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edenfallingSummary: The sleeping city is empty now, but Shadowfall cannot take that final step beyond the thorns. (350 words)
Note: Some more exploratory noodling for "Sunbright and Shadowfall." Details are, of course, subject to change as I hammer out more concrete world-building.
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Penance
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The city is empty now, the sleeping bodies long since loaded into carts or wheelbarrows and dragged beyond the boundary of the curse. The only ones left are those too close to Sunbright, caught where the Shining Ones' spell is strong enough to still even the air itself. Shadowfall can walk with ease, the broken remnants of the spindle and her own blood weaving her into the fabric of the curse, but it takes all her strength to pull a sleeper even five feet per day.
The stronghold is shadowed, the lamps and torches long since burned to ash and air. Scattered beams from sun and moon pierce downward through the caves, and Shadowfall sets mirrors to catch and spread the light. But most times, she walks in darkness.
Waking and sleeping have little meaning here in the heart of the earth, swallowed by cold and echoing stone. She tried, at first, to meet Aunt Greenleaf at the edge of the thorns once every hand of days, but now they only see each other when she tugs a body free of the stronghold and wheels it over the sluggish river, through the silent, dusty streets, past empty houses aching for the lives they once sheltered. She lights a fire at the inside of the thorns and waits until she sees silver flames answer from the outer edge.
Shadowfall cannot take that final step beyond the spell.
She tells Aunt Greenleaf the magic holds her back.
This is only half a truth.
She keeps gardens at the river's edge, keeps a tiny flock of sheep, a handful of squabbling chickens. She tends them when she remembers, harvests and butchers when hunger gnaws too hard behind her ribs. But those things belong to daylight, to the sun -- and the sun in her world is still asleep.
Shadowfall curls on the floor beside Sunbright, still as perfect and young as the day Shadowfall failed and brought the curse upon her lady and her land. The afternoon sun slants bright and mocking down through a crack in the stone, gilding Sunbright's sleeping face.
Shadowfall covers her eyes and waits for darkness to return.
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Inspired by the 11/16/14![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
15_minute_ficlets word #212: drowsy
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Yay, I wrote a thing! (I've been feeling kind of blah and uncreative this week -- which I think is situational, due to November weather and screwed up sleep schedule -- so it's nice to get some words down on paper, as it were.) Anyway, this vignette would fall either late in chapter 5 or early in chapter 7 of my current outline, as Shadowfall slowly drifts away from any hope of breaking the curse. (Chapter 6 is where Sunbright accidentally learns how to dreamwalk.)
Note: Some more exploratory noodling for "Sunbright and Shadowfall." Details are, of course, subject to change as I hammer out more concrete world-building.
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Penance
---------------------------------------------
The city is empty now, the sleeping bodies long since loaded into carts or wheelbarrows and dragged beyond the boundary of the curse. The only ones left are those too close to Sunbright, caught where the Shining Ones' spell is strong enough to still even the air itself. Shadowfall can walk with ease, the broken remnants of the spindle and her own blood weaving her into the fabric of the curse, but it takes all her strength to pull a sleeper even five feet per day.
The stronghold is shadowed, the lamps and torches long since burned to ash and air. Scattered beams from sun and moon pierce downward through the caves, and Shadowfall sets mirrors to catch and spread the light. But most times, she walks in darkness.
Waking and sleeping have little meaning here in the heart of the earth, swallowed by cold and echoing stone. She tried, at first, to meet Aunt Greenleaf at the edge of the thorns once every hand of days, but now they only see each other when she tugs a body free of the stronghold and wheels it over the sluggish river, through the silent, dusty streets, past empty houses aching for the lives they once sheltered. She lights a fire at the inside of the thorns and waits until she sees silver flames answer from the outer edge.
Shadowfall cannot take that final step beyond the spell.
She tells Aunt Greenleaf the magic holds her back.
This is only half a truth.
She keeps gardens at the river's edge, keeps a tiny flock of sheep, a handful of squabbling chickens. She tends them when she remembers, harvests and butchers when hunger gnaws too hard behind her ribs. But those things belong to daylight, to the sun -- and the sun in her world is still asleep.
Shadowfall curls on the floor beside Sunbright, still as perfect and young as the day Shadowfall failed and brought the curse upon her lady and her land. The afternoon sun slants bright and mocking down through a crack in the stone, gilding Sunbright's sleeping face.
Shadowfall covers her eyes and waits for darkness to return.
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Inspired by the 11/16/14
15_minute_ficlets word #212: drowsy---------------------------------------------
Yay, I wrote a thing! (I've been feeling kind of blah and uncreative this week -- which I think is situational, due to November weather and screwed up sleep schedule -- so it's nice to get some words down on paper, as it were.) Anyway, this vignette would fall either late in chapter 5 or early in chapter 7 of my current outline, as Shadowfall slowly drifts away from any hope of breaking the curse. (Chapter 6 is where Sunbright accidentally learns how to dreamwalk.)
(no subject)
Date: 2014-11-21 11:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-11-21 08:43 pm (UTC)