by Rance » Tue Feb 11, 2014 3:12 pm
Several seconds passed like ages. Her face was a mill of emotion, tectonic and volatile in one moment and keen to consider the next, scarcely able to shed the spasmodic tides of conflict.
Beauty alone is not enough. It has to be fought for.
He received no words, not yet, for all fires had their threshold, the moment that inevitably turned them from sparks into flame. She denied hers. If there were cracks in her flesh, the warm, soothing sureness of Elliot's light would not have mattered; hers was brighter, hotter, incubated by Sun-heat and sand, and--
Nothing else. The seamstress surged forward. Her heels drummed against the floor. She threw one hand out before her to aid her in force, a counterbalance that would bring even more vicious strength to the fist she cocked up beside her ear. Elliot Gahald sat there like a broken king upon a throne, all bound in beauty and goodness and perfection, a hypocrite, a grinning farce, the unwitting thief of a smile that used to be so genuine, so real, so real.
Her friend.
So she swung.
But the arm only lashed out halfway before, as though she struck an unseen wall, the bandage-wrapped scourge of knuckles and black, Jernoan sweat suddenly stopped in its course. She stood like a shaking totem and said very simply, "No."
He'd said so much and so little; his words were a miasma, a tangled mess plagued with the mud of stupidity and fantasy. The seamstress loomed over him, a behemoth of shadow and mud-dark skin. Her whole body was tensile, the cranequin of a crossbow ready to fire but ultimately refused the pleasure of release.
The girl's glare was burning slag.
"If those things, those values, are what defines knighthood, then what are you, Elliot? For I see you feeding no one, I see you shielding no one. You do nothing. You stagnate here, under your comforting pretenses of goodness and beauty, contributing nothing, offering nothing. All the while, your squire, your only friend, cares for your horse and leathers as -- as if they are his own. But you never use them. Do you?
"You've all the trappings of knighthood, all the proofs and evidence and language, but none of the tangible, necessary function. This is my home, and I contribute to it as such; I do things both loathsome and charitable not only when I can, but every day I breathe, no matter my capability. I try. I live. As does everyone else except you."
Her fingers unwound from their fist, loosening, easing. Her volume was scarcely more than a shivering breath.
"But all you do is perpetuate a comforting, glittering lie. Were you truly a knight, I would bloody your nose, but I find myself hesitating, not out of kindness, but -- but out of clemency. For it is truly cruel to batter a lost little boy, especially when he knows no better."
The words, she knew, would be of no use. They'd plant no seeds, part no seas, etch no imperfections in perfectly-shining glass. She pushed the soup nearer to Elliot Gahald, left the bundle of letters where it lay, and turned. Only when her back was visible and her face was no longer Gahald's to see did the will trickle out of her. She fastened the clasp of her cloak and paused near Cherny.
"It's all I can do," she told her brother, her voice languid and sluggish. "There's -- there's one knight in this room, and his sister, who wishes she'd the same patience as her brother."
She left. Her feet relished the reality and reliability of the floor beneath them.