[Wild Roses] Prompt 037 "Sound"

[taennyn]

Title: The Youngest
’Verse/characters: : Wild Roses, Sebastian du Lac d'Sabaey, Isael Sabaey, (Ruadhan Sabaey)
Prompt: 037: "Sound"
Word Count: 463
Rating: G
Notes: continues from 010 prompt.


’It should have been me’? Sebastian shook his head slowly, only half listening to the now weeping-choked words. Uncle, my father spent three hundred years convinced it was you, and his the hand that did it.

If nothing else, the man crying at his father’s tree behaved like the man his father had described, and he found himself slowly convinced that this really was a walking, breathing living ghost, a never-known uncle back from the dead.

Sneaking a last glance around the cloaking evergreen at the ghost, he turned back towards the house--and jerked back against the rough bark as he registered another presence.

Ruadhan’s youngest son, mostly hidden behind a tree of his own, lifted a finger to his lips in a silent shushing gesture, a small, shy smile behind the finger.

Moments later, assured of temporary silence, his cousin beckoned Sebastian to join him as he walked away from the lake.

As they drew out of earshot in eerily silent woods, Isael cast a glance at Sebastian, then looked back at the trees. “For a bard,” he said softly, “the man can be damnably secretive at times. I don’t think anyone at home even knew he had a single brother, let alone enough to hate and love in such unequal measures.”

Sebastian blinked at his cousin’s profile, then blinked again as he caught the edge of a pattern in the corner of his eye. “ . . what did you know of him, then?” he asked, half curious and half to make conversation.

“A bard, first foremost and always. Older than he looked, and prone to disappearing for years at a time. . . Kind, in a careless sort of way.” Isael shrugged his near shoulder. “He and I didn’t cross paths much, before he brought me here--" a half-careless gesture to the woods, and beyond it the world and the Family.

“He hasn’t changed much, then, from the man my father told stories about.” Sebastian’s mouth twitched into a small smile. “I wish that were reassuring.”

This earned a brief, sun-bright grin. “He’s not, very.” The silence of the woods grew a little deeper as Isael’s smile faded, and he lifted his head to contemplate the crowns of the trees. “But he’s good at what he chooses to do, from what I’ve seen. And that is reassuring, just a little.”

It was a pattern. Faint and more in the patterns of silences than in noise, a melody of lack. No trick of Ian’s, this. Brilliant and mad their great-grandfather had been, but he’d been no musician.

The light dawned, and he cast a half-awed look at his cousin.

Bard’s son, that you could tell by his face, and the pull of his smile.

But was he a Trickster’s son, as well?

Comments

[billradish.livejournal.com]

“He hasn’t changed much, from the man my father told stories about.”

How much had Sebastian come to know Ruadhan, by this point?

It was a pattern. Faint and more in the patterns of silences than in noise, a melody of lack. No trick of Ian’s, this. Brilliant and mad their great-grandfather had been, but he’d been no musician.

This, and the lines after... Ruadhan's trick, or another? Ruadhan's pattern here, or Isael's?

[taennyn]

. . day and a half? Ish? Not long, for a face-to-face meeting.

And Ruadhan's trick, taught to Isael.

[billradish.livejournal.com]

...and he makes statements like this? *eyes Sebastian, confused*

*nods* This makes sense. Thankee.

[taennyn]

Isael's description meshed well with Donel's--remember tha' all of Sebastian's knowledge of his Uncle is second or third hand.

[billradish.livejournal.com]

Hasn't changed, rather than it doesn't sound like he's change. It's just...more personal and definitive, to my ears. Seemed a bit odd.

[taennyn]

*tongueclick* tha' one doesn't seem to really like implying uncertainty--if he's wrong, he can be corrected, and if he's half wrong, he used to get Poked. So he tends to express himself as if in absolutes, even if it's not [khert].

*blinks at self, facepalms*

[goshawk.livejournal.com]

::head-upside-down-peer:: Shiiiny. I am so very much with the intrigued.

[youraugustine.livejournal.com]

Isael is shiny.

[klgaffney.livejournal.com]

*is tangled in the shiny string!*

i like isael.

[taennyn]

He's weirdly likeable, even when he is nuts.

[klgaffney.livejournal.com]

yes. and it isn't as if people being nuts has ever stopped me from liking them before. =p

[taennyn]

*snerk* C'se tá.

It's peculiar, seeing/writing him this young (and it's not quite years-wise. But it is pre-massively traumatic events. =P).

[klgaffney.livejournal.com]

i bet it is. he still reads as "different/somewhat otherly/askew" but it's much softer shine then when it's cracked and broken.

[taennyn]

*grin* Shiny, I got the feeling right. 'cause he really is, to the typical Sabaey--he's never been A Sabaey, nor's he ever met/been warped by Aifiric. He very definately is a member of the family--looks way too much like Ruadhan and Ruadhan's other children not to be--but he's a bit . . askew.

[larathia.livejournal.com]

s'shiny. Only quibble I have is that - having, of course, ignored the title bit - I spent several sentences wondering who the other speaker was. (Bad habit of mine, too, not to name the speakers.)