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edenfallingSummary: Four days after Shadowfall's parents were executed, her aunt Greenleaf cut her finger while chopping onions. Her blood was silver. (350 words)
Note: And yet more noodling. This is actually a stab at the opening of the story proper, though I'm sure it has many flaws I'm not seeing at the moment. I think Shadowfall is about nine years old at this point.
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The Scent of Onions
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Four days after Shadowfall's parents were executed, her aunt Greenleaf cut her finger while chopping onions. Her blood was silver.
Shadowfall stared at the flame-bright color spattered across the table and the knife. "Oh," she said.
"We were going to tell you when you were older," Greenleaf said as she splashed a bit of water over her hand and tore a strip from a clean rag to bind the wound. "But yes. I'm a sorcerer. Which is why you weren't killed along with your parents."
"Oh," Shadowfall said again. She reached across the table and picked up the knife. People said the Shining Ones and their children burned like fire, but her aunt's blood felt no different from her own. It tasted the same as well, when she stuck her finger into her mouth.
Greenleaf pulled another knife from the wooden block Shadowfall's father had built for her, and resumed chopping the onion. "My great-great-grandmother was captured in the fall of Ihorjo. He let her go when he realized she would bear a child. She never learned his name. And that's enough of that." She scraped the onion pieces into the stewpot and set to work on the carrots. "Don't clean the knife. Blood carries power, a sorcerer's more than most. We'll find a use for it someday."
Shadowfall set the stained knife down and looked at her fingers, still damp with her own saliva and the faint, glittering remnants of silver. She imagined Greenleaf's blood burning with magic, changing her inside. But that was nonsense. Blood alone meant nothing without a spell to shape and weave the power, and humans couldn't touch magic on their own.
All humans could do was die.
Across the table, her aunt's knife sliced through vegetables and meat, rhythmic and steady like the beating of a heart. The earthy smell of carrots joined the musty scent of beans rising from the stewpot, but the biting, sweet-sharp scent of onions overpowered them both, rising in invisible waves to catch in her eyes, and Shadowfall told herself that was the only reason for her tears.
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Inspired by the 11/9/14![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
15_minute_ficlets word #211: silver
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As I'm sure you've noticed, given the excerpts I'm posting, I have a much better handle on Shadowfall than on Sunbright. I should work on that.
Note: And yet more noodling. This is actually a stab at the opening of the story proper, though I'm sure it has many flaws I'm not seeing at the moment. I think Shadowfall is about nine years old at this point.
---------------------------------------------
The Scent of Onions
---------------------------------------------
Four days after Shadowfall's parents were executed, her aunt Greenleaf cut her finger while chopping onions. Her blood was silver.
Shadowfall stared at the flame-bright color spattered across the table and the knife. "Oh," she said.
"We were going to tell you when you were older," Greenleaf said as she splashed a bit of water over her hand and tore a strip from a clean rag to bind the wound. "But yes. I'm a sorcerer. Which is why you weren't killed along with your parents."
"Oh," Shadowfall said again. She reached across the table and picked up the knife. People said the Shining Ones and their children burned like fire, but her aunt's blood felt no different from her own. It tasted the same as well, when she stuck her finger into her mouth.
Greenleaf pulled another knife from the wooden block Shadowfall's father had built for her, and resumed chopping the onion. "My great-great-grandmother was captured in the fall of Ihorjo. He let her go when he realized she would bear a child. She never learned his name. And that's enough of that." She scraped the onion pieces into the stewpot and set to work on the carrots. "Don't clean the knife. Blood carries power, a sorcerer's more than most. We'll find a use for it someday."
Shadowfall set the stained knife down and looked at her fingers, still damp with her own saliva and the faint, glittering remnants of silver. She imagined Greenleaf's blood burning with magic, changing her inside. But that was nonsense. Blood alone meant nothing without a spell to shape and weave the power, and humans couldn't touch magic on their own.
All humans could do was die.
Across the table, her aunt's knife sliced through vegetables and meat, rhythmic and steady like the beating of a heart. The earthy smell of carrots joined the musty scent of beans rising from the stewpot, but the biting, sweet-sharp scent of onions overpowered them both, rising in invisible waves to catch in her eyes, and Shadowfall told herself that was the only reason for her tears.
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Inspired by the 11/9/14
15_minute_ficlets word #211: silver---------------------------------------------
As I'm sure you've noticed, given the excerpts I'm posting, I have a much better handle on Shadowfall than on Sunbright. I should work on that.
