Post by max on Feb 19, 2010 8:43:19 GMT 10
Title: Bright Star
Rating: G
Length: 325
Competitor: Joren
Round: 1/E
Summary: Joren. Ages might be a bit iffy. I guessed. A series.
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Until he is 13, his mother calls him her brightest star because of his penchant for staying awake into the deepest hours of the night. That year, though, when he finally begins to sleep the nights through (because his father speaks with the authority of a god and there are no healers or witches or chamomile flowers in the shadow of the mountain, and the sachets of dried lavender his mother slips into his pillows are, like her, beautiful and wholly ineffectual), loses the bruisey shadows under his eyes, the chalky whiteness of his skin, and (when the fatigue of it overwhelms him) the erratic, uncontrollable tremor of his hands, the meaning of her words shifts into much more nebulous territory.
Incidentally (although he doesn’t think of it that way) it is also the year she invades him.
Her hazel eyes with their hints of gold (and these are the first colours to vanish when the sun goes down) and her sullen indifference and her hair, above all else (mud-coloured, shorter than his own) are all traits he finds disgustingly ironic, and he is not alone.
They watch her go into his Lord Wyldon’s office with her father (who is short and who are the Mindelans anyway? And these are crimes for which there is no absolution) and Vinson elbows him and says ‘You’d make a prettier girl than that!’ and he doesn’t reply because the Genliths are stewards to Stone Mountain, and he owes Vinson nothing.
Only after he is holding the strange halberd in the centre of her room, silk fibres floating in the air, does he realise that this only proves everything wrong, but he lives his life in spirals of trade-offs; what he gives and what he owes
(and how, and how much)
And his fingers do not tremble even once.
Rating: G
Length: 325
Competitor: Joren
Round: 1/E
Summary: Joren. Ages might be a bit iffy. I guessed. A series.
___________________________________
Until he is 13, his mother calls him her brightest star because of his penchant for staying awake into the deepest hours of the night. That year, though, when he finally begins to sleep the nights through (because his father speaks with the authority of a god and there are no healers or witches or chamomile flowers in the shadow of the mountain, and the sachets of dried lavender his mother slips into his pillows are, like her, beautiful and wholly ineffectual), loses the bruisey shadows under his eyes, the chalky whiteness of his skin, and (when the fatigue of it overwhelms him) the erratic, uncontrollable tremor of his hands, the meaning of her words shifts into much more nebulous territory.
Incidentally (although he doesn’t think of it that way) it is also the year she invades him.
Her hazel eyes with their hints of gold (and these are the first colours to vanish when the sun goes down) and her sullen indifference and her hair, above all else (mud-coloured, shorter than his own) are all traits he finds disgustingly ironic, and he is not alone.
They watch her go into his Lord Wyldon’s office with her father (who is short and who are the Mindelans anyway? And these are crimes for which there is no absolution) and Vinson elbows him and says ‘You’d make a prettier girl than that!’ and he doesn’t reply because the Genliths are stewards to Stone Mountain, and he owes Vinson nothing.
Only after he is holding the strange halberd in the centre of her room, silk fibres floating in the air, does he realise that this only proves everything wrong, but he lives his life in spirals of trade-offs; what he gives and what he owes
(and how, and how much)
And his fingers do not tremble even once.