Briseris Drabbles
In honor of finally moving Briseris over to Earthen Ring I'm posting some old drabbles of hers. Yay!
DARK
She wakes, and in the darkness she cannot remember where she is. This scares her.
She calls the name of a lover long gone, the sound of it swallowed up by the vacant tangle of cold linens around her. The darkness presses in against her mouth, threatening to suffocate her in her fear and confusion.
She presses her hands to her damp face, and it is then that she remembers. Skin that was once taught has now been creased by the gentle touch of age. The scents she remembers from so long ago have faded, only an autumn memory of a distant spring. The multitude of years that have brought her here remain a blur, a tangled knotting of thread that was once a tapestry. It is only her age that that has returned to her.
She is old. In the darkness and the vacancy of memory this terrifies her.
She does not sleep, but struggles instead to remember.
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GREEN
The smell of burning leaves was thick in the small room, the pungent scent of them soaking into her clothing and hair. She knows she will smell of this place for days and she does not care.
Warm skin presses against her bare shoulder, and as she pulls her lover against her she takes the cool metal tube that is handed to her and presses her lips around it. The smoke is pleasantly warm, and it smooths away the sharp edges she does not yet have the strength to face.
A part of her, even here, even now, is appalled by her own complacency, in the surrender to the despair, of this communal worship of a fragile god of glass and water and smoke. One day this will matter. One day the weight of it will drive away the woman who so eagerly seeks her hands, her mouth, her touch. She knows these things, though she hides them from herself.
Strong hands, hands she has held a thousand times, take the mouthpiece from her. She feels its loss more keenly than she will admit, and she seeks out comfort in her companion’s face.
She does not find it. All that is left has been tinted in green.
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STABLE
They had ridden through the evening, and now dawn had burnished the edge of the world with a pale fire. It was a land she did not recognize, as far from her sheltered homelands as the world would allow.
The beasts they rode had not the elegant gait of her hawkstrider, but their wide feet and bandy legs gave them stable purchase on the ever shifting ground. Her own animal bore her burden and that of her equipment without signs of strain or complaint, and if their swaying shuffle took some acclimation then it was a price she was willing to pay.
As the sun rose towards its zenith it revealed distant, unnatural peaks and long rows of columns. A small part of her thrilled at the view, at the potential for discovery. The greater part of her watched the peaks draw closer and wished for the stability of her mount, for the chance to ride the changing tide of events without losing her footing.
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SPRING
She lays among the cool grass, her head swimming in a sea of green blades that move with the wind, their verdant waves breaking against her bent knees. She is young here, knowing only the endless, tame spring of Eversong.
She thinks herself wild and free and reckless, knowing nothing of the world outside her homeland.
In the grass she lays and dreams, filling the clear sky with a future she cannot know. A future she will never have, though to tell her this now would be folly.
Very soon now duty will find her, and the true calling of her heart will make itself known, but not today. Today she lays in the sun and dreams, all the things tomorrow can promise still sweet in her mind.