Post by luinae on Jul 2, 2011 9:54:07 GMT 10
Title: Alive
Rating: PG-13
Couple: Lark/Yazmin
Event: 400 word dash
Words: 400
Summary: Yazmin doesn't care for those rulers on their thrones.
Lark stirs and coughs and rolls over in her bed, and Yazmin shrinks back into the shadows. She rests her aching back against the wall and breathes in the silence, which burns her throat and threatens poverty with every breath. She sighs, and the night sinks around them.
Summersea is asleep, in the Mire, its citizens forced to sleep after another gruelling day that none of them were sure they would live through. And in the morning, Yazmin thinks bitterly, they’ll drag some more bodies out of their houses and the rich will cover their noses and we’ll all think good thing is wasn’t us.
The whole city is where they should be, except for Yazmin.
They have separate rooms, but Yazmin doesn’t like hers, and if she was pressed to admit it she would say she was scared for the tiny, delicate tumbler who made her living with Yazmin.
But as she watches Lark sleep, with her delicate breaths and sleek black hair, she can’t help but wonder about her own life. Yazmin has spent a long time wishing to be rich, and she’s beginning to realize she doesn’t want that at all. She looks at Lark, who is young and beautiful and not jaded yet, and knows that if she was rich she wouldn’t appreciate the warm smell of bread or a fire at night or a beautiful dance on the streets of the Mire.
Those in thrones can’t see that, what Lark and Yazmin do, the frail balance when you live between life and death. They don’t see how sad life is, and how very beautiful it is at the same time.
Yazmin will care for Lark in this Summersea Mire, because she is worth a hundred bloody rulers on their thrones. One perfect little dancer in a world trying to make her anything but.
The air shifts and the windows creak, and dawn is coming again in this doomed Mire. They’re all doomed. Yazmin in particular. She’s doomed to dance and dance until her feet are so disfigured she won’t even remember what they look like and then dance and dance for the next lot of poor people who come along. By the time she’s fifty no emperor will want to see her dance because she’ll be old and wrinkled and very, very tired.
But Lark will be alive to see it, emperors and dukes be damned.
Rating: PG-13
Couple: Lark/Yazmin
Event: 400 word dash
Words: 400
Summary: Yazmin doesn't care for those rulers on their thrones.
Lark stirs and coughs and rolls over in her bed, and Yazmin shrinks back into the shadows. She rests her aching back against the wall and breathes in the silence, which burns her throat and threatens poverty with every breath. She sighs, and the night sinks around them.
Summersea is asleep, in the Mire, its citizens forced to sleep after another gruelling day that none of them were sure they would live through. And in the morning, Yazmin thinks bitterly, they’ll drag some more bodies out of their houses and the rich will cover their noses and we’ll all think good thing is wasn’t us.
The whole city is where they should be, except for Yazmin.
They have separate rooms, but Yazmin doesn’t like hers, and if she was pressed to admit it she would say she was scared for the tiny, delicate tumbler who made her living with Yazmin.
But as she watches Lark sleep, with her delicate breaths and sleek black hair, she can’t help but wonder about her own life. Yazmin has spent a long time wishing to be rich, and she’s beginning to realize she doesn’t want that at all. She looks at Lark, who is young and beautiful and not jaded yet, and knows that if she was rich she wouldn’t appreciate the warm smell of bread or a fire at night or a beautiful dance on the streets of the Mire.
Those in thrones can’t see that, what Lark and Yazmin do, the frail balance when you live between life and death. They don’t see how sad life is, and how very beautiful it is at the same time.
Yazmin will care for Lark in this Summersea Mire, because she is worth a hundred bloody rulers on their thrones. One perfect little dancer in a world trying to make her anything but.
The air shifts and the windows creak, and dawn is coming again in this doomed Mire. They’re all doomed. Yazmin in particular. She’s doomed to dance and dance until her feet are so disfigured she won’t even remember what they look like and then dance and dance for the next lot of poor people who come along. By the time she’s fifty no emperor will want to see her dance because she’ll be old and wrinkled and very, very tired.
But Lark will be alive to see it, emperors and dukes be damned.