Post by max on Feb 20, 2010 20:50:59 GMT 10
Bright Star X
PG-13
603
Joren
1/E
The kidnapping etc. I think I've messed up the ages a bit. You'll live, I'm sure.
____________________________________
It is only when he is woken not by his master or father but his steward that he realises he has been trying to quench the dread thirst in ways that are as impossible as they are logical (water, women, war, the wind) but it’s not like he could have done any differently. He hadn’t seen Vinson in nearly two years, and of all people, he never would have thought a remedy would manifest in the form of so hostile a soul as the Genlith heir.
‘Tell them it was me. Say I did it,’ and the words are fatal, but (some stars are dead even when they light the sky, and) she has stopped caring about who he is, and there is something unfathomably terrifying about that – Vinson’s idiocy (is there for the taking) an unexpected salvation.
He knows it will come to trial by combat, knows it deep in his core when he sees her, eyes molten with fury she cannot suppress, meeting his own, and I will breathe you in and suck the essence from your bones, he almost adds, feeling the old desire burn in his insides, to coalesce with the worn stones of the courtroom floor and the poison he has poured there as a ring of shining saliva.
The tang stays in his mouth, even after his father’s people are gone and it is just Paxton, staring through him in their quarters, and he picks up a book he has been trying to read (Songs, Ancient and Modern of the Raka) and traces the white streams between the words and waits.
‘I don’t pretend to understand you, Joren, nor do I expect you to tell me everything. But had you been forced into a blood-oath, we both know what truth would have emerged.’
‘They’ll do no such thing, though. Or didn’t you hear – ’
‘Regardless of your performance in that courtroom,’ Paxton’s voice rising over his own before it softens again. ‘I find myself – lost. At a loss. You can’t… you realise this has marred you now.’
The irony is rich enough to make him laugh aloud, but Pax is weary with this game of long odds (indeed, he has no knowledge of the ultimate prize), voice rising again, ‘And for what, Joren? Notoriety?’ an inevitable crescendo. ‘Protecting young Genlith?’ He pauses, swallows, counts silently in his head while Joren pretends not to notice, tracing white lines between black text. ‘It certainly can’t be for Squire Keladry’s sake.’
‘Obviously not.’
It isn’t, ever – it’s for his own.
‘After all, she has abjured her right to trial by combat.’
The book falls onto the floor, spine-down, pages crushed and Paxton’s eyes (a bright, almost-black) are boring into him, and he has no time to recover himself, both of them dismayed.
‘I thought you had finished with this – this fixation with her! Gods Joren! You’re seventeen – ’ and Paxton grabs his wrists, his shaking hands, and they will bruise, he can feel it, and he wants to say that now he’ll not be able to take the book back to the library but Paxton is looking at his hands, his wrists, his not so pale arms, and there is something so comic about everything he wants to laugh, laugh and laugh and laugh, but he can’t, is too tired, and sometimes shadows stretch across his waking eyes, and he is undone by them, and the only thing that helps is to think of her, fight her, somehow reconnect himself to her life.
Fixation doesn’t even come close to covering the drought in him. The longing for dirty green water.
PG-13
603
Joren
1/E
The kidnapping etc. I think I've messed up the ages a bit. You'll live, I'm sure.
____________________________________
It is only when he is woken not by his master or father but his steward that he realises he has been trying to quench the dread thirst in ways that are as impossible as they are logical (water, women, war, the wind) but it’s not like he could have done any differently. He hadn’t seen Vinson in nearly two years, and of all people, he never would have thought a remedy would manifest in the form of so hostile a soul as the Genlith heir.
‘Tell them it was me. Say I did it,’ and the words are fatal, but (some stars are dead even when they light the sky, and) she has stopped caring about who he is, and there is something unfathomably terrifying about that – Vinson’s idiocy (is there for the taking) an unexpected salvation.
He knows it will come to trial by combat, knows it deep in his core when he sees her, eyes molten with fury she cannot suppress, meeting his own, and I will breathe you in and suck the essence from your bones, he almost adds, feeling the old desire burn in his insides, to coalesce with the worn stones of the courtroom floor and the poison he has poured there as a ring of shining saliva.
The tang stays in his mouth, even after his father’s people are gone and it is just Paxton, staring through him in their quarters, and he picks up a book he has been trying to read (Songs, Ancient and Modern of the Raka) and traces the white streams between the words and waits.
‘I don’t pretend to understand you, Joren, nor do I expect you to tell me everything. But had you been forced into a blood-oath, we both know what truth would have emerged.’
‘They’ll do no such thing, though. Or didn’t you hear – ’
‘Regardless of your performance in that courtroom,’ Paxton’s voice rising over his own before it softens again. ‘I find myself – lost. At a loss. You can’t… you realise this has marred you now.’
The irony is rich enough to make him laugh aloud, but Pax is weary with this game of long odds (indeed, he has no knowledge of the ultimate prize), voice rising again, ‘And for what, Joren? Notoriety?’ an inevitable crescendo. ‘Protecting young Genlith?’ He pauses, swallows, counts silently in his head while Joren pretends not to notice, tracing white lines between black text. ‘It certainly can’t be for Squire Keladry’s sake.’
‘Obviously not.’
It isn’t, ever – it’s for his own.
‘After all, she has abjured her right to trial by combat.’
The book falls onto the floor, spine-down, pages crushed and Paxton’s eyes (a bright, almost-black) are boring into him, and he has no time to recover himself, both of them dismayed.
‘I thought you had finished with this – this fixation with her! Gods Joren! You’re seventeen – ’ and Paxton grabs his wrists, his shaking hands, and they will bruise, he can feel it, and he wants to say that now he’ll not be able to take the book back to the library but Paxton is looking at his hands, his wrists, his not so pale arms, and there is something so comic about everything he wants to laugh, laugh and laugh and laugh, but he can’t, is too tired, and sometimes shadows stretch across his waking eyes, and he is undone by them, and the only thing that helps is to think of her, fight her, somehow reconnect himself to her life.
Fixation doesn’t even come close to covering the drought in him. The longing for dirty green water.