Post by Kit on Dec 31, 2010 16:22:06 GMT 10
To: Emberfyire (and also Kiwi, because of snowpocalypse madness)
Message: Since the forum still exists, I thought I should put this up here. One more to go, but this is a story of turning, for the new year.
From: Kit
Title: Hearts and Houses -- Floors and Windows
Rating: PG-13
Wishlist:#2. Rosethorn backstory
Summary: Rosethorn is not a good nurse.
It was a glorious day. Paras, looking out at the concentric circles and blooming acacias laid out to the Temple's northern wall, thought it was as if the sun had somehow leaked into some of the brisk, ocean cool winds, and was taken anywhere it might want. It clung to dust and turned it elegant. As she sorted through another pile of thatch, the ragged flecks of plant matter that floated about her face and caught in her hair could have been daylight fireflies.
Her throat tightened. Breathing hard through her nose, lips pinched together, Paras pressed hard her chest. She would not cough. Loose piles of thatch wove together loosely under her hands. She smiled, feeling the warm, sleepy strangeness of these fibres, and then Niva was laughing at her from the ground.
"You're mooning again."
"Sorry!" Paras leant forward over the roof, careful not to disturb her handiwork, and could see the other novice clearly: a pale figure in dirty white, figure with bright hair—her hat had slipped and was half down her back; the ridiculously unbecoming tie she used to keep it from flying away would be cutting into the skin above her collarbones—hands on hips. A sharp, confident stance, weight on the balls of her feet, and her neat, fine features blurring away as Paras felt her ribs work around lungs that were again empty of air, a spasm that ripped up from chest to the base of her throat and further still, wheezing out of her.
Her hands clenched. She bit through her lip, and she breathed. Thin and faint and determined. "Sorry!" This time, her voice managed to stumble away from her and off the roof. "They're so happy. This is a new life for them."
"A new life being dead? It's thatch, Paras."
"It's fibre." Her vision sparkled strangely now. Black burst and dots and red pulses in hectic time with her heartbeat. And Niva's laughter was lost as Paras began to cough.
***
Niva was not fond of heights. They didn't make her quake or faint, but they were unpleasant. And her hands left sweat streaks as she pushed her way through onto the half-thatched surface, because the sight of Paras as she was—hacking and wheezing and blue-tinged—was enough to leave anyone shaky.
Paras raised her head, and a hand. A warding gesture. "I'm—"
"—if you say you're fine I'm going to throw you down there!"
The other woman only coughed, and when Niva took her by the shoulders and shook her, unable to stop even if the rage she felt, sharp in her muscles and mind, made her a wretched person, her head lolled forward and Niva could only scream.
She screamed once, loud enough that the grasses around the cottage, half dead or not, flattened themselves away from the sound. And then she stood, supporting all of the long, lean person that she could manage, and set to getting off the roof.
***
Niva had no interest in Isas and his project. It was, she felt, abominable.
She had told him so, often, when he had let dreams slip from his lips as easy as other people breathed, in the echoing passages of the University. He could come back, he had said, all fine hands and wild eyes and strange, devout beauty that she would never speak of and he would never accept, and he would dedicate himself. He would pour his vast personal fortune into the grounds of Winding Circle—no other Temple would do—and from this outward rush there would grow a house of glass and magic and a whole verdant world from which anything might come.
"Tell the bookkeepers about the vast personal fortune," she had said, "And you'll find yourself wearing borders before two years are up."
She would, perhaps, have felt bad for the hurt in his eyes if he hadn't kissed her. If there had been rules between them in those days, one was that there were no apologies between their bodies.
Now, she stood on the construction site. The chalk marks on the earth already looked like scars. It suited her mood.
"Begone, creature!"
Niva looked away from the earth. Isas was striding the way he had once said, in all seriousness, he had been taught. A question of carriage, he'd told her, shaking her head as she laughed herself to bits. His robes flapped about his ankles.
"No," she said.
This stopped him. "If all you deign to do is laugh—"
Niva glared at him. "Today," she said, "I might need something to laugh at."
"You look terrible."
"Thank you."
He did not open his arms, and she did not run to them. But she did sit on the ground, watching the bustle of Isas's worldly devotions, and pointed out every tiny flaw that she could see.
***
Niklaren Goldeye, no less, was attending to Paras by the time Niva returned to the cottage.
"Oh," she said, as the tall man turned and inclined his head to her, with obnoxious grace. "I thought she'd still be at the Water Temple." Her robes were streaked with mud and grass and her skin was grimy with the protective magic Isas had spent the hours driving into his work. The mage was dressed in greys and lavender, and looked perfect. Even if he couldn't grow a moustache. He raised heavy, dark eyebrows while she glowered at him.
"She's been given the magic she needs, and most of the medicine," he said, very soft. "What Paras requires most right now is rest."
"I..." Niva swallowed. "I'm a terrible nurse," she said, hating that it came out squeaking.
She expected the man to look stern. Instead, the sweet smile he gave lit the darkening room, and Niva found she was unable to look away. "With that," he said, "I may sympathise."
Niva's chest tightened. She clenched her hands and jerked her head back as she felt one curl of hair fall forward onto her sweating face. The man only looked at her.
"Master Niklaren, I had no idea it was so—I'd never have let her work with thatch if I'd known it was likely to—the air's thick with pollen and she was stupid, but I'm—"
"—The question, Novice Niva, is not whether you are a good nurse, but whether, rather, you are a good friend. And it's Niko, please. I've heard you've never stood on ceremony. There's no reason to start. I'm not quite old."
With a polite little bow, Niko backed out of the room. By the time Niva could do more than splutter, the front door had clicked closed.
***
Darkness. Heaviness. Hands checking her brow and her throat and a strange, familiar sweetness in her mouth, as thick and vile as the time she snuck into the caravan's provisions of cider. Her teeth felt too large for her mouth. Her eyes were odd, weighted things that sunk deep into her head, so her eyelids barely covered them. If she opened her eyes, would there just be holes? Best not to try. Best to...breathe. She was breathing. Ribs stuck in her like teeth. In, and out. In. In. And a voice.
("So once, not very long ago, I lived at Lightsbridge. I didn't want to live at Lightsbridge, you understand, but it was a project for my novitiate, the way you've been given with this house. I'd have preferred the house. But I had the University. Isas and I.
"He loved it, because it meant we were the best, you see. And if love of the Circle hadn't slipped into his life like the strangest of secrets—which it did: I saw it happen—he would have gone there, and been Isas Ironwill or something just as daft, and been great. But he was a novice, just like me and nothing like me, and we went because of a game we made, which they thought the dry, Lightsbridge bodies could turn into skill.
Which they did, I suppose. We both worked hard, and everyone loved Isas, and everyone was afraid of me. Which is how it always would have been. And we were a year away from going home and my magic did feel sleeker and stronger and more disciplined than before I read the sleek, strong, disciplined books. Before Breakbone Fever walked into Kerang.")
Tears on her face. Cold, from a long fall. Not her own.
***
"This one. This will surely work."
Xiyun Mountainstrider was not a large man, but his voice held his title, and there was no fear as he held the small bottle up to the light. Isas watched him, avid and drawn. Niva could not watch. Instead, she looked through the laboratory door at the waiting patients.
"Novice."
Niva twitched. Novice meant her. Isas was always 'Young Lord', which he put up with in good grace, Niva suspected, because he could not hear the humour in it. The Novice, blinking hard to remove the shades of the sick, shivering people from her eyes, turned back to their master. "Yes, sir?"
"Go and give this to those who need it."
Niva swallowed. "We—"
"—there is always need for further testing," he said, not misunderstanding her. The worst thing about this man, in this room, was that he rarely did. "But we have no time."
Isas, eyes red-rimmed, glared at her. "We both worked on this," he said.
"I know."
"Novice."
"I know."
Niva took the bottle, feeling it growing hot and clamorous under hand. A volatile mix of medicines that she knew as well as the lines in her palm. What she did not know was the way they would mix with another's blood and organs. Closing her eyes, she forced away the fevers of the last attempt, the sad, gurgling ends of the one before that: bone had strengthened, there, but only whilst muscle sloughed away.
She let herself breathe. Isas was right. They had worked on this. Mountainstrider was right. They had no time. None of them had any sleep.
As Niva let herself pass through the laboratory door, she heard Isas begin pestering their master again about a new way, a better way, that they had come up with while their eyes burned from magic and their hands kept still even as they were scalded and soaked by countless compounds. His timing was excellent. Mountainstrider was tired enough to listen.
But human essences would not help these people right now, who flinched away from her as she drew closer to them, and made the Gods circle across their chests.
They all knew, even as they swallowed what Niva gave them, that these trial cures would kill half of them, if they were lucky, and that the blood of the surviving would go into some new concoction, which would kill only a fraction less.
Poisoner's assistant, they called her and Isas both. And Niva could not blame them.
"Thank you," said one woman, both her arms already in slings as Niva held a cup to her lips and tilted her head back.
When she said it again, Niva started to cry.
***
Warmth. Heaviness. An arm about her and the scent of another's hair, rich and sweet and soft against her shoulder. And fingers in her own curls, questing and tremulous and strange. Rough cloth and unsteady heartbeat against her skin.
"And so you see, Paras, I'm just awful with sickness, so you need to tell me if you're ever feeling that bad. If you can't breathe. Don't just...I couldn't help you. And I never will. Ever. Oh, stop that, you'll hurt yourself."
Still not opening her eyes, Paras let her arms fit around this shaking, strangest of friends. Niva was small in her bed, but Paraskeve felt all of her, and it was an easy thing, even blind, to kiss tears from her cheeks.
Message: Since the forum still exists, I thought I should put this up here. One more to go, but this is a story of turning, for the new year.
From: Kit
Title: Hearts and Houses -- Floors and Windows
Rating: PG-13
Wishlist:#2. Rosethorn backstory
Summary: Rosethorn is not a good nurse.
It was a glorious day. Paras, looking out at the concentric circles and blooming acacias laid out to the Temple's northern wall, thought it was as if the sun had somehow leaked into some of the brisk, ocean cool winds, and was taken anywhere it might want. It clung to dust and turned it elegant. As she sorted through another pile of thatch, the ragged flecks of plant matter that floated about her face and caught in her hair could have been daylight fireflies.
Her throat tightened. Breathing hard through her nose, lips pinched together, Paras pressed hard her chest. She would not cough. Loose piles of thatch wove together loosely under her hands. She smiled, feeling the warm, sleepy strangeness of these fibres, and then Niva was laughing at her from the ground.
"You're mooning again."
"Sorry!" Paras leant forward over the roof, careful not to disturb her handiwork, and could see the other novice clearly: a pale figure in dirty white, figure with bright hair—her hat had slipped and was half down her back; the ridiculously unbecoming tie she used to keep it from flying away would be cutting into the skin above her collarbones—hands on hips. A sharp, confident stance, weight on the balls of her feet, and her neat, fine features blurring away as Paras felt her ribs work around lungs that were again empty of air, a spasm that ripped up from chest to the base of her throat and further still, wheezing out of her.
Her hands clenched. She bit through her lip, and she breathed. Thin and faint and determined. "Sorry!" This time, her voice managed to stumble away from her and off the roof. "They're so happy. This is a new life for them."
"A new life being dead? It's thatch, Paras."
"It's fibre." Her vision sparkled strangely now. Black burst and dots and red pulses in hectic time with her heartbeat. And Niva's laughter was lost as Paras began to cough.
***
Niva was not fond of heights. They didn't make her quake or faint, but they were unpleasant. And her hands left sweat streaks as she pushed her way through onto the half-thatched surface, because the sight of Paras as she was—hacking and wheezing and blue-tinged—was enough to leave anyone shaky.
Paras raised her head, and a hand. A warding gesture. "I'm—"
"—if you say you're fine I'm going to throw you down there!"
The other woman only coughed, and when Niva took her by the shoulders and shook her, unable to stop even if the rage she felt, sharp in her muscles and mind, made her a wretched person, her head lolled forward and Niva could only scream.
She screamed once, loud enough that the grasses around the cottage, half dead or not, flattened themselves away from the sound. And then she stood, supporting all of the long, lean person that she could manage, and set to getting off the roof.
***
Niva had no interest in Isas and his project. It was, she felt, abominable.
She had told him so, often, when he had let dreams slip from his lips as easy as other people breathed, in the echoing passages of the University. He could come back, he had said, all fine hands and wild eyes and strange, devout beauty that she would never speak of and he would never accept, and he would dedicate himself. He would pour his vast personal fortune into the grounds of Winding Circle—no other Temple would do—and from this outward rush there would grow a house of glass and magic and a whole verdant world from which anything might come.
"Tell the bookkeepers about the vast personal fortune," she had said, "And you'll find yourself wearing borders before two years are up."
She would, perhaps, have felt bad for the hurt in his eyes if he hadn't kissed her. If there had been rules between them in those days, one was that there were no apologies between their bodies.
Now, she stood on the construction site. The chalk marks on the earth already looked like scars. It suited her mood.
"Begone, creature!"
Niva looked away from the earth. Isas was striding the way he had once said, in all seriousness, he had been taught. A question of carriage, he'd told her, shaking her head as she laughed herself to bits. His robes flapped about his ankles.
"No," she said.
This stopped him. "If all you deign to do is laugh—"
Niva glared at him. "Today," she said, "I might need something to laugh at."
"You look terrible."
"Thank you."
He did not open his arms, and she did not run to them. But she did sit on the ground, watching the bustle of Isas's worldly devotions, and pointed out every tiny flaw that she could see.
***
Niklaren Goldeye, no less, was attending to Paras by the time Niva returned to the cottage.
"Oh," she said, as the tall man turned and inclined his head to her, with obnoxious grace. "I thought she'd still be at the Water Temple." Her robes were streaked with mud and grass and her skin was grimy with the protective magic Isas had spent the hours driving into his work. The mage was dressed in greys and lavender, and looked perfect. Even if he couldn't grow a moustache. He raised heavy, dark eyebrows while she glowered at him.
"She's been given the magic she needs, and most of the medicine," he said, very soft. "What Paras requires most right now is rest."
"I..." Niva swallowed. "I'm a terrible nurse," she said, hating that it came out squeaking.
She expected the man to look stern. Instead, the sweet smile he gave lit the darkening room, and Niva found she was unable to look away. "With that," he said, "I may sympathise."
Niva's chest tightened. She clenched her hands and jerked her head back as she felt one curl of hair fall forward onto her sweating face. The man only looked at her.
"Master Niklaren, I had no idea it was so—I'd never have let her work with thatch if I'd known it was likely to—the air's thick with pollen and she was stupid, but I'm—"
"—The question, Novice Niva, is not whether you are a good nurse, but whether, rather, you are a good friend. And it's Niko, please. I've heard you've never stood on ceremony. There's no reason to start. I'm not quite old."
With a polite little bow, Niko backed out of the room. By the time Niva could do more than splutter, the front door had clicked closed.
***
Darkness. Heaviness. Hands checking her brow and her throat and a strange, familiar sweetness in her mouth, as thick and vile as the time she snuck into the caravan's provisions of cider. Her teeth felt too large for her mouth. Her eyes were odd, weighted things that sunk deep into her head, so her eyelids barely covered them. If she opened her eyes, would there just be holes? Best not to try. Best to...breathe. She was breathing. Ribs stuck in her like teeth. In, and out. In. In. And a voice.
("So once, not very long ago, I lived at Lightsbridge. I didn't want to live at Lightsbridge, you understand, but it was a project for my novitiate, the way you've been given with this house. I'd have preferred the house. But I had the University. Isas and I.
"He loved it, because it meant we were the best, you see. And if love of the Circle hadn't slipped into his life like the strangest of secrets—which it did: I saw it happen—he would have gone there, and been Isas Ironwill or something just as daft, and been great. But he was a novice, just like me and nothing like me, and we went because of a game we made, which they thought the dry, Lightsbridge bodies could turn into skill.
Which they did, I suppose. We both worked hard, and everyone loved Isas, and everyone was afraid of me. Which is how it always would have been. And we were a year away from going home and my magic did feel sleeker and stronger and more disciplined than before I read the sleek, strong, disciplined books. Before Breakbone Fever walked into Kerang.")
Tears on her face. Cold, from a long fall. Not her own.
***
"This one. This will surely work."
Xiyun Mountainstrider was not a large man, but his voice held his title, and there was no fear as he held the small bottle up to the light. Isas watched him, avid and drawn. Niva could not watch. Instead, she looked through the laboratory door at the waiting patients.
"Novice."
Niva twitched. Novice meant her. Isas was always 'Young Lord', which he put up with in good grace, Niva suspected, because he could not hear the humour in it. The Novice, blinking hard to remove the shades of the sick, shivering people from her eyes, turned back to their master. "Yes, sir?"
"Go and give this to those who need it."
Niva swallowed. "We—"
"—there is always need for further testing," he said, not misunderstanding her. The worst thing about this man, in this room, was that he rarely did. "But we have no time."
Isas, eyes red-rimmed, glared at her. "We both worked on this," he said.
"I know."
"Novice."
"I know."
Niva took the bottle, feeling it growing hot and clamorous under hand. A volatile mix of medicines that she knew as well as the lines in her palm. What she did not know was the way they would mix with another's blood and organs. Closing her eyes, she forced away the fevers of the last attempt, the sad, gurgling ends of the one before that: bone had strengthened, there, but only whilst muscle sloughed away.
She let herself breathe. Isas was right. They had worked on this. Mountainstrider was right. They had no time. None of them had any sleep.
As Niva let herself pass through the laboratory door, she heard Isas begin pestering their master again about a new way, a better way, that they had come up with while their eyes burned from magic and their hands kept still even as they were scalded and soaked by countless compounds. His timing was excellent. Mountainstrider was tired enough to listen.
But human essences would not help these people right now, who flinched away from her as she drew closer to them, and made the Gods circle across their chests.
They all knew, even as they swallowed what Niva gave them, that these trial cures would kill half of them, if they were lucky, and that the blood of the surviving would go into some new concoction, which would kill only a fraction less.
Poisoner's assistant, they called her and Isas both. And Niva could not blame them.
"Thank you," said one woman, both her arms already in slings as Niva held a cup to her lips and tilted her head back.
When she said it again, Niva started to cry.
***
Warmth. Heaviness. An arm about her and the scent of another's hair, rich and sweet and soft against her shoulder. And fingers in her own curls, questing and tremulous and strange. Rough cloth and unsteady heartbeat against her skin.
"And so you see, Paras, I'm just awful with sickness, so you need to tell me if you're ever feeling that bad. If you can't breathe. Don't just...I couldn't help you. And I never will. Ever. Oh, stop that, you'll hurt yourself."
Still not opening her eyes, Paras let her arms fit around this shaking, strangest of friends. Niva was small in her bed, but Paraskeve felt all of her, and it was an easy thing, even blind, to kiss tears from her cheeks.