Post by max on Feb 20, 2010 20:10:13 GMT 10
Bright Star VII
PG
325
Joren
1/E
Kel and Joren on the wall.
_____________________________________
He comes from the mountains, and this is why he is never quite able to stomach the breadth and depth of the muck of Corus, down in the river valley where the earth and sky are blackened by pollution; sometimes he can’t bear to breathe at all (but he does, because he, of all people, is bound to it).
The palace at least was built on high ground, though, and the top of the curtain wall is high enough to catch the Nor’westerlies that tug at his clothes and blast the hair off his face into a messy kind of nimbus and steal the breath right out of his lungs (his mother says ‘You cannot cut it until you are grown, my best beloved. It would be… inauspicious’ and if his father is a god then his mother is a deeper, more ancient force of the universe) if he is lucky.
He learns to watch the forecasts, to meet the winds that are, at least, clear about what they want from him (though sometimes he thinks if he climbed between the merlons they’d hold him up), but a single glance at the clothes she is wearing makes it clear she has not done the same. That the predictions of the weather mages are not why she is here, (and why would they be? She should have been a Northerner, but palaces are built with ornamental lakes, not man-made mountains) and Joren wonders.
He can see in the set of her shoulders that she can hardly bear to stand there with sketchbook in hand, eyes calculating, constantly, how far away the ground is, instead of marvelling at the air, and the taste of victory dissolves on his tongue, rich and sugar-sweet and just a little sickening.
He hasn’t slept in two days and his hands are marble.
(It is not in the nature of stars to fear falling)
He never sees her on the wall again.
PG
325
Joren
1/E
Kel and Joren on the wall.
_____________________________________
He comes from the mountains, and this is why he is never quite able to stomach the breadth and depth of the muck of Corus, down in the river valley where the earth and sky are blackened by pollution; sometimes he can’t bear to breathe at all (but he does, because he, of all people, is bound to it).
The palace at least was built on high ground, though, and the top of the curtain wall is high enough to catch the Nor’westerlies that tug at his clothes and blast the hair off his face into a messy kind of nimbus and steal the breath right out of his lungs (his mother says ‘You cannot cut it until you are grown, my best beloved. It would be… inauspicious’ and if his father is a god then his mother is a deeper, more ancient force of the universe) if he is lucky.
He learns to watch the forecasts, to meet the winds that are, at least, clear about what they want from him (though sometimes he thinks if he climbed between the merlons they’d hold him up), but a single glance at the clothes she is wearing makes it clear she has not done the same. That the predictions of the weather mages are not why she is here, (and why would they be? She should have been a Northerner, but palaces are built with ornamental lakes, not man-made mountains) and Joren wonders.
He can see in the set of her shoulders that she can hardly bear to stand there with sketchbook in hand, eyes calculating, constantly, how far away the ground is, instead of marvelling at the air, and the taste of victory dissolves on his tongue, rich and sugar-sweet and just a little sickening.
He hasn’t slept in two days and his hands are marble.
(It is not in the nature of stars to fear falling)
He never sees her on the wall again.