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Post by ev on Aug 1, 2010 10:52:25 GMT 10
This is simply wonderful.
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NoirGrimoir
Queen's Rider
Promoter of the Emelan-verse
Posts: 556
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Post by NoirGrimoir on Sept 23, 2010 5:18:06 GMT 10
I really love this, will there be more? (hint hint) Seems it hasn't been updated in a while.
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Kit
Squire
Duchess of Emelan
Posts: 1,151
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Post by Kit on Sept 23, 2010 13:29:14 GMT 10
There will be. Eight is about half written. I got sucked into a plot whole. It's very grippy. Glad you're enjoying it!
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Kit
Squire
Duchess of Emelan
Posts: 1,151
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Post by Kit on Oct 27, 2010 17:19:13 GMT 10
Chapter Eight Summary: Briar has a teaching moment, and the four come into each other's lives.
Voices. There were no people, but there were voices. Catching at him like sand in his eyes and under his nails and skin. Shouts and sobs and questions and blasts of sand, which he melted slick and red and burning to his body, encasing him, so the world was trapped, airless echoes.
"—what? Save us, what is—?"
"—it's all come back to him, you tick-brained fools. All that power—"
"—Witch!"
"Call me what you like. He's coming with me."
"Good. There's nothing here for—"
Voices. Roaring muted through glass and his own heartbeat. And motion, sharp and ungentle and dizzying even while he stayed blind. Voices. Screaming. Screaming. Nails and wheels and, "Curse-it! The cart's broken again," and that one voice, the witch's voice, there and there and there.
"Master Chandler, I don't know if we have the provisions for such a—"
"—You're a Dedicate. You provide. Make provision."
"And...but the screaming..."
"You'll do worse if we have to keep standing here."
Quiet, now. Only his heartbeat left, and his blood. The glass. Something strange under him, soft and slippery. Too much effort to catch. Too cold. He is cold, now, and that cracks him, deep and desperate, his veins turned to faultlines. Small sounds, wet sounds.
"Don't touch him, Paraskeve."
"It...it hurt when I—and what are you doing here?"
"Something's been eating at my shields all week, and then you mentioned screaming...come away now."
"Why is he—"
"—I can help him. Go with Tris now, please."
"Yes, my girl, come with—"
"—nobody tells me anything!"
"Hush."
Weight against his face, and around his hand. He had hands. And fingers. Strange, bloated things, all skin and shattered mess inside. The weight closed his skin tighter, and drew his bones together in all the places, so he was hinged and bolted and soldered. Not neat, but firm.
"Pijule fakol waits for those that did this."
The tightness moved from that hand up his arm—he had an arm!—and across his chest. Through him, over him and down again, through every last fingertip and the long, strange things that he remembered were his thighs, his feet. Brass flooded his mouth, acrid and sharp and it sang, a loud, strong note high in his head, a pressure just behind the bridge of his nose. His eyes watered, and he opened them before he could lose them again.
A dark face looked down at him, eyes heavier than the hand still held against his cheek. Her lips were pinched tight, and it seemed to take some time for her to drag air into her lungs after she saw he could see her.
"Kiam," she said. "My name is Daja. Welcome back."
The brass song warmed and thrilled, molten in his skull, and Kiam Ngaire slipped into real sleep.
Discipline Cottage; Winding Circle Temple, Emelan
Niva pulled at weeds.
They were thick and luxurious in this weather, taking gentle sun as a sign to come up—up, even if it did end in a rather ungentle death. It was admirable, if Niva refused to think of their sticky, skinny, tricksome white roots strangling this crop of beans. She had told Dedicate Briar this, hoping it might shock him, but he only laughed. "I used to cry like a baby, pulling them," he'd told her with perfect disregard for any dignity.
Maybe they were right, back home, and Dedicates don't care if they're thought of like men, at all. Niva knew she did not care a bit for being treated like her femaleness made her some sort of delicate thing, cosseted and kept back all at once, and that seemed sensible to her and any of the woman-Dedicates she might meet, but men were—well. More stupid that way, surely? Even here. Except that Dedicate Briar seemed entirely sensible. Except when he wasn't. She tugged at a patch of Heartsclover, joyously violet and more poison than any ten bodies could cope with all at once. Dedicate Briar had been pleased she knew that, though it made him more distracted than usual, looking over at the Lady Sandry with an odd, dark expression on his face. Sandry, sunning herself by the kitchen window, doing the dishes like any farmgirl or potsboy, turned and smiled at the both of them, though most of that warmth spilled onto Briar.
Niva, as she tossed the now uprooted plant into the pile of wilting purple that had grown by her left foot while she worked, supposed that she could be wrong about one or two things around Winding Circle. Like Dedicates in general.
Sandry's probably breaking rules, she thought, smiling a little even as the images made her screw up her face. But I bet she never cares.
"You go and wash your hands after you've done with this."
Niva glowered at the new shadow, not looking up. "I'm not stupid," she said. "Don't you know you should wear a hat?"
The Dedicate laughed. "I'm not so vain as you are rude, you know."
"If I'm so rude, why do you want to teach me?"
Niva swallowed after the words left her mouth, flushing and glaring even more furiously at the earth. She heard the cloth of Briar's habit rustle as he knelt. "Because," he said, "You might just be a gifted little scrap now, but I think you can be magnificent."
Magnificent. The word hung there, her word, in his mouth. It was unsettling. She still could not look at him. "If I was teaching," she mumbled, "I'd just say, 'I need the slave labour,' or, 'Because I said so!' Or something."
Briar's hand was warm on her shoulder, and squeezed roughly. "That," he said, "is why I am the teacher and you are not."
Niva snorted, glad the blush was finally leeching out of her face. "What are you going to teach today, O Great One?"
"Forbearance."
The girl waited.
"We're going to have company," Briar said cheerfully. "Tris's brought a few more magical waifs in to be poked at for a while."
Niva sighed, finally looking up into her strange new teacher's laughing eyes. "Great," she muttered. "More people."
Wards of Yanna Healtouch; Winding Circle Temple, Emelan
After half an hour in Paraskeve's company, waiting in an alcove with her while Tris and Novice Daja talked—and, he assumed, fussed over that boy who was screaming like all the inside bits of him were on the outside—Niko was sure he had not met anyone smaller or stranger in his life. She was staring at him with huge eyes, and her face was a mix of all the things Liesel and his aunts would have called disreputable.
"So," he said diffidently. "Where did Tris find you, then?"
"n'Summersea." Her voice was soft, and a little hoarse. Not frightened, he thought, but angry. She had not liked being pulled away from the boy Kiam, and she hadn't liked Tris's sharp words afterwards. And her words made no sense.
He blinked. "Summersea, really? But your face! You don't look—your name isn't..."
"Is your name Stupid?" she asked him, still in that soft voice. She looked tired, and he knew he looked mottled with an ugly flush, as her eyes passed wearily over his face. "Because that's what your face says."
"Hey! I didn't—I mean, I didn't mean anything by it, only that—"
"Paraskeve Aygry!" A new person entered the alcove, smiling and freckled and only about Niko's own height, though she seemed to be at least thirty, with a voice that might make anyone tall. Paraskeve, her anger forgotten, was staring at her.
"I heard that you were finally coming up to us, and I know I should have waited, but I was entirely sick of such things, I'm afraid. You look so much better than when I saw you last."
"Lady, I...um—"
"—and you must be Niklaren." The woman turned to him, a swirl of coral skirts, the girlish picture blurring before his eyes and showing streaks of bruising, of sickness and the wrong sort of sleep. Why was everyone so tired, here? He was nervous to take her hands, but she was already grasping them, light and careful. "Tris said you'd be coming, and Kiam too, of course."
"Coming where?" He said the words even as he saw the girl tense to shape them.
"Discipline," she said. "My name is Sandry. I'll be one your teachers, there."
Before Niko could do anything more than gape at her, she turned again to Paraskeve, taking that girl's hand and laying it gently on her bright sleeve. She was laughing very softly. "Silk loves you," she said, as if that was anything sensible. "I can feel the fibres just shaking all over me. You're going to have trouble for a while, I'm afraid, but you can learn to calm anything, I promise."
She looked as if Sandry had given her gold. "It really—"
"—Yes," said the lady. "It truly does. You're not mad."
Niko wished he could say the same.
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Post by PeroxidePirate on Oct 28, 2010 22:59:06 GMT 10
Excellent chapter. I love the exchange between Briar and Niva, and the first meeting between Daja and Kiam. I'm not sure if I'm more fascinated by the teachers as youngsters or by the students as adults.
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Post by ubiquitous on Oct 29, 2010 10:37:21 GMT 10
Wonderful chapter!! I just love how this is coming along, and I can't wait for more!
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Post by wordy on Feb 25, 2011 10:11:55 GMT 10
I've only just read the whole thing, and I have to say, this is possibly the best fic I've ever read. You write so beautifully, with such amazing description, and I love seeing how different - and how similar - the characters are after the switch. Tris is brilliant, I really like Paras (even though I'm not a particular fan of Lark, usually), Niko as 'all knees and eyelashes' is just adorable to picture, all of the scenes with Kiam are just STUNNING, and I'm feeling slightly hopeful that there's something going on with Briar and Sandry.
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Kit
Squire
Duchess of Emelan
Posts: 1,151
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Post by Kit on Feb 25, 2011 10:58:26 GMT 10
I'm feeling slightly hopeful that there's something going on with Briar and Sandry. *grin* Well, since Briar and Sandry ARE Lark and Rosethorn, it's really no spoiler for me to confirm that one. Thank you so much!
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Kit
Squire
Duchess of Emelan
Posts: 1,151
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Post by Kit on Apr 10, 2011 21:48:32 GMT 10
Chapter Nine Summary: The new four do not mesh as well as anyone might help. Paras tries to make amends. Kiam prefers to make nails.
The four children sat panting and cross-legged in the Hub, and glared at each other.
“He did it again—”
“—I did no such thing! I can't even--”
“—Farmgirl ‘s right, I'm afraid. You're just so disruptive, somehow, that we all get—”
“—Jinked out of our skin! But don't call me that, Master Skinny Sourface. It's a bad idea.”
“Skinny?”
“And sour faced. Yes. You see?”
“Can you all just—”
“ —we'd all just shut up like good little mice, Paras, if him over there would just settle down and breathe and let us mediate without splashing magic all the way to--”
“—Niva! Stop it. He has a name—”
“—don't all you stupid mchowni understand? I don't know how I'm doing that.”
Kiam's shout broke through the fierce whispers that been splintering against his skin all morning. The other three— the drab little mouse; the ghost-pale fighting one who got all flushed up during an argument as if the blood of her tongue-lashed victims filled her face; the other boy, who looked at him like he was a demon whenever he wasn't wandering around all bleary-eyed and bored —glared with the same pair of accusing eyes. No raised voices in the heart of Winding Circle. No meat at dinner. No getting out of chores. And excuses when his bones felt like they were about the break and he had no air and it somehow disturbed their skinny bodies as much as it hurt his.
And then the air went thick in his lungs, a fist down his throat.
“I've had quite enough of this.”
The mchowni Tris paced around the four of them, slow and measured, and Kiam felt the air tighten over his skin the closer she came, as if it filmed over them all to keep them still. Paras had her lip caught hard between her teeth and Niko was slightly grey. Niva had been caught glaring at the ground rather than at him, and all he could see besides the cloud of hair that fell in her face were the tight, twitching muscles of her bent neck.
“Time was,” said the mage, “When confronted with boring or difficult tasks, the student would complain quietly, in their heads, and only when it was absolutely necessary.”
She pulled a face, sudden and rueful, and clapped her hands. Niko’s head jerked up, his mouth wide with surprise at the moment, and Tris stepped back as the four scrambled to their feet, her arms folding. “I think,” she said, “The four of you should not try things in concert for a while.”
“Are we in trouble?” This was from Niva, head cocked, her own arms clenched at her sides.
“Do you think so?”
The girl squirmed.
Parakseve shivered. Sandry, reaching over to pluck the carding tools from her small hands, only smiled. “Yes,” she said. “Tris is fierce when she’s angry.”
I bet she’s never angry at you. Paras blushed, never quite sure where to look at the elegant woman. She decided upon the crocus she could see twining about her left wrist, extending in delicate spirals up to her shoulder. It was picked out in amethyst and gold tones against lush white silk. Paras was sure she had seen nothing quite as fine.
“I’m very proud of this.” Sandry smiled at her. “If I could, I’d have it shift and grow—”
“—you can do that?”
“—hush, sweet. Let me finish.” The slight woman leant forward, tugging on one of Paraskeve’s short, spiralled curls. “I cannot do such a thing. I was terribly jealous when Briar managed it on his hands. The foolish boy used vegetable dyes—his teacher was livid—but it was such a pretty accident.” She grinned as Paras shifted in her seat, trying to keep up with the flow of words.
“Lady?”
“Yes, dear?”
“Are you...are you really going to teach me?”
“I insisted.” There was a joke there, hovering about the word and making Paras think of the massive Honoured Gorse and his rumbling, soothing voice as he’d told her that her life really had changed forever. But Paras could not quite catch it.
“Why?”
“Oh, because I can.” Sandry took both the girl’s hands in hers, blue eyes intent. “I’m not sure why, because Tris is often in any number of strange realms even when she’s standing in the same room as a person, but she wants the four of you to work together. I just know that, with a little help, you could thread your magic into just about anything. Do you want to learn, Paraskeve?”
Paras swallowed. “I want...I want to know who tried to kill you,” she whispered, not hearing Sandry’s startled gasp. “Because I don’t know why anyone would.”
Sandrilene fa Toren was almost startled enough to forget that her day’s lesson was a glimpse at fine embroidery—always a reason, when I wear my best work!—but, while Paraskeve stammered and held bone needles as if they were gold, she recovered soon enough.
“Are you going to help me?”
Kiam, fleeing Tris’s ire and Niva’s muted jeering, had gone to the forges. They were fine things, and there had been plenty more to stare at than the one he lingered by now, with its modest array tools and the long, ebony staff leaning against the door like a curse. The brass took the fires and reflected them, without letting any image stay on its slick surface. Daja Kisubo was a deity at her anvil, all broad back and well-worked shoulders, hardly out of breath as she beat metal before into something still unknown. Her braids gleamed the same brass as her staff. And she had spotted him. He flinched.
“I don’t—”
“—don’t what, boy? You don’t want?”
He could taste the metal at the back of his throat. His hands clenched. Blood felt forge hot, felt steel hot, slow and thick and bright in his veins. “The Smith at home warded against me,” he said, sure his voice would be lost in the clanging and the steam. “Screamed at me, because I—I didn’t—because I—”
“—because you burned, I know.” She turned to face him, teeth bright in her streaked face. “You almost had the worst luck in the world.”
“It’ll happen again. I was sick for weeks and it’ll happen again, because I’m stupid like the rich two say, and can’t breathe right, and I’ll never—”
“Get any nails made standing there,” she said.
“Nails?”
“Nails. Ever made any?” She was grinning broadly now.
“Never! You’ll—you’re going to let me?”
“Kiam. I promise that by the time I’m done with you, you’ll have made half the nails the whole world might need. I’ll enjoy every minute.”
Stunned, Kiam Ngaire stepped into the forge.
“I know you can’t read, but this is my room.”
“I—”
“—Get. Out.”
Paras and Niko glared at each other across a threshold. The girl swallowed. Niko did not look well, his black eyes might have been cut into his narrow face, they looked so deep and strange. He had a room on the upper floors, near Kiam’s, but where Kiam’s room already held the clutter of a ten-year-old boy who liked to go running and often collected gravel in his clothes in the process, Niko’s room was still stark and cold. She had found herself drawn there, after the lesson with Sandry, remembering how sick he had seemed when Tris magicked them, and how, even when he said stupid things, he often said them with lips bitten raw.
She leaned against his bed, now, feeling the hard wooden slats bite into the backs of her knees, and her clenched hands twisted the fine cambric that had been caused all her trouble.
“I was—I just wanted—I thought you might—”
“Know something nice when it happened to him? Mila, Paras, look at him. He’s clearly dim.”
Niko started, turning to glare at Niva as she laid a heavy hand on his shoulder. “What are you doing here?”
“You were loud.” The girl sniffed. “I was trying to read. And she’s trying to give you a present, fool.”
“Why?”
“I thought you might like it!” Paras’s voice was cracking, but she glared at both children with equal heat. “Everyone’s so...prickly. I don’t know why I bothered, except that I made this and I like it and Sandry liked it, and I was rude to you, Niko, so I thought I’d—oh, nevermind.” Embroidery dropping to the boy’s narrow bed, Paras fled the room.
“I do not understand that girl,” Niko muttered, wincing as Niva cuffed him, her eyes drawn to the fragile, fine-stitched crocuses that almost seemed to grow from soft, white fabric.
“Me neither,” she muttered, stalking past the boy to pluck up the work before turning to head for the stairs.
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Post by wordy on Apr 12, 2011 15:59:37 GMT 10
Sandry-as-Lark is so sweet and enchanting. I don't blame Paras for being completely in awe of her. And even though Daja was never my favourite in the books, what you've done with Daja and Kiam makes me love them both so much. Like I said before, everything about Kiam - the description when you write his scenes - is just so stunning. ♥ Plus Daja's glee at making him do nails is hilarious!
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Kit
Squire
Duchess of Emelan
Posts: 1,151
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Post by Kit on Mar 14, 2012 22:51:25 GMT 10
Speculation -- Chapter 10: Nightmares Summary: Niko is troubled by his powers, among other things.
There were many irritating things about Tris Chandler. But the one that plagued Niko most was her insistence on having their lessons on the beach.
It was not just any beach—its wild, grey, rubble-strewn spaces were a lesson. The first time they’d stood there, Niko wincing as grit and stones worked their way into his boots, Tris had turned to him, smiled, and said that there had been small cliffs all about the place, and lovely, clear sand. “Until I tried to be clever and kill a storm.”
Her tone was easy, but serious, eyes matching the early morning light. “All students,” she’d said. “Are a bit stupid. And some can be stupid and powerful at the same time. It’s a dangerous combination.”
“I,” Niko had said, hearing waves flicker and slip and grumble all about him, and trying to keep his words clear, “Can’t do anything with the weather.”
“No, but we’re going to find out what you can do, boy.” Tris’s smile had been thin. “I suspect it’s powerful enough.”
***
Since then, Niko had had nightmares about waves. Waves and stone and Tris’s voice, constant and exasperated, as she told him not to strain so, not to run forward trying to grab visions like they were pennies thrown from a cart. They breathed and counted and Tris told him of her own Sight—how time and the right books and her weather magic had allowed her to see snatches of other lives on the wind—futures that could be breaths or whole seasons away. She heard their voices, felt their touch on her face.
“It’s why I’m a little mad,” she said—sanely, sitting on the sand with her knees drawn up, skirts stained with salt. “I’ll do my best not to pass that on.”
Niko had to think—he had to breathe, in meditation patterns that would have made Kiam shout and curse and, eventually, skulk away to sulk. Control over the body could, if you were very lucky, lead to control over the mind—and control over the mind might lead to control over what was outside it, in all their colours and tricks and not-quite truths.
Niko’s head, he was sure, would explode.
“Nonsense!” said the teacher, smiling as a stray breeze—gleeful and absolutely against any current—sneaked through her braids. Her hand was around his, her pulse rising as it matched his own. Her pulse always matched his own. Control. “There are risks to this, but combustion of any kind is not one of them.”
“Do you have to be…be so…glib?”
Niko swallowed, surprised at his own words, at how easily they’d burst from him. As if he’d never been taught to be quiet around his elders and betters. Tris, in her turn, only looked tired.
“What,” she asked him, “Do you need?”
Niko stared. Tris, shaking her head, let her hand tighten about his. “You meditate beautifully,” she said. “You learn theory fast, and well, and you know it. But you’re not so clever yet that you can fool me. I know there’s something wrong. Is it the speed? Yours is a different sort of magic than weaving or smithing or making things grow. It’s not going to show itself with all its colours all at once. You know—”
“—I don’t know what the point is.”
A leap in his pulse, carefully matched, caught, and slowed. She breathed, and Niko, used to beach mornings and her demands, couldn’t help but breathe with her, until his heart felt less like it was going to tear through his skin.
“I don’t,” he repeated. “See. All of this—” he waved his free hand. “It’s so often wrong—even for you, and you usually know when you’re hearing a real voice or seeing a true picture. I thought that it didn’t matter—the future part—since it’s at least useful to see present and past, but I can’t even do that regularly, and the future is…” he swallowed. “Stupid. Wrong. It just gets people’s hopes up.”
Tris did not look away from the sea. “Your father?”
“How do you—oh, of course you know. Sneak.”
“Ha. Hardly.” Tris shifted enough to glower one-eyed at him, light glinting off her spectacles. “I Saw you and your family the way I Saw all you children—rapidly and without warning, or much control. In your case, you were telling that silly sister of yours—”
“—half sister—”
“—half sister. Don’t interrupt. You were telling her that you had seen a future that made her happy. Considering that I found you a fatherless and singularly awkward waif out in the mountains, I am assuming it did not go well.”
It was strange, how sometimes Tris’s words failed to match her voice.
Niko shivered.”Can I fix it?” he asked, very soft. “I want to fix it so that I’m never wrong.”
“Ah,” Tris sighed, pulling her hand away. “That’s impossible—but we’ll always try.”
There were many things to love about Tris Chandler.But the one Niko thought of most—there, on the beach; later, in libraries and in bed—was that she never treated him like a child. Even when the things she said made him feel like one.
***
Now he stood a little apart from his teacher, looking out to sea. The air, even here, was thick with heat, the waters seeming thick and sluggish with it this close to shore. All slow, faintly gleaming trails of green and blue amidst the grey.
“Don’t search for a particular thing.” Tris’s voice was faint, caught in the small rill of cool air that blew past his cheek. “For now, just cast your mind out. Use the waves, if you like. They can pull you out…”
“I can’t work it out.” Pareskeve, curled up on the roof of Discipline cottage, alone and small. Her eyes were hot, her voice scratchy and strained, and she pushed the small bundle of papers she was holding away from her as if they burned. They fluttered and scattered—of course they’d do that, Niko thought. You have to be gentle with them—but his breath caught as she, rather than trying to catch them up again, seemed to crumple. He was there, but not there, and saw with unseen eyes as the girl burst into small, painful tears.
One of the papers flew up, then. Obscuring her and pressed flat to his sight, as if he stood behind a window. On it, he saw letters, drawn with appalling penmanship and obvious care.
“Find anything?”
Niko blinked. Swallowed. His throat was tight and his tongue thick in his mouth.
“I…nothing in the future.”
“But something. There was something.”
He told her. He felt like the old soothsayers in traveller’s tales, telling her—as if he feared a whipping for speaking words that were trivial, but true. Instead, Tris only shook her head, smiling.
“I think,” she said, “That your gift lies in lost things.”
***
Night noises woke Paraskeve. Not creaking or bird calls or the rasp of leaves against Discipline’s windows, but the other sort. Crying, hard-and-muffled, full of clenched teeth and snot and pain. It was the sort of crying where people punched things, where some people shook and shook with it, like a fever or a fear. Mire crying.
Nightmare noise.
Walking across to Niko’s room, feet quiet on the old mix of rug and wood, she had to stop several times and remember that Niko was the keep out boy—fierce and solitary and probably angry at the very thought of someone hearing him. Nightmares, she could almost hear him think, were for people like Kiam.People like Paras. Not for him. Not for his learning and the year he had on everyone else. He was no screaming boy.
But he sounded frightened, now.
Biting her lip, Paras stepped inside.
Niko was tangled in his sheets— his straight, thick hair smeared across his brow; his whole body left clenched and hard by the dream inside it. He didn’t even flinch as she sat on the bed. She was invisible, sitting there, Should she wake him? No. Not too fast. She remembered drunken sleepwalkers from the family troupe, turning and smashing the people who tried to lead them back to bed. And it was dark in here. Too dark for a sudden wakening. Her own eyes, still more used to night-guarding than close stitch work, did not need a candle.
And all of his look burnt down. She sighed, straining to see, straining to filter out his noises and cries and the fear in the room. It was still an empty place—all books and bare windows. Her embroidery lay abandoned by his desk, rumpled and sad.
Barely breathing, she stood and walked to it, feeling the cambric and silk cool and familiar against her fingers. Even with her eyes, there wasn’t enough light to see the design, but she did not need it.
And Niko didn’t, either.
Working by touch—and, she now knew, a little whisper of the magic Sandry had shown her—she unpicked three of the longest, strongest lengths of thread. Simple colours, splendidly dyed. Blue, and red, and grey. Their ends were ragged, and they were all-over kinks, but she let the rest of the work slide out of her hands as she drew them out.
Silk, Sandry had said, loves you.
Well, if it loved her, than perhaps it might take light for her. The little traces of light that were in any room, no matter how dark, so long as there was a window and eyes to see. For her, if she just asked with all her best manners—if she only coaxed—the silver might glow with moonlight; the red with the downstairs torchlights that still came up, just faintly, through cracks in the floor; the blue with everything that lay between their shadows.
Her fingers worked, and Paras soon felt as if her own smile might be caught up in the softly glowing braid that grew between her hands.
***
Niko Smythe woke slowly, eyes sore and throat worse, his head full of pasts people wanted to forget, and presents that could hardly be lived through. And waves. All of it, cut with the sound of waves and Tris’s voice—not telling him to try, this time, but to stop. To just stop, because there was no use to him anyway. Unknown futures would turn into dying presents and dead pasts, no matter what he did.
But there was a warm weight against his legs, and the room was full of silver light.A girl was sitting on his bed.
“Um—Paras?”
“Yeah.” The glow in the room seemed to come from her hands. It threw her shock of curls into sharp relief—caught the scrawniness of her face and arms. “Didn’t want to wake you up too fast. People do crazy things with nightmares.” She shrugged, still working. “It makes sense that mages would be worse. Even little ones like us.”
“But you…” Are confusing! “Wanted me to wake up?”
“You were having a nightmare.” She said this easily, as if it wasn’t a bad thing to be heard crying at eleven—which was almost a man’s age in some countries. His father had already been working at eleven. Niko sniffed, trying to sit up. Trying for dignity. “And you’re making me a nightlight?”
Paras only shrugged.
“How?
This made her smile. “Magic,” she said, in an odd, scratched-up mix of pride and amusement. “What else? What were you dreaming of? It helps to talk, sometimes.”
“Magic,” said Niko. “What else?”
Paras swallowed. “Well,” she said. “I’ll leave you alone once I work out how to tie this off.”
“—don’t. I mean…please. Paras. Please don’t tell the others?” A laugh, now. Quick and not, though he bristled, mean-spirited. “Not a word,” she said. “I promise.”
“I was…I was rude to you earlier.” He said. “I’m often rude to you. I’m afraid you make it easy. And that’s rude, too, but it’s true. You’re one of the strangest people I’ve ever met and so—so—”
“—I really don’t want to know,” Paras said, eyes fixed on her braiding. “Really.”
“I think I can teach you to read,” he said, diffidently. “That is, if you want.”
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Post by wordy on Mar 20, 2012 8:21:22 GMT 10
Ah, this is fantastic! I love how you've drawn the links between this fic and the books, with the nightmares, the nightlight, and Niko offering to teach Paras how to read. It's beautifully done. And, of course, the growing relationship between Niko and Tris is gorgeous!
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Post by Lisa on Mar 20, 2012 22:08:09 GMT 10
I know I say this all the time, but this truly is a masterpiece, Kit. The parallels are gorgeous, but the differences (and why they're in place) is what makes it absolutely astounding. The Niko/Tris relationship was a sensitive one that took me forever to latch onto the way I did the others, and flipping it around just stresses what's good about it and reminds me how stupid I was for not feeling it from the start in the canon.
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