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

This journal is currently accepting sparks.

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

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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"

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Luminescence

West by north

"let me see it?"

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.

"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.

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.

"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 . ."

...well that's alarming. =|

she is WINNING so hard that charlie sheen should pay attention. <3

*snork!* so cute. curious as to who these folks are.

"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.

So am I. Am also wondering how big their dog is. O.o;

yes. >_>;

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.

(heee. i'd hoped they'd find that one to taste.)

*snork* since it won't shoot straight already i guess there's no reason why not to let the morrigan lay a trick on your rifle. it's julian so she shouldn't have to worry about it exploding--or shooting a little flag that says BOOM! out the end. =D

"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."

bwahahaha.
despite the laughter, i'm genuinely sympathetic here, gentlemen. it's sympathy laughter, yes. because yeah. all the damn water (and the possibility of a lonely ocean coming to find hernén... =D ).

Mountain combing

Talking airlock

Unfortunate blade placement

Wizard-in-a-box

"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.

Edited Date: 2011-11-09 07:55 pm (UTC)

Oh, dear.

...the constant nagging 'uh, where's the guitar' worry. I do love the way they work together.

Oh, she is adorable.

a legend in himself, mind - of course he doesn't remark at legends.

"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.

"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."

the grey of the gloaming

since last we danced

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

"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!"