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rainbowfic2023-03-15 09:25 pm
thisbluespirit) wrote in rainbowfic2023-03-15 09:25 pm
Colour of the Day 15/03/23; Vienna Orange #4; Tourmaline #4 [Starfall]
Name: The Lost Garden
Story: Starfall
Colors: Vienna Orange #4 (Your dream’ll be a nightmare before too long); Tourmaline #4 (rain/sun); Colour of the Day – 15th March 2023 (bewray)
Supplies and Styles: Canvas + Graffiti (TV Tropes Challenge – “Garden of Love” and “Post-Injury Desk Job”) + Paint-by-Numbers fromshadowsong26 (But it’ll be worth it while it lasts and sometimes that’s enough)
Word Count: 1594
Rating: G
Warnings: Some references to injuries.
Notes: 1309; 1318 Starfall Manor; Osmer Nivern/Lynah Allin, Tannis Kellen. (This is, at least in part, something of what happened to Osmer that made him stop being a Pathwalker and left him badly wounded for Pio to rescue. Flashfic for CotD, so forgive any errors.)
Summary: The roses and the thorns grow tangled up together.
i. 1309
“I saw it marked out on an old map and came to have a look – and this was what I found.”
Osmer scrambled easily over the loose bank of earth, rubble and old bricks. Stopping on the other side, he turned back and grasped Lynah’s hand to help her over the same. Steadying her on the top, his hand settled on her waist, and then he lifted her down into the garden. The pale blonde of her hair caught the sunlight filtering through the trees and rambling bushes as she moved.
“You see?” he said, freeing one hand to gesture around them at the old, neglected garden.
It was badly overgrown, despite the work Osmer had put in lately to clear out weeds and nettles, revealing glimpses of grey stone through long grass that had once been whole paths and, in the lee of one of the two walls left more or less standing, wild flowers, domestic herbs and two rose bushes grew tangled together. What remained of the house – probably an out house for one of Starfall’s staff in times gone by – was covered in ivy. A small brown bird flew in, fluttering its wings to settle in one of the alcoves in the brickwork where it had its nest.
Lynah laughed and squeezed his arm. “Very well, then. I agree – it is a good secret!” She shook herself and sat down on the largest clear patch of lawn – the sheep must have wandered in at some point, for it was by no means as long as the rest, and raised her face, eyes closed, to the early summer sun.
“I thought you’d like to be free of the place for a while,” he said.
Lynah straightened and twisted round on the grass to look at him. She sighed. “Yes. I don’t belong, do I?”
“I didn’t mean it quite like that,” he murmured, and sat down beside her, folding up his long legs under clasped fingers. He cast a sidelong glace at Lynah. She caught it, and they laughed for no reason.
“I didn’t imagine you’d been gardening, though.” Lynah leant her head against his arm. “I thought you lived in the library when you weren’t busy with your Pathwalker duties.”
He shook his head. “Oh, I need some freedom, too. The Paths – everything to do with them. I’m only learning yet, but it can be unnerving at times.”
“Shall we run away?”
Osmer sobered instantly. He put his arm around her again. “Don’t think about it,” he advised and kissed her cheek. Lynah lowered her gaze, and didn’t quite turn her face to meet his; she only half did and then caught her breath. Her fingers tightened on the material of his shirt.
“One day,” she said distantly. “If we’re patient. If they all stop bothering us, perhaps.”
“You’ll be able to do anything you please,” he assured her. (In time. In probably far too long a time for this to last.)
Lynah swallowed. “Well, there’s today,” she offered. “And nobody else is here, and I like your secret very much.”
Today might, he decided suddenly, be worth everything.
ii. 1318
The sky through the library windows was grey. Wintry rain made a soft patter against the panes as Osmer sat down. He lowered himself into the chair slowly, but not carefully enough, giving a wince as he caught his bad arm. He grunted and then settled more cautiously into his seat, resting his stick against the table beside him.
He pulled the volume in front of him closer, preparing to forget all of that for an hour or two – but no such luck. Before he’d even found his place, Tannis Kellen breezed in and across the library to stop in his study space. She pushed one of the books out of the way and perched on the edge of the table.
“There you are!” she said. “Busy already, I see. I should have known.”
Osmer raised his head sharply. “All the Powers, Tannis, not now! Go and plague someone else – haven’t you done enough?”
“Osmer –”
He laid his good arm down on the table and glared upwards. “Yes! Just go! Or, what is it – you can have Cam, but stars above and below forbid anyone else should! Well, you needn’t worry about that now. Just let me get on with about the one thing left to me in peace!”
“Well! I hope you feel better for that,” Tannis observed. She shook her head, dark curls pulled back neatly from her face. “I see it’s no good talking to you now. When you’ve stopped breathing fire, you may come and find me and then you can decide whether to apologise or thank me first.”
Osmer put a hand to his head. “Tannis. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean –” He shrugged. “I’ve just been given permission to do something – finally – and everything still hurts when I move. Ignore me.”
“You asked me for that bit of advice,” she said, and then pulled a face. “I’m sorry, too, although I can’t imagine that was at the root of all this.”
“It turns out you were right, though.” He managed a twisted smile. “Unforgivable, Tannis.”
Tannis slid off the table and moved across to take the empty wooden chair next to him. “Osmer,” she said, remembering to lower her tone before Irval came across to have words with them both for disturbing the peace of the library. “You know that wasn’t what I meant. Nobody could have guessed that Lynah would hurt you of all people.”
Osmer rubbed his eyes, a headache creeping back already. He’d asked Tannis about Lynah once, around nine and a half years ago. It wasn’t her fault that what she’d told him was true. The only way you can run away with Lynah is if you go through the Paths. And you won’t do that, will you? It wasn’t Tannis’s fault that Lynah was heir to the whole of the Allin estate; it wasn’t her fault if she knew before Osmer did that he’d never risk something so extreme. It certainly wasn’t her fault that Lynah and Osmer both knew where their duty lay. And the painful trap he’d walked into hadn’t been anybody’s fault but Lynah’s – unless it was his, for being a fool.
“She nearly had me killed.” He hadn’t said it aloud before. The statement seemed to fill the library with deeper silence, only broken by the steady falling of the rain.
Tannis nodded, her usual liveliness dimmed.
Osmer looked at her. There had been something else that had been going on as well. He wasn’t sure what, but some sort of arrangement with Starfall and Lynah, and he’d wondered when he’d been able to, if there could be some sort of mistake – a double bluff of some kind. His cheeks heated, though, at the thought of what Tannis would think of him if he asked her. Even so, he opened his mouth and almost did, before shaking his head instead.
“She’s not been back in touch with any of us, not in all the time you were missing, or since.” Tannis’s voice fell yet further, in case anyone other than the books was listening. “That’s long enough to prove where she stands. We all thought you were dead.”
“I nearly was,” said Osmer. “Except for getting to the Paths – and Pio.” He stopped and closed his eyes briefly, suddenly making sense of her presence here. His mood lightened. “Tannis – is that why I should thank you? Is Pio staying with us?”
Tannis beamed. “The Norhyrian ambassador finally agreed to leaving him with us. I don’t think she ever had any other intention, to be honest, but it was a very touchy couple of interviews and Imor Doiran left it largely to me – so you owe me!”
“Then I am grateful.”
“Good, because I need your help in your new capacity right now,” she said, moving on briskly. She stretched out an arm and tapped lightly on the cover of the nearest book with her fingernails. “It’s that business at North Fort last year, although I suppose you won’t have heard. A military affair, really, but North Fort answers to us, so I’m going. There’s a heavy-handed General who wants to throw the book at some young idiot of a Captain, but his story is weird enough for us, even if we weren’t already involved.”
“And?”
Tannis slid the file along the table towards him. “Read that. Write me a report on how possible or likely it all is and send it after me as soon as you can. The General might be right, but even so, whatever sort of fool this Delver is, he’s ours for now, and I won’t see him thrown to the wolves without giving him a proper hearing.”
“Something to make me feel important?”
“No,” she said, tartly as she rose. “If you weren’t still in such bad shape, I’d hit you with this book. It could be a matter of life and death if General Jayensor has his way – and you, I am reliably informed, are my best hope when it comes to this sort of thing. I have to leave as soon as I can, so please send it on after me.”
Osmer straightened his posture and took hold of the file as she headed away, back to the main library door. “I promise. And Tannis?”
She poked her head back around the bookshelves. “Yes?”
“Thank you. For all of it.”
“You’ll still owe me!”
Story: Starfall
Colors: Vienna Orange #4 (Your dream’ll be a nightmare before too long); Tourmaline #4 (rain/sun); Colour of the Day – 15th March 2023 (bewray)
Supplies and Styles: Canvas + Graffiti (TV Tropes Challenge – “Garden of Love” and “Post-Injury Desk Job”) + Paint-by-Numbers from
shadowsong26 (But it’ll be worth it while it lasts and sometimes that’s enough)Word Count: 1594
Rating: G
Warnings: Some references to injuries.
Notes: 1309; 1318 Starfall Manor; Osmer Nivern/Lynah Allin, Tannis Kellen. (This is, at least in part, something of what happened to Osmer that made him stop being a Pathwalker and left him badly wounded for Pio to rescue. Flashfic for CotD, so forgive any errors.)
Summary: The roses and the thorns grow tangled up together.
i. 1309
“I saw it marked out on an old map and came to have a look – and this was what I found.”
Osmer scrambled easily over the loose bank of earth, rubble and old bricks. Stopping on the other side, he turned back and grasped Lynah’s hand to help her over the same. Steadying her on the top, his hand settled on her waist, and then he lifted her down into the garden. The pale blonde of her hair caught the sunlight filtering through the trees and rambling bushes as she moved.
“You see?” he said, freeing one hand to gesture around them at the old, neglected garden.
It was badly overgrown, despite the work Osmer had put in lately to clear out weeds and nettles, revealing glimpses of grey stone through long grass that had once been whole paths and, in the lee of one of the two walls left more or less standing, wild flowers, domestic herbs and two rose bushes grew tangled together. What remained of the house – probably an out house for one of Starfall’s staff in times gone by – was covered in ivy. A small brown bird flew in, fluttering its wings to settle in one of the alcoves in the brickwork where it had its nest.
Lynah laughed and squeezed his arm. “Very well, then. I agree – it is a good secret!” She shook herself and sat down on the largest clear patch of lawn – the sheep must have wandered in at some point, for it was by no means as long as the rest, and raised her face, eyes closed, to the early summer sun.
“I thought you’d like to be free of the place for a while,” he said.
Lynah straightened and twisted round on the grass to look at him. She sighed. “Yes. I don’t belong, do I?”
“I didn’t mean it quite like that,” he murmured, and sat down beside her, folding up his long legs under clasped fingers. He cast a sidelong glace at Lynah. She caught it, and they laughed for no reason.
“I didn’t imagine you’d been gardening, though.” Lynah leant her head against his arm. “I thought you lived in the library when you weren’t busy with your Pathwalker duties.”
He shook his head. “Oh, I need some freedom, too. The Paths – everything to do with them. I’m only learning yet, but it can be unnerving at times.”
“Shall we run away?”
Osmer sobered instantly. He put his arm around her again. “Don’t think about it,” he advised and kissed her cheek. Lynah lowered her gaze, and didn’t quite turn her face to meet his; she only half did and then caught her breath. Her fingers tightened on the material of his shirt.
“One day,” she said distantly. “If we’re patient. If they all stop bothering us, perhaps.”
“You’ll be able to do anything you please,” he assured her. (In time. In probably far too long a time for this to last.)
Lynah swallowed. “Well, there’s today,” she offered. “And nobody else is here, and I like your secret very much.”
Today might, he decided suddenly, be worth everything.
ii. 1318
The sky through the library windows was grey. Wintry rain made a soft patter against the panes as Osmer sat down. He lowered himself into the chair slowly, but not carefully enough, giving a wince as he caught his bad arm. He grunted and then settled more cautiously into his seat, resting his stick against the table beside him.
He pulled the volume in front of him closer, preparing to forget all of that for an hour or two – but no such luck. Before he’d even found his place, Tannis Kellen breezed in and across the library to stop in his study space. She pushed one of the books out of the way and perched on the edge of the table.
“There you are!” she said. “Busy already, I see. I should have known.”
Osmer raised his head sharply. “All the Powers, Tannis, not now! Go and plague someone else – haven’t you done enough?”
“Osmer –”
He laid his good arm down on the table and glared upwards. “Yes! Just go! Or, what is it – you can have Cam, but stars above and below forbid anyone else should! Well, you needn’t worry about that now. Just let me get on with about the one thing left to me in peace!”
“Well! I hope you feel better for that,” Tannis observed. She shook her head, dark curls pulled back neatly from her face. “I see it’s no good talking to you now. When you’ve stopped breathing fire, you may come and find me and then you can decide whether to apologise or thank me first.”
Osmer put a hand to his head. “Tannis. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean –” He shrugged. “I’ve just been given permission to do something – finally – and everything still hurts when I move. Ignore me.”
“You asked me for that bit of advice,” she said, and then pulled a face. “I’m sorry, too, although I can’t imagine that was at the root of all this.”
“It turns out you were right, though.” He managed a twisted smile. “Unforgivable, Tannis.”
Tannis slid off the table and moved across to take the empty wooden chair next to him. “Osmer,” she said, remembering to lower her tone before Irval came across to have words with them both for disturbing the peace of the library. “You know that wasn’t what I meant. Nobody could have guessed that Lynah would hurt you of all people.”
Osmer rubbed his eyes, a headache creeping back already. He’d asked Tannis about Lynah once, around nine and a half years ago. It wasn’t her fault that what she’d told him was true. The only way you can run away with Lynah is if you go through the Paths. And you won’t do that, will you? It wasn’t Tannis’s fault that Lynah was heir to the whole of the Allin estate; it wasn’t her fault if she knew before Osmer did that he’d never risk something so extreme. It certainly wasn’t her fault that Lynah and Osmer both knew where their duty lay. And the painful trap he’d walked into hadn’t been anybody’s fault but Lynah’s – unless it was his, for being a fool.
“She nearly had me killed.” He hadn’t said it aloud before. The statement seemed to fill the library with deeper silence, only broken by the steady falling of the rain.
Tannis nodded, her usual liveliness dimmed.
Osmer looked at her. There had been something else that had been going on as well. He wasn’t sure what, but some sort of arrangement with Starfall and Lynah, and he’d wondered when he’d been able to, if there could be some sort of mistake – a double bluff of some kind. His cheeks heated, though, at the thought of what Tannis would think of him if he asked her. Even so, he opened his mouth and almost did, before shaking his head instead.
“She’s not been back in touch with any of us, not in all the time you were missing, or since.” Tannis’s voice fell yet further, in case anyone other than the books was listening. “That’s long enough to prove where she stands. We all thought you were dead.”
“I nearly was,” said Osmer. “Except for getting to the Paths – and Pio.” He stopped and closed his eyes briefly, suddenly making sense of her presence here. His mood lightened. “Tannis – is that why I should thank you? Is Pio staying with us?”
Tannis beamed. “The Norhyrian ambassador finally agreed to leaving him with us. I don’t think she ever had any other intention, to be honest, but it was a very touchy couple of interviews and Imor Doiran left it largely to me – so you owe me!”
“Then I am grateful.”
“Good, because I need your help in your new capacity right now,” she said, moving on briskly. She stretched out an arm and tapped lightly on the cover of the nearest book with her fingernails. “It’s that business at North Fort last year, although I suppose you won’t have heard. A military affair, really, but North Fort answers to us, so I’m going. There’s a heavy-handed General who wants to throw the book at some young idiot of a Captain, but his story is weird enough for us, even if we weren’t already involved.”
“And?”
Tannis slid the file along the table towards him. “Read that. Write me a report on how possible or likely it all is and send it after me as soon as you can. The General might be right, but even so, whatever sort of fool this Delver is, he’s ours for now, and I won’t see him thrown to the wolves without giving him a proper hearing.”
“Something to make me feel important?”
“No,” she said, tartly as she rose. “If you weren’t still in such bad shape, I’d hit you with this book. It could be a matter of life and death if General Jayensor has his way – and you, I am reliably informed, are my best hope when it comes to this sort of thing. I have to leave as soon as I can, so please send it on after me.”
Osmer straightened his posture and took hold of the file as she headed away, back to the main library door. “I promise. And Tannis?”
She poked her head back around the bookshelves. “Yes?”
“Thank you. For all of it.”
“You’ll still owe me!”
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“Roses have thorns. That's the price of roses. When you start to forget that, that's when things go wrong.” ― T. Kingfisher
“Look, if you can't laugh about the homicidal fits that make you a menace to society, what's even the point?” ― T. Kingfisher, Paladin's Grace
“Saving a single wondrous thing is better than saving the world. For one thing, it’s more achievable. The world is never content to stay saved.” ― T. Kingfisher, Summer in Orcus
“That it was a wolf was somewhat comforting. Wolves talked occasionally. So did bears. Foxes talked all the time, particularly if you caught them in the hen house, where they would do their best to addle you with fine nonsense until they could slip out the door, and it was generally believed that all cats could talk and simply refused to do so for inscrutable reasons of their own. ” ― T. Kingfisher, Toad Words And Other Stories
“You expect heroes to survive terrible things. If you give them a medal, then you don't ever have to ask why the terrible thing happened in the first place. Or try to fix it.” ― T. Kingfisher, A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking
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