vanilla and chocolate chip mint with malt and whipped cream
Story: Timeless { backstory | index }
Title: Sharp
Rating: G
Challenge: Vanilla #11: a walk in the woods, Chocolate Chip Mint #10: luminous
Toppings/Extras: malt (advent calendar day seven), whipped cream
Wordcount: 655
Summary: Mr Prowse must demonstrate his knife-throwing skills to his new teenage master.
Notes: About two days after Ashdown first “discovers” Prowse and hires him. I really love writing early-days Prowse and Ashdown. Also: snow!
Things changed just after it had snowed. There was a funny light in the air, white and straight and faint, and a smell too-something fresh and tinny and cold. Isaac Prowse would have been able to tell it had snowed had he been locked in a windowless room, he felt; it was the sort of thing that brought its own atmosphere with it.
But business went on as usual.
Hampstead Heath was a landscape of endless white, the horizon scarcely discernable as the black trunks of the trees peered through a layer of ice. The heavens were absolutely colourless; Prowse couldn’t tell where cloud stopped and sky began. It was simply an arc of very faint grey far above them. His breath turned to fog in front of him as a leather-gloved hand carefully eased a knife from his bandoleer belt.
“Aren’t days like this wonderful?” his teenage master said musingly from somewhere behind him, his voice seeming both muffled and stark at the same time as it bounced from the cushioning layer of snow that blanketed everything. “One can almost hear the music of the spheres.”
Edward Ashdown was always saying things like that. Prowse didn’t have a clue what it meant.
Around them, all was still. The bare boughs of the trees were thickly layered in uncrumpled snow and the virgin ground was imprinted only with their own boot-prints and those of the deer. Everything looked as though it had been kissed by some mystical, pagan figure of winter solstice; the air was diamond-sharp to breathe and all the more exhilarating for it. Everything glowed, dazzlingly luminous, radiant in its frozen glory. Prowse breathed again, watching the cloud of warm air dissipate upwards and away.
Holding the blade of the knife between his thumb and his forefinger, Prowse slowly brought it up next to his ear, preparing for the perfect throw. It had to be perfect: Ashdown didn’t accept anything less than perfection; and this was his time to prove that he could do this. That he deserved to be hired as Ashdown’s man.
If he was hired, he’d have a home; somewhere off the streets, at least. And Ashdown had said he would teach him how to read, to write, to speak, to think. Lord, how he wanted those things.
The air was sharp but the knife was sharper. When he brought his arm down in this perfect throw, letting his fingers part from the blade at just the right moment, the knife flew with such simple elegance that even Prowse-not one usually to suffer from pride-couldn’t help but feel confidence swell in his breast. It arced flawlessly, just one half-revolution so that it turned to face the correct direction, thudding deeply into the bark of the tree.
Directly in the centre of the cross that Ashdown had traced into the snow-fringed bark with one dainty finger.
Prowse had stepped forwards just once in the process of the throw, kicking up a dusting of snowflakes as his arm thrust downwards. Now he let his fingers curl over and turned to look at the pale teenager behind him, his deep teal frockcoat vibrant against the endless white. Ashdown’s unnervingly swift grey-blue eyes met his.
“Good enough for yer?” Prowse asked, more steam billowing from his mouth.
Ashdown smiled indulgently.
“More than good enough,” he said in his bright, prim accent. “Although we really must sort out your diction, Mr Prowse. It is quite frankly atrocious.”
Trying not to scowl too much, Prowse began to make his way towards the tree to retrieve his knife. His feet made a softened scuffing sound as he pushed the tumbling snow from his path, leaving a bluish trail behind him scored into the bright, bright snow. He had to be patient now-if this infuriating little twit was going to be his master for the next God-knows-how-long, it wouldn’t do to upset him.
Much.