Post by Kit on Feb 16, 2010 1:34:16 GMT 10
Title: Sorrowless Field
Rating: PG-13
Length: 500
Competitor: Neal
Round: I/C
Summary: Unravelling. (Also, this is not, actually, the end. I am just exhausted, and shall conclude tomorrow. Also, I'm sorry.)
“Queenscove...”
“Don’t you go near him!”
Yuki stood at the door, resolute, lip bitten raw but held firm, now, against rain and weeping and Lord Raoul, who loomed her like broken stone, jagged and falling urgently forward.
Seeing his shadow on her face, Raoul swallowed. “My lady,” he said, words thick and soft and strange. “Forgive me, but it’s been three days, and we can’t keep—”
If no one said the words, they could not be true. “He should see her.”
“He sees,” she said, bowing her tears into a clean line, a shape; something she could hold. “But he cannot do this thing.”
“A tree,” said Wyldon, leaden.
“Yes, My Lord.” The rain was hard against the window, and Merric shivered. He was too big for his skin, too small for the room, with Wyldon here. It was his office, and yet with Wyldon here his world was reversed into a stuttering eleven-year-old denied free days for a month. “She was—”
Lord Wyldon of Cavall’s mouth tightened, and he closed his eyes. Just once, but slowly, heavily, and Merric was jolted into his own world again, where was rain and he had people, an explanations that fit like too-small-skin over broken, alien bones.
“She was testing herself.”
Merric slammed his fist on the desk. “No,” he said, ragged. “There was no test. This was just random, my lord. She was there, and she was joking with Jacut, and she just slipped and—”
“Get a-hold of yourself, Merric of Hollyrose.” The words and response were reflexive. Indrawn breaths, stilling faces. Lord Wyldon waited.
“Tobe found Neal,” the younger man whispered, eyes stark in his face. “But by the time he got there—the sound, My Lord.”
Wyldon’s hands clenched.
“The sound,” said Merric. “I heard it. I swear so. Just…snap. She fell, and—
The world was wrong. Yuki, kneeling by her own closed door, felt it shift in and out, large to small, lightness lurching drunkenly, commonly, into lead weight and back again. Fragments of words ill-fitting, shallow breaths half drawn. She could hear each scratch of his pen—could see the feathers bent and stained even with her eyes closed and a door between them.
Yuki knelt, and tried to breathe. She tried to look, her eyes still closed, her friend laid out rooms away. She tried to look back to where she had not been. To the place where things changed. Where there had, apparently, been a sound to break he ordinariness of everything.
People fell, after all, all the time.
Rating: PG-13
Length: 500
Competitor: Neal
Round: I/C
Summary: Unravelling. (Also, this is not, actually, the end. I am just exhausted, and shall conclude tomorrow. Also, I'm sorry.)
“Queenscove...”
“Don’t you go near him!”
Yuki stood at the door, resolute, lip bitten raw but held firm, now, against rain and weeping and Lord Raoul, who loomed her like broken stone, jagged and falling urgently forward.
Seeing his shadow on her face, Raoul swallowed. “My lady,” he said, words thick and soft and strange. “Forgive me, but it’s been three days, and we can’t keep—”
If no one said the words, they could not be true. “He should see her.”
“He sees,” she said, bowing her tears into a clean line, a shape; something she could hold. “But he cannot do this thing.”
I dreamt last night
of a Sorrowlessfield
You stood under—
“A tree,” said Wyldon, leaden.
“Yes, My Lord.” The rain was hard against the window, and Merric shivered. He was too big for his skin, too small for the room, with Wyldon here. It was his office, and yet with Wyldon here his world was reversed into a stuttering eleven-year-old denied free days for a month. “She was—”
Lord Wyldon of Cavall’s mouth tightened, and he closed his eyes. Just once, but slowly, heavily, and Merric was jolted into his own world again, where was rain and he had people, an explanations that fit like too-small-skin over broken, alien bones.
“She was testing herself.”
Merric slammed his fist on the desk. “No,” he said, ragged. “There was no test. This was just random, my lord. She was there, and she was joking with Jacut, and she just slipped and—”
“Get a-hold of yourself, Merric of Hollyrose.” The words and response were reflexive. Indrawn breaths, stilling faces. Lord Wyldon waited.
“Tobe found Neal,” the younger man whispered, eyes stark in his face. “But by the time he got there—the sound, My Lord.”
Wyldon’s hands clenched.
“The sound,” said Merric. “I heard it. I swear so. Just…snap. She fell, and—
Through the rattle and rain,
To the window you came
Where I lay silently sleeping…
The world was wrong. Yuki, kneeling by her own closed door, felt it shift in and out, large to small, lightness lurching drunkenly, commonly, into lead weight and back again. Fragments of words ill-fitting, shallow breaths half drawn. She could hear each scratch of his pen—could see the feathers bent and stained even with her eyes closed and a door between them.
Yuki knelt, and tried to breathe. She tried to look, her eyes still closed, her friend laid out rooms away. She tried to look back to where she had not been. To the place where things changed. Where there had, apparently, been a sound to break he ordinariness of everything.
People fell, after all, all the time.
I dreamt last night of a Sorrowlessfield
And woke to the sound of weeping