![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
moriwen1.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
tamingthemuseTitle: Forming Syzygy
Fandom: Original
Prompt: Syzygy
Warnings: None
Rating: G
Summary: She’s the first ordinary thing that’s ever happened to him.
He’s the first exciting thing that’s ever happened to her.
The black market is dangerous, sure, but it’s her job. No one’s job is exciting. Hers less so than most, really -- it’s the same thing the acolytes do, sitting on the shining stairs of the Spiral Temple, in the view of anyone who cares to look. The only difference is that at the end of the day she writes down a chart or table or even a single word, and a customer comes in, face veiled, and takes the paper, and leaves heavy mounds of money in exchange. Money is nice, and lots of money is very nice, but it stops being exciting very quickly.
Him, though -- he’s different. She doesn’t know it at first, but who does, when they meet the most important person?
She meets him at a well. She’s stopped to breathe, and he’s sitting astraddle the stone edge, tossing pebbles down to hear them clink, listening to the sounds like there’s nothing else in the world. He’s good-looking enough, she supposes, though after a country fashion, skin pale like he’s never seen the sun a day in his life, and hair down his back in loose waves. If she’d met him at her perfectly respectable bakery in the City of a Thousand Suns, if he’d been looking to do business, she’d have laughed him out of the building. No one who looks like that has the money to buy her services, that’s for sure.
Here, though, she’s the one out of place. She feels it acutely, and it makes her uncomfortable. She can’t ever afford to look different. Different is suspicious. Different makes people look twice. “Hey, goat-boy,” she says, and she’s proud her voice is level and confident. “Draw me some water, will you?”
He looks up but doesn’t start, so he’s not as oblivious as he looks. “Wouldn’t know what to do with a goat if I had one,” he answers, voice rich with a drawling northern accent. “But for the maiden who moves like a puma in shadows, I will draw water.”
She’s not sure to do with that, more laughter than flirtation, so she stands silent and watches as he hauls up a bucket from the well. He’s thin, but compact, not scrawny -- his arm muscles bulge and ripple with the effort, veins showing blue on his biceps. Local, strong, doesn’t ask too many questions; she could do with someone like him.
- * -
She’s the first ordinary thing that’s ever happened to him.
He’s like the boy in the fairy tale with a piece of magic mirror lodged in his eye, turning everything about him into a rich strange tapestry that only he can see. Today the sound of a pebble down a well has turned to music, with a pitch and rhythm he can alter by choosing a rock of a different size or smoothness, and he wonders if someday he could go to one of the great towering cities with their spires of alabaster and become a musician, a bard playing in echoing halls.
Pebbles down a well, that’s magic. But a strange woman at the well asking you to draw water, that’s ordinary. Everyone’s heard that story. That’s how adventures start.
So he hands her the oaken bucket heavy with cool sloshing water and watches as she drinks from it. A little clumsy, like she’s never drunk from something larger than a glass before, and she tilts her head up and down as she tries to compromise between thirst and dignity. Rivulets of water stream down her full cheeks, catching and trailing in her sweaty hair, and the twin streams meet and mingle behind her neck. A dark line appears down the back of her very expensive blouse, where the water makes the thin fabric cling to her spine.
Time doesn’t slow down. It seems like it, later, when he remembers this, remembers the first time he saw her, when a familiar face was still strange, full of mystery and promise. But the moments pass at their wonted rate, and so it’s not long before she lowers the bucket, breathing heavily, staring at him like he’s something good to eat.
“Come with me,” she says.
“I don’t even know your name,” he answers, not because he really cares, but because it seems like the thing to say.
“Cassandra,” she says, and that’s all, not even a repeat of her demand, like she’s absolutely sure he’ll follow her, now that she’s satisfied his requirement.
(She’s right, of course.)
Her hand is reaching out to him, palm up, fingers barely curled in a come-hither gesture which can’t be bothered to make itself into a proper beckon. It casts a very long shadow in the morning light.
He takes one step, two, then lifts his own hand and holds it over hers, palm down. She doesn’t move, still as an ambush. Waiting.
Very, very gently, he places his fingers along hers, not clasping, only touching. He looks at the long light-on-dark parallels, then looks up and into her eyes.
She smiles.
Fandom: Original
Prompt: Syzygy
Warnings: None
Rating: G
Summary: She’s the first ordinary thing that’s ever happened to him.
He’s the first exciting thing that’s ever happened to her.
The black market is dangerous, sure, but it’s her job. No one’s job is exciting. Hers less so than most, really -- it’s the same thing the acolytes do, sitting on the shining stairs of the Spiral Temple, in the view of anyone who cares to look. The only difference is that at the end of the day she writes down a chart or table or even a single word, and a customer comes in, face veiled, and takes the paper, and leaves heavy mounds of money in exchange. Money is nice, and lots of money is very nice, but it stops being exciting very quickly.
Him, though -- he’s different. She doesn’t know it at first, but who does, when they meet the most important person?
She meets him at a well. She’s stopped to breathe, and he’s sitting astraddle the stone edge, tossing pebbles down to hear them clink, listening to the sounds like there’s nothing else in the world. He’s good-looking enough, she supposes, though after a country fashion, skin pale like he’s never seen the sun a day in his life, and hair down his back in loose waves. If she’d met him at her perfectly respectable bakery in the City of a Thousand Suns, if he’d been looking to do business, she’d have laughed him out of the building. No one who looks like that has the money to buy her services, that’s for sure.
Here, though, she’s the one out of place. She feels it acutely, and it makes her uncomfortable. She can’t ever afford to look different. Different is suspicious. Different makes people look twice. “Hey, goat-boy,” she says, and she’s proud her voice is level and confident. “Draw me some water, will you?”
He looks up but doesn’t start, so he’s not as oblivious as he looks. “Wouldn’t know what to do with a goat if I had one,” he answers, voice rich with a drawling northern accent. “But for the maiden who moves like a puma in shadows, I will draw water.”
She’s not sure to do with that, more laughter than flirtation, so she stands silent and watches as he hauls up a bucket from the well. He’s thin, but compact, not scrawny -- his arm muscles bulge and ripple with the effort, veins showing blue on his biceps. Local, strong, doesn’t ask too many questions; she could do with someone like him.
- * -
She’s the first ordinary thing that’s ever happened to him.
He’s like the boy in the fairy tale with a piece of magic mirror lodged in his eye, turning everything about him into a rich strange tapestry that only he can see. Today the sound of a pebble down a well has turned to music, with a pitch and rhythm he can alter by choosing a rock of a different size or smoothness, and he wonders if someday he could go to one of the great towering cities with their spires of alabaster and become a musician, a bard playing in echoing halls.
Pebbles down a well, that’s magic. But a strange woman at the well asking you to draw water, that’s ordinary. Everyone’s heard that story. That’s how adventures start.
So he hands her the oaken bucket heavy with cool sloshing water and watches as she drinks from it. A little clumsy, like she’s never drunk from something larger than a glass before, and she tilts her head up and down as she tries to compromise between thirst and dignity. Rivulets of water stream down her full cheeks, catching and trailing in her sweaty hair, and the twin streams meet and mingle behind her neck. A dark line appears down the back of her very expensive blouse, where the water makes the thin fabric cling to her spine.
Time doesn’t slow down. It seems like it, later, when he remembers this, remembers the first time he saw her, when a familiar face was still strange, full of mystery and promise. But the moments pass at their wonted rate, and so it’s not long before she lowers the bucket, breathing heavily, staring at him like he’s something good to eat.
“Come with me,” she says.
“I don’t even know your name,” he answers, not because he really cares, but because it seems like the thing to say.
“Cassandra,” she says, and that’s all, not even a repeat of her demand, like she’s absolutely sure he’ll follow her, now that she’s satisfied his requirement.
(She’s right, of course.)
Her hand is reaching out to him, palm up, fingers barely curled in a come-hither gesture which can’t be bothered to make itself into a proper beckon. It casts a very long shadow in the morning light.
He takes one step, two, then lifts his own hand and holds it over hers, palm down. She doesn’t move, still as an ambush. Waiting.
Very, very gently, he places his fingers along hers, not clasping, only touching. He looks at the long light-on-dark parallels, then looks up and into her eyes.
She smiles.
no subject
Date: 2013-12-07 11:38 pm (UTC)