(Because it's like the exact opposite of the weekend right now.)
Thanks @chaosherald for the tag, and @thedissonantverses for the prompt!
Take a scene you’ve already written and flip it to another character’s POV in the same scene! This can be another main character or a secondary or tertiary character! The goal here is to just highlight what is different or the same about the exact same moment from different perspectives and more importantly, show you the writer where you can make your POVs stand out from each other!
The first scene that came to mind for this was the chase sequence in "Shadow and Crow." Not a super-introspective scene to do this with, but it's one that I felt I could do quickly.
If you want to read the section from "Shadow and Crow" for comparison, it's a bit long to copy-paste here (when this is already going to be long for a Tumblr post), but find the line "A boy stood in the kitchen, watching her" and read from there to the section break.
An intruder stood in the butler’s pantry.
Lucanis had expected a simple late-night snack run to the kitchen. Grab a bit of bread, maybe some cheese. Try to avoid his grandmother, his cousin, all three of the staff that somehow maintained the entirety of House Dellamorte’s Seleny villa. He’d expected maybe getting caught—it happened sometimes, when his grandmother walked the halls late, checking for weaknesses, soothing the fears she refused to voice—and maybe receiving a caning for it.
He hadn’t expected a hooded, scarf-masked stranger.
An intruder.
In the butler’s pantry.
Rifling through the flatware and pocketing the weird pieces that Lucanis still didn’t exactly know the function of, despite receiving etiquette training since he was four.
Etiquette training didn’t matter right now. Not when there was an intruder in his house. Where there was one, there could be more. More meant vulnerability. More meant danger. More could very well mean a repeat of—
His thoughts hitched for a moment, spiraling in on themselves, still raw and small. Still nine years old, wedged in a corner behind a dusty old wardrobe and a stack of old paintings in an attic with Illario, trying to block out the screams and wishing he had a knife, had his stuffed wyvern, had his Mamá and Papá—
He clenched his hand, digging his nails into his palm, and willed the images away, cleared his mind like his grandmother had taught. File it down. Make it useful.
The intruder hadn’t moved. Simply stared with eyes that glinted pale against dark skin, the only thing visible between hood and scarf. Wide. Darting down to look at his dressing gown, his pressed pajamas, his slippers. Just as surprised as he was.
His fingers twitched. Wishing again for a knife. Cursing himself for leaving it under his pillow instead.
The intruder bolted.
It took Lucanis longer than he would admit to realize what was happening.
He should have raised the alarm.
He should have gotten his grandmother’s attention, roused the whole household, warned them of potential threats.
Instead, he took off running after the intruder.
They were light on their feet, footsteps still quiet on soft soles against the tiled floor despite their sudden flight. Focused enough to run with purpose, like they knew where they were going in the maze of the villa’s rooms. Nimble enough to make sudden turns.
Crow training?
But they didn’t wear fledgling leathers.
He tucked the thought aside for later. Slid on the floor as the intruder took a sharp corner and rolled beneath the table in the servants’ kitchen. His own feet slid on the floor, and he stumbled and cursed softly as the gap between them widened. The intruder dashed into the laundry. Lucanis tossed his slippers aside for better footing and followed, just in time to see them bound up the wash basins and through the window with the grace of a cat.
His hips stuck momentarily in the casement, and he grunted with the effort of forcing himself through. His dressing gown tore on the latch. The cold ground stung his bare toes, and he hissed and hopped briefly and wished he had his boots.
The stranger glanced over their shoulder once and ran on.
It didn’t matter. While Lucanis’s grandmother let the garden fall to some measure of wildness, to obfuscate their presence at the Seleny villa for his and Illario’s training, she still ordered the trees cut back from the wall to control the routes by which one might leave the Villa grounds.
To keep potential intruding Crows from climbing back out easily.
He pushed harder, drew closer to the intruder. Reached out to grab the back of their coat.
They pivoted slightly, just enough to evade his grip, and ran at the wall anyway. It didn’t take Lucanis long to spot their goal.
Ivy. Growing over from a neighboring building.
The intruder leaped and scrambled up the roots like a monkey.
Some small part of Lucanis was impressed. The rest tried to match the leap, and nearly fell as the roots pulled away from the wall. Training kicked in. Fingers found the small gaps he could just barely hold, grip for half a heartbeat, just long enough to gain leverage and pull himself further. Slower than the intruder, but not by much.
He should have raised the alarm.
Instead, he followed the intruder out across the rooftops, out into the city, both of them silent as shadows save for the tattoo of their feet against tiles and the huff of breath.
They were good. Clearly trained. But he was better. He was a Dellamorte. The First Talon’s grandson.
The intruder slipped on a tile, and Lucanis snapped into motion.
His hand snapped out. Grabbed the trailing end of the intruder’s scarf. Yanked it tight around their throat and whipped them backward. They stumbled and reached for something on their thigh.
Dagger.
Swung at his face.
He ducked the strike, flowed around them like water, and in moments had dropped them to the roof with bruising force and pinned them down. They clutched at the hand that gripped their throat, but his training was in control, every lesson his grandmother had drilled into him at the forefront now. Give no quarter. Be ruthless. Be efficient. Dellamortes do not bend to the other Houses.
“Who are you?” he growled, gripping the intruder’s knife-wrist until they whimpered and dropped the dagger. “Which House sent you?”
“Please,” the intruder choked out, and something in that tiny, strangled voice hit him like a shard of ice to the chest.
Dark skin, pale hair, exposed when their hood and scarf had fallen back. Round cheeks, soft chin. Wide eyes, wet with tears that fell freely. Small body, too soft, too thin. Horns. Stubby things, banded with strips of leather stamped with colorful flower designs.
A child.
Not a youth like him, but a child.
A Qunari child.
A girl, he thought, by the hair, the flowers on the leather horn wraps.
His grip around her throat loosened slightly in surprise. She gasped, her throat fluttering beneath his fingertips.
Don’t let your guard down.
He tightened his grip again.
The girl squeaked in pain.
A child.
Do not show weakness. The other Crows will see your failing and strike.
His grandmother’s voice in his ears. Training. No mercy to those who would harm the Dellamortes. No more.
The First Talon’s family could not show weakness, or they would be cut down.
But...a child.
Compassion and sentimentality will only get you killed.
The girl’s grip on his wrist faltered as she struggled to breathe. Fading.
Do what must be done.
Dying.
At his hands.
Just a child. And not a Crow.
He flinched, and yanked his hand away from her throat.
“You’re not a Crow,” he said softly as she took deep, relieved breaths. As her tears streamed down the sides of her face into her hair. As they caught in the lines of a scar that ran pink-tinged and crooked across one temple. “You’re just a child.”
He should have raised the alarm.
Instead, he listened.
Instead, he found himself giving a Qunari child her knife back, and letting her leave with her stolen spoils.
And when she showed up the next night, and the next, and the next, and wormed her way into a forced but not entirely unwanted friendship, he found himself grateful he’d given chase instead.
