thisbluespirit (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thisbluespirit) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
rainbowfic2022-08-26 09:05 pm
thisbluespirit) wrote in rainbowfic2022-08-26 09:05 pm
Colour of the Day 26/08/22 [Starfall]
Name: Reject
Story: Starfall
Colors: Colour of the Day (26th August 2022 – amendatory)
Supplies and Styles: Graffiti – Lilith Faire Day 6 (Village Stage: Bad Girls – M.I.A. “I had a handle on it/My life, but I broke it.”)
Word Count: 1355
Rating: G
Warnings: None, really.
Notes: 1337, Starfall Manor; Aliyna Dimue, Osmer Nivyrn.
Summary: It turns out being sent home in disgrace is harder to pull off than it sounds.
“Don’t go in there.”
Osmer halted outside the library doors, his arms full of papers. “And why not?”
“Imor Kellen and Tollings and Leaira are all in there arguing about me, and unless you’ve been invited to that enthralling meeting, you need to keep away for half an hour.”
He dragged his attention away from whatever research he’d been intending to embark on and fixed his gaze on Aliyna. “There can’t possibly be that much to say about you.”
“I’m a nuisance – haven’t you noticed?” She’d done it at last. Got them to give up, and throw her out. That’d show everyone at home that they couldn’t just pass her onto any conveniently remote institution that would take her. She kicked her foot against the wall.
Osmer stared at her even harder. She thought he might whip out his glasses and study her like one of his old manuscripts. “Well, that’s ridiculous!”
“Which part?”
“All of it!” He shoved all his paraphernalia into her arms, causing her to hastily peel herself off the wall she’d been slouching against and grab at errant papers. “Wait here!”
By the time Aliyna had a solid grip on his files, he was gone. All that was left was the library door swinging in his wake, and her belated realisation that she should have dropped everything anyway. Sometimes it was hard work being the pain that she had set out to be ever since she arrived.
“How about everybody has a say in my life but me?” she muttered, and buried her nose in the papers and the familiar musty scent.
After a few moments, she shrugged, and walked back into the library. If Osmer had gone in, the conversation wasn’t exactly private any more, so why should she stand around outside? She threw the papers down on the nearest desk, and then hesitated in the gloom, unsure what to do.
She’d wanted to have the right to be sent back home and decide for herself where she went and what she did, and if she wanted to see her family or not. But it wasn’t Starfall itself that was the problem, not really, and she squirmed inwardly at having to actually hear the bad report she’d worked so hard to earn.
Before she could move on, Osmer reappeared, marching out of the office, the robe he wore to protect his clothes from the dust flapping about him quite magnificently as he went. He barely even stopped beside her long enough to say, “Get yourself kitted out. You’re coming up to the Paths with me.”
Aliyna swung around as he swept on to the door. “Wait – what? You can’t do that!”
“Yes, I can,” he said, halting in the doorway and looking back at her. “Be ready and waiting at the east entrance in half an hour, if you want to know what it is you’re running away from. Otherwise, you may as well pack your bags and congratulate yourself on your idiotic little stratagem’s success.”
He swept on through the door, leaving her standing open-mouthed.
“He’s not serious,” she said, to herself more than to anyone else, although she heard movement behind her and knew she wasn’t alone.
Tannis Kellen halted beside Aliyna. “Oh, he is. Don’t worry. He does know what he’s doing. I suggest you take his advice – whichever part of it you prefer.”
“You’ve ruined everything,” she grumbled as they made their way up the mountain path. “Why?”
Osmer carried on at the same steady pace, outstripping her, even if he was, what, sixty? Out of the robes she usually saw him in, he looked quite different; tall and stern and suddenly alarming.
“Nonsense,” he said. “Now, you had better tell me what the problem is before we reach the Paths, or we’ll have wasted our journey up here. In broad terms,” he added. “I don’t care what’s going on in your head, but I can’t let you loose on the Paths until I know you’re not going to try and get both of us killed.”
Aliyna huffed, much more out of breath than he was, to her disgust. “This is a bluff. You’re not going to take me out there. You’re not even a Pathwalker. You’re a Researcher!”
“I used to be one.”
Aliyna tried to gather her breath and keep pace with his longer legs, and wasn’t entirely successful. She had to shut up to navigate a sharply upward turn ahead, and then Osmer helped her up a step-like stretch of rock to the path’s next level. “So you weren’t any good at it, then?”
“You can decide that for yourself presently if you answer my question.”
Aliyna glanced over her shoulder, and then upwards at the mountain peaks. The tops had snow on them. Behind her, the valley stretched away towards little green and yellow hills. Her tightly held objections to being here seemed suddenly petty; nothing that would withstand being brought out into this clear daylight. She scowled and nudged at loose stones with her toe. “None of this is anything to do with you! You’re just poking your nose in where it isn’t wanted.”
“It is particularly well shaped for that purpose,” he said and touched the tip of his long nose before grinning. “Come on,” he added, and then caught her by the arm and hauled her up the steep incline until he stopped at what appeared to be a plateau beside sheer mountain wall. It wasn’t a dead end, though. She could feel the wideness beyond it that must be the Paths, and she didn’t need to ask if they were at one of the gateways.
Aliyna put out a hand to touch the pearlescent substance that covered it. Azure and turquoise sparks danced about and she pulled back. She could feel a thrumming through her whole body, and she couldn’t keep from running her fingers over the uneven, bubbled surface again. Oh, he’d known what he was doing, hadn’t he? She couldn’t tear herself away from this, not without opening the door to it at least once.
“It’s not being here,” she said, looking out over at the view rather than at Osmer. “I don’t mind that so much, even if it is far away. It’s just – if they wanted to get rid of me, they should have been honest about it! They could have told me why I’m the one that’s so disposable!”
Osmer stared at her, frowning even harder than he had outside the library. “Shara’s Tears,” he said to the mountainside at large. “Can she be that stupid? Did nobody explain?”
“Oh, everybody kept talking.” She shrugged. “It was all excuses – lies.” Her gaze strayed to her surroundings. “But – I mean – it had to be, didn’t it? Even if it’s true, if I do have an affinity to the Paths, whatever that means, wouldn’t that have gone for all of us? But it was me they sent up here.”
Osmer put a hand on her arm. “Ridiculous girl,” he said, but more quietly. “Starfall doesn’t expend time, energy and money bringing people here merely because their families don’t want them. I don’t know how it works, either – why you rather than the rest of the family. There are theories, but I don’t suppose you want an in-depth debate on the subject here.”
She mustered a half smile, and wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. “Spare me.”
“Now, do you want to do this? It is dangerous. That’s why no one’s brought you up here before. When we’re out there, I have to be able to trust you, or neither of us might ever come back. If you want to go home instead, Tannis will agree. Nobody’s kept at Starfall against their will. You wouldn’t be the first or the last to leave. There was no need for all this nonsense.”
Aliyna nodded, her pride falling away behind her down into the valley. She could pick it up again later. “All right. You can show me, if you like.”
“Thank you,” he said, and held out his hand to her. “Shall we go?”
Story: Starfall
Colors: Colour of the Day (26th August 2022 – amendatory)
Supplies and Styles: Graffiti – Lilith Faire Day 6 (Village Stage: Bad Girls – M.I.A. “I had a handle on it/My life, but I broke it.”)
Word Count: 1355
Rating: G
Warnings: None, really.
Notes: 1337, Starfall Manor; Aliyna Dimue, Osmer Nivyrn.
Summary: It turns out being sent home in disgrace is harder to pull off than it sounds.
“Don’t go in there.”
Osmer halted outside the library doors, his arms full of papers. “And why not?”
“Imor Kellen and Tollings and Leaira are all in there arguing about me, and unless you’ve been invited to that enthralling meeting, you need to keep away for half an hour.”
He dragged his attention away from whatever research he’d been intending to embark on and fixed his gaze on Aliyna. “There can’t possibly be that much to say about you.”
“I’m a nuisance – haven’t you noticed?” She’d done it at last. Got them to give up, and throw her out. That’d show everyone at home that they couldn’t just pass her onto any conveniently remote institution that would take her. She kicked her foot against the wall.
Osmer stared at her even harder. She thought he might whip out his glasses and study her like one of his old manuscripts. “Well, that’s ridiculous!”
“Which part?”
“All of it!” He shoved all his paraphernalia into her arms, causing her to hastily peel herself off the wall she’d been slouching against and grab at errant papers. “Wait here!”
By the time Aliyna had a solid grip on his files, he was gone. All that was left was the library door swinging in his wake, and her belated realisation that she should have dropped everything anyway. Sometimes it was hard work being the pain that she had set out to be ever since she arrived.
“How about everybody has a say in my life but me?” she muttered, and buried her nose in the papers and the familiar musty scent.
After a few moments, she shrugged, and walked back into the library. If Osmer had gone in, the conversation wasn’t exactly private any more, so why should she stand around outside? She threw the papers down on the nearest desk, and then hesitated in the gloom, unsure what to do.
She’d wanted to have the right to be sent back home and decide for herself where she went and what she did, and if she wanted to see her family or not. But it wasn’t Starfall itself that was the problem, not really, and she squirmed inwardly at having to actually hear the bad report she’d worked so hard to earn.
Before she could move on, Osmer reappeared, marching out of the office, the robe he wore to protect his clothes from the dust flapping about him quite magnificently as he went. He barely even stopped beside her long enough to say, “Get yourself kitted out. You’re coming up to the Paths with me.”
Aliyna swung around as he swept on to the door. “Wait – what? You can’t do that!”
“Yes, I can,” he said, halting in the doorway and looking back at her. “Be ready and waiting at the east entrance in half an hour, if you want to know what it is you’re running away from. Otherwise, you may as well pack your bags and congratulate yourself on your idiotic little stratagem’s success.”
He swept on through the door, leaving her standing open-mouthed.
“He’s not serious,” she said, to herself more than to anyone else, although she heard movement behind her and knew she wasn’t alone.
Tannis Kellen halted beside Aliyna. “Oh, he is. Don’t worry. He does know what he’s doing. I suggest you take his advice – whichever part of it you prefer.”
“You’ve ruined everything,” she grumbled as they made their way up the mountain path. “Why?”
Osmer carried on at the same steady pace, outstripping her, even if he was, what, sixty? Out of the robes she usually saw him in, he looked quite different; tall and stern and suddenly alarming.
“Nonsense,” he said. “Now, you had better tell me what the problem is before we reach the Paths, or we’ll have wasted our journey up here. In broad terms,” he added. “I don’t care what’s going on in your head, but I can’t let you loose on the Paths until I know you’re not going to try and get both of us killed.”
Aliyna huffed, much more out of breath than he was, to her disgust. “This is a bluff. You’re not going to take me out there. You’re not even a Pathwalker. You’re a Researcher!”
“I used to be one.”
Aliyna tried to gather her breath and keep pace with his longer legs, and wasn’t entirely successful. She had to shut up to navigate a sharply upward turn ahead, and then Osmer helped her up a step-like stretch of rock to the path’s next level. “So you weren’t any good at it, then?”
“You can decide that for yourself presently if you answer my question.”
Aliyna glanced over her shoulder, and then upwards at the mountain peaks. The tops had snow on them. Behind her, the valley stretched away towards little green and yellow hills. Her tightly held objections to being here seemed suddenly petty; nothing that would withstand being brought out into this clear daylight. She scowled and nudged at loose stones with her toe. “None of this is anything to do with you! You’re just poking your nose in where it isn’t wanted.”
“It is particularly well shaped for that purpose,” he said and touched the tip of his long nose before grinning. “Come on,” he added, and then caught her by the arm and hauled her up the steep incline until he stopped at what appeared to be a plateau beside sheer mountain wall. It wasn’t a dead end, though. She could feel the wideness beyond it that must be the Paths, and she didn’t need to ask if they were at one of the gateways.
Aliyna put out a hand to touch the pearlescent substance that covered it. Azure and turquoise sparks danced about and she pulled back. She could feel a thrumming through her whole body, and she couldn’t keep from running her fingers over the uneven, bubbled surface again. Oh, he’d known what he was doing, hadn’t he? She couldn’t tear herself away from this, not without opening the door to it at least once.
“It’s not being here,” she said, looking out over at the view rather than at Osmer. “I don’t mind that so much, even if it is far away. It’s just – if they wanted to get rid of me, they should have been honest about it! They could have told me why I’m the one that’s so disposable!”
Osmer stared at her, frowning even harder than he had outside the library. “Shara’s Tears,” he said to the mountainside at large. “Can she be that stupid? Did nobody explain?”
“Oh, everybody kept talking.” She shrugged. “It was all excuses – lies.” Her gaze strayed to her surroundings. “But – I mean – it had to be, didn’t it? Even if it’s true, if I do have an affinity to the Paths, whatever that means, wouldn’t that have gone for all of us? But it was me they sent up here.”
Osmer put a hand on her arm. “Ridiculous girl,” he said, but more quietly. “Starfall doesn’t expend time, energy and money bringing people here merely because their families don’t want them. I don’t know how it works, either – why you rather than the rest of the family. There are theories, but I don’t suppose you want an in-depth debate on the subject here.”
She mustered a half smile, and wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. “Spare me.”
“Now, do you want to do this? It is dangerous. That’s why no one’s brought you up here before. When we’re out there, I have to be able to trust you, or neither of us might ever come back. If you want to go home instead, Tannis will agree. Nobody’s kept at Starfall against their will. You wouldn’t be the first or the last to leave. There was no need for all this nonsense.”
Aliyna nodded, her pride falling away behind her down into the valley. She could pick it up again later. “All right. You can show me, if you like.”
“Thank you,” he said, and held out his hand to her. “Shall we go?”