Post by max on Jul 29, 2010 21:03:58 GMT 10
Title: Levelling Revelling
Rating: PG
Length: 642
Original and Subsequent Haunts: Goldenlake, for Malorie's Peak prompt #23 (dreams)
Summary: In which a promise is extracted.
The first night he hears her crying it is early autumn and although the sun still shines golden in the daylight, the eiderdowns are back upon their beds, and he is nearly twelve, cold, still awake enough in the hours after dusk to hear her through the wooden doors and stone halls that separate their bedrooms, to follow the sound of her sadness on bare, light feet.
Her door is ajar, and when he enters the room there is still a candle, burning low, casting shadows of her trembling shoulders across the walls, gleaming on her raven-dark hair, illuminating the fragility of her thin white arms, pillowing her head.
In the daylight Kalasin is every bit the perfect princess, beautiful and grave and attentive and regal, doesn’t voice so much as a whisper at her sudden relegation to pawn in the game of Tortallan security, her parents’ hypocrisy.
That day, though, when the news had come of the Mindelan page, the family who had betrayed her now raising chaos on behalf of another girl, he had seen her usual serenity drain away, to be replaced by a mask of blank politeness.
Only in the dark had she allowed herself to succumb to it.
There is only one thing he can think to do, sitting on the bed at her side, stroking her back in circles while her pillows stop soaking up her tears, although her shoulders are still shaking and her breath is still coming in anguished gasps, and he knows the words are too simple and impossible to provide any kind of comfort (Don’t be sad Kally. Please don’t be sad) but they’re all he has, (I’m sorry. I’m so sorry Kally) wishes were enough.
Inevitably her sadness overflows into his own body, and she is holding onto him, her hair with its perennial scent of violets mingled with saltwater in his lungs, her heart hammering next to his own, and he realises all in an instant that no one ever touches her anymore (and is unsurprised to understand her whisper, when her breathing has steadied, Sometimes I think I’ve turned to glass, see the horror of it in her eyes) except for him (and he is going, soon, where she is forbidden to follow).
‘I’ll hate her. I know I will.’ Desperate declaration to drive the hopelessness out of her, but Kally shakes her head in a silky whisper of hair flickering against his cheek, glassy now.
‘Will you promise me something.’ And it isn't a question, but there are no second thoughts.
‘Yes.’
‘I want you to love her for me.’
‘But –’
‘You promised!’
‘But…’ the candle has long guttered out, but only now does he register the moon (full and haloed in green and gold) revealing all the silvery pain of it in her face, reflecting back the confusion in his own, shining down into the room from the wide uncurtained windows.
She is only a couple of months older than he is – just enough to hold it over him – nonetheless; her words seem to brand themselves into his heart. Kalasin, growing into her mother’s skin, glowing with dignity and sorrow, taking both his hands in her own in the autumnal dark, saying,
‘She dreamt the same dream I did, Fal.’
Saying, ‘There is honour in that.’
But for all her brave words she can’t bear to sleep alone that night, or the ones that follow, and the scent of violets lingers on him even when he is back at the palace, seeing the girl she wants him to love for her, and
I’m trying he thinks, willing the thought out into the dark, to the princess who cannot quite love her parents anymore, learning perfection, made of glass.
But it is hard to look at her.
Rating: PG
Length: 642
Original and Subsequent Haunts: Goldenlake, for Malorie's Peak prompt #23 (dreams)
Summary: In which a promise is extracted.
…
The first night he hears her crying it is early autumn and although the sun still shines golden in the daylight, the eiderdowns are back upon their beds, and he is nearly twelve, cold, still awake enough in the hours after dusk to hear her through the wooden doors and stone halls that separate their bedrooms, to follow the sound of her sadness on bare, light feet.
Her door is ajar, and when he enters the room there is still a candle, burning low, casting shadows of her trembling shoulders across the walls, gleaming on her raven-dark hair, illuminating the fragility of her thin white arms, pillowing her head.
In the daylight Kalasin is every bit the perfect princess, beautiful and grave and attentive and regal, doesn’t voice so much as a whisper at her sudden relegation to pawn in the game of Tortallan security, her parents’ hypocrisy.
That day, though, when the news had come of the Mindelan page, the family who had betrayed her now raising chaos on behalf of another girl, he had seen her usual serenity drain away, to be replaced by a mask of blank politeness.
Only in the dark had she allowed herself to succumb to it.
There is only one thing he can think to do, sitting on the bed at her side, stroking her back in circles while her pillows stop soaking up her tears, although her shoulders are still shaking and her breath is still coming in anguished gasps, and he knows the words are too simple and impossible to provide any kind of comfort (Don’t be sad Kally. Please don’t be sad) but they’re all he has, (I’m sorry. I’m so sorry Kally) wishes were enough.
Inevitably her sadness overflows into his own body, and she is holding onto him, her hair with its perennial scent of violets mingled with saltwater in his lungs, her heart hammering next to his own, and he realises all in an instant that no one ever touches her anymore (and is unsurprised to understand her whisper, when her breathing has steadied, Sometimes I think I’ve turned to glass, see the horror of it in her eyes) except for him (and he is going, soon, where she is forbidden to follow).
‘I’ll hate her. I know I will.’ Desperate declaration to drive the hopelessness out of her, but Kally shakes her head in a silky whisper of hair flickering against his cheek, glassy now.
‘Will you promise me something.’ And it isn't a question, but there are no second thoughts.
‘Yes.’
‘I want you to love her for me.’
‘But –’
‘You promised!’
‘But…’ the candle has long guttered out, but only now does he register the moon (full and haloed in green and gold) revealing all the silvery pain of it in her face, reflecting back the confusion in his own, shining down into the room from the wide uncurtained windows.
She is only a couple of months older than he is – just enough to hold it over him – nonetheless; her words seem to brand themselves into his heart. Kalasin, growing into her mother’s skin, glowing with dignity and sorrow, taking both his hands in her own in the autumnal dark, saying,
‘She dreamt the same dream I did, Fal.’
Saying, ‘There is honour in that.’
But for all her brave words she can’t bear to sleep alone that night, or the ones that follow, and the scent of violets lingers on him even when he is back at the palace, seeing the girl she wants him to love for her, and
I’m trying he thinks, willing the thought out into the dark, to the princess who cannot quite love her parents anymore, learning perfection, made of glass.
But it is hard to look at her.