Post by Kit on Jun 13, 2010 23:46:31 GMT 10
Title: New-Old Threads: Fit and Fall
Rating: PG
Series: Speculation AU-verse, this one between the events of Chapters Two and Four.
Words: 350
Summary: Sandry walks ahead of her litter, Briar waits.
He should, Lakik blight him, have been able to tell just from looking at her.
It had taken years for Discipline to be his home, and now she filled it more than she’d ever managed as a bare snip of a kid whose Uncle had sent her off for ‘Finishing’ (Namorn, apparently, had not been enough) and gotten a threadwitch in the bargain. She had crowded him then, all scent and elbows and braids, and nothing like that in the way she stood now, all spectral, swaying in his doorway after ordering her hapless litter retinue back down winding paths to Gorse. There was nothing of that girl at all, but she crowded just the same, even when hanging back.
Hanging upright by a thread. He caught her arm, and she let herself sag. “Oh,” she said.
“What did you go and let that happen for, Duchess?”
Blue eyes met his in a sharp tilt of her head. “It’s not quite right,” she said to him, and it was, he knew, only his hopeful nature that turned the twist of her mouth into half a smile instead of almost a grimace. “Calling me that, under the circumstances.”
“You know me,” he said cheerily. “Not quite right.”
“Ah.” She swallowed, long, and he felt the breath she took, shaking and shallow from battered lungs. The house smelt of thatch, he knew, and pepper and pine and, very faintly, of burnt porridge that had been practically salvageable. He closed his doorway, leaning around her to fit the latch. His old friend remained very, very still.
“If that’s still the case,” she said. “I think it would be... not quite right for you to hold me, if you—please.”
Dedicate Briarmoss, sole tenant of Discipline for almost eight years, took the Lady Sandrilene in his arms, and strained and strived to find any plant base to the poison that—so the whole world knew and his heart could barely swallow, if given a moment to itself—had almost caught her.
Nothing was ever quite right for them. They had always fit too well.
Rating: PG
Series: Speculation AU-verse, this one between the events of Chapters Two and Four.
Words: 350
Summary: Sandry walks ahead of her litter, Briar waits.
He should, Lakik blight him, have been able to tell just from looking at her.
It had taken years for Discipline to be his home, and now she filled it more than she’d ever managed as a bare snip of a kid whose Uncle had sent her off for ‘Finishing’ (Namorn, apparently, had not been enough) and gotten a threadwitch in the bargain. She had crowded him then, all scent and elbows and braids, and nothing like that in the way she stood now, all spectral, swaying in his doorway after ordering her hapless litter retinue back down winding paths to Gorse. There was nothing of that girl at all, but she crowded just the same, even when hanging back.
Hanging upright by a thread. He caught her arm, and she let herself sag. “Oh,” she said.
“What did you go and let that happen for, Duchess?”
Blue eyes met his in a sharp tilt of her head. “It’s not quite right,” she said to him, and it was, he knew, only his hopeful nature that turned the twist of her mouth into half a smile instead of almost a grimace. “Calling me that, under the circumstances.”
“You know me,” he said cheerily. “Not quite right.”
“Ah.” She swallowed, long, and he felt the breath she took, shaking and shallow from battered lungs. The house smelt of thatch, he knew, and pepper and pine and, very faintly, of burnt porridge that had been practically salvageable. He closed his doorway, leaning around her to fit the latch. His old friend remained very, very still.
“If that’s still the case,” she said. “I think it would be... not quite right for you to hold me, if you—please.”
Dedicate Briarmoss, sole tenant of Discipline for almost eight years, took the Lady Sandrilene in his arms, and strained and strived to find any plant base to the poison that—so the whole world knew and his heart could barely swallow, if given a moment to itself—had almost caught her.
Nothing was ever quite right for them. They had always fit too well.