Post by laura on Feb 4, 2010 8:38:52 GMT 10
Title: Domesticity
Rating: PG
Length: 320 words
Competitor: Wyldon
Round/Fight: 1/A
Summary: Another night at Fief Cavall.
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Though it was almost midnight, when all good twelve-year-old boys should be asleep, Wyl turned over on his pillow. The dog beside him snuffled awake, but her master soothed her with a gentle hand.
He could hear the voices down the hall again.
They never shouted, the Lord and Lady of Cavall, but Wylstan could hear their short, angry words as if they had. Almost every night, it seemed now.
“Why won’t you--”
“I’ve told you so many times--”
Wyl was the only one who listened. The babies were still too young to understand. His oldest sister Patrista was now a knight and more often found with her friends, Princess Lia and Emrys of Queenscove, then at home. Rysher, the oldest brother and heir, had just been knighted in the past year and had returned home. He liked to turn a blind eye to his parents’ bickering, and his face was usually so impassive now that Uncle Neal had begun to call him “the Stick” after his father. And the sib closest to him in age, Ilane, was now a squire and was too busy perfecting her jousting techniques to listen to his complaints.
His parents continued to snarl and snap at each other. Wyl buried his hand in his dog’s ruff. Even though he wasn’t exactly sure he wanted to be a knight like his older brother and sisters, he missed his friends from training on the Fighting Nights, as he had come to think of them. The nights were bad, but so were the days, which were filled with such silence and tension that even the three youngest children, who toddled into their father’s study periodically or interrupted their mother during her morning bath, couldn’t break it.
Wylstan couldn’t wait to return to Corus, for all the wrong reasons.
The voices two doors down grew louder. Wyl drew the coverlet over his head, and fell asleep.
Rating: PG
Length: 320 words
Competitor: Wyldon
Round/Fight: 1/A
Summary: Another night at Fief Cavall.
------
Though it was almost midnight, when all good twelve-year-old boys should be asleep, Wyl turned over on his pillow. The dog beside him snuffled awake, but her master soothed her with a gentle hand.
He could hear the voices down the hall again.
They never shouted, the Lord and Lady of Cavall, but Wylstan could hear their short, angry words as if they had. Almost every night, it seemed now.
“Why won’t you--”
“I’ve told you so many times--”
Wyl was the only one who listened. The babies were still too young to understand. His oldest sister Patrista was now a knight and more often found with her friends, Princess Lia and Emrys of Queenscove, then at home. Rysher, the oldest brother and heir, had just been knighted in the past year and had returned home. He liked to turn a blind eye to his parents’ bickering, and his face was usually so impassive now that Uncle Neal had begun to call him “the Stick” after his father. And the sib closest to him in age, Ilane, was now a squire and was too busy perfecting her jousting techniques to listen to his complaints.
His parents continued to snarl and snap at each other. Wyl buried his hand in his dog’s ruff. Even though he wasn’t exactly sure he wanted to be a knight like his older brother and sisters, he missed his friends from training on the Fighting Nights, as he had come to think of them. The nights were bad, but so were the days, which were filled with such silence and tension that even the three youngest children, who toddled into their father’s study periodically or interrupted their mother during her morning bath, couldn’t break it.
Wylstan couldn’t wait to return to Corus, for all the wrong reasons.
The voices two doors down grew louder. Wyl drew the coverlet over his head, and fell asleep.