Post by Seek on Jul 21, 2010 0:39:45 GMT 10
Title: Looking Away
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: #30, Eyes
Words: 276 words
Summary: Paxton realises he’s been looking away almost all his life.
A/N: No Tortallan women harmed in the making of this. Even then, warning for suggested wife abuse. Companion to Decay.
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He is vaguely sorry to see that the firstborn doesn’t have the Nond eyes; light green, like the touch of frost on a cold winter morning. Burchard carries him proudly, Stone Mountain eyes glancing into Stone Mountain eyes. One pair is flinty, with the hardness of rock; aged, and stern and unbending. The other is soft, bright blue and when the bairn blinks, Paxton smiles. Perhaps there is something of Nond in those eyes after all.
He doesn’t know when he first sees it. Perhaps when his squire (and something like a nephew) is carried out of the chamber, and when the first rays of sunlight slant through the chapel windows to touch his eyes; glacial, and as crystal-clear as blue glass and very dead. His heart clenches; he cannot speak. He glances at Burchard, and sees that even sobbing convulsively with grief and screaming Mindelan’s name in a frenzy of rage, Stone Mountain eyes do not weep. They are as hard and cold and firm as rock, as they have always been.
Lisbet is stunned, and then kneeling by the body, weeping. Paxton takes a step forward, and then Burchard screams, a wordless cry of grief and anguish and anger and when Lisbet hesitates, he grabs her by her arm, and hauls her behind him. The crowd scatters before them and Lisbet is crying out but no one does anything, they are too stunned, and Herbert is bringing up the rear.
She glances back, just once. She’s never looked at him, never since her marriage night. She glances, instead, at the floor where his boots rest, and then they vanish out of the chapel doors.
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Rating: PG-13
Prompt: #30, Eyes
Words: 276 words
Summary: Paxton realises he’s been looking away almost all his life.
A/N: No Tortallan women harmed in the making of this. Even then, warning for suggested wife abuse. Companion to Decay.
-
He is vaguely sorry to see that the firstborn doesn’t have the Nond eyes; light green, like the touch of frost on a cold winter morning. Burchard carries him proudly, Stone Mountain eyes glancing into Stone Mountain eyes. One pair is flinty, with the hardness of rock; aged, and stern and unbending. The other is soft, bright blue and when the bairn blinks, Paxton smiles. Perhaps there is something of Nond in those eyes after all.
He doesn’t know when he first sees it. Perhaps when his squire (and something like a nephew) is carried out of the chamber, and when the first rays of sunlight slant through the chapel windows to touch his eyes; glacial, and as crystal-clear as blue glass and very dead. His heart clenches; he cannot speak. He glances at Burchard, and sees that even sobbing convulsively with grief and screaming Mindelan’s name in a frenzy of rage, Stone Mountain eyes do not weep. They are as hard and cold and firm as rock, as they have always been.
Lisbet is stunned, and then kneeling by the body, weeping. Paxton takes a step forward, and then Burchard screams, a wordless cry of grief and anguish and anger and when Lisbet hesitates, he grabs her by her arm, and hauls her behind him. The crowd scatters before them and Lisbet is crying out but no one does anything, they are too stunned, and Herbert is bringing up the rear.
She glances back, just once. She’s never looked at him, never since her marriage night. She glances, instead, at the floor where his boots rest, and then they vanish out of the chapel doors.
-