Post by max on Apr 12, 2012 15:49:51 GMT 10
The Barbarian Invasions
PG
#65 – Cheaters never prosper
Wyldon considers the necessary evils of entrenched paradoxes. Or, Zen and the art of concession.
Probably terribly disjointed, and multiple-tensed. Nor particularly cheaty centric. More in keeping with what Lisa actually said in the prompt thread (I hope)?
Whatever. I’m very tired.
Edit - I just also realised how repetitive it is. Sorry. I'll fix it when I can think about it.
________________
The code of chivalry is clear about falsehood.
Many years ago he had come to the palace dreaming of how things would change when he was only old enough to fix them (his brother following him into knighthood, enough money from the great deeds he would perform to pay for his sister – half-wild with motherlessness, and their father all broken-hearted by the grief – to go through the convent, make a marriage befitting of a daughter of Cavall. One day, a wife of his own, and children who would never be without the parents they deserved) and felt for the first time the jarring shock of the dishonesties which were meant to exemplify their honour.
Nonetheless, like nearly every other child in the same position ever had, he had stood before his training master the Duke of Naxen and felt the lies spilling like honey in syrup-sticky trails down his chin: falls his Grace knew he was far too nimble-footed to have ever committed – later, philosophical differences it was well within his power to ignore. Except that he did fall. Couldn’t disregard them. A departure from real life everyone pretended was somehow rendered possible by the geographical accident of being wards of the King – for all that here, in the core of the kingdom, they were meant to observe these things over and above anything else.
Even she would bow to it; treading too fine a line to stretch custom more than her bare existence already did (doing only exactly what they were meant to, and he would slough off the disappointment before it had the chance to properly consciously coalesce upon his skin at all): on the first day of the first year she earned the right to be there, would be compelled to stumble into another child in order to save him, too, from that greater of two evils. (As they were perceived in the fishbowl of palace life, anyway.)
Owen of Jesslaw’s eyes would always radiate his guilty conscience in the training-master’s office, because Owen of Jesslaw had grown in a world of permanent chiaroscuro from the day his mother was killed. For him, there would never be tolerated white lies; only intolerable deceits. No grey area at all beyond his almost lavender-hued irises. At seventeen he would follow Keladry behind enemy lines and be the only one of her party to break their highest laws in doing so because there would be no other option, and at the knife-edge divide of two kingdoms, the boy would meet his gaze squarely and this would be all to flash through his mind.
Chivalry clear about honour as it is all things.
Owen’s eyes sorrowful, and perfectly clear.
PG
#65 – Cheaters never prosper
Wyldon considers the necessary evils of entrenched paradoxes. Or, Zen and the art of concession.
Probably terribly disjointed, and multiple-tensed. Nor particularly cheaty centric. More in keeping with what Lisa actually said in the prompt thread (I hope)?
Whatever. I’m very tired.
Edit - I just also realised how repetitive it is. Sorry. I'll fix it when I can think about it.
________________
The code of chivalry is clear about falsehood.
Many years ago he had come to the palace dreaming of how things would change when he was only old enough to fix them (his brother following him into knighthood, enough money from the great deeds he would perform to pay for his sister – half-wild with motherlessness, and their father all broken-hearted by the grief – to go through the convent, make a marriage befitting of a daughter of Cavall. One day, a wife of his own, and children who would never be without the parents they deserved) and felt for the first time the jarring shock of the dishonesties which were meant to exemplify their honour.
Nonetheless, like nearly every other child in the same position ever had, he had stood before his training master the Duke of Naxen and felt the lies spilling like honey in syrup-sticky trails down his chin: falls his Grace knew he was far too nimble-footed to have ever committed – later, philosophical differences it was well within his power to ignore. Except that he did fall. Couldn’t disregard them. A departure from real life everyone pretended was somehow rendered possible by the geographical accident of being wards of the King – for all that here, in the core of the kingdom, they were meant to observe these things over and above anything else.
Even she would bow to it; treading too fine a line to stretch custom more than her bare existence already did (doing only exactly what they were meant to, and he would slough off the disappointment before it had the chance to properly consciously coalesce upon his skin at all): on the first day of the first year she earned the right to be there, would be compelled to stumble into another child in order to save him, too, from that greater of two evils. (As they were perceived in the fishbowl of palace life, anyway.)
Owen of Jesslaw’s eyes would always radiate his guilty conscience in the training-master’s office, because Owen of Jesslaw had grown in a world of permanent chiaroscuro from the day his mother was killed. For him, there would never be tolerated white lies; only intolerable deceits. No grey area at all beyond his almost lavender-hued irises. At seventeen he would follow Keladry behind enemy lines and be the only one of her party to break their highest laws in doing so because there would be no other option, and at the knife-edge divide of two kingdoms, the boy would meet his gaze squarely and this would be all to flash through his mind.
Chivalry clear about honour as it is all things.
Owen’s eyes sorrowful, and perfectly clear.
Maybe once we'd have seen it during Smackdown!