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Jan. 9th, 2006 06:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zarahemlaMeant to post these anyway. Had nothing to do with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
stubbleglitter's fabulous feedback to my story and how good it made me feel. Yep. No recollection of that, Senator.
The First Five
10. Careless Love
Here's a story no one remembers and no one would believe, aye, not even that pert Delgado bitch with her simpering smile and her "yes Rhea"s dripping from her stupid mouth. Here's a story no one remembers.
Many years ago there was a girl who was not pretty. She lived in a village in the Outer Baronies with her mother and father and five other sisters. She was the eldest, aye, and smart as the whip that stings your back, but she couldn't escape her ka. One day a woman came a-tapping at the door and called her mother into their small front room. Her mother came out wailing and said, "Rhea, you must go with her."
And so Rhea went, will she or nill she, and a sack of coin was what her faithless mother got in exchange -- if it even was money the next day and not a bag of straw. Witches' coin, Rhea came to learn, was not trustworthy. Witches took what they wanted, and be damned to anyone in their way. The woman taught Rhea, and Rhea learned.
Herbs, poisons, familiars, books of learning and books of spells. She learned fast and she never forgot. About the wizards and their glasses, about guns and gunslingers, about what men and women like in bed and how to take everything afterward. But there were things she forgot -- no. Disremembered. Things that made a witch weak. Love. Faith. Honesty. Charity. She spit them out of herself. She ate hemlock and drank ichor instead.
Careless love indeed. Could anything be more careless than love? What does love care, aye, for anything? Love and Rhea have much in common, for they burn you up to a shell and steal the best parts of you. As Miss Delgado will find out, will she or nill she. Rhea is looking forward to it.
(prompt: "years")
64. The Bridge, And the River Under It
The splintered, final creaking of the wood, and then the fall through the long black dark. The bridge, receding, as Jake screams silently. Laughter -- whose? the man in black's? and is there such a man? -- booming out echoes.
"Go then," says the gunslinger in his ear. "Go then, there are --"
And Jake wakes up.
* * *
One, two, three, four trestle ties missing. Something slippery as he puts his hand down. Laughter -- no, a river, isn't that the sound of water? -- booming out echoes. Slip. Crack. Break.
"Go then," says the gunslinger in his ear. "There are other worlds than these."
And Jake wakes up.
* * *
A push on the small of his back; the pinwheel his arms make as he barrels forward. The wild pain of something in his chest cracking. Gasp. Try to breathe. Laughter -- why would the gunslinger bring him all the way here to kill him? -- booming out echoes.
"There other -- " says the gunslinger. "There are other --"
And Jake wakes up.
* * *
Air with weight, that tries to invade instead of just letting Jake breathe it. The terrified certainty that something is coming up behind. Laughter -- his own? Is he truly mad then? -- booming out echoes.
"Other worlds," says the gunslinger. "Go then, there -- "
And Jake
(prompt: "fall")
1. Hile Gilead
Jamie skids around the corner of the boys' quarter, screaming at the top of his lungs. "It's beginning! It's beginning! With Roland!" At that name, Cuthbert, who had been idly playing cards, drops a perfect (Alain notices) hand of Watch Me onto the table and bolts out of the room. And after those performances, Alain has to follow, jogging heavily after his friends into the green corridor of the proving ground.
"What? What?" he asks Jamie, who is panting on one of the stone spectator's benches. And then he sees Roland standing alone at the west end, with something black and moving on his arm, and the Touch explodes behind his eyes, painting Roland in a halo of weltering red. Alain's vision -- solidifies -- there is no other word for it -- and he sees that it is David on Roland's arm, irritably fussing in his jesses.
"Look," says Cuthbert in a strangled voice, and to the east a shadow falls and that shadow becomes Cort and his walking stick, both blazing in blue like the perfect heart of a fire. Alain puts his hand on Cuthbert's arm; his friend's whole body is as tight as a bowstring and his mind is almost perfectly blank. Alain has never felt such a blank mind before, and it frightens him.
The two combatants on the field begin their ritual words. Alain can't quite follow -- it all seems odd and disjointed, and all he can think of is how not half an hour ago he was eating a leftover bun from the food in the Great Hall. A vision comes very clearly then: Roland's mother, her head canted downward and a sad smile on her face, and a man's hand in a dark sleeve set at the base of her neck. Alain can't focus the Touch any further and can't follow that sleeve up to its owner's face, but he knows now. Something --
"Something to do with his mother," he says half-aloud, but Roland has finished the ritual and launched the hawk -- launched it at Cort -- and Cuthbert surges under Alain's arm, rising to his feet shouting, "Hile! Gunslinger! Hile Gilead!" and no one, not even a boy with second sight, knows where this will lead.
(Prompt: "beginnings")
86. Cradle to a casket.
A Beam stretches across the sky above Jericho Hill and Alain can't keep his eyes off it. Farson's machines spit fire and they are fearsome, fearsome, but their smoke follows the Beam. Cuthbert's hair whips in the wind away from his face, and it follows the Beam. A soldier dies, gaping and bleeding, his hand pointing toward the Dark Tower.
Brief respite for their company: the sunset will stop the machines, because Farson won't waste oil on illumining his enemies. But after sunset, the commanders will call Alain and ask him to use his Touch to find things -- random things, it seems to him. Last night they kept him up all night finding out who was running Farson's water. He hadn't really been able to tell except that it was carried in tankers. And it didn't seem to matter, because no one did anything about it. Was it a desperate ploy or just busywork? Alain can't imagine why anyone would put him to useless tasks, with Farson on the other end of the valley and coming on fast.
And the Touch has been vague lately; as if it knows how he almost betrayed his friends with the Pink Glass. Alain and the Touch are only acquaintances as it is: one has the whip hand, and one dances to the blows. Trying to force it leaves him bruised somewhere inside; all the gentle, insistent urgings of his commanders cannot change what he isn't being told.
Under a canvas lean-to, twenty feet away, Cuthbert sits and watches the valley, hugging his knees. Roland is on an errand, taking messages around on Rusher. Not everyone has a horse, and certainly not one like Rusher. The two of them together seem to dodge bullets. And even bullets follow the Beam, gigging backwards sometimes or sideways, along that (in)visible track that carries all hope upon it. Hope is on the wind, as Alain's father used to say: and Alain would add, watching blood mat into the grass of Jericho Hill, that the wind is on the Beam.
Stumbling a little on the uphill path, he slides up to and then under the lean-to with Cuthbert. The dark is bringing cold with it: not that a bit of canvas will keep the cold away, but Alain can kind of huddle up against it and pretend.
Cuthbert stares off into the distance, seemingly watching the last of Farson's shells and cannonballs pound the Hill's breastworks. "Naphtha," he says, and the word is completely unfamiliar to Alain.
"What?"
"Naphtha," says Cuthbert again, and spells it. "Captain says that's what they call the flaming stuff. I saw it cover a man on a horse. They couldn't -- get the flames out -- they just had to let him run in circles, burning."
"Naphtha," repeats Alain, committing it to memory. He has not been sent to the front yet, even to defend the rudimentary walls ringing the Hill. Roland has not either -- he is kept too busy playing messenger. But Cuthbert has spent four days watching Farson's mechanical mouths splatter obscenities.
"Thank the Turtle and all the gods we blew that oil to the sky," says Cuthbert. "Everything was worth it because we did that." Alain says nothing, remembering the sight (the pink sight) of a girl who hadn't gotten the flames out either, who had been let to burn.
Cuthbert buries his face in his bent knees. "Fuckers," he says dimly. "Those fuckers are going to burn this poor world, and we are going to go with it. We're desperate -- and we're losing."
"We aren't," says Alain automatically, even though he is not even sure whether he's telling the truth.
When his friend replies, his voice is so thickly bitter that Alain actually scoots back a bit. "You're always looking for morning-glories, 'Lain. Eyes open for flowers and missing the biter-snake. We've been Farson's gilly-girls for a long time, dancing to his tune, and now he's taken us out of the throne room and got us alone and now he's going to fuck us."
Alain has nothing to say to that and he sits in shocked silence, listening to Cuthbert talking as if his heart is an open wound.
"All our glamours avail us nothing against machines -- we have stopped being able to magick them. He has some kind of counter-spell working, he has the Wizard's Glass and he's come out of the storybook. This world is moving on -- can you feel it, 'Lain?" For the second time he uses the short-name that he called Alain by when they were ten and living lorne and lone in a boys' dorm, daily savaged by Cort and the older boys.
"I feel it." Alain shivers, caught up in the wind, watching the world end along the Beam.
(prompt: "life")
stubbleglitter's fabulous feedback to my story and how good it made me feel. Yep. No recollection of that, Senator.The First Five
10. Careless Love
Here's a story no one remembers and no one would believe, aye, not even that pert Delgado bitch with her simpering smile and her "yes Rhea"s dripping from her stupid mouth. Here's a story no one remembers.
Many years ago there was a girl who was not pretty. She lived in a village in the Outer Baronies with her mother and father and five other sisters. She was the eldest, aye, and smart as the whip that stings your back, but she couldn't escape her ka. One day a woman came a-tapping at the door and called her mother into their small front room. Her mother came out wailing and said, "Rhea, you must go with her."
And so Rhea went, will she or nill she, and a sack of coin was what her faithless mother got in exchange -- if it even was money the next day and not a bag of straw. Witches' coin, Rhea came to learn, was not trustworthy. Witches took what they wanted, and be damned to anyone in their way. The woman taught Rhea, and Rhea learned.
Herbs, poisons, familiars, books of learning and books of spells. She learned fast and she never forgot. About the wizards and their glasses, about guns and gunslingers, about what men and women like in bed and how to take everything afterward. But there were things she forgot -- no. Disremembered. Things that made a witch weak. Love. Faith. Honesty. Charity. She spit them out of herself. She ate hemlock and drank ichor instead.
Careless love indeed. Could anything be more careless than love? What does love care, aye, for anything? Love and Rhea have much in common, for they burn you up to a shell and steal the best parts of you. As Miss Delgado will find out, will she or nill she. Rhea is looking forward to it.
(prompt: "years")
64. The Bridge, And the River Under It
The splintered, final creaking of the wood, and then the fall through the long black dark. The bridge, receding, as Jake screams silently. Laughter -- whose? the man in black's? and is there such a man? -- booming out echoes.
"Go then," says the gunslinger in his ear. "Go then, there are --"
And Jake wakes up.
* * *
One, two, three, four trestle ties missing. Something slippery as he puts his hand down. Laughter -- no, a river, isn't that the sound of water? -- booming out echoes. Slip. Crack. Break.
"Go then," says the gunslinger in his ear. "There are other worlds than these."
And Jake wakes up.
* * *
A push on the small of his back; the pinwheel his arms make as he barrels forward. The wild pain of something in his chest cracking. Gasp. Try to breathe. Laughter -- why would the gunslinger bring him all the way here to kill him? -- booming out echoes.
"There other -- " says the gunslinger. "There are other --"
And Jake wakes up.
* * *
Air with weight, that tries to invade instead of just letting Jake breathe it. The terrified certainty that something is coming up behind. Laughter -- his own? Is he truly mad then? -- booming out echoes.
"Other worlds," says the gunslinger. "Go then, there -- "
And Jake
(prompt: "fall")
1. Hile Gilead
Jamie skids around the corner of the boys' quarter, screaming at the top of his lungs. "It's beginning! It's beginning! With Roland!" At that name, Cuthbert, who had been idly playing cards, drops a perfect (Alain notices) hand of Watch Me onto the table and bolts out of the room. And after those performances, Alain has to follow, jogging heavily after his friends into the green corridor of the proving ground.
"What? What?" he asks Jamie, who is panting on one of the stone spectator's benches. And then he sees Roland standing alone at the west end, with something black and moving on his arm, and the Touch explodes behind his eyes, painting Roland in a halo of weltering red. Alain's vision -- solidifies -- there is no other word for it -- and he sees that it is David on Roland's arm, irritably fussing in his jesses.
"Look," says Cuthbert in a strangled voice, and to the east a shadow falls and that shadow becomes Cort and his walking stick, both blazing in blue like the perfect heart of a fire. Alain puts his hand on Cuthbert's arm; his friend's whole body is as tight as a bowstring and his mind is almost perfectly blank. Alain has never felt such a blank mind before, and it frightens him.
The two combatants on the field begin their ritual words. Alain can't quite follow -- it all seems odd and disjointed, and all he can think of is how not half an hour ago he was eating a leftover bun from the food in the Great Hall. A vision comes very clearly then: Roland's mother, her head canted downward and a sad smile on her face, and a man's hand in a dark sleeve set at the base of her neck. Alain can't focus the Touch any further and can't follow that sleeve up to its owner's face, but he knows now. Something --
"Something to do with his mother," he says half-aloud, but Roland has finished the ritual and launched the hawk -- launched it at Cort -- and Cuthbert surges under Alain's arm, rising to his feet shouting, "Hile! Gunslinger! Hile Gilead!" and no one, not even a boy with second sight, knows where this will lead.
(Prompt: "beginnings")
86. Cradle to a casket.
A Beam stretches across the sky above Jericho Hill and Alain can't keep his eyes off it. Farson's machines spit fire and they are fearsome, fearsome, but their smoke follows the Beam. Cuthbert's hair whips in the wind away from his face, and it follows the Beam. A soldier dies, gaping and bleeding, his hand pointing toward the Dark Tower.
Brief respite for their company: the sunset will stop the machines, because Farson won't waste oil on illumining his enemies. But after sunset, the commanders will call Alain and ask him to use his Touch to find things -- random things, it seems to him. Last night they kept him up all night finding out who was running Farson's water. He hadn't really been able to tell except that it was carried in tankers. And it didn't seem to matter, because no one did anything about it. Was it a desperate ploy or just busywork? Alain can't imagine why anyone would put him to useless tasks, with Farson on the other end of the valley and coming on fast.
And the Touch has been vague lately; as if it knows how he almost betrayed his friends with the Pink Glass. Alain and the Touch are only acquaintances as it is: one has the whip hand, and one dances to the blows. Trying to force it leaves him bruised somewhere inside; all the gentle, insistent urgings of his commanders cannot change what he isn't being told.
Under a canvas lean-to, twenty feet away, Cuthbert sits and watches the valley, hugging his knees. Roland is on an errand, taking messages around on Rusher. Not everyone has a horse, and certainly not one like Rusher. The two of them together seem to dodge bullets. And even bullets follow the Beam, gigging backwards sometimes or sideways, along that (in)visible track that carries all hope upon it. Hope is on the wind, as Alain's father used to say: and Alain would add, watching blood mat into the grass of Jericho Hill, that the wind is on the Beam.
Stumbling a little on the uphill path, he slides up to and then under the lean-to with Cuthbert. The dark is bringing cold with it: not that a bit of canvas will keep the cold away, but Alain can kind of huddle up against it and pretend.
Cuthbert stares off into the distance, seemingly watching the last of Farson's shells and cannonballs pound the Hill's breastworks. "Naphtha," he says, and the word is completely unfamiliar to Alain.
"What?"
"Naphtha," says Cuthbert again, and spells it. "Captain says that's what they call the flaming stuff. I saw it cover a man on a horse. They couldn't -- get the flames out -- they just had to let him run in circles, burning."
"Naphtha," repeats Alain, committing it to memory. He has not been sent to the front yet, even to defend the rudimentary walls ringing the Hill. Roland has not either -- he is kept too busy playing messenger. But Cuthbert has spent four days watching Farson's mechanical mouths splatter obscenities.
"Thank the Turtle and all the gods we blew that oil to the sky," says Cuthbert. "Everything was worth it because we did that." Alain says nothing, remembering the sight (the pink sight) of a girl who hadn't gotten the flames out either, who had been let to burn.
Cuthbert buries his face in his bent knees. "Fuckers," he says dimly. "Those fuckers are going to burn this poor world, and we are going to go with it. We're desperate -- and we're losing."
"We aren't," says Alain automatically, even though he is not even sure whether he's telling the truth.
When his friend replies, his voice is so thickly bitter that Alain actually scoots back a bit. "You're always looking for morning-glories, 'Lain. Eyes open for flowers and missing the biter-snake. We've been Farson's gilly-girls for a long time, dancing to his tune, and now he's taken us out of the throne room and got us alone and now he's going to fuck us."
Alain has nothing to say to that and he sits in shocked silence, listening to Cuthbert talking as if his heart is an open wound.
"All our glamours avail us nothing against machines -- we have stopped being able to magick them. He has some kind of counter-spell working, he has the Wizard's Glass and he's come out of the storybook. This world is moving on -- can you feel it, 'Lain?" For the second time he uses the short-name that he called Alain by when they were ten and living lorne and lone in a boys' dorm, daily savaged by Cort and the older boys.
"I feel it." Alain shivers, caught up in the wind, watching the world end along the Beam.
(prompt: "life")
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-10 04:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-04 08:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-10 05:33 am (UTC)(A friend,
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-04 08:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-10 07:58 pm (UTC)These are wonderful in the same vein -- you have an unerring ear for what each of the characters is supposed to sound like and subtly shift your writing accordingly, and that's fabulous. I especially liked the bit with Rhea (and the ways she's changed herself, shutting out the better emotions) and the fragmented, scary nightmare for Jake. Marvelous stuff.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-04 08:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-03 07:37 pm (UTC)Possibly my favorite paragraph of yours yet.
And this part especially: and how to take everything afterward because I think I read it wrong at first. I read it as how to deal with all the messy stuff that happens after sex, like someone leaving you or using you. How to keep your mouth shut and just take it. Which might not be what you meant at all since I have no idea the context of any of these stories, but I like it that way, so I'm going to read it that way. MAYBE I SHOULD READ THE BOOKS.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-04 08:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-04 08:31 pm (UTC)