Rune just stares at her, unmoved by her fumbling for a response. “You heard me,” he says, the sheathed blade still gripped in his outstretched hand, waiting for her to take action.
She snaps her hand around the hilt. “Give me that.”
1278
“How long?” Kairn says again, through gritted teeth.
All his smirks and snide remarks abandoned, Sethan isn’t even looking at him now. He’s curled up on the ground with his arms around his knees, staring at his own feet instead. He sighs, resigned, and says softly, “Since we were boys.”
Kairn chokes on the dozen or so tirades he’s carefully rehearsed in his mind, too much at a loss to even sputter. What would Sethan say if he did manage to find the words? Is it even worth trying?
He rakes his crippled hand through his hair as he turns away. “I’m through with this.”
And that’s that. It’s over. He’s walking away. So why does his throat still feel like it’s closing and why do his eyes burn and-
“You brought it up.”
Kairn whirls around, livid and shaking. “I-I… I br- I’m- You’re the one that did it!”
Sethan’s smirking again.
with Cookie Crumbs, Gummies, and Malt
Story : knights & necromancers
Rating : PG
Word Count : 1488
Malt Prompt : summer 2011 (#3) "I feel that a true best friend would share this with their true best friend." - Chuck (Morgan)
Gummy Prompt : 500themes #30. A life of lies.
Cookie Crumbs : Happily Ever After and assorted other pieces
Wedding montage theme and rampant spoilers continue.
1257
“I bear my soul to you,” says Ilya.
Dalton catches the gleam of the golden ring for only a moment before her hand dives beneath the cloth coiled round both their arms. He’s too busy watching the brighter glow in those soft, dark eyes of hers that haven’t left his for a breath since the ceremony began.
“My world becomes your own,” she says, as the band slides into place along his finger. He can feel her own, cool and smooth, against his arm, now half of a matching pair.
“That from your eyes I have no need to hide.” As if it’s ever been any other way.
1259
Lips brushing Shasa’s ear, Sethan murmurs, “I love you.”
Shasa giggles, her whole body shaking against him. “I love you more.”
He nuzzles closer, sliding a hand firmly around her belly. “I love you more than I thought I could ever possibly love a woman.”
She frees herself from his grasp, rolling over to throw her arms around him with a delighted squeal of “Oh, Sethan!”
1260
“I have been waiting for love all my life,” says Ski, the bottle shaking in her hand. “And when I find it, I foul it up. I throw it away.” She can scarcely manage to get it to her lips anymore. “This is love…I think. If anything ever has been. And how do I treat it? I should have left marriage what it was, a business arrangement, a practicality. Should have done as I had planned before…before I met you.”
“Right,” says Rune, seated on the parapet beside her. He’s edging away, just a bit, with a hand creeping to the back of his neck. “You’d be happy back at court with a mess of little Terrels running about your knees.”
“It didn’t have to be Terrel, I suppose.”
“True. Your mother spent the last five years offering you more perfectly good men than-”
“That was after you.”
“How much of that have you-” Rune makes a swipe for the bottle as she continues to gesture with it, but she manages to avoid him and pulls it close to her chest.
“I loved you, you know.”
“Ski, you’re drunk.”
“Doesn’t mean it’s not true."
1261
“The father.” Mother presses, with a nod towards the baby scampering through the grass. “Who was he?”
“That is a question best posed to Lyssa, is it not?” says Ski, as Mother comes to sit beside her.
“I think not.”
Ski fidgets in her seat, playing with her skirts and avoiding her mother’s gaze. “What, you think I can keep track of Lyssa’s love life?” she says. “Are you expecting a list?”
Mother sighs and shakes her head. “Honestly, Masakari, what sort of fool do you take me for? Your little farce may have passed in court, but I am your mother. You will kindly desist with the lies. Who was he?”
Ski fingers the chain around her neck through the fabric of her blouse and swallows hard. “He’s dead,” she says.
1260's
Kairn’s still washing the blood from his hands when Lyssa gets back to the kitchen.
“Is Sham all right?” he asks, over the rush of the faucet, without so much as a glance over his shoulder as she comes up behind him.
“Fine,” she says, her hand settling on his shoulder. “He’s sleeping.”
“Good,” he says, still focused on his hands. It seems no amount of scrubbing will erase the stains from his fingers.
Lyssa’s grip tightens. “Are you all right?”
“I’ll be fine.” He’s digging at his nails with a brush and wishing he had such a way to scrub the images from his mind.
“Kairn?” His eyes are burning and his hands are shaking, but he just keeps scrubbing. “Do you want to talk about it?”
He flings the brush down in the basin and slams the handle on the faucet down. “No, I’m not all right,” he says, clamping his hands over the rim of the sink so he won’t have to face her. “And I don’t want to talk about it. I want it all to go away. I want to go home.”
1267
Tristan stands beside the desk, arms folded across his chest, quietly watching as Sethan draws form after frantic form for several minutes before he finally asks, “How often does she… speak to you?”
Sethan ignores him, holding up the newest sheet to frown at the lines scrawled on it before tossing it aside and beginning another.
“Is it always the screaming, or does she just like to have a nice chat sometimes?”
The new form is half done and Sethan has yet to say a word.
“Is she talking to you now?”
He finishes this page and tosses it aside as well.
“Sethan?”
The ink blots and Sethan crumples the new page. He’s about to reach for another, but he stops with a sigh. “It varies,” he says. “Sometimes she’s like a blathering five-year-old, telling me every bit of nonsense that’s popped into her head. Sometimes she’s screaming like something’s torn her in two. Sometimes… sometimes she’s blessedly, peacefully silent. And that,” he sweeps a hand over the mess of discarded pages, “is when I try to get things done. “
1277
“See, funny thing about that,” says Lyssa, and she’s wishing more than anything that she had a bottle of something hard right now. “You’re right; she’s not yours.”
“Yeah, real funny.”
She catches Rune by the arm as he turns away. “I’m not done.” The look he gives her says he is.
“She’s not mine,” says Lyssa. “See, it’s complicated-” she blunders on, as he pulls away again.
“Why don’t you stop now and save whatever little dignity you have left?”
1277
They’re seated on a bench, side by side, across from the bier that holds the still lifeless body of Sethan’s construct. In the grey morning light, the doll is all the more disturbing, with its rubbery pink flesh and vacant eyes, and Sham finds he can’t take his eyes from it for fear it might do something. What a fabricated woman is likely to do on its own, he hasn’t managed to put his finger on yet, but he’d rather it not happen while he’s turned the other way.
“Uncle Kairn?” he says, because he still hasn’t quite made up his mind about the day’s agenda. “All those years we were hiding. Were you really keeping my father away from me? Or were you keeping him away from you?”
The man beside him turns, one shaggy brow raised. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Sham shrugs, unsure how to put it into words. “He says jump, you ask how high. He brings out this…this thing and tells us we’re going to put a god in it. And you tell me it’s my choice, but you… you want me to do this, don’t you?”
Uncle Kairn sighs, and that one breath speaks of years of exhaustion. “If it will save him…” he says, more to himself than to Sham.
“That’s where you were the last five years, isn’t it? With him? Building this?”
His uncle only nods.
“So, what is he, Uncle Kairn? Is he my friend or my enemy?”
Kairn sort of laughs at that, like he’s not really sure what else to do. “I suppose he’s both.”
1278
“Take it.”
Ski stares at the sword held flat in front of her - Rune’s sword. She wonders if he’ll just take it back if she ignores it long enough. Instead the hilt bobs impatiently under her nose .
“Look,” Rune says sternly, “it’s bad enough you’re not going to save your sister. She has your daughter now.”
She snaps to attention at that. Barely even thinking about the sword anymore, she whirls around to face him.
Rune just stares at her, unmoved by her fumbling for a response. “You heard me,” he says, the sheathed blade still gripped in his outstretched hand, waiting for her to take action.
She snaps her hand around the hilt. “Give me that.”
1278
“How long?” Kairn says again, through gritted teeth.
All his smirks and snide remarks abandoned, Sethan isn’t even looking at him now. He’s curled up on the ground with his arms around his knees, staring at his own feet instead. He sighs, resigned, and says softly, “Since we were boys.”
Kairn chokes on the dozen or so tirades he’s carefully rehearsed in his mind, too much at a loss to even sputter. What would Sethan say if he did manage to find the words? Is it even worth trying?
He rakes his crippled hand through his hair as he turns away. “I’m through with this.”
And that’s that. It’s over. He’s walking away. So why does his throat still feel like it’s closing and why do his eyes burn and-
“You brought it up.”
Kairn whirls around, livid and shaking. “I-I… I br- I’m- You’re the one that did it!”
Sethan’s smirking again.