FicFicFic. Fic. And Dentistry Woes.
Aug. 25th, 2004 08:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cygna_himeYes, more.
1. Merriman/Hawkin, for the DiRSlash challenge (and Rider-chan) yet again. Angst. Angsty angst angst. Woe. Spoilers of major nature for DiR. Angst. You have been warned.
Requiem
I loved him. I still love him.
I am forgotten. Of all the tales, of all the songs, none remember me. It is better so. I do not want to be remembered for what I did. I want to be remembered instead for who I was, for whom I loved, for who, perhaps, loved me. And that only he can remember now.
I must have loved him from the first moment I set eyes upon him. I was a child, no more, and he...was very much as he has ever been. Of course, I didn't know that then. I didn't even know I loved him, although I must have done, for I cannot remember a time when his smiles, his assurances meant no more to me than another's. He was always, always the most important. He was my liege-lord, the man who took care of me as a son...but I was not his son. No wife or mistress of his bore me. I was glad, am still glad, for that. I wondered once why it was he, and not my kin, who raised me. I still wonder. Did he know what he would come to be to me? Did he even suspect that he would have in me a more devoted pawn than he could otherwise have gotten? I should not think so bitterly of him. Perhaps not even an Old One, not even he can predict the human soul. I would like to believe so.
I grew, and grew to love him ever more in those years in his manor, until I marveled that he could not tell from the barest glance at my face. Maybe he could, and simply chose to be silent for a reason of his own. At that time, I could not imagine how he could be unaware that I worshipped him not as a son, but as a lover. And then he did. No more than a look and a smile passed from him to me, but I knew, or thought I knew, that I was the most important to him as he will always be the most important to me.
He told me, that day. About everything. About the Light, the Dark, the Old Ones...himself. I had always known him to be far older than I, but so much older, so much that age had no meaning-! He looked at me when he explained, trying to gauge my reaction before I spoke. I laughed. After all, I had not minded before; why should I? I told him I loved him, then, for the first time, and in the warmth of the first kiss we shared he said he loved me too.
I would have done anything for him, in those blissful days and weeks when the world was perfect. I wanted to do something for him, anything, everything. I wanted to give him everything. It frightened me then, frightens me even now, that I could, and did, and can, and do want anything so much. So when he told me what he wanted me to do, I was more than willing to help. I would have done anything he asked.
Coming forward in time was wonderful. Almost, but not quite, I forgot why I had come. I didn't care, or thought I didn't, that my liege-lord left to fetch another Old One, a boy not yet grown into his strength, the boy I had to help do that growing. I liked the boy. He was young, very much a child still, knowing not even so much as I did about what he was. He reminded me of myself, or of the younger brother I never had. I wanted to do what I could to guide and protect him for his own sake, and not just because my lord had asked it of me.
I was not prepared for what I did do. I don't think anyone could ever have been prepared. To kneel there, watching death swing back and forth, knowing everything rests on the graceful movement of his fingers, and yet unable to do so much as gasp...no one could make themselves ready for that. I never feared death in battle or illness, but to remain still and calm while wondering if I would live another second was unlike anything I had imagined. And my lord...all I could think of as I watched was that if I were to die I would not be able to say goodbye to him. But as it happened, I did not die.
And then I more than died to see that my lord cared less for my life than for the boy and the book he held, the book for which I had risked my life. It was as though a fog melted from my sight. He cared nothing for me; he never had cared. I had been no more than a willing tool, to be spoken to kindly perhaps, but not wanted after its use had been fulfilled. My love had been nothing, my life even less. What could a man who would live perhaps forty years matter to an immortal? And the boy...I truly had seen in him an echo of myself; young (but an Old One, too, and immortal), looking to my lord for guidance, simple and childish as yet. But of a sudden I realized he would grow very quickly, and what was a dozen years to an Old One? So I thought then. I have learned better now. But then I wanted to hurt all of them, him with his concern, and the Old Ones with their pity, and my lord most of all, with his betrayal. That was the way it felt.
I could hurt them. A way was open before me. The Dark girl thought she could persuade me to join her; she was a fool. I cared nothing then for her or her masters, only for what I could do to their enemies. I let them in, and then...I was struck down, everything that I had been destroyed for the second time by the man I loved. He took away the chance I was seeking even then, death and forgetfulness at the hands of the Dark, or of the Light, or if all else failed, myself. He had taken my life from me, and without any more hesitation than he had shown in doing that he took away my death. I hated him then, for destroying all that had been me and yet refusing to destroy me. And still I loved him. I loved him through all the years I carried the Sign, loved him and hated him and feared him too, until it was all I could do to release the Sign at all. It had been my safeguard, my protection from who I once had been. But how could I not give it up? I knew I had, I had seen it on his belt. So it was done.
I wanted ton turn back, when he asked me. I wanted it so much it hurt. But I was so sure he was lying, pretending affection if that would protect him and his from the Dark. He had done it before, or I thought he had. Even though I was certain it was nought but pretense, almost I went to him and begged forgiveness. I wanted what he was offering, to be what I had been, wanted it so much. But then I realized: I could never be what I had been. He had stripped all that away. Home? I had no home, had never had a home except with him, and I was no longer wanted there. Trust? Love? They had passed from me to him in a flood, leaving me empty without his to fill me. So I refused him and his Light. The Dark, at least, made no pretense of asking or giving trust.
I was a fool, and worse than a fool. I know that now. I first knew when I fell, at last, from the horse of the Black Rider. I had been expecting it, but still it hurt in a faint shadow of that first pain. But the Dark had nothing of me to betray. The pain I had been awaiting, but not the terrible, clinging numbness. Less had I lookd for the figures who came to me; my lord, and the boy beside him who I could at last see was not a reflection or replacement, but himself. My lord...he told me, then, all I had thought was wrong. I had been a fool to make myself believe that it was his doing, not mine, that parted us. That much was past. He had forgiven me; it was more than I had ever hoped for. For what I had done to him, or tried to do, I deserved far worse than I had suffered, and yet he forgave me. I loved him, in that last moment when speech was gone, more than I had ever loved him before. I hope he understood then what I had no longer the voice to say, for I can not now see him to tell him what is in my heart.
I loved him. I still love him.
Why Requiem? Dictionary.com--a song for the dead. Whah.
I like the EvilForAReason!People a lot more than the EvilButNot!People. You know, the ones who are only misunderstood, were never evil at all, and/or are easily redeemed by the hero(ine)? I hate them. I prefer people like Hawkin, and Seishirou, and Vlad, and Morrolan, who if they are evil, are damn good at it, and if it started with a misunderstanding, it's gone far beyond that now. Evil rox my sox. Which I'm not wearing, so maybe forget that.
Second:
I wrote a canonverse X story! Of course, it's a drabble, and 16 or so years before Prelude, but still...G rated, I really hope it doesn't need spoilers to tell you that Kamui was born.
It was a difficult labor. She had refused to have an anesthetic. They should begin as they would go on. She was healthy, and so was he, and that was that.
She held him, small and purple-faced, a wisp of dark hair clinging to his skull. They had wiped the blood off, but she could tell it was (or would be) there.
He looked up at her, and his eyes were almost purple. His tiny fist grabbed at a strand of her sweat-soaked hair. A nurse asked what his name was, for the birth certificate.
“Kamui,” she said, “Shirou Kamui.”
Does Kamui's mom have red hair, or is that just my delusion? I've forgotten. She does, however, go on my list of Parents Who Die Burning, along with Feanor and Denethor.
The thing about universes like X, CCS, and Smallville, where nuclear families are few and far-between, by the way, is that it's very easy to connect them. Who is Chloe's mom? We only know she left when Chloe was five. Are there any other LLuthors out there somewhere? It seems likely (since when does Lionel have only one of anything useful?). Who was Lillian's family? We don't even know her maiden name. Fun for crossovers.
Third: Snippet from Card Master of Derkholm, on which I wrote 2 scenes so far, and here they are. I made OCs! Who haven't been introduced yet! But exist! Without distorting canon, in fact to prevent said distortion! Go me!
Clow was disgruntled. He had been so sure when he wrote out the plan that it would work perfectly, only it seemed to have all gone wrong somehow. The shape inside the pentacle was not at all what he had visualized.
“Look,” he began, for what felt like the twentieth time but was probably only the third, “it’s no good being so stubborn. There is nothing wrong with the shape I made for you.” The pixielike figure shook its head emphatically and tried to speak, but no words came out. It glared at him. “Well, that’s your own fault for not letting me finish. The voice comes last of all, and you won’t let me get that far. I ought to just banish you, and find someone else,” he threatened, without meaning a word of it. He never could bear to send anything away, least of all one of his new children, and it never worked anyway. What’s wrong with my design, anyway?” She—the being was definitely a she—gestured in a way that said very clearly, ‘It’s not the least bit like me, you idiot!’ Clow sighed and decided to capitulate. “Oh, fine, have it your way.” He muttered a few magical phrases and the pentacle dissolved in a flash of light.
A delicate girl-child, only about as high as knee, smiled sunnily at him. Her skin and hair were pale green, and she seemed to have a green puffball of a tail tucvked under her neat black jacket. Clow scooped her up to get a better look at his daughter, and she giggled.
“I thought you’d never finish me!” she said brightly. “What’s your name? For that matter, what’s mine?”
“I am Clow Reed,” he replied, “and I think I shall call you Glow. How on earth did you come to be so stubborn?” Of course, he knew why. He and his wife between them had enough of what they liked to call ‘determination’ to more than account for it. “I wanted you to be more like your sister, Light.”
Glow giggled. “But then I wouldn’t be me, Daddy. I have a sister? Is she nice? Do I have a mother too?”
“Light is very nice, and you certainly have a mother.” A knock sounded on the door. “In fact, I think that’s her. Come in, Madoushi!” he called. “I’m finished.”
It could have been no one else at the door. Madoushi was the only one in Derkholm who dared to enter the study when Clow had declared his intention of doing a spell. Being a skilled sorceress herself, she could be relied upon to assist if the spell went awry. This time, though, she hardly seemed to notice Glow nestled in Clow’s arms.
“You need to come at once, dear,” she said. “It’s rather a mess.”
“What is it?” Clow asked, suddenly worried. “Has Yue been doing magic without knowing it again?”
“No, I’m afraid it’s worse than that.” Madoushi looked at him sympathetically. “Querida wants to see you. You’re to be made Dark Lord for this year’s Pilgrim Parties.”
* * *
Clow privately swore to himself as he started toward the stables after sending Glow off with Madoushi to be intoriduced to the others. Dark Lord! And now, of all times, too! Still there was nothing he could do about it. Other wizards had been Dark Lords when they had families too, and anyway telling Querida he had to take care of his children would make her ask far too many questions about who all these children were, and why she had never met any of them but Li Wu and Johanne, and what would happen then would be far worse than being Dark Lord. No, he would have to do it, even if he would rather refuse and see how the Pilgrim Parties would work without a Dark Lord.
The Pilgrim Parties had been devastating the world for the last forty years, and everyone knew it except, presumably, the tourists themselves. They just thought of the world as a sort of imaginary game, while Mr. Chesney sat back and collected profits. He must be a horribly powerful man, Clow thought, even if he was being backed up by a demon the way Wizard Barnabas said. And strict about things, too. Blast Querida! She would have to make him be Dark Lord now, of all the inconvenient times!
Clow was in the stable and had a saddle halfway over Beauty’s back before he realized that he could no more ride Beauty in to the University than he could tell Querida who his other children were. The merest sight of a winged horse would have made her more determined than ever to find out what he was doing at Derkholm. He would have to translocate, and that was a chore when he could go only five miles at a time. Still, it was better than nothing, and much better than giving Querida a sight of Beauty.
“Sorry girl, not today,” he said to Beauty as he hung the saddle back up. “I have to go to the University to see Querida, and you wouldn’t like that. Perhaps tomorrow.” Beauty didn’t reply, which he knew meant she was annoyed with him. With a sigh, Clow went out of the stable and began the wretched long process of translocating fifty miles to the University.
* * *
Querida was a small, dried-up woman who was so old her skin looked almost as green as Glow’s. She was also the most brutally efficient person Clow had ever met, and persisted in thinking of him as a helpless fool. She had been one of the things he had been happiest to leave behind with the University. She looked up when he entered her study, and moved straight to business.
“Wizard Clow, it has been brought to my notice that, while all the other male wizards have been Dark Lord at least twice in the past forty years, you have so far managed to avoid doing it even once.” Clow opened his mouth to protest that he had been Dark Lord twenty-four years back, actually, but she ignored him. “As such, I have chosen to select you as Dark Lord for this year’s Tours. You will, of course, be responsible for holding the official meeting next week. Derkholm is, if I recall correctly, quite adequate to contain the number of guests. Expect some fifty wizards, myself, three off-worlders, and Mr. Chesney. All further information will be given to you at the meeting. That is all.”
Clow, recognizing a lost cause when he saw one, turned to go, only to be stopped by one last remark. “Oh, and if you have been creating any monsters on that land of yours, see to it that Mr. Chesney does not see them. Thank you.”
The door slammed to behind Clow as he walked out, trying desperately not to say what he thought about Querida. She always gave orders in such an autocratic way, as if she had the right to interfere with your life! Perhaps, under the circumstances, she did, but it still aggravated him. The worst thing was that she couldn’t seem to see him as anything but the student wizard he had been over thirty years before, and a rather limited version of that, too.
Torn between anger at Querida and pleasure that he was out of the University, it took Clow nearly twice as many jumps as usual to get back to Derkholm.
Of course, no one here knows what I'm blabbing about, but what the hey.
Also: Dentistry woes.
It is difficult to restrain the urge to resist when someone is poking you in the gums, has their fingers in your mouth, and is someone to whom you have taken instant dislike. Ow. I apparently have gingivitis, and need to start flossing more (i.e. at all). But I hated that woman. She treated me like a piece of wood with teeth.
Sorry she had to put up with me. Sorry I had to put up with her.
Reading DWJ's A Tale of Time City for fun and tone for CMoD. Whoo. Ish good.
Oi, this post is long.
1. Merriman/Hawkin, for the DiRSlash challenge (and Rider-chan) yet again. Angst. Angsty angst angst. Woe. Spoilers of major nature for DiR. Angst. You have been warned.
I loved him. I still love him.
I am forgotten. Of all the tales, of all the songs, none remember me. It is better so. I do not want to be remembered for what I did. I want to be remembered instead for who I was, for whom I loved, for who, perhaps, loved me. And that only he can remember now.
I must have loved him from the first moment I set eyes upon him. I was a child, no more, and he...was very much as he has ever been. Of course, I didn't know that then. I didn't even know I loved him, although I must have done, for I cannot remember a time when his smiles, his assurances meant no more to me than another's. He was always, always the most important. He was my liege-lord, the man who took care of me as a son...but I was not his son. No wife or mistress of his bore me. I was glad, am still glad, for that. I wondered once why it was he, and not my kin, who raised me. I still wonder. Did he know what he would come to be to me? Did he even suspect that he would have in me a more devoted pawn than he could otherwise have gotten? I should not think so bitterly of him. Perhaps not even an Old One, not even he can predict the human soul. I would like to believe so.
I grew, and grew to love him ever more in those years in his manor, until I marveled that he could not tell from the barest glance at my face. Maybe he could, and simply chose to be silent for a reason of his own. At that time, I could not imagine how he could be unaware that I worshipped him not as a son, but as a lover. And then he did. No more than a look and a smile passed from him to me, but I knew, or thought I knew, that I was the most important to him as he will always be the most important to me.
He told me, that day. About everything. About the Light, the Dark, the Old Ones...himself. I had always known him to be far older than I, but so much older, so much that age had no meaning-! He looked at me when he explained, trying to gauge my reaction before I spoke. I laughed. After all, I had not minded before; why should I? I told him I loved him, then, for the first time, and in the warmth of the first kiss we shared he said he loved me too.
I would have done anything for him, in those blissful days and weeks when the world was perfect. I wanted to do something for him, anything, everything. I wanted to give him everything. It frightened me then, frightens me even now, that I could, and did, and can, and do want anything so much. So when he told me what he wanted me to do, I was more than willing to help. I would have done anything he asked.
Coming forward in time was wonderful. Almost, but not quite, I forgot why I had come. I didn't care, or thought I didn't, that my liege-lord left to fetch another Old One, a boy not yet grown into his strength, the boy I had to help do that growing. I liked the boy. He was young, very much a child still, knowing not even so much as I did about what he was. He reminded me of myself, or of the younger brother I never had. I wanted to do what I could to guide and protect him for his own sake, and not just because my lord had asked it of me.
I was not prepared for what I did do. I don't think anyone could ever have been prepared. To kneel there, watching death swing back and forth, knowing everything rests on the graceful movement of his fingers, and yet unable to do so much as gasp...no one could make themselves ready for that. I never feared death in battle or illness, but to remain still and calm while wondering if I would live another second was unlike anything I had imagined. And my lord...all I could think of as I watched was that if I were to die I would not be able to say goodbye to him. But as it happened, I did not die.
And then I more than died to see that my lord cared less for my life than for the boy and the book he held, the book for which I had risked my life. It was as though a fog melted from my sight. He cared nothing for me; he never had cared. I had been no more than a willing tool, to be spoken to kindly perhaps, but not wanted after its use had been fulfilled. My love had been nothing, my life even less. What could a man who would live perhaps forty years matter to an immortal? And the boy...I truly had seen in him an echo of myself; young (but an Old One, too, and immortal), looking to my lord for guidance, simple and childish as yet. But of a sudden I realized he would grow very quickly, and what was a dozen years to an Old One? So I thought then. I have learned better now. But then I wanted to hurt all of them, him with his concern, and the Old Ones with their pity, and my lord most of all, with his betrayal. That was the way it felt.
I could hurt them. A way was open before me. The Dark girl thought she could persuade me to join her; she was a fool. I cared nothing then for her or her masters, only for what I could do to their enemies. I let them in, and then...I was struck down, everything that I had been destroyed for the second time by the man I loved. He took away the chance I was seeking even then, death and forgetfulness at the hands of the Dark, or of the Light, or if all else failed, myself. He had taken my life from me, and without any more hesitation than he had shown in doing that he took away my death. I hated him then, for destroying all that had been me and yet refusing to destroy me. And still I loved him. I loved him through all the years I carried the Sign, loved him and hated him and feared him too, until it was all I could do to release the Sign at all. It had been my safeguard, my protection from who I once had been. But how could I not give it up? I knew I had, I had seen it on his belt. So it was done.
I wanted ton turn back, when he asked me. I wanted it so much it hurt. But I was so sure he was lying, pretending affection if that would protect him and his from the Dark. He had done it before, or I thought he had. Even though I was certain it was nought but pretense, almost I went to him and begged forgiveness. I wanted what he was offering, to be what I had been, wanted it so much. But then I realized: I could never be what I had been. He had stripped all that away. Home? I had no home, had never had a home except with him, and I was no longer wanted there. Trust? Love? They had passed from me to him in a flood, leaving me empty without his to fill me. So I refused him and his Light. The Dark, at least, made no pretense of asking or giving trust.
I was a fool, and worse than a fool. I know that now. I first knew when I fell, at last, from the horse of the Black Rider. I had been expecting it, but still it hurt in a faint shadow of that first pain. But the Dark had nothing of me to betray. The pain I had been awaiting, but not the terrible, clinging numbness. Less had I lookd for the figures who came to me; my lord, and the boy beside him who I could at last see was not a reflection or replacement, but himself. My lord...he told me, then, all I had thought was wrong. I had been a fool to make myself believe that it was his doing, not mine, that parted us. That much was past. He had forgiven me; it was more than I had ever hoped for. For what I had done to him, or tried to do, I deserved far worse than I had suffered, and yet he forgave me. I loved him, in that last moment when speech was gone, more than I had ever loved him before. I hope he understood then what I had no longer the voice to say, for I can not now see him to tell him what is in my heart.
I loved him. I still love him.
Why Requiem? Dictionary.com--a song for the dead. Whah.
I like the EvilForAReason!People a lot more than the EvilButNot!People. You know, the ones who are only misunderstood, were never evil at all, and/or are easily redeemed by the hero(ine)? I hate them. I prefer people like Hawkin, and Seishirou, and Vlad, and Morrolan, who if they are evil, are damn good at it, and if it started with a misunderstanding, it's gone far beyond that now. Evil rox my sox. Which I'm not wearing, so maybe forget that.
Second:
I wrote a canonverse X story! Of course, it's a drabble, and 16 or so years before Prelude, but still...G rated, I really hope it doesn't need spoilers to tell you that Kamui was born.
It was a difficult labor. She had refused to have an anesthetic. They should begin as they would go on. She was healthy, and so was he, and that was that.
She held him, small and purple-faced, a wisp of dark hair clinging to his skull. They had wiped the blood off, but she could tell it was (or would be) there.
He looked up at her, and his eyes were almost purple. His tiny fist grabbed at a strand of her sweat-soaked hair. A nurse asked what his name was, for the birth certificate.
“Kamui,” she said, “Shirou Kamui.”
Does Kamui's mom have red hair, or is that just my delusion? I've forgotten. She does, however, go on my list of Parents Who Die Burning, along with Feanor and Denethor.
The thing about universes like X, CCS, and Smallville, where nuclear families are few and far-between, by the way, is that it's very easy to connect them. Who is Chloe's mom? We only know she left when Chloe was five. Are there any other LLuthors out there somewhere? It seems likely (since when does Lionel have only one of anything useful?). Who was Lillian's family? We don't even know her maiden name. Fun for crossovers.
Third: Snippet from Card Master of Derkholm, on which I wrote 2 scenes so far, and here they are. I made OCs! Who haven't been introduced yet! But exist! Without distorting canon, in fact to prevent said distortion! Go me!
Clow was disgruntled. He had been so sure when he wrote out the plan that it would work perfectly, only it seemed to have all gone wrong somehow. The shape inside the pentacle was not at all what he had visualized.
“Look,” he began, for what felt like the twentieth time but was probably only the third, “it’s no good being so stubborn. There is nothing wrong with the shape I made for you.” The pixielike figure shook its head emphatically and tried to speak, but no words came out. It glared at him. “Well, that’s your own fault for not letting me finish. The voice comes last of all, and you won’t let me get that far. I ought to just banish you, and find someone else,” he threatened, without meaning a word of it. He never could bear to send anything away, least of all one of his new children, and it never worked anyway. What’s wrong with my design, anyway?” She—the being was definitely a she—gestured in a way that said very clearly, ‘It’s not the least bit like me, you idiot!’ Clow sighed and decided to capitulate. “Oh, fine, have it your way.” He muttered a few magical phrases and the pentacle dissolved in a flash of light.
A delicate girl-child, only about as high as knee, smiled sunnily at him. Her skin and hair were pale green, and she seemed to have a green puffball of a tail tucvked under her neat black jacket. Clow scooped her up to get a better look at his daughter, and she giggled.
“I thought you’d never finish me!” she said brightly. “What’s your name? For that matter, what’s mine?”
“I am Clow Reed,” he replied, “and I think I shall call you Glow. How on earth did you come to be so stubborn?” Of course, he knew why. He and his wife between them had enough of what they liked to call ‘determination’ to more than account for it. “I wanted you to be more like your sister, Light.”
Glow giggled. “But then I wouldn’t be me, Daddy. I have a sister? Is she nice? Do I have a mother too?”
“Light is very nice, and you certainly have a mother.” A knock sounded on the door. “In fact, I think that’s her. Come in, Madoushi!” he called. “I’m finished.”
It could have been no one else at the door. Madoushi was the only one in Derkholm who dared to enter the study when Clow had declared his intention of doing a spell. Being a skilled sorceress herself, she could be relied upon to assist if the spell went awry. This time, though, she hardly seemed to notice Glow nestled in Clow’s arms.
“You need to come at once, dear,” she said. “It’s rather a mess.”
“What is it?” Clow asked, suddenly worried. “Has Yue been doing magic without knowing it again?”
“No, I’m afraid it’s worse than that.” Madoushi looked at him sympathetically. “Querida wants to see you. You’re to be made Dark Lord for this year’s Pilgrim Parties.”
* * *
Clow privately swore to himself as he started toward the stables after sending Glow off with Madoushi to be intoriduced to the others. Dark Lord! And now, of all times, too! Still there was nothing he could do about it. Other wizards had been Dark Lords when they had families too, and anyway telling Querida he had to take care of his children would make her ask far too many questions about who all these children were, and why she had never met any of them but Li Wu and Johanne, and what would happen then would be far worse than being Dark Lord. No, he would have to do it, even if he would rather refuse and see how the Pilgrim Parties would work without a Dark Lord.
The Pilgrim Parties had been devastating the world for the last forty years, and everyone knew it except, presumably, the tourists themselves. They just thought of the world as a sort of imaginary game, while Mr. Chesney sat back and collected profits. He must be a horribly powerful man, Clow thought, even if he was being backed up by a demon the way Wizard Barnabas said. And strict about things, too. Blast Querida! She would have to make him be Dark Lord now, of all the inconvenient times!
Clow was in the stable and had a saddle halfway over Beauty’s back before he realized that he could no more ride Beauty in to the University than he could tell Querida who his other children were. The merest sight of a winged horse would have made her more determined than ever to find out what he was doing at Derkholm. He would have to translocate, and that was a chore when he could go only five miles at a time. Still, it was better than nothing, and much better than giving Querida a sight of Beauty.
“Sorry girl, not today,” he said to Beauty as he hung the saddle back up. “I have to go to the University to see Querida, and you wouldn’t like that. Perhaps tomorrow.” Beauty didn’t reply, which he knew meant she was annoyed with him. With a sigh, Clow went out of the stable and began the wretched long process of translocating fifty miles to the University.
* * *
Querida was a small, dried-up woman who was so old her skin looked almost as green as Glow’s. She was also the most brutally efficient person Clow had ever met, and persisted in thinking of him as a helpless fool. She had been one of the things he had been happiest to leave behind with the University. She looked up when he entered her study, and moved straight to business.
“Wizard Clow, it has been brought to my notice that, while all the other male wizards have been Dark Lord at least twice in the past forty years, you have so far managed to avoid doing it even once.” Clow opened his mouth to protest that he had been Dark Lord twenty-four years back, actually, but she ignored him. “As such, I have chosen to select you as Dark Lord for this year’s Tours. You will, of course, be responsible for holding the official meeting next week. Derkholm is, if I recall correctly, quite adequate to contain the number of guests. Expect some fifty wizards, myself, three off-worlders, and Mr. Chesney. All further information will be given to you at the meeting. That is all.”
Clow, recognizing a lost cause when he saw one, turned to go, only to be stopped by one last remark. “Oh, and if you have been creating any monsters on that land of yours, see to it that Mr. Chesney does not see them. Thank you.”
The door slammed to behind Clow as he walked out, trying desperately not to say what he thought about Querida. She always gave orders in such an autocratic way, as if she had the right to interfere with your life! Perhaps, under the circumstances, she did, but it still aggravated him. The worst thing was that she couldn’t seem to see him as anything but the student wizard he had been over thirty years before, and a rather limited version of that, too.
Torn between anger at Querida and pleasure that he was out of the University, it took Clow nearly twice as many jumps as usual to get back to Derkholm.
Of course, no one here knows what I'm blabbing about, but what the hey.
Also: Dentistry woes.
It is difficult to restrain the urge to resist when someone is poking you in the gums, has their fingers in your mouth, and is someone to whom you have taken instant dislike. Ow. I apparently have gingivitis, and need to start flossing more (i.e. at all). But I hated that woman. She treated me like a piece of wood with teeth.
Sorry she had to put up with me. Sorry I had to put up with her.
Reading DWJ's A Tale of Time City for fun and tone for CMoD. Whoo. Ish good.
Oi, this post is long.
