Post by max on Feb 20, 2010 19:54:21 GMT 10
Bright Star IV
PG
499
Joren
1/E
Continuation of the Bright Starness.
___________________________________
‘I understand you have spoken with several knights already about the coming summer.’
‘Yessir.’ Adding, ‘Mostly friends of the family,’ should the training master think him too arrogant.
Another one of those stares from Wyldon – so common now! – and a shiver flickers up his spine.
‘I advise you not to make your choice until the Autumn.’
He bows, waiting for the dismissal, but it doesn’t come.
‘It is important in youth to challenge one’s ideas, that your own perspective be strengthened by it. Do you understand me?’
He does.
___________________________________
Although the Nonds are a Conservative family, Book of Silver, with extensive mines to their name, he has never met them before, is surprised by Paxton’s interest in him. But Paxton has eyes the same deep brown as lord Wyldon’s, and the same, dark grace peculiar to the families of the midlands. He is also one the greatest swordsmen in the eastern lands; trained in the time between the wars when there was time to perfect such arts – and he has always trusted those who worship at the edge of such a blade.
They ride east to where the plains are fringed by distant blue mountains, and there he learns how to curl over a horse’s neck so that the wind doesn’t touch or slow him down. In the South he is taught diplomacy at the edge of a smuggler’s cutlass. On the coast between the desert and the sea (so alike, so painfully far apart) he learns love in a young widow’s bed and if in the back of his mind there is an awareness of time racing to catch up with him, pull him into a room and spit him out again a knight, for the moment he is learning everything he has ever wanted to know, feeling his body lengthen and strengthen and become more invincible with the knowledge of the world and his place within it.
She seems a very long way away, a very insignificant warp in the tapestry of his life, but then he meets her sister, and she is to Kel as the ocean is to those shifting sands, flashes of her everywhere, and suddenly it is there again, that strange desolation – writhing – through his peace.
It is almost a relief to return to the capital, call out to her in a hallway and watch her turn. She is becoming graceful with womanhood now, and there is something strangely beautiful about her – not anything in her blank face or average features, but a kind of vivacity behind her movements, the strange juxtaposition of the warrior she will one day be with the young girl she is now.
She doesn’t accept his apology though – in a way, he knows she never could have. For all that he feels things rushing through him at the sight of her, there remains between them one inherent difference: she will always choose a glaive above a sword.
No one can be met halfway when they carry a polearm.
PG
499
Joren
1/E
Continuation of the Bright Starness.
___________________________________
‘I understand you have spoken with several knights already about the coming summer.’
‘Yessir.’ Adding, ‘Mostly friends of the family,’ should the training master think him too arrogant.
Another one of those stares from Wyldon – so common now! – and a shiver flickers up his spine.
‘I advise you not to make your choice until the Autumn.’
He bows, waiting for the dismissal, but it doesn’t come.
‘It is important in youth to challenge one’s ideas, that your own perspective be strengthened by it. Do you understand me?’
He does.
___________________________________
Although the Nonds are a Conservative family, Book of Silver, with extensive mines to their name, he has never met them before, is surprised by Paxton’s interest in him. But Paxton has eyes the same deep brown as lord Wyldon’s, and the same, dark grace peculiar to the families of the midlands. He is also one the greatest swordsmen in the eastern lands; trained in the time between the wars when there was time to perfect such arts – and he has always trusted those who worship at the edge of such a blade.
They ride east to where the plains are fringed by distant blue mountains, and there he learns how to curl over a horse’s neck so that the wind doesn’t touch or slow him down. In the South he is taught diplomacy at the edge of a smuggler’s cutlass. On the coast between the desert and the sea (so alike, so painfully far apart) he learns love in a young widow’s bed and if in the back of his mind there is an awareness of time racing to catch up with him, pull him into a room and spit him out again a knight, for the moment he is learning everything he has ever wanted to know, feeling his body lengthen and strengthen and become more invincible with the knowledge of the world and his place within it.
She seems a very long way away, a very insignificant warp in the tapestry of his life, but then he meets her sister, and she is to Kel as the ocean is to those shifting sands, flashes of her everywhere, and suddenly it is there again, that strange desolation – writhing – through his peace.
It is almost a relief to return to the capital, call out to her in a hallway and watch her turn. She is becoming graceful with womanhood now, and there is something strangely beautiful about her – not anything in her blank face or average features, but a kind of vivacity behind her movements, the strange juxtaposition of the warrior she will one day be with the young girl she is now.
She doesn’t accept his apology though – in a way, he knows she never could have. For all that he feels things rushing through him at the sight of her, there remains between them one inherent difference: she will always choose a glaive above a sword.
No one can be met halfway when they carry a polearm.