Post by Seek on May 14, 2013 6:23:37 GMT 10
Title: Faithful
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 558 words.
Pairing: Alanna/Jonathan
Round/Fight: 2A
Summary: AU, Alanna and Faithful meet again, and go off to find Jon. Set in the Barren Boughs and Dry Stones universe.
Warnings: Very, very dark.
-
Despite her exhaustion, Alanna snaps awake, and immediately reaches for Lightning’s hilt. The battered crystal in the sword hilt has gone quiescent again, and she can’t quite say why but she feels relieved about that discovery.
She doesn’t know what’s startled her awake, but in a few moments, a tiny dark shape pads into the small clearing where she’s set up her make-shift hammock. Purple eyes glance at Alanna, and purring, Faithful licks himself.
“Faithful!” Alanna exclaims, and manages to scramble up to her feet to grab him. He mreows! in protest but she hugs him—she’d been too pressed to think about Faithful’s absence, and when she had the space to remember, she’d thought him dead. “What happened?”
Put me down, Faithful manages to sound perfectly disgruntled, and when she does set him down, he starts to wash. Jon’s crazy woman shouldn’t be allowed around axes.
“Princess Josiane?” Alanna asks, grinning widely in spite of herself. She remembered that summer of poisonous rumours from Corus; Jon with Delia of Eldorne, with Princess Josiane Rittevon of the Copper Islands…a seemingly endless series of faces that had almost earned Jon a reputation as a rake. “Where did you go?”
Here, and there, Faithful says, and when she opens her mouth to complain that’s not being particularly helpful, he adds, you must move! They’re coming from the palace.
Alanna blinks. “They?” she asks slowly, thinking back to the nine human-like figures in the blackness. A blackness of eyes, teeth. The prickling sensation between her shoulder-blades intensifies, as does the feeling of being watched, of giant wings flapping unseen in the dark.
It might have been day, she can’t tell.
Old, Faithful says, helpfully. Older than you know.
Alanna scowls as she quickly packs away her things. She’s loosened the saddle girth on Moonlight, and now she tightens them again. “Is it just me or are you being exceptionally cryptic today?” she demands.
Faithful yawns, and says, put me in the saddle cup. Jon’s north of here. You have a long way to go.
Muttering about cats that are too smug for their own good, Alanna drops Faithful into the saddle cup constructed especially for him, and then swings her aching, exhausted muscles up into the saddle and then rides north.
-
The voices of the Bazhir flood up into Jon’s consciousness, now that he lets them. He sifts through them, as he’s forced himself to learn, with the memory of Ali Muktab to guide him. Focus on the voice, tease apart the strands…Muktab whispers.
Jon thinks, wryly, that if there isn’t anything more insane, it’s listening to a voice in his head tell him how to manage another voice in his head. Coram is muted, solid iron, tested in the fires of adversity. He’s gotten the measure of Alanna’s servant, and respects the man. He’s never really known Alanna among the Bazhir, no matter how often he searches and teases apart the strands that are voices of Bazhir communing.
But he’s scried Alanna, and she him. A streak of violet laces itself through his Gift, and he hasn’t the faintest idea why or what it means.
He can’t hear her voice, as he hears the Bazhir. Somehow though, he knows: Alanna’s moving, right now. She’s coming to find him.
And he’d better have their next move worked out by then.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 558 words.
Pairing: Alanna/Jonathan
Round/Fight: 2A
Summary: AU, Alanna and Faithful meet again, and go off to find Jon. Set in the Barren Boughs and Dry Stones universe.
Warnings: Very, very dark.
-
Despite her exhaustion, Alanna snaps awake, and immediately reaches for Lightning’s hilt. The battered crystal in the sword hilt has gone quiescent again, and she can’t quite say why but she feels relieved about that discovery.
She doesn’t know what’s startled her awake, but in a few moments, a tiny dark shape pads into the small clearing where she’s set up her make-shift hammock. Purple eyes glance at Alanna, and purring, Faithful licks himself.
“Faithful!” Alanna exclaims, and manages to scramble up to her feet to grab him. He mreows! in protest but she hugs him—she’d been too pressed to think about Faithful’s absence, and when she had the space to remember, she’d thought him dead. “What happened?”
Put me down, Faithful manages to sound perfectly disgruntled, and when she does set him down, he starts to wash. Jon’s crazy woman shouldn’t be allowed around axes.
“Princess Josiane?” Alanna asks, grinning widely in spite of herself. She remembered that summer of poisonous rumours from Corus; Jon with Delia of Eldorne, with Princess Josiane Rittevon of the Copper Islands…a seemingly endless series of faces that had almost earned Jon a reputation as a rake. “Where did you go?”
Here, and there, Faithful says, and when she opens her mouth to complain that’s not being particularly helpful, he adds, you must move! They’re coming from the palace.
Alanna blinks. “They?” she asks slowly, thinking back to the nine human-like figures in the blackness. A blackness of eyes, teeth. The prickling sensation between her shoulder-blades intensifies, as does the feeling of being watched, of giant wings flapping unseen in the dark.
It might have been day, she can’t tell.
Old, Faithful says, helpfully. Older than you know.
Alanna scowls as she quickly packs away her things. She’s loosened the saddle girth on Moonlight, and now she tightens them again. “Is it just me or are you being exceptionally cryptic today?” she demands.
Faithful yawns, and says, put me in the saddle cup. Jon’s north of here. You have a long way to go.
Muttering about cats that are too smug for their own good, Alanna drops Faithful into the saddle cup constructed especially for him, and then swings her aching, exhausted muscles up into the saddle and then rides north.
-
The voices of the Bazhir flood up into Jon’s consciousness, now that he lets them. He sifts through them, as he’s forced himself to learn, with the memory of Ali Muktab to guide him. Focus on the voice, tease apart the strands…Muktab whispers.
Jon thinks, wryly, that if there isn’t anything more insane, it’s listening to a voice in his head tell him how to manage another voice in his head. Coram is muted, solid iron, tested in the fires of adversity. He’s gotten the measure of Alanna’s servant, and respects the man. He’s never really known Alanna among the Bazhir, no matter how often he searches and teases apart the strands that are voices of Bazhir communing.
But he’s scried Alanna, and she him. A streak of violet laces itself through his Gift, and he hasn’t the faintest idea why or what it means.
He can’t hear her voice, as he hears the Bazhir. Somehow though, he knows: Alanna’s moving, right now. She’s coming to find him.
And he’d better have their next move worked out by then.