Post by max on Feb 20, 2010 20:19:43 GMT 10
Bright Star IX
PG
295
Joren
1/E
A direct continuation from part 8. Kind of.
____________________________________________
The justification saves him, although his father has never raised him to be answerable to anyone but the gods, and so it goes that he explains her impact on his universe in the cool clear terms of logic.
He reads what she reads, because she always did do better than he at arithmetic. He goes where she goes, because since he became a squire how else is he to know if she really, truly deserves her shield?
The next time he sees her, though – tilting; all impossibly long slender legs and build of finest-boned Yamani steel – he feels his heart quicken not with hatred, but something a myriad times more destructive.
It is natural because she is my antithesis, he tries to convince himself, but the thought brings him no comfort.
Then Lord Raoul is there and he melts into the hazy summer afternoon as if he doesn’t exist at all.
They leave the next day, and for six months his world melts inexorably into a haze of midsummer-at-high-noon heat which he can’t escape, skin cracked, dying for water (and sometimes he sees lakes where none ever ought to be) and I am Joren of Stone Mountain. I love the north wind and being seventeen goes the unending prayer, broken not by sleep or training or his father or master but the numbness that overwhelms him in the face of all of these, now and again.
‘Have you injured your hands?’ Paxton asks, surveying the empty bowl and porridge-splattered table one morning, and he buries his hands into his shirt and says ‘I ran 10 miles last night’ which is no explanation at all, but because Paxton is kind he pretends the answer is sufficient.
(Fear no evil, his mother had said)
So he tries.
PG
295
Joren
1/E
A direct continuation from part 8. Kind of.
____________________________________________
The justification saves him, although his father has never raised him to be answerable to anyone but the gods, and so it goes that he explains her impact on his universe in the cool clear terms of logic.
He reads what she reads, because she always did do better than he at arithmetic. He goes where she goes, because since he became a squire how else is he to know if she really, truly deserves her shield?
The next time he sees her, though – tilting; all impossibly long slender legs and build of finest-boned Yamani steel – he feels his heart quicken not with hatred, but something a myriad times more destructive.
It is natural because she is my antithesis, he tries to convince himself, but the thought brings him no comfort.
Then Lord Raoul is there and he melts into the hazy summer afternoon as if he doesn’t exist at all.
They leave the next day, and for six months his world melts inexorably into a haze of midsummer-at-high-noon heat which he can’t escape, skin cracked, dying for water (and sometimes he sees lakes where none ever ought to be) and I am Joren of Stone Mountain. I love the north wind and being seventeen goes the unending prayer, broken not by sleep or training or his father or master but the numbness that overwhelms him in the face of all of these, now and again.
‘Have you injured your hands?’ Paxton asks, surveying the empty bowl and porridge-splattered table one morning, and he buries his hands into his shirt and says ‘I ran 10 miles last night’ which is no explanation at all, but because Paxton is kind he pretends the answer is sufficient.
(Fear no evil, his mother had said)
So he tries.