Post by max on Jun 16, 2012 6:51:40 GMT 10
Series: Firebirds
Title: Butterflies and Hurricanes
Rating: PG
Event: 4x100 word relay
Words: 400 (+ titles; 422 in total).
Summary: (including warnings): Four times Zahir and Faleron don’t end up together. (Character death).
Notes: ghilān=ghilan with a macron to be stupid=ghouls in Persian. Which are said to eat the lost in deserts, and, I reckon, might be a bit more hardcore in Tortall. Drabbles are in chronological order from hypothetical earliest to latest, by the POTS kind of timeline.
There is no reason for the bibleing other than the fact I’ve had <3 hours sleep in the last 40 hours, and this seems to make me more Catholic than usual, also. Further, if these make no sense, there are explanatory notes at the end.
.
.
(i put away childish things)
They roar up out of the desert like the nightmare they are, but the cyclopean walls of Persepolis were built by djinn, etched in the language of the winds, before this was lost. Never any protection against the Ysandir or the Tortallan King, but the first time in 400 years the ghilān dash themselves against the city’s wards, he thanks the gods their mercy, and refuses to leave his parents’ side.
‘My first duty is here,’ he tells them, and bows, brow to the cool tiled floor.
And his mother’s eyes are filled with tears when she kisses his hands.
(for thine is the Kingdom)
Hurdik lore attests that when Father Universe and Mother Flame created the world, Mithros Lord of Men was born high in the hill country wildernesses, hence their pellucid splendour.
The day they spring the bandit camp this is all that comes to him – crystalline purity of air, impossible concavity of sky – even as Kel screams to move Faleron; the arrow so quick and sharp he doesn’t realise its passage at all until he’s nourishing parched earth with the carmine secrets of his heart staring up into eternity.
For a moment, all there is is heaven-blueness.
Then he closes his eyes.
(until lawlessness was found in you)
Kalasin at sixteen is exquisite as only the young and damned can be. Her high K’miri cheekbones. Her grief-molten (Conté) eyes. At court (the only place she now speaks to her parents) she seems to glow (burn) with terrible light, illuminating their duplicity like a star.
She is meant to sail two days after he finds Faleron holding her, sobbing into his shoulder. Later, he will understand the catalysing potency of the instant (the rage, the reckless despair) – immediately, though, there is only the dark-eyed glance he receives over her dark hair.
Something like resignation in it; something like fear.
(above all else, guard your heart)
You’ve known since you were ten he is the loveliest person you’ve ever seen; luminous in a moonlight-coloured way belying the shadows ever beneath his eyes, their beneath-the-bones chill.
Once you ransom oil from a secret desert grove, kneading distilled sunlight into his skin as if this will be enough to counteract the terrible dreams.
Once you graft yourself along his body, as if this will be enough to reignite the brilliance of his eyes – but it’s never long before they re-cloud with unutterable horrors.
And it’s then that you realise you don’t know why it let him live at all.
.
.
What if…
(1) The Immortals war made Zahir want to stick with his family rather than travel to Corus (so he never tried for his knighthood, etc.)
(2) Faleron died in the Page skirmish.
(3) Faleron ran away with Kalasin (I actually have sooo many never-finished fics about Kalasin doing this kind of thing it’s not funny. Usually to Sarain and her grandmother’s clan)
(4) Joren survived (sort of).
Title: Butterflies and Hurricanes
Rating: PG
Event: 4x100 word relay
Words: 400 (+ titles; 422 in total).
Summary: (including warnings): Four times Zahir and Faleron don’t end up together. (Character death).
Notes: ghilān=ghilan with a macron to be stupid=ghouls in Persian. Which are said to eat the lost in deserts, and, I reckon, might be a bit more hardcore in Tortall. Drabbles are in chronological order from hypothetical earliest to latest, by the POTS kind of timeline.
There is no reason for the bibleing other than the fact I’ve had <3 hours sleep in the last 40 hours, and this seems to make me more Catholic than usual, also. Further, if these make no sense, there are explanatory notes at the end.
.
.
(i put away childish things)
They roar up out of the desert like the nightmare they are, but the cyclopean walls of Persepolis were built by djinn, etched in the language of the winds, before this was lost. Never any protection against the Ysandir or the Tortallan King, but the first time in 400 years the ghilān dash themselves against the city’s wards, he thanks the gods their mercy, and refuses to leave his parents’ side.
‘My first duty is here,’ he tells them, and bows, brow to the cool tiled floor.
And his mother’s eyes are filled with tears when she kisses his hands.
(for thine is the Kingdom)
Hurdik lore attests that when Father Universe and Mother Flame created the world, Mithros Lord of Men was born high in the hill country wildernesses, hence their pellucid splendour.
The day they spring the bandit camp this is all that comes to him – crystalline purity of air, impossible concavity of sky – even as Kel screams to move Faleron; the arrow so quick and sharp he doesn’t realise its passage at all until he’s nourishing parched earth with the carmine secrets of his heart staring up into eternity.
For a moment, all there is is heaven-blueness.
Then he closes his eyes.
(until lawlessness was found in you)
Kalasin at sixteen is exquisite as only the young and damned can be. Her high K’miri cheekbones. Her grief-molten (Conté) eyes. At court (the only place she now speaks to her parents) she seems to glow (burn) with terrible light, illuminating their duplicity like a star.
She is meant to sail two days after he finds Faleron holding her, sobbing into his shoulder. Later, he will understand the catalysing potency of the instant (the rage, the reckless despair) – immediately, though, there is only the dark-eyed glance he receives over her dark hair.
Something like resignation in it; something like fear.
(above all else, guard your heart)
You’ve known since you were ten he is the loveliest person you’ve ever seen; luminous in a moonlight-coloured way belying the shadows ever beneath his eyes, their beneath-the-bones chill.
Once you ransom oil from a secret desert grove, kneading distilled sunlight into his skin as if this will be enough to counteract the terrible dreams.
Once you graft yourself along his body, as if this will be enough to reignite the brilliance of his eyes – but it’s never long before they re-cloud with unutterable horrors.
And it’s then that you realise you don’t know why it let him live at all.
.
.
What if…
(1) The Immortals war made Zahir want to stick with his family rather than travel to Corus (so he never tried for his knighthood, etc.)
(2) Faleron died in the Page skirmish.
(3) Faleron ran away with Kalasin (I actually have sooo many never-finished fics about Kalasin doing this kind of thing it’s not funny. Usually to Sarain and her grandmother’s clan)
(4) Joren survived (sort of).