Post by max on Jan 10, 2017 14:13:36 GMT 10
Title: Erat Hora
Rating: PG
For: wordy
Prompt: Aniki/Rosto or Aniki and Rosto
Summary: Meditations on you and me. Aniki/Rosto introspections.
Notes and Warnings: Happy overdue Wishing Tree!
All of them have days when the ghosts whisper to them so that they can hear, Beka or no. Days that make Kora turn brittle with the memory of a sister, long dead. Her skin the only fragile shell to contain the fire which threatens to rise anew, burst forth out of the ember of her heart to consume more than just a wicked, long dead man. Days when he ceases to sleep altogether, awake after Aniki sleeps and still after she sleeps again, unbearably vigilant to the implacable turning of the world until his skin is stretched too thin over his bones and she forces it on him – riding him until he is spent past the point of touch – still she touches, overwhelming him. Knowing, knowing, her hair like sticky spider silk against his too-hot skin, her body spilled like the shadow of his own so close, hand splayed over his heart.
Days when even she turns colder than the dead, the chill of the tundra finding the little holes in her soul to whistle through, singing in a tongue neither he nor Kora have ever known. He draws water up for her, endless pails brought to heat in the copper Kora had charmed and washes her hair with the lemon infusion Kora had made, pressing kisses to her bare back as he combs it dry. Patient as patient til the mantle of it gleams again, a god’s ransom of beaten gold he gathers up in his hands just to watch the way the filaments catch the fading light when they slip through his fingers, again and again.
When he had met her, it had been a fuzz, shorn right back to her skull, only a little darker than his own. That had been in the last throes of her childhood, when she had still been able to disguise herself as a boy – just another skinny wavenger on the edge of a master smith’s workshop, eyes blue as cornflowers in the face blackened by soot. Yet to grow into the sword too valuable for her, but she would steal out into the meadows at night all the same, working slowly through forms until moonset, a solitary figure beneath the wide arc of the sky.
Thus had she learnt her art: after she had learnt to kill.
‘You know, I’ve half a mind to leave these to blunt if you intend to keep bein’ so coarse wi’ ‘em,’ she scolds, the way another girl might scold a child for wearing temple clothes to play in the street.
‘You won’t, though.’
‘No,’ she admits, pausing in her task to tuck an errant strand of hair behind her ear.
‘Because you love me too much.’
And she sits back on her knees, dagger momentarily discarded as she meets his eyes.
And agrees, ‘Because I do.’
She does: reviewing his many weapons and their sheaths each day; grading blades according to their sharpness, fineness and defensive strength. Bringing them to the sharpness of thought, and a polish as if she has trapped stars in the steel, like a witch – these secrets she had learnt in the master’s forge before ever she’d learnt to speak more than broken Scanran.
And the routine susurration of whetstones and water is love. Like the silken hush of a comb dragging easy through silken hair. The only way she allows herself to ask him each day that he not die – resorting to her preferred language of gesture, act and touch. Communication free from the yoke of any one tongue, still marked by the cheek and deadliness that has persisted through each iteration of her life.
(Stop following me, he had said, when he had caught her shadowing him from the treeline. Pinned to the ground beneath his weight, the sword still strapped to her back and his knife held to her throat. Those blue eyes had met his, calm and unafraid, and Maybe, she had offered, I’m just going the same place)
There have been times when they have washed other people’s blood from their skin and hair with hands that tremble with fatigue. Have been times when they have become one being, their fingers laced and eyes locked, breathing through one another’s bodies as if their souls have pooled, have merged, have blurred.
Then in the in-between: breakfasts with their many friends; the continued running of the under country. Conversations with dogs who may or may not be loyal, and cats who may or may not be constellations. Funerals and birthday parties, lovers they share or keep all to themselves.
And it is a life, more than love, these devotions.
Rating: PG
For: wordy
Prompt: Aniki/Rosto or Aniki and Rosto
Summary: Meditations on you and me. Aniki/Rosto introspections.
Notes and Warnings: Happy overdue Wishing Tree!
All of them have days when the ghosts whisper to them so that they can hear, Beka or no. Days that make Kora turn brittle with the memory of a sister, long dead. Her skin the only fragile shell to contain the fire which threatens to rise anew, burst forth out of the ember of her heart to consume more than just a wicked, long dead man. Days when he ceases to sleep altogether, awake after Aniki sleeps and still after she sleeps again, unbearably vigilant to the implacable turning of the world until his skin is stretched too thin over his bones and she forces it on him – riding him until he is spent past the point of touch – still she touches, overwhelming him. Knowing, knowing, her hair like sticky spider silk against his too-hot skin, her body spilled like the shadow of his own so close, hand splayed over his heart.
Days when even she turns colder than the dead, the chill of the tundra finding the little holes in her soul to whistle through, singing in a tongue neither he nor Kora have ever known. He draws water up for her, endless pails brought to heat in the copper Kora had charmed and washes her hair with the lemon infusion Kora had made, pressing kisses to her bare back as he combs it dry. Patient as patient til the mantle of it gleams again, a god’s ransom of beaten gold he gathers up in his hands just to watch the way the filaments catch the fading light when they slip through his fingers, again and again.
When he had met her, it had been a fuzz, shorn right back to her skull, only a little darker than his own. That had been in the last throes of her childhood, when she had still been able to disguise herself as a boy – just another skinny wavenger on the edge of a master smith’s workshop, eyes blue as cornflowers in the face blackened by soot. Yet to grow into the sword too valuable for her, but she would steal out into the meadows at night all the same, working slowly through forms until moonset, a solitary figure beneath the wide arc of the sky.
Thus had she learnt her art: after she had learnt to kill.
‘You know, I’ve half a mind to leave these to blunt if you intend to keep bein’ so coarse wi’ ‘em,’ she scolds, the way another girl might scold a child for wearing temple clothes to play in the street.
‘You won’t, though.’
‘No,’ she admits, pausing in her task to tuck an errant strand of hair behind her ear.
‘Because you love me too much.’
And she sits back on her knees, dagger momentarily discarded as she meets his eyes.
And agrees, ‘Because I do.’
She does: reviewing his many weapons and their sheaths each day; grading blades according to their sharpness, fineness and defensive strength. Bringing them to the sharpness of thought, and a polish as if she has trapped stars in the steel, like a witch – these secrets she had learnt in the master’s forge before ever she’d learnt to speak more than broken Scanran.
And the routine susurration of whetstones and water is love. Like the silken hush of a comb dragging easy through silken hair. The only way she allows herself to ask him each day that he not die – resorting to her preferred language of gesture, act and touch. Communication free from the yoke of any one tongue, still marked by the cheek and deadliness that has persisted through each iteration of her life.
(Stop following me, he had said, when he had caught her shadowing him from the treeline. Pinned to the ground beneath his weight, the sword still strapped to her back and his knife held to her throat. Those blue eyes had met his, calm and unafraid, and Maybe, she had offered, I’m just going the same place)
There have been times when they have washed other people’s blood from their skin and hair with hands that tremble with fatigue. Have been times when they have become one being, their fingers laced and eyes locked, breathing through one another’s bodies as if their souls have pooled, have merged, have blurred.
Then in the in-between: breakfasts with their many friends; the continued running of the under country. Conversations with dogs who may or may not be loyal, and cats who may or may not be constellations. Funerals and birthday parties, lovers they share or keep all to themselves.
And it is a life, more than love, these devotions.