You guys who have known me forever and read my stuff, know that I used to suck at it. Epically. After writing most of my original adventure novel, I'm finally getting the hang of portraying grief. You know how your first instinct as a writer is to make your character cry when sad things happen? Don't do it, I tell you. Resist the urge! *glomps Magnus* Don't let your character cry! At least, not too much. It's way more effective, when hugely awful things happen, to hide them behind a mask, or send them into shock, or make them lash out in a fury, or whatever we DON'T expect them to do. So, from that space, read this and tell me how I did.
I shoved past a pair of soldiers with their blades locked together at the hilt, each straining to best the other. My boot snagged on someone’s discarded quarterstaff, and I went down on my hands and knees in the muddy snow. As I lifted my head, my eyes refocused on the body stretched out in front of me.
He lay on his back, arms flung out to either side. A sword stood upright in his chest, a sword with a smooth black stone set into the crosshilt. The general roar of battle dropped away, leaving behind a numb silence. Violence swirled around me, men from both baronies fought and died, but I couldn’t hear them. Only the hushed murmur of heavy, wet snowflakes striking the ground.
Get up, my mind told me. Get up and keep moving. You don’t know this boy. You’re making a mistake. He’s not who you think. Just leave him. Get up. Get up!
But the spiked, tawny hair told me otherwise. I only knew one person with hair like that.
My hand moved as if it belonged to someone else. When my fingers brushed the frozen stream of blood at the corner of his mouth, I felt nothing. I watched, impassive, as the hand that was not mine traced the frost on his closed eyelids, skimmed his pale jaw, and waited at his neck for a pulse. Why couldn’t I feel his heart beating? Why couldn’t I feel?
“He’s quite dead, I’m afraid,” said a gentle voice by my ear. “Pity that stupid Dawnbridge brat can’t seem to follow orders. That is his sword, I take it?”
I turned my head. Fable crouched beside me, wearing a sorrowful expression that didn’t match the hard gleam in his eyes. I stared at the sharpness of him, of his nose and chin and cheekbones. His green cat’s eyes. I wondered why he didn’t cut people simply by looking at them.
“Yes.”
Peering at me, he lifted a few sodden black strands away from my face with his callous-tipped fingers. “I believe you’ve gone into shock.”
I didn’t move.
He jerked me upright by my hair. “Andra, do you know where your mother is now?”
That question didn’t make sense. “My mother?”
“There is no need,” he snarled, “to repeat everything I say. Do you know where she is?” Holding me by a fistful of hair, he yanked my head back, forcing me to look him in the face. I blinked as he shifted in and out of focus. Even his teeth are sharp.
“No.”
A smirk thinned his lips. “I thought not. She happens to be at the Gypsy’s Bramble just now, suffering from an extremely high fever. My sources tell me she’s not expected to last the night.”
Another piece of information that didn’t make sense. I tried to think. I don’t know for sure where the Baroness is, but I can only think of so many places she might be, and the Gypsy’s Bramble isn’t one. “She can’t be there. She hates gypsies,” I mumbled.
“Not the Baroness, silly girl,” Fable said, rolling his eyes, “I’m talking about your biological mother. Alice, or Eris…”
“Aurice.”
“Yes, Aurice. That’s her name. In any case, I would hurry if I were you. It would be such a terrible pity if you were to miss her.”
With a short laugh, he flung me down beside my friend’s body and strode off, the purple lining of his half-cloak the only color in a world washed gray.
Gah! I miss Kaden already. You guys could tell it was him, right?
Anyway, Andra is a complete mess in this scene. Normally, she wouldn't begin to put up with Fable jerking her around like that. *swats Fable*
Commander Kip
Hey look, a ring! But I can't see it through all the spam...
Normal is overrated!
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