Post by indifferentred on Jul 30, 2012 19:31:33 GMT 10
Title: Pillar of Strength
Rating: PG
Team: PotS/DL
Prompt: Granite
Word Count: 376
Summary (and any warnings): Strength does not always come with a sword…
Notes: Quite angsty, but I am really growing to love this odd pairing (suggested to me by a friend a while ago)…
If the Cavalls are a family of stone, then Cathrea of Cavall is granite. Hard, tough. She would, she thinks, be marble, were it not for her plainness. She does not shine like Eiralys the diamond, nor crumble like chalky, nervous Sunarine, nor even is she soft yet hard-wearing, like the soapstone of Margarry. She has been this way since her childhood, the last to weep, the last to admit defeat.
When she meets Thom of Pirate’s Swoop, his energy and life envelop her. He is not stone, although his will is as inexorable as her own, an almost magnetic pull. He is rather water, flowing around her, trying to wear down her resistance with soft words, and laughter and kisses that start to rub away her sharp edges. She pulls away and remains unmoved, even though inside, she burns like the magma that the bio-mages say ‘she’ is made from. She is a Priestess of the Goddess and she is granite.
When Papa dies - a stray arrow, and why was he even out in the field? - and Mama is transfixed with her grief, and her sisters are made ghosts by their loss, Cathrea takes charge. She receives her father’s preserved body, recognises the distinctive trace of Thom’s magic in the spellwork, all freshness and sea-salt; she holds the vigil the night before his funeral, watching the shadows of his still, hard face in the shifting candlelight; she does not cry. She is her father’s daughter and she is granite.
Mama cannot bear to remain at Cavall, after…that, and the temple have given their implacable Daughter a leave of absence for her grief, so Cathrea forges a path back to Corus too. The war is winding down, and Thom is there, engaged in a series of delicate experiments with killing devices and dark magic in darker rooms; his familiar face, made thin and haggard by the horrors of his work, the ink-stains on his fingers, his red hair tousled from where he has brushed his hands through it countless times in frustration - for a moment her stomach clenches and she wants - what? She is tired, tired of being the dependable one, the hard one - but she is granite and granite admits of no help.
Rating: PG
Team: PotS/DL
Prompt: Granite
Word Count: 376
Summary (and any warnings): Strength does not always come with a sword…
Notes: Quite angsty, but I am really growing to love this odd pairing (suggested to me by a friend a while ago)…
If the Cavalls are a family of stone, then Cathrea of Cavall is granite. Hard, tough. She would, she thinks, be marble, were it not for her plainness. She does not shine like Eiralys the diamond, nor crumble like chalky, nervous Sunarine, nor even is she soft yet hard-wearing, like the soapstone of Margarry. She has been this way since her childhood, the last to weep, the last to admit defeat.
When she meets Thom of Pirate’s Swoop, his energy and life envelop her. He is not stone, although his will is as inexorable as her own, an almost magnetic pull. He is rather water, flowing around her, trying to wear down her resistance with soft words, and laughter and kisses that start to rub away her sharp edges. She pulls away and remains unmoved, even though inside, she burns like the magma that the bio-mages say ‘she’ is made from. She is a Priestess of the Goddess and she is granite.
When Papa dies - a stray arrow, and why was he even out in the field? - and Mama is transfixed with her grief, and her sisters are made ghosts by their loss, Cathrea takes charge. She receives her father’s preserved body, recognises the distinctive trace of Thom’s magic in the spellwork, all freshness and sea-salt; she holds the vigil the night before his funeral, watching the shadows of his still, hard face in the shifting candlelight; she does not cry. She is her father’s daughter and she is granite.
Mama cannot bear to remain at Cavall, after…that, and the temple have given their implacable Daughter a leave of absence for her grief, so Cathrea forges a path back to Corus too. The war is winding down, and Thom is there, engaged in a series of delicate experiments with killing devices and dark magic in darker rooms; his familiar face, made thin and haggard by the horrors of his work, the ink-stains on his fingers, his red hair tousled from where he has brushed his hands through it countless times in frustration - for a moment her stomach clenches and she wants - what? She is tired, tired of being the dependable one, the hard one - but she is granite and granite admits of no help.