Post by Seek on Jul 13, 2013 19:20:28 GMT 10
Title: Journey
Rating: G
Prompt: Journey, (#27)
Character/Couple/Theme: Mattes
Series: White Shores Calling
Summary: Mattes is on a sea-journey. Post Mastiff.
Notes: This is sort of a Mastiff AU. Therefore, spoilers for Mastiff. Kind of.
-
The ship creaks, the sound drowning out the stillness of the ocean.
“Why did you do it?” the boatman asks. His face is hidden; he sits with his back to him, his hand on the rudder. The ash-grey sails don’t really billow in the wind so much as slice through it. Mayhap ‘tis the sharp knife-wedge shape of the sails, Mattes thinks.
“Why did I do what?” he asks, lazily. Not much of a ship, this. More a tiny boat in the middle of the ocean. He’d spent a year as a seaman, after he left the hill country, after they were all slaughtered…
Rust-red rocks, dust. He’d never seen so much water in his whole life, but he’d decided soon enough that the sea wasn’t for him. And here he was again.
Sharp blue eyes stare at him, bright like mage-fire. The boatman turns. “Oh, come on, lad,” the boatman drawls. “We both know what I’m speaking of.” He crosses his lanky legs, shifts his sword-belt so the scabbarded cutlass rests at a less awkward ankle. “We’ve got time on our side, after all.”
“Yes,” Mattes murmurs. One hand trails in the water, leaving a small water-crossing. A tiny boat, the wrought caged-glass lantern on the prow a tiny prick of light in an infinitely large ocean. A candle on the water. Everywhere from here is a water-crossing.
He glances down at the leatherbound book in his lap. Books are expensive things, and he’d never had much to do with them. He knew his letters though. No use for that, for a hillman, even for a seaman, but Dogs needed their letters.
Even after all those years, the reading doesn’t come easy. The writing even less.
In his other hand, he holds one of those ruinously expensive glass pens from Tyra. Ruinously expensive, fancy things, he muses, but far less likely to go through the many accidents a quill does. He doesn’t dip the pen into the unstoppered bottle of ink. Not yet.
My Lady Sabine…Dear Sabine…Dear Clary, Dear Beka…
So many letters unwritten. All of them undelivered.
“Well,” Mattes says, tiring of the game. “I did it because I was an old Dog. Because he asked me to.”
Rating: G
Prompt: Journey, (#27)
Character/Couple/Theme: Mattes
Series: White Shores Calling
Summary: Mattes is on a sea-journey. Post Mastiff.
Notes: This is sort of a Mastiff AU. Therefore, spoilers for Mastiff. Kind of.
-
The ship creaks, the sound drowning out the stillness of the ocean.
“Why did you do it?” the boatman asks. His face is hidden; he sits with his back to him, his hand on the rudder. The ash-grey sails don’t really billow in the wind so much as slice through it. Mayhap ‘tis the sharp knife-wedge shape of the sails, Mattes thinks.
“Why did I do what?” he asks, lazily. Not much of a ship, this. More a tiny boat in the middle of the ocean. He’d spent a year as a seaman, after he left the hill country, after they were all slaughtered…
Rust-red rocks, dust. He’d never seen so much water in his whole life, but he’d decided soon enough that the sea wasn’t for him. And here he was again.
Sharp blue eyes stare at him, bright like mage-fire. The boatman turns. “Oh, come on, lad,” the boatman drawls. “We both know what I’m speaking of.” He crosses his lanky legs, shifts his sword-belt so the scabbarded cutlass rests at a less awkward ankle. “We’ve got time on our side, after all.”
“Yes,” Mattes murmurs. One hand trails in the water, leaving a small water-crossing. A tiny boat, the wrought caged-glass lantern on the prow a tiny prick of light in an infinitely large ocean. A candle on the water. Everywhere from here is a water-crossing.
He glances down at the leatherbound book in his lap. Books are expensive things, and he’d never had much to do with them. He knew his letters though. No use for that, for a hillman, even for a seaman, but Dogs needed their letters.
Even after all those years, the reading doesn’t come easy. The writing even less.
In his other hand, he holds one of those ruinously expensive glass pens from Tyra. Ruinously expensive, fancy things, he muses, but far less likely to go through the many accidents a quill does. He doesn’t dip the pen into the unstoppered bottle of ink. Not yet.
My Lady Sabine…Dear Sabine…Dear Clary, Dear Beka…
So many letters unwritten. All of them undelivered.
“Well,” Mattes says, tiring of the game. “I did it because I was an old Dog. Because he asked me to.”
Maybe once we'd have seen it during Smackdown!