Post by max on May 29, 2012 20:47:33 GMT 10
Title: What the magpies said
Rating: PG
MPP: #66 (minor to major)
Words: 1462
Summary: Jayat and Nory, some armchair geology, the art of growing up. Post-MS.
Notes: This might turn out to be a two-shot; but I'm not sure how that would go. There's more I want to say about these two, but... mfgh. Anyway. Title is from a poem generations of kids here grow up with, aand I recommend copy+pasting this into a word doc, because it's much easier to read like that.
.
.
She doesn’t go straight away, because immediately after the eruption there are houses to mend and belongings to straighten and kids to soothe or scold out of hyperactivity, depending on the particular kids they happen to be – and besides, he and Oswin mostly spend the whole first week writing down every single thing they observe about the new island (dragging her up Grace to show her the way the currents of the sea are shifting to accommodate the burgeoning land, show her the seabirds flying and squalling, the spectacular moody sunsets) so there isn’t time anyway. But one night after the Emelanese have sailed, he finds her himself, after the kids are in bed and the day is fading to a sweet-smelling dusk, and they sit together on the doorstep and watch the night falling like rain.
It feels like she hasn’t seen him in weeks, but she doesn’t say as much. Then she feels stupid – she has, after all, agreed that one day in the hazy, not-too-distant future she’s no good at properly conceptualising, they’ll wed, so shouldn’t she say something? – so she says, ‘I’ll make some chamomile tea,’ and does just that, leaving him outside while she fusses over sweet dried flowers and trying to find the unchipped mug in the range-lit kitchen gloom before she decides that she’s never bothered to do that for him before and why is she starting now? and by the time she’s come to this conclusion the water’s burbling and boiling and she’s burnt the tea and she’s obviously not cut out to be a wife anyway, so she goes back outside just as Nory, crotchety spinster-in-training. But he smiles in thanks anyway, as if burnt flower tea is all he’s ever wanted, so she settles down next to him to sip her drink in the cooling air and it’s okay when she focuses on all the little, normal things.
Eruptions aside, Jayat still smells of that clean lemony smell he has ever since Tahar took him for her ‘prentice. Still wears his hair in the fine, tight braids she used to tease him for a hundred years ago. Eruptions aside, this is still her favourite time of day on Starns; everything fallen beneath Grace’s mantle of shadow, the sky a pale blue, bright only because everything else is so dark. The earth losing its sun-warmth, the now and then chirp of dozy crickets mingling through the now and then rustle of trees. Upstairs in the house, the oceanic rhythm of the kids’ breathing in sleep and Oswin dozing over his book so his spectacles slip off the end of his nose and he wakes with a little start, nods off again. Solace in the familiarity of it all, and she wonders if marriage could be like this, tea and the dark, Jayat right beside her so she doesn’t need to look to feel him there. He’s saying something about the evening star – probably what he always says, which is that it isn’t actually a star, which she knows, and that it’s also the morning star, which she also knows – and she holds her cup with the tips of her fingers, not really listening to his words so much as his voice.
She’s forgotten so much about her mother and father, but there is this. She is perhaps four years old in a new dress the colour of the roses her father grows because her mother is home from sea, and while pa fashions a lucky dolphin from a piece of cherry wood (not lucky enough as it would turn out, for Queen Pauha would die with the dolphin in her hand) her mother peels a clementine in a single vibrant rind. Everything is glazed in morning light.
She sits on the doorstep of her second father’s home not listening to her sort-of not-quite husband-to-be’s words, this bright shard of memory come to her, and Jayat touches her arm. ‘Alright Nory?’
And her mother had once told her, while they watched her father wrap the legs of an injured kid, that one of the three things to look for in a husband was kindness to children and animals. She is neither anymore, but she leans into Jayat as she’s seen other people do and is surprised by how much reassurance there is in the fact of his warmth, his strength. He is all muscle, because life in the islands makes hard workers even of its mage-born, but his arm comes around her to cup her shoulder with characteristic gentleness. ‘It’s late.’
‘I’ll go,’ he answers, though he doesn’t move. She is aware that she has never been held like this before – too full of raging grief, no one had dared touch her – as she is aware that he has never held anyone this way before, either. There is novelty in it – luminous newness, her heartbeat quickening with it – but also improbable familiarity. For all this, when he shifts incrementally she responds to the movement to accommodate his leaving; turning politely as he leans forward to rise.
Except that he doesn’t.
Accidentally and inadvertently they have moved as a mirror; face to face, scant heartbeats apart. There are cups in her hands, his easy breathing grazing her skin. The catch of his lungs felt, although she can’t hear it. Then she closes her eyes.
*
It’s her first kiss, so she feels it through all of her biology. The hollows of her bones resonating with the sunburst delight of it, tendons quivering with strange and holy music. Jayat’s fingertips cradle her jaw, his other hand slipping to her waist, pulling her closer to him with an urgency that reduces her limbs to treacle. The cups slip from her hands to the step beneath them; silver delirium broken with the spill of dregs.
She comes back into herself – Nory again, with Jayatin holding her as nobody else ever has because she wouldn’t let anyone but him. The astonishing heat of his body, the hand at her midriff. They have lost all colour with the white horizon light – everything is grey and black and blurred; the world as seen through dark gauze – but his eyes are crescents of pearl.
Then he says ‘I’ll let you go to bed, then.’
‘Thanks.’
Her voice small and slightly croaky, the way it goes when she’s trying not to cry. Her lips almost burning, the way they tingle after she eats the spiced rice in the Sustree tavern – but somehow both now are sweet. She wants to say something more, without knowing what words to use, holds her silence with her body all filled with what there are no words for.
It isn’t enough, but nothing in her has ever been enough. Not enough to stop her mother leaving; not enough to stop her father dying. Jayat has always treated her as if she’s worth more than this, but Jayat has always valued things differently than other people. And even so, when he rises he lets her go, doesn’t try to kiss her again, and it’s probably for the best because she isn’t sure she wouldn’t have punched him out for it otherwise.
Instead, he gives her back the cups she’s all but forgotten and says, ‘Thanks for the tea.’
She nods, then guesses she should say something back – is that what people do? Say things after? ‘Thanks for… visiting.’
A smile, the corner of his mouth twitching up at how inadequate it is. Then he steps down to the garden path. ‘Night, Nory.’
*
She doesn’t stay outside until he’s out of sight, because the things people do in the love songs are stupid when it’s cold and the wind is picking up. Instead she goes in when he reaches the gate, rinses out cups and pot, wraps herself in her soft brown shawl. Instead, there is the kitchen lit by the scant and rich rose glow of the stove: she stares into its embers and thinks about things. The house is dark and all asleep apart from her; she has no idea what time it is, nor much of a desire to find it out – time had stopped when they had embraced, or stretched out of all proportion, like cloth pulled and warped. It feels stupid to think about it as it had appeared before; unnecessary, the onward progression of hours when she has come to a place without. Unnecessary, when in her mind’s eye, she watches him going up the mountain path because Tahar makes him map the heavens on clear nights, imagining the witchy flare of magelight on his forehead to light the way.
Unnecessary when there is his name, rolling through her until it has no meaning except as a sound: except as what she feels most.
Rating: PG
MPP: #66 (minor to major)
Words: 1462
Summary: Jayat and Nory, some armchair geology, the art of growing up. Post-MS.
Notes: This might turn out to be a two-shot; but I'm not sure how that would go. There's more I want to say about these two, but... mfgh. Anyway. Title is from a poem generations of kids here grow up with, aand I recommend copy+pasting this into a word doc, because it's much easier to read like that.
.
.
She doesn’t go straight away, because immediately after the eruption there are houses to mend and belongings to straighten and kids to soothe or scold out of hyperactivity, depending on the particular kids they happen to be – and besides, he and Oswin mostly spend the whole first week writing down every single thing they observe about the new island (dragging her up Grace to show her the way the currents of the sea are shifting to accommodate the burgeoning land, show her the seabirds flying and squalling, the spectacular moody sunsets) so there isn’t time anyway. But one night after the Emelanese have sailed, he finds her himself, after the kids are in bed and the day is fading to a sweet-smelling dusk, and they sit together on the doorstep and watch the night falling like rain.
It feels like she hasn’t seen him in weeks, but she doesn’t say as much. Then she feels stupid – she has, after all, agreed that one day in the hazy, not-too-distant future she’s no good at properly conceptualising, they’ll wed, so shouldn’t she say something? – so she says, ‘I’ll make some chamomile tea,’ and does just that, leaving him outside while she fusses over sweet dried flowers and trying to find the unchipped mug in the range-lit kitchen gloom before she decides that she’s never bothered to do that for him before and why is she starting now? and by the time she’s come to this conclusion the water’s burbling and boiling and she’s burnt the tea and she’s obviously not cut out to be a wife anyway, so she goes back outside just as Nory, crotchety spinster-in-training. But he smiles in thanks anyway, as if burnt flower tea is all he’s ever wanted, so she settles down next to him to sip her drink in the cooling air and it’s okay when she focuses on all the little, normal things.
Eruptions aside, Jayat still smells of that clean lemony smell he has ever since Tahar took him for her ‘prentice. Still wears his hair in the fine, tight braids she used to tease him for a hundred years ago. Eruptions aside, this is still her favourite time of day on Starns; everything fallen beneath Grace’s mantle of shadow, the sky a pale blue, bright only because everything else is so dark. The earth losing its sun-warmth, the now and then chirp of dozy crickets mingling through the now and then rustle of trees. Upstairs in the house, the oceanic rhythm of the kids’ breathing in sleep and Oswin dozing over his book so his spectacles slip off the end of his nose and he wakes with a little start, nods off again. Solace in the familiarity of it all, and she wonders if marriage could be like this, tea and the dark, Jayat right beside her so she doesn’t need to look to feel him there. He’s saying something about the evening star – probably what he always says, which is that it isn’t actually a star, which she knows, and that it’s also the morning star, which she also knows – and she holds her cup with the tips of her fingers, not really listening to his words so much as his voice.
She’s forgotten so much about her mother and father, but there is this. She is perhaps four years old in a new dress the colour of the roses her father grows because her mother is home from sea, and while pa fashions a lucky dolphin from a piece of cherry wood (not lucky enough as it would turn out, for Queen Pauha would die with the dolphin in her hand) her mother peels a clementine in a single vibrant rind. Everything is glazed in morning light.
She sits on the doorstep of her second father’s home not listening to her sort-of not-quite husband-to-be’s words, this bright shard of memory come to her, and Jayat touches her arm. ‘Alright Nory?’
And her mother had once told her, while they watched her father wrap the legs of an injured kid, that one of the three things to look for in a husband was kindness to children and animals. She is neither anymore, but she leans into Jayat as she’s seen other people do and is surprised by how much reassurance there is in the fact of his warmth, his strength. He is all muscle, because life in the islands makes hard workers even of its mage-born, but his arm comes around her to cup her shoulder with characteristic gentleness. ‘It’s late.’
‘I’ll go,’ he answers, though he doesn’t move. She is aware that she has never been held like this before – too full of raging grief, no one had dared touch her – as she is aware that he has never held anyone this way before, either. There is novelty in it – luminous newness, her heartbeat quickening with it – but also improbable familiarity. For all this, when he shifts incrementally she responds to the movement to accommodate his leaving; turning politely as he leans forward to rise.
Except that he doesn’t.
Accidentally and inadvertently they have moved as a mirror; face to face, scant heartbeats apart. There are cups in her hands, his easy breathing grazing her skin. The catch of his lungs felt, although she can’t hear it. Then she closes her eyes.
*
It’s her first kiss, so she feels it through all of her biology. The hollows of her bones resonating with the sunburst delight of it, tendons quivering with strange and holy music. Jayat’s fingertips cradle her jaw, his other hand slipping to her waist, pulling her closer to him with an urgency that reduces her limbs to treacle. The cups slip from her hands to the step beneath them; silver delirium broken with the spill of dregs.
She comes back into herself – Nory again, with Jayatin holding her as nobody else ever has because she wouldn’t let anyone but him. The astonishing heat of his body, the hand at her midriff. They have lost all colour with the white horizon light – everything is grey and black and blurred; the world as seen through dark gauze – but his eyes are crescents of pearl.
Then he says ‘I’ll let you go to bed, then.’
‘Thanks.’
Her voice small and slightly croaky, the way it goes when she’s trying not to cry. Her lips almost burning, the way they tingle after she eats the spiced rice in the Sustree tavern – but somehow both now are sweet. She wants to say something more, without knowing what words to use, holds her silence with her body all filled with what there are no words for.
It isn’t enough, but nothing in her has ever been enough. Not enough to stop her mother leaving; not enough to stop her father dying. Jayat has always treated her as if she’s worth more than this, but Jayat has always valued things differently than other people. And even so, when he rises he lets her go, doesn’t try to kiss her again, and it’s probably for the best because she isn’t sure she wouldn’t have punched him out for it otherwise.
Instead, he gives her back the cups she’s all but forgotten and says, ‘Thanks for the tea.’
She nods, then guesses she should say something back – is that what people do? Say things after? ‘Thanks for… visiting.’
A smile, the corner of his mouth twitching up at how inadequate it is. Then he steps down to the garden path. ‘Night, Nory.’
*
She doesn’t stay outside until he’s out of sight, because the things people do in the love songs are stupid when it’s cold and the wind is picking up. Instead she goes in when he reaches the gate, rinses out cups and pot, wraps herself in her soft brown shawl. Instead, there is the kitchen lit by the scant and rich rose glow of the stove: she stares into its embers and thinks about things. The house is dark and all asleep apart from her; she has no idea what time it is, nor much of a desire to find it out – time had stopped when they had embraced, or stretched out of all proportion, like cloth pulled and warped. It feels stupid to think about it as it had appeared before; unnecessary, the onward progression of hours when she has come to a place without. Unnecessary, when in her mind’s eye, she watches him going up the mountain path because Tahar makes him map the heavens on clear nights, imagining the witchy flare of magelight on his forehead to light the way.
Unnecessary when there is his name, rolling through her until it has no meaning except as a sound: except as what she feels most.
Maybe once we'd have seen it during Smackdown!