Oh, what the heck

[osprey_archer]

A meme, via surexit:

Pick any passage of 500 words or less from any story I've written, and comment to this post with that selection. I will then give you the equivalent of a DVD commentary on that snippet: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I wrote it in the first place, what's going on in the character's heads, why I chose certain words, what this moment means in the context of the rest of the fic, lots of awful puns, and anything else that you’d expect to find on a DVD commentary track.

Comments

[sineala.livejournal.com]

Oh oh! Tell me about the wingfic! :)

“Tell me if I hurt you.”

“Yes, domine,” said Esca, in the mock submissive voice he knew Marcus loathed. But he was angry, and he wanted Marcus to be angry: it was only fury that gave Esca the dignity to sit still, gripping the edge of the chill stone bench with sweaty hands, and not bate like a frightened hawk at the sound of the shears singing on the whetstone.

But Marcus only set aside the whetstone. “Truly,” he said. “If I hurt you, squawk.”

“I’m not a bird,” Esca snapped.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Marcus replied, and if his words were not an apology, his tone was. His leg dragged on the early fallen leaves as he came to stand behind Esca, tugging Esca’s left wing – his good wing – to see that it was fully open. Esca wished he would start with the right, because then at least the dreading would be over. But he forced himself to stretch his wings wide, so Marcus would not pull on them.

He hated this: sitting still, spreading his wings till the bad wing ached, and letting his masters cripple him. The good little slave. So obedient. Where now the chieftain’s son?

He had fought, the first time, until the soldiers threatened to pinion him. They held him down: they broke his right wing.

That badly healed wing grounded Esca as thoroughly as clipping could, but masters always insisted on clipping anyway. And Esca held still for it, though it was a degradation, because he was so afraid of pinioning. Coward.

Marcus smoothed Esca’s flight feathers. Esca dry-swallowed. The new-grown feathers were still tender: if Marcus cut them too short, they would bleed. “Have you ever clipped – ” Esca started, and stopped himself, because his voice was near to shaking.

“Yes,” Marcus replied. Esca hated the gentleness of his voice. He was going to clip Esca’s wings: he did not get to be kind about it.

The shears snicked. Esca clenched his eyes shut so he didn’t have to see his wingtips flutter onto the fallen leaves. “When?” he asked.

Snick. Another feather. Marcus did not reply, and Esca suddenly did not want to know: he did not want to learn that Marcus’s legion had defeated thus-and-such tribe, and clipped such of them as had wings, and sold them into slavery.

But at length Marcus said, “My uncle – my other uncle, who I lived with in Rome – had a winged slave.”

They were silent after that. The shears rasped through another feather. It brushed against Esca’s ankle as it fell. Esca gagged.

[island-of-reil.livejournal.com]

Nicomedes smiled. “Your recklessness is...” He waved his free hand slightly, admiring the wine swirling in the glass. “...appealing.”

“The desires of Bithynia are the desires of Rome,” Caesar replied.

Nicomedes sipped his wine. Caesar angled his chin slightly upward, smiling. “Are they now?” Nicomedes asked, and held out the wineglass again.

Caesar leaned forward, raising his hand to tilt the wineglass toward him. His fingers pressed against Nicomedes, and Nicomedes found he was holding his breath. “Yes,” Caesar said, and licked wine off his lips.

“So that is what Rome wants,” Nicomedes said. “But I am interested in Caesar: what does Caesar want?”

“I am Rome,” said Caesar, all hauteur in his tone.

Nicomedes grabbed Caesar’s collar, pulling him forward to kiss him. The wineglass fell to the floor between them, and Nicomedes kicked it under the couch, dragging Caesar off the couch to his knees on the antique rug. Caesar’s windburned cheek was rough beneath Nicomedes’ hand, his chapped lips scratchy against Nicomedes’ mouth.

[surexit.livejournal.com]

It would not have befitted the honor of the House of Loristan or the nation of Samavia for Marco to pace back and forth on the throne dais in front of his entire court. Therefore Marco sat in his throne, a little below his father’s, as calm as if the eyes and the whispers of the court were not fixed on him.

The mocking gaze of the Jiardasian ambassador, dashing in his short velvet cape, especially vexed Marco. The ambassador looked as self-satisfied as a cat, his white teeth flashing occasionally when he could not fight back his smile any longer. “Where is Captain Ratcliffe?” he asked, just loud enough that Marco could hear, and it took all Marco’s self-control to remain calm in his seat.

The Rat would be here soon, he told himself. He would be here at any moment, and then he would explain everything, and they would trust him again. They should never have doubted him, when he had helped bring the message across Europe to Samavia. But of course they did not know the Rat like Marco did.

And they could not forget that the Rat was British. “He is a foreigner,” General Sapt had said, his voice gruff, during the Cabinet meeting that had led to this gathering in the throne room.

“I’m a foreigner,” Marco pointed out with asperity.

The cabinet was so shocked that no one spoke. “Oh no, sir,” said old Tamboran, who was in charge of the exchequer. “A Loristan could never be a foreigner.”

And Marco had not pressed the matter, because he knew that he had to be Samavian for them, even if he still sometimes felt hopelessly confused by the customs of the country that he would one day rule.

Marco wished the Rat would arrive. Despite his resolve to sit still and dignified, he briefly touched his father’s signet ring. If only his father were here!

But Stefan Loristan was away, calming Kaiser Wilhelm from another one of his rages. Marco could not call him back from a mission that was of such importance to Europe. Certainly not for something as minor as this.

Minor.

But it was minor, Marco told himself fiercely. He and the Rat would laugh about it that evening, sitting in front of Marco’s fire.

The throne room, hitherto buzzing quietly, fell abruptly silent. The Rat had entered.