Post by Kit on Mar 4, 2010 12:08:32 GMT 10
Title: Faces
Rating: PG
Length: 312
Round: 2/D
Competitor: Alanna
Summary: Kel considers boundaries.
Give me blood, give me wounds, give me half-digested fish scraps thrown at my face...please, oh, please--don’t give me vomit.
The figure was small, and she shivered.
Any age she might have claimed, from six to past sixty, swallowed by the waves of lost-and-helpless that came from the tension in her curled shoulders; the desperate plea shaped by her back. Tension caught and killed any air that tried, wistfully, to creep in through cracks in walls and doorways. Tallow added a deep, rancid note to the gloom, shadows crowding in around unhappy flame.
The world lurched. Gulls screeched and wheeled against the sky, unthreatened by Stormwing.
Kel stood tall and at ease—though never easy—in the doorway, watching her idol turn herself slowly inside-out over a basin. She stood stuck, the world all strange thresholds. If Neal were with her, she knew, she’d find she was, for once, being hit upside the head.
I could never help in Yaman, she thought. The loss of face.
Offering up a small prayer to Sakuyo, god of tricks, she thought of all the ways honour and glory and heroes became very ordinary indeed, in all the candences of her Lord Raoul; laughing and laughing and laughing.
Raoul, though. The thought caught at her as she tried to keep her breathing even. Raoul wouldn’t just be standing here. He’d hold her hair back.
The tiny, hoarse, desperate sound that came from the older woman caught in Kel’s ears, spiking down to her heart. I hate it if people see me sick. What if she’s embarrassed to have me here...
A sob, now, strangled and angry but still, at its centre, full of tears and tired bewilderment. Kel watched the small body heave, and she sighed, stepping forward to brace it against her chest, stroking damp, copper-silver hair back and hoping, somehow, to pass on her own heartbeat in place of the one that the motion of the ship had stolen.
Rating: PG
Length: 312
Round: 2/D
Competitor: Alanna
Summary: Kel considers boundaries.
Give me blood, give me wounds, give me half-digested fish scraps thrown at my face...please, oh, please--don’t give me vomit.
The figure was small, and she shivered.
Any age she might have claimed, from six to past sixty, swallowed by the waves of lost-and-helpless that came from the tension in her curled shoulders; the desperate plea shaped by her back. Tension caught and killed any air that tried, wistfully, to creep in through cracks in walls and doorways. Tallow added a deep, rancid note to the gloom, shadows crowding in around unhappy flame.
The world lurched. Gulls screeched and wheeled against the sky, unthreatened by Stormwing.
Kel stood tall and at ease—though never easy—in the doorway, watching her idol turn herself slowly inside-out over a basin. She stood stuck, the world all strange thresholds. If Neal were with her, she knew, she’d find she was, for once, being hit upside the head.
I could never help in Yaman, she thought. The loss of face.
Offering up a small prayer to Sakuyo, god of tricks, she thought of all the ways honour and glory and heroes became very ordinary indeed, in all the candences of her Lord Raoul; laughing and laughing and laughing.
Raoul, though. The thought caught at her as she tried to keep her breathing even. Raoul wouldn’t just be standing here. He’d hold her hair back.
The tiny, hoarse, desperate sound that came from the older woman caught in Kel’s ears, spiking down to her heart. I hate it if people see me sick. What if she’s embarrassed to have me here...
A sob, now, strangled and angry but still, at its centre, full of tears and tired bewilderment. Kel watched the small body heave, and she sighed, stepping forward to brace it against her chest, stroking damp, copper-silver hair back and hoping, somehow, to pass on her own heartbeat in place of the one that the motion of the ship had stolen.