Embrace the Thorns
Apr. 1st, 2008 11:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kolTitle: Embrace the Thorns
Fandom: NONE. I wrote IPOM fic. HAHA. Yeah, I suck.
Rating: Um. PG/PG-13 to be safe?
Chances anyone will know what I'm babbling about? Slim to none.
Challenge Fic: For 31_days, "The smell Of Spring"
The stench of wet wool snatched Whist from his uneasy sleep; his ears ached, unrested after hours of Yhisa, the ancient ghas, strumming her fine lyre against the star dimpled sky. Rain should be a soothing sound to one born on the Eosan Wastes, where life was uncertain, and snatches of water captured from the shifty skies could spell harvest— or starvation.
But Whist was Khasan more than a boy of Eosa, and his ways were not tied to the earth. Rain was unsettling, an annoyance on travel days, disaster settling in to sell the caravan’s wares, and blasphemy on this day of days. Yhisa’s fists pounded her frustrations against the ger’s thick canvas, which trembled before the sharp light permeated the pre-dawn darkness.
He sighed, and twisted in his linens, his eyes reaching across the blackness the ger had been cast into when the fire had smoldered out, liquid pooling beneath the saturated felt. He had been too slow to cover the roof with the canvas last night, and without light to see, he dared not risk a fire.
His grandmother had said nothing. But Whist wasn’t fanciful enough to expect a corpse to speak.
It was fitting that Nedda would sleep on, deaf to the rage of the ghas above. In life, such nights she would toss the bones, muttering at the course her sisters walked which she could not follow, her eyes blind to all but the ways of the ghas above and below. In death, she would nestle within the thorns of Iltane’s grove, a smile stitched deep into her death mask, finding a peace she had never wished for in life.
A peace? She would smack Whist across his pounding skull, sharply ending such nonsense. In the thick gloom, shadows flickered an uneasy parade, teasing fears from his grieving mind. It was in that fear that he wished the ghas to will Nedda speech, so that she could scold him once more, blister his ears with the fire only a woman who commanded the ghas themselves could wield. Her words would fill the ger, fill what had sunk into the ground the moment of her passing. There was a hole inside Whist, once which threatened to pull his sore body inside out, stretching his insides to dry in the winter sun.
But that wasn’t quite right, Whist considered the still shroud, barely visible, laying across the ger in defiance to the woman’s terrible force in life.
Rain meant only one thing in the Wastes, and this the first rain meant winter had turned its back upon the lands, that death would leave, that new life would take its place, that SPRING had come before the lands.
Whist didn’t feel the great transition; soon, the Khasan would celebrate the rites to ensure a good fortune, and any other year, this would be a time for joy and laughter, furtive hiding of gifts, and batting eyes at the beauties within the other gers.
This Spring, he would follow Old Nedda, living the year backwards. Dying as the stench of rain filled the lands, tearing the caravan asunder so no single mortal could take her place, rejecting the ways of the world for the taste of chill once more.
Whist longed for the winter that was, the final gasp in his life among his brothers. It wasn’t the ghas that roared above him, spilling their music as life upon the land. Nedda would take the ghas with her into the thorns, leaving Whist alone to a barren spring, waiting for the heralds of war to rip him from the only family he had known.
He closed his eyes, mouth full of spring and the first taste of drenched wool, aching for the ghas to realize their mistake— and take him to the thorns in his grandmother’s place.
Author's Note: Inspiration: Letitia Elizabeth Landon’s “The Lost Pleiad,” specifically these lines:
… he was not in the mood for the festival.
There was that crimson, the last on the sky,
Blushes that fade in the moon’s cold eye;
The sigh of the flowers arose sweet on the air,
For the breath of the twilight was wandering there.
He look’d to the west, and the tranquil main
Was branch’d with many a life-like vein;
Hues of the rosebud the clouds had cast,
Like a cheek on its mirror in gliding past.
It tempted him forth— to the lulling gale …
Yay for random poetry inspiration <3.
I tried so hard to write a Derek fic for Terminator. But it kept going in hilarious tangents, and betrayed the mood of the show. Should have known VAST would save writer-brain. Whist usually isn't this moping, but hey, you would be too if your grandmother had died ;___;.
A primer for IPOM, if you were wondering:
Ger: More or less, a mobile, easy collapse and transport, round hut made of wood, canvas, and felt.
ghas: Tricky; not gods, specifically, but ancestors who many older Khasan believe live in the sky, the stars the fires of many gers, watching over their children and descendants. Yhisa is regarded as the mother of the Khasan, although she's a pretty recent figure in IPOM history. Tricky thing here is ghosts exist in IPOM verse, so ghas is more shorthand for ghosts than for gods. And ghosts totally try to influence things, although, their influence in the world is fading.
Iltaine Grove : Resting place for ghemin. Think sleeping beauty's castle.
Khasan: Nomads, mostly, who travel among the lands. The caravan Whist lives in travels almost exclusively in the Eosan Wastes.
Eosan Wastes: The land no one really wanted, the borderlands where life is difficult not always simply because of terrain or climate. Eosa isn't unified at all-- their fabled King united the three separate "city-states," but after his death, they went back to being separated. XD
And that's all I'm telling. I might try for a drabble from characters that hail from the pre-renaissance kingdoms, but... that would take effort.
Fandom: NONE. I wrote IPOM fic. HAHA. Yeah, I suck.
Rating: Um. PG/PG-13 to be safe?
Chances anyone will know what I'm babbling about? Slim to none.
Challenge Fic: For 31_days, "The smell Of Spring"
The stench of wet wool snatched Whist from his uneasy sleep; his ears ached, unrested after hours of Yhisa, the ancient ghas, strumming her fine lyre against the star dimpled sky. Rain should be a soothing sound to one born on the Eosan Wastes, where life was uncertain, and snatches of water captured from the shifty skies could spell harvest— or starvation.
But Whist was Khasan more than a boy of Eosa, and his ways were not tied to the earth. Rain was unsettling, an annoyance on travel days, disaster settling in to sell the caravan’s wares, and blasphemy on this day of days. Yhisa’s fists pounded her frustrations against the ger’s thick canvas, which trembled before the sharp light permeated the pre-dawn darkness.
He sighed, and twisted in his linens, his eyes reaching across the blackness the ger had been cast into when the fire had smoldered out, liquid pooling beneath the saturated felt. He had been too slow to cover the roof with the canvas last night, and without light to see, he dared not risk a fire.
His grandmother had said nothing. But Whist wasn’t fanciful enough to expect a corpse to speak.
It was fitting that Nedda would sleep on, deaf to the rage of the ghas above. In life, such nights she would toss the bones, muttering at the course her sisters walked which she could not follow, her eyes blind to all but the ways of the ghas above and below. In death, she would nestle within the thorns of Iltane’s grove, a smile stitched deep into her death mask, finding a peace she had never wished for in life.
A peace? She would smack Whist across his pounding skull, sharply ending such nonsense. In the thick gloom, shadows flickered an uneasy parade, teasing fears from his grieving mind. It was in that fear that he wished the ghas to will Nedda speech, so that she could scold him once more, blister his ears with the fire only a woman who commanded the ghas themselves could wield. Her words would fill the ger, fill what had sunk into the ground the moment of her passing. There was a hole inside Whist, once which threatened to pull his sore body inside out, stretching his insides to dry in the winter sun.
But that wasn’t quite right, Whist considered the still shroud, barely visible, laying across the ger in defiance to the woman’s terrible force in life.
Rain meant only one thing in the Wastes, and this the first rain meant winter had turned its back upon the lands, that death would leave, that new life would take its place, that SPRING had come before the lands.
Whist didn’t feel the great transition; soon, the Khasan would celebrate the rites to ensure a good fortune, and any other year, this would be a time for joy and laughter, furtive hiding of gifts, and batting eyes at the beauties within the other gers.
This Spring, he would follow Old Nedda, living the year backwards. Dying as the stench of rain filled the lands, tearing the caravan asunder so no single mortal could take her place, rejecting the ways of the world for the taste of chill once more.
Whist longed for the winter that was, the final gasp in his life among his brothers. It wasn’t the ghas that roared above him, spilling their music as life upon the land. Nedda would take the ghas with her into the thorns, leaving Whist alone to a barren spring, waiting for the heralds of war to rip him from the only family he had known.
He closed his eyes, mouth full of spring and the first taste of drenched wool, aching for the ghas to realize their mistake— and take him to the thorns in his grandmother’s place.
Author's Note: Inspiration: Letitia Elizabeth Landon’s “The Lost Pleiad,” specifically these lines:
… he was not in the mood for the festival.
There was that crimson, the last on the sky,
Blushes that fade in the moon’s cold eye;
The sigh of the flowers arose sweet on the air,
For the breath of the twilight was wandering there.
He look’d to the west, and the tranquil main
Was branch’d with many a life-like vein;
Hues of the rosebud the clouds had cast,
Like a cheek on its mirror in gliding past.
It tempted him forth— to the lulling gale …
Yay for random poetry inspiration <3.
I tried so hard to write a Derek fic for Terminator. But it kept going in hilarious tangents, and betrayed the mood of the show. Should have known VAST would save writer-brain. Whist usually isn't this moping, but hey, you would be too if your grandmother had died ;___;.
A primer for IPOM, if you were wondering:
Ger: More or less, a mobile, easy collapse and transport, round hut made of wood, canvas, and felt.
ghas: Tricky; not gods, specifically, but ancestors who many older Khasan believe live in the sky, the stars the fires of many gers, watching over their children and descendants. Yhisa is regarded as the mother of the Khasan, although she's a pretty recent figure in IPOM history. Tricky thing here is ghosts exist in IPOM verse, so ghas is more shorthand for ghosts than for gods. And ghosts totally try to influence things, although, their influence in the world is fading.
Iltaine Grove : Resting place for ghemin. Think sleeping beauty's castle.
Khasan: Nomads, mostly, who travel among the lands. The caravan Whist lives in travels almost exclusively in the Eosan Wastes.
Eosan Wastes: The land no one really wanted, the borderlands where life is difficult not always simply because of terrain or climate. Eosa isn't unified at all-- their fabled King united the three separate "city-states," but after his death, they went back to being separated. XD
And that's all I'm telling. I might try for a drabble from characters that hail from the pre-renaissance kingdoms, but... that would take effort.
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