So, since I can kinda bend my arm again--

[taennyn]

This journal is currently accepting sparks.

Edited to add that I'm done for the day, I think. :) Thank you, all.


------------

Wild Roses:
"the word "_____" is starting to lose all meaning to me now." (Ruadhan and Donel)
"more teeth than I want to face in the morning" (Ruadhan, Hernén)
"a beautiful hide" (Baroness Sidonie Two Rivers)
"struggling to repair the ripped lining of a coat." (Donel and Ruadhan)
"Mountain combing" (Donel)
"at least, that's the way *I* remember it -" (Ulysse, Donel, Hernén and Ruadhan)
"since last we danced" (Fintain & Katerina of Autumn)
"Let me see it?" (Fintain and wee!Hazel)


Deaths:
West by north
"the grey of the gloaming" (Ricard & the Morrigan)
war paint (The Morrigan)
To Charm a Firearm (Julian De'Ath & the Morrigan)
craving (The Morrigan)


Herding the Witches' Horses:
"Talking airlock" (Falcons' Feathers, Irina and Khenbish)
"beads in the hair" (Falcons' Feathers, Irina and Khenbish)
"accents of gold and black (Falcons' Feathers, Irina)
this house, it is not well (Vasilisa)
"Unfortunate blade placement" (Sinclair)
Luminescence (Sinclair)


Unknown:
restlessly looking outside when there's work to be done inside.
"Wizard-in-a-box"

Comments

[youraugustine.livejournal.com]

Luminescence

West by north

"let me see it?"

"West by north" - Deaths, unknown, early campaign

[taennyn]

There's something coming--someone coming--clear in his head as a mountain affected a compass needle. West by north, and getting closer, bigger, growing like the Pyrénées as one came south from Aquitaine.

It makes him itchy, restless, curious and irritated at once.

He hadn't felt this pulled the last six times he's stood next to a head of council. It might be Council-born, but he's tempted to bet with himself that it's not, and that leaves the question of what--who--has been hiding so well, and now isn't.

"Let me see it?" - Wild Roses, Fintain and wee!Hazel

[taennyn]

Something rebounded painfully off his shin, and he caught himself from throwing a 'what's going on?' diagnostic spell when he recognised his youngest daughter's voice crowing with hiccupy triumph.

Hazel, dressed in dusty borrowed clothes--he could tell by the Tall Pines edges, and had to assume some wolf had seen fit to rinse his daughter off and put her in clean clothes--grinned up at him.

Those clothes would need cleaning before they were returned to their actual owner; she'd thrown herself through at least one thicket and a muddy ford recently, going by the burrs and smudges, and had a green stain running the entire length of her right arm.

"Daughter mine," he started, and her grin widened, showing off the gap where she'd lost another milk tooth, "what are you doing?"

"WINNING!" she announced, scraping herself back up off the ground and wincing as she did, rubbing at the hip she'd landed on, then at her shoulder, where she'd hit his leg. They might have matching bruises, he thought as he flexed his foot and his shin protested.

"Really," he said, and she brandished something in a closed fist.

"Oui," she chirped, and dug her toes into the ground, about to take off again.

Sighing, he dropped to one knee, holding out his hands towards her. "Let me see it?"

She scowled, thinking, head cocked to one side as though she were checking the state of her pursuit, then unpeeled her fingers enough to show him what looked like a wolf's teething toy with a catch-me-not pattern tied on in sunset-red silk.

"Huh," he muttered, and she grinned again, closing her fist and dropping into a runner's crouch.

"They thought I couldn't play. No nose. And now, I'm winning!" she crowed, and took off.

Five minutes later, two boys about her age--also dressed in Tall Pines clothes though theirs fit a bit better--went tearing through in unmistakable pursuit.

"Luminescence" - Witches' Horses, Sinclair & Grammont

[taennyn]

It's a bright night, bright enough he could see the ragged edges of her sealant job as he hiked down the slope to join her in the valley.

Any brighter and he'd start worrying about spotlights, but everything is limned in the same way, individual fir needles as distinct as the stones under his feet and the upper edges of his horse, the long clean lines of her just warped enough to imply she's older than she is.

The light she ignited over one of her cargo hatches for him broke the spell, rendered the moonlight a little cheaper, and he ducked up inside her amused at himself. There he was, climbing into a witch's horse tucked neatly away in a planet's valley, and it was the moonlight he found remarkable.

Not the way her inner skin glittered under the low-level track lighting she put up to let his eyes adjust, or that he hadn't spoken a word and his horse was politely adjusting her own internal light levels to keep from blinding him.

[klgaffney.livejournal.com]

"the word "_____" is starting to lose all meaning to me now."

restlessly looking outside when there's work to be done inside.

TO CHARM A FIREARM - It is necessary to say whilst taking the firearm: God Has a share in this and the Devil leaves it. Then take aim, in crossing the left leg over the right, from the prone rifle position lying down and saying in Latin: Non tradas Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum. Mathon. Amen."
- the crossed keys, michael cecchetelli

struggling to repair the ripped lining of a coat.

"restlessly looking outside when there's work to be done inside." - dialogue only

[taennyn]

"And I could start turning the earth for that bed off at the side, and that tree needs pruning--"

" . . Would this have something to do with the fact that the floor needs sweeping and there's a spiderweb the size of the dog over the pantry?"

"Noooooo? I've just been thinking the next nice day I should really get out into the yard, and oh, look, it's nice out today?"

"If by 'nice' you mean 'not currently pouring sleet', I suppose--and I would pay money to watch you try that on Magda, I really would--but isn't it a bad idea to go digging when the ground's sopping wet?"

"You lose a boot once and you never hear the end of it, I swear . ."

"TO CHARM A FIREARM" - Deaths, Julian De'Ath & the Morrigan

[taennyn]

"What's the occasion?" the Morrigan inquired from the hall, and Julian looked up from the neatly laid out stained linen tablecloth and the as-neatly laid out assortment of tools and components.

"Rifle keeps jamming," she said by way of explanation, picking up the barrel and squinting down the length. "And it keeps pulling out of true--last time it was a handspan to the left, the time before a handspan low. I almost clipped Weyland instead of the man I was aiming at, and that was after taking a test shot to see where the Damned thing was grouping."

She'd bought Weyland's round as an apology afterwards, and it wasn't like most of them would take a rifle round as anything but a distraction, but it was the principle of the thing.

"Oh," the Morrigan murmured, then took a sip of her tea. Smiling around the rim, she added "Call me when it's almost assembled, I've an old trick to try on it," and wandered away again.

After a moment of staring, Julian philosophically started up with a cleaning brush again. If it worked, it worked, and if it didn't, there was always the option of buying a new rifle.

"the word "_____" is starting to lose all meaning to me now." - Trickwood, Donel & Ruadhan

[taennyn]

"Oh look, more water," Donel muttered, and Ruadhan couldn't help snorting.

"'Water' is really starting to lose all meaning," he muttered back. "It might be a flood! It might be a puddle. It might be someone talking about what Geoffrey's up to, or a well, or a river that we have to figure out some way of redirecting to annoy a baron. It might be an ocean that got bored and wanted to come looking for Hernén--"

"Shut up Ruadhan," Donel growled, casting a reproving look back over his shoulder, "Don't give anything ideas."

"Shut up yourself," Ruadhan said back easily, kneeing his gelding gently so he could join his brother at the crest of the hill. "It's not like it'd be a surprise at this point."

"struggling to repair the ripped lining of a coat." - Trickwood, Ruadhan & Donel

[taennyn]

"Aww, flood and fire," he heard Ruadhan mutter as he struggled out of his coat, and Donel couldn't help but look up, over the heads of the wolves he'd been talking to.

His brother was new-returned, and while his horse looked fine, and so did the people behind him, Ruadhan looked tired and grouchy.

The ragged stubble along his cheeks didn't help, of course--never did, both of them grew terrible beards even when they actually tried instead of just neglecting to deal with it--but it wasn't until Donel realised that Ruadhan hadn't shed a guitar case along with the sword on his belt and the rifle tucked into his saddle gear that he started to worry.

Ruadhan, apparently oblivious to the scrutiny, had turned the left sleeve of his coat inside out and was muttering too softly to hear at the massive gap in the lining the motion had revealed.

The wolf whose head he was looking right over rumbled a reminder, and Donel looked back down at her, smiling with just a little apology curled into the corners. "You were saying?" he prompted, and set his brother mentally aside for a while.

Several hours later, he found Ruadhan sitting near a fire, a couple of magelights tied to a staked-down treebranch next to his brother's neatly piled gear.

He dropped himself down next to his brother, deliberately as easy as any of the wolves, and Ruadhan didn't startle until he happened to glance over as he finished a ragged stitch.

Donel quirked a smile, and Ruadhan relaxed, scowled back down at his handiwork. He'd found a patch to replace the ripped fabric--probably politely begged off someone else's sewing kit, the same way he'd found needle and saffron-dyed thread--but his stitches left a lot to be desired. He wasn't bleeding, but Donel was willing to be it was only because he'd wished his skin sturdy enough to withstand an accidental jab.

Failing that, that his guitar callouses really were just that thick.

"Here," he said, reaching over, "I got roped into helping make repairs after that windstorm we had."

Ruadhan surrendered his coat with slightly less fighting than Donel had expected, and he automatically reached down to his other side once his hands were empty.

Froze for just a moment--just long enough to notice, if you knew what you were looking for--as his hand closed on air instead of guitar case, then leaned back, propping his elbows on his saddle and staring into the fire.

"Thanks," he said eventually, and Donel hummed a noncommittal reply ans he carefully folded an edge under before starting to stitch it down into place.

"Bad day?"

"Bad week," Ruadhan corrected, then shifted his weight so he could reach his left arm up over his head to mime shielding himself. "Coat couldn't keep up with me."

"Lining the only casualty?" Donel asked, then realised how that could be interpreted, and bit down on the tip of his tongue.

Ruadhan huffed a rough laugh, resettling himself before whispering a tiny spell that fanned the flames in front of him higher. "Nobody's bleeding," he said, "just bad luck and bad timing."

"Ah," Donel said, turning a corner in the patch job and noticing a collection of scratch marks on the outer side of the coat. Given it was good sturdy manticore leather, he was a little impressed.

He'd bring wine next time, see if he could get the actual story without having to pry delicately at the edges of his brother's temper.

[illian.livejournal.com]

Mountain combing

Talking airlock

Unfortunate blade placement

Wizard-in-a-box

"Talking airlock" - Falcons' Feathers, Irina and Khenbish

[taennyn]

"Mind your manners," a voice snapped when Irina put her hand out to poke at one of the molded words printed on the airlock wall, and she startled so hard her feet left the floor.

"Sorry, grandmother!" Kavin--no, he'd said to call him Khenbish today, and one day she'd know what all his names meant--called back, the toe of one of his boots crooked underneath the edge of another panel.

She used his shoulder and arm to claw herself back down onto the floor, heart still hammering, and was drawing breath to try to tear a shred off him when the lock cycled.

"Ooh," she murmured instead, and caught the curl of Khenbish's grin as she turned her head to stare up at the ceiling.

"Mountain combing" - Trickwood, Donel and others

[taennyn]

"So, you're saying we need to comb this entire mountain range--" he gestured for emphasis and tried not to get distracted by the way one of the two-legged wolves ducked automatically, or by Barra's four-legged chuckle behind his left thigh "--for one thing."

"That's the size of it, yes?" the woman who'd been explaining to him agreed cautiously.

" . . Right." He growled under his breath as he looked at the range again, then remarked "You know what? No. I'm calling Ulysse and seeing if he has some sort of net for this kind of thing."

"Wizard-in-a-box" - unknown

[taennyn]

"And so they locked the wizard and his heart away in separate boxes, so he couldn't escape, and they set the box with his knowledge away in a library, where only the most determined could ask questions . . "

" . . . But the story's not done!"

"Yes it is, see?"

"That's just wrong. How can the story stop there? Does the wizard ever get to get free? Or die? Did someone find his heart and ask what it wanted? Or--"

"--alright, fine, here. Years later, after the people who fought the wizard forgot about him, a very determined student of the Most Arcane Arts started research for their thesis. Now, it was supposed to be on ways to avoid death, looking for historical examples based on Koschei's legends, but the student kept finding evidence for a different legend being true. So they kept looking, distracting their advisors with philosopher's stones and hares that hid within ducks, until they found the wizard in the box."

"Ooh. What then?"

"The student asked the wizard if it'd been worth it--involuntary immortality at such a price. The wizard asked if the student was stupid, said of course it wasn't, and told the student to go soak their head. So the student went away, and did more research, and came back again, and broke the wizard's box into nine pieces, caught the wizard's soul before he could so much as shout 'Freedom!', stuffed the wizard's mind back in with his heart, added a few books written on the wizard's lifetime and what he'd taught the world, and left him to stew for a week."

"Was he dead when the student came back?"

"Stop bouncing like that, you're far too gleeful about this sort of thing. No, the wizard wasn't dead, just very quiet, and very sad. The student gave him the keys to his box, and the nice pieces of his other box, and told him to do as he would.

The wizard was never heard from again . . at least not by his own name."

"Ooooooooh. There! Much better end to the story. Now tell me about Koschei!"

"Unfortunate blade placement" - Chevalier de Grammont, Sinclair

[taennyn]

He kept himself from wincing with a great deal of effort, pivoted off the section of his back he'd met the wall with--and thus off the holdout knife digging into his skin--then shoved, caught the man who'd mashed him up into the wall with an elbow to the face and kept going.

He'd need to pad that sheath better. Later. Assuming he didn't just leave the knife in someone today.

[zero_pixel_count]

the grey of the gloaming

since last we danced

"at least, that's the way *I* remember it -"

"the grey of the gloaming" - Deaths, Ricard and the Morrigan, campaign era

[taennyn]

Ricard and the Morrigan has lost the card game last night about who had clean-up duty today, and it was coming up on twilight before they finished gathering the last of the weapons.

The Morrigan's rich blue shirt went gradually grey as the light failed, and the blood drying across her arms and face faded into an almost artistic splash of dappled shadows. Ricard was quite sure he was not so picturesque, tired and dabbed here and there with blood himself. He kept resisting the urge to scratch at the stuff on his face, growing tacky and pulling at his stubble.

"Think they'll remember to leave us something to eat?" he asked as the Morrigan circled back in, dropping a last armload of metal atop the jumbled mess already in the hole he'd dug.

"Absolutely," she replied, picking up the shovel and beginning to return the dirt with surprisingly economical ease. "Though perhaps not those almond biscuits."

"I'm surprised any of them escaped you," he remarked, trying not to laugh as she grinned over at him.

"Yes, well," she said equably, and dropped the shovel so she could try to help him roll the stone back into place.

That done--she'd become an artist's invitation to find a woman among deep shadows in the meantime--and the remaining earth arranged around the stone to ape some child's prank at moving big stones, they went walking back towards the city.

"since last we danced" - Wild Roses, Fintain and Katerina of Autumn

[taennyn]

"Let me see," he mused aloud, and she shot him a narrow glare as he cut neatly through the circle and swooped her up as a partner, "since last we danced, you've worried three Hands, annoyed two of my siblings--well, played, that--and I've been obliged to visit other, far less fair harbours."

"And here I'd been thinking that my life might perhaps have finally found some sort of rhythm," she retorted, spinning in such a way that the hem of her skirt brushed his leg, "but then I realised, oh, such a pity, that it was merely your absence lulling me into complacency."

"That would never do," he said, grinning, caught her hips between his hands, spun her thrice, kissed her cheek and deposited her into a newly opened space in the circle.

"at least, that's the way *I* remember it -" - Wild Roses, several Sabaeys

[taennyn]

"At least, that's the way I remember it--" Donel was saying as Ulysse sat down on one end of the bench, passing along the pitchers he'd brought with him, and couldn't help grinning broadly as Hernén growled, rumbled "Now the way I remember that afternoon going--"

Kid was holding his own. Good on 'im.

"Now Ulysse should know how that goes," Ruadhan chimed in from Hernén's other side--the kid had deliberately sat down between Donel and Ruadhan, and Ulysse hadn't asked--and Ulysse found himself drawn into the competition, if nothing else to defend the virtue of that mermaid.

[billradish.livejournal.com]

a beautiful hide
more teeth than I want to face in the morning
craving
accents of gold and black
war paint

[edit] Bwahahaha. I made the post thread. <3 [/edit]

"war paint" - The Morrigan (because really, who else?)

[taennyn]

Ideally speaking, the blue should be woad, fresh-made, but circumstances and availability--and timing--mean she'd merely wandered down to the fabric quarter in a perfectly ordinary city and bought a scrap of indigo dye, neatly blocked and designed to be dissolved.

Azrael was the first who didn't blink when he saw her the next morning; Weyland had all but flinched, and Ricard's eyes had done that amusing nonplused widening that usually spelled blood in her hair.

But Azrael just nodded, politely, and passed her a cup of clear cold water.

The Morrigan knew her returning smile wasn't wholly human.

That was the point.

"a beautiful hide" - Trickwood, Baroness Two Rivers

[taennyn]

"Wait," Sidonie said suddenly, pointing at the edge of the bale of hides tucked back behind a rather bigger bale of fleeces. "What's that?"

"Manticore, milady, from the mountains," the trader said, and she mentally complimented him on his timing. Not too slow, like he thought she might be stupid, not so fast that it looked like he was hiding something.

"Which mountains?" she asked, nodding to Jacoby's third, and he in turn nodded to several of his.

"Ilmarinen," the trader replied, stepping aside so the bale could be extracted without bowling him over. "I believe the outermost one was killed just this last winter."

"Hmm," she hummed, admiring the way the colours of the hide shifted in daylight, gold and green and purple glinting up at her.

Now, what use could she put to a hide like that?

"accents of gold and black" - Falcons' Feathers, Irina

[taennyn]

The grafayina was rich; richer than Irina's father and all the friends of her father's she'd ever met. Even the servants' quarters were decorated, accented with black and gold atop the grey-sealed walls, and it made Irina's back itch to see it.

She'd been taken to several places most didn't dare go, and need had forced her into several others much against her will. In all of them the walls had talked, crooned lullabies or rapped out sharp commands to leave their spaces alone, and more than a few of them had been decorated as lushly, if faded far by age and neglect. They'd echoed, empty and uninhabited.

So why did this warmly furnished room in a bustling town give her the chills?

"more teeth than I want to face in the morning" - Trickwood, Ruadhan, Hernén

[taennyn]

A bit-off yelp of surprise rolled out of Hernén's gar, loud enough that Ruadhan looked up from the breakfast someone wearing a leather apron had handed him ten minutes ago.

A moment later, "WINTER, Belladonna, Don't DO that!" rolled after the yelp, and a smug grey wolf trotted out of the gar and down towards the cooking areas.

Ruadhan had mostly gotten his face back under control by the time Hernén made a disheveled appearance, and had made a space on the carpet he was sitting tailor-fashion on for his brother.

"That is way more teeth than I want to face in the morning," Hernén grumbled, scrubbing his hands over his face before trying to steal Ruadhan's tea.

Ruadhan didn't bother defending the cup, because it was empty, and grinned when Hernén shot him a betrayed look.

"Think your wolf's scrounging up breakfast for you," he offered, and Hernén dropped his forehead into his palm.

"I hate it when she does this," he said, and Ruadhan choked off a peal of laughter with difficulty.

"You've said," he agreed amiably, and watched a younger wolf--this one on two legs, bearing a plate and a steaming mug--trot back up the slope.

"craving" - Deaths, the Morrigan again

[taennyn]

She can't tell if it's tea, a dance, or a fight she's craving, and ten years ago she'd have never had this problem.

But she's been stretched and compressed so many times this year her body's confused, and when her hands start to tremble she can't quite put a name to her desires.

It's worth it, for their goal, but oh, it's uncomfortable.

*is pathetic*

[dormouse-in-tea.livejournal.com]

my bitch friend amy invited me over to spend the day and didn't tell me her one year old twins were both sick. so now I'm sick. I cannot think of a prompt. write me something anyway?

*tries to drink tea*

*tea is too hot*

*cries*

Re: *is pathetic*

[illian.livejournal.com]

Considering I'm fighting off a cold given to me by a one year old, I have nothing but sympathy.


"Amelia," Wish murmured into his cup.

She turned a cool look on him, the breeze ruffling the layers of her short blonde hair. "Are you going to be all patriarchal and tell me to 'Be Nice'?"

Wish quirked an eyebrow at her. "I don't know. Do I seem the type to be that stupid and suicidal?"