Skate Rink

Image by The Real Estreya via Flickr

“Who else is coming?” Bren asked, tapping his shoes to the rhythm of the song on the car radio.

“Michelle at least,” Ethan said. “And Hannah and Ashlee and David, I think. Michelle said she was bringing a friend.”

“That's a nice group,” Bren said, getting out of Ethan's car.

He was getting better at keeping his eyes above the neck as the weather grew warmer. The additional inches he'd grown since last year might have helped. Although, they didn't help at all when it came to looking down at girls and accidentally glancing down their shirts...

But! He was getting better at that, too. Standing a safe distance away, keeping his eyes on their eyes, and actually paying attention to what they said tended to help. It took some effort, but he was getting better at it.

Still, he found himself wishing it was fall and winter again. He was notified by the quick glance-and-look-away's he was receiving from the girls there that he probably had a scowl on. He checked his expression back into a pleasant one, was distracted by a girl in very short shorts and a low-cut top, and yanked his eyes back to the entrance of the skate rink.

“Geez, Bren,” he muttered in annoyance under his breath. “Horny much?”

Ethan didn't notice – he was not-so-subtly looking over a group of girls leaning against the wall near the door. They nudged each other and smiled. Ethan smiled back. Bren smiled vaguely in their direction, then elbowed Ethan in the door when it looked like he was going to stop and talk.

“One ticket and rollerblade rental,” Bren told the man behind the counter.

A few minutes later, they ran into the rest of the group near the back of the row of lockers. Ethan greeted Michelle with enthusiasm – much more enthusiasm, Bren noted with relief, than the girls outside the door. There were more people than Ethan had thought. Nikki was there, too, and Brittany. Some other people he didn't recognize were talking with the others; he assumed they were from Stenson.

* * *

“Look, Michelle,” April said, eyes closed. “My head kills. I don't think I should go.”

“Your head always kills,” Michelle said suspiciously, standing over April's bed with her hands on her hips. “I don't think you want to go.”

“No, seriously. I just took some Tylenol, like, an hour ago, and my head feels like it's going to pound out of my brain. I mean, wait.”

She paused, confused.

“You have that backwards,” Michelle sighed. “Here, take some Motrin. You're probably just dehydrated. You have to come! I invited Chris and Chloe, too. They don't know anyone else.”

“They know you,” April pointed out, eyes still closed.

“Yeah, but...”

“You want to hang out with Ethan,” April moaned. “Fine. Get me a bottle of water. But if you say one word about Bren, I will punch you. In the face.”

“Got it,” April said quietly. “I'll get you water. Go put on something cute.”

“This is cute enough,” April said, not moving.

Michelle took in the holey jeans and tee-shirt.

“At least put on those cute appliqued shorts we got at AE.”

“Fine.”

Not long after, they were at the skate rink, meeting up with everyone except Ethan and Bren, who hadn't arrived yet. Her head was starting to feel better, so she didn't have a hard time making conversation with the two people from Stenson that the others didn't know.

--

Inspiration: A smaller section of a larger story in the works. I wanted to see how this Zemanta thing worked, mainly, but I hope you enjoyed the window into April's world. You know you love the snazzy skate photo Z found. *grin*

Revisited

Image via Wikipedia

Note: These are several descriptions I've been working on for the rewrite of an old story. No, I don't know why there are random italics. Sorry about that.

--

Greyson estate was at its finest that evening in early spring. The sun was starting to set behind the large hill the shadowed the archery range, but there was still plenty of light to accommodate the lone boy pulling the bowstring taut. He loosed an arrow; it struck close to the center. The boy let out a puff of frustration and pulled another arrow to his bow.

Nearer to the house, a trim stable – well looked after and well used – let out a few whinnies as the stable hands brushed the horses clean of all their daily grime. There were many horses at Greyson, ready to accommodate whatever need the Duke thought up. The horses were especially fine; the Duke was fortunate enough to have made acquaintance with a man who knew what to look for in horses.

A worn path led from the stable to the manor house. It was a familiar sort of house, furnished lushly with rich, comfortable furniture. The small, well kept garden could be seen from the windows in the study, where a teenaged boy was slumped at the table, sweaty from being at the archery range and wondering why his father wanted to see him. The older man began to speak in his usual long winded manner, spreading his hands wide for effect. ...

--

Cameron ducked low over Aiden's neck, urging her to a canter. The mare was reluctant, but she eventually smoothened her gait and took long strides. The path beneath her hooves was packed dirt, damp with recent rain. The fog of a hot rainfall lingered in the valleys between the trees. Cameron could feel it wick away the warmth in his calves, tight as they were to the body of his horse.

His face was damp with sweat, but the humid air cooled the heat, though it didn't dry his face very much. This path along the outskirts of the castle grounds gave him full view of the beautiful Grendathian mountains, stark on the horizon. The sun was setting, glistening on the everlasting snow at their peaks and throwing their roughness into sharp relief.

Soon the path curved away from the mountains and toward the west, where the sun was hidden by the grove of trees planted by Cameron's forefathers to block the castle from the town. “We have enough scrutiny as it is,” they had said, and so the trees had come to be. There were few trees anywhere else near the royal palace. They grew in more abundance further from the mountains, though it didn't seem anyone knew exactly why. People said that all the trees were cut down and burnt long ago in a war of the Magics, but Cameron wasn't so sure about that.

The fog licked his arms as he rode through the shadows, slippery tongues evaporating as soon as they had formed. It blew through his hair: water through flame.

The path curved again, toward the castle, and Cameron began to slow Aiden down for the final stretch. She broke back into a trot as they began to pass his mother's Grey Garden. It was something she had once seen in her travels in the North as a young woman. In the mountains, the people made gardens of stone and dried wood, arranged in patterns. Cameron thought it looked bleak and hopeless, but his mother thought it was simple and soothing.

He lifted a hand to her as he passed; she was sitting on the granite bench – a sliver of color against the garden. She wore a dark colored dress, but her skin was fair and her hair as red as Cameron's. On her, it looked auburn and regal – not fiery or rebellious at all. She was serene. She was perfect. She was always perfect.

She smiled her calm smile at him as he rode by, then looked back to her Grey Garden.

When they returned to the stables, Cameron dismounted and wiped his forehead. Sweat and condensation left a smear on his white sleeve.

“Sir, your father has a message." ...

Ugly

So, this isn't really a fictional post. Just a thought: one that I can't fully describe in a oneshot.

Last weekend, I had the privilege of walking the beach with three ladies full of imagination. Once we'd walked the beach, we settled on the rocky divider between the public beach and the channel for the boats, and we watched the sun set. Colors splashed the sky as you might expect them to in a sunset over the water. A few sailboats and motorboats interrupted the calm surface of the water, but they didn't bother us.

After a few minutes of silence, my youngest sister began begging me for a story; the scenery had inspired her as it had inspired me. I held off for a few minutes, but eventually gave in. I was pressed to retell "the one with the dresses out of nuts". I did intend to tell just the story requested (which was incidentally a hodge-podge of many fairy tales, including Catskin, Goose Girl, and Cinderella) but my muse became distracted and the story ended up being a new twist on Catskin, and that was all.

I was reprimanded for telling the story wrong, but half-jokingly, and then the lady next to me was supplicated for a story. After a few minutes, she gave in and told us the first part of the tales of the Selkie Prince. Then it was the third girl's turn, and she made up a lovely tale from her head (a concept from it inspired me so, that I might write about soon). Finally, it was my sister's turn, and I waited with anticipation to see just how much we were alike.

I was not disappointed. The story she told may have been a little cliche, but she knew no better. It was well told, with description and plot in all the right places. It went something like this, though my memory dims. The sleepy silence on the pier does not aid one's memory.

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful girl. She was the daughter of a rich lord who owned a lot of land in the country. The king was jealous of the land, but he did not want to steal or kill to gain the fertile grounds, so he devised a sly plan. He met with the lord, and together they agreed that marriage between the lord's daughter and the king's son would be most beneficial. The lord gave most of the lands to the king and the son as his daughter's dowry.

Now, the daughter was quite angry with her father. She did not want to marry the prince, for he was ugly. He was short, and he was chubby. His nose was too big. His eyes were squinty. But all her pleas came to naught, because, though her father was distraught that he had caused her so much distress, there was just no going back on a deal with the king. And so it came to be that in a few months, the daughter was married to the prince.

The prince loved her as soon as he laid his eyes upon her, but she did not love him. She was extremely unhappy, even though he loved her, and she wished she could run away, but she knew she couldn't. One day, as she was taking a walk in the wood, she came upon a Tree of Heaven. She collapsed beneath it and sobbed out her tale of woe to its flowering branches. When she'd finished her story, a tiger pounced out of the tree. Though she was scared, she soon found that the tiger was like a tame kitten under her hand.

When she returned to the palace, the prince was fascinated with the tiger and tried to train it for battle. The tiger didn't listen to the prince; he only responded to the girl's sweet voice. He followed her around and did everything she commanded it to. The prince wouldn't give up, however. He continued to try to train the tiger, but the tiger turned wild on him and injured a man. The prince ordered the beast killed, much to the girl's great anger and sorrow.

She went back to the Tree of Heaven and told it what had happened. This time, a lion pounced out of the tree. It would not listen to her, however, when she called to it and tried to stroke its mane. It listened only to the unspoken desires of her heart. The murderous anger and grief pounding in the girl's heart gave it direction: it loped into the palace and found the prince. Before the prince had time to call for assistance, the lion had killed him.

The girl threw her arms around the lion's neck and kissed it, and it turned into a charming, handsome prince before her very eyes. They were married, and they lived happily ever after.

I was quite startled by the ending; I had been expecting (foolishly, I suppose) the girl to realize that she could be happy with the ugly prince, since he loved her so! The girl's wishes obviously put a rift between them, and if she had just opened her eyes and realized that her husband loved her very much and only wanted to make her happy, none of this would have happened!

Saddened by the cruel destruction of the ugly prince, I covered up my nettled attitude and listened as the lady beside me told the second part of the Selkie's tale. Was I ever like that at that age? I wondered. Was being pretty all that mattered to me, then? Did I really believe that as long as two people were pretty, they would be happy together? We were consequently there at the beach in order to attend a wedding, in which both people were fairly pretty, though the woman was, in my opinion, far more so.

She possesses that natural beauty that needs no cosmetics or pretty dresses to bring it out. I have always thought her quite beautiful, and when she came back from getting her make-over for the wedding, I was set entirely off-balance. I don't believe I'd ever seen her with more than lip gloss on, and here she was: lipsticked, eye make-up-ed, blushed, mascara-ed, and eyebrows plucked. I didn't recognize her, and I didn't like it. It didn't fit her character at all.

Maybe the prince's face fit him, too. Maybe he wasw ugly, but he wouldn't look right any other way. Once you got to know him, he was a great guy. He was easy to love, a loving man: a passionate one. He might have been a lover of beauty, and an optimistic personality might have been his. He fell in love with his wife, a beautiful, sun-kissed woman who knew how to conduct herself with deportment and kindness. She knew how to be a princess, and she was beautiful even in sleep. He counted himself lucky to have a radiant bride, supposing that such a sweet face could hold no other expression.

But all her eyes saw in his awed, hopeful expression was a nose too large to be stately, eyes set too close together, and a man in need of a few more inches of height and a few less around the waist. She didn't see that his smile, though crooked, was genuine and fair. She didn't see that the other women at the balls stayed to talk with him, not out of pity, but because he complimented them, and he meant it expecting nothing in return. She didn't see that the men smiled around him, and that the air couldn't help but be warmer wherever the prince walked.

Everyone loved him except his own wife.

His odd and ugly looks were a part of him no one would wish away; a man so kind and with a flawless face would be too good to be true. This way, he seemed human. People feared her, with her angelic appearance, but the prince's rustic, homely face made him approachable. He was an earnest man, one intent on his people, and one wanting to do right.

And by the hateful wish of a beautiful girl, he was killed. Where is the justice in that? The prince could have complained to the tree, and perhaps a lion could have killed the girl. That would be more just. But, the prince never complained. Though he must have known his wife hated him, he didnot separate from her, send her away in shame, accuse her of having a lover, or even ship her quietly off to a summer home by the sea. No, night after night, he slept next to her in bed, though she was cold as ice with loathing. Day after day, he ate across the table from her. Week after week, he danced with her at balls. Always, he had hope that she would love him.

And his hope brought about his downfall.

Without intending it, it seemed my sister made a great life point; optimism and hope cannot always save you. But the prince lived well and fully. I don't think I could have said the same for the girl. If I had to choose between a shorter, happier life or a longer, bitter one, I would choose the shorter in an instant. I suppose I shouldn't grieve for the prince. After all, he didn't grieve for himself. And maybe, in ten years, the girl will realize how she wronged him, and perhaps she will change.

Or perhaps I am too optimistic.

Big Brother

“Nolrion,” she said, pacing the wood restlessly. Her mind still swirled with a two lifetimes of battling memories. “His name is Nolrion. It means, 'born in the shadow of stars'. That turned out to be more true than I'd ever wanted. Oh!”

Her words fell apart, and she trembled, then leaned against the tree. Raleem stood, hand outstretched—

and let it fall.

--

“Prince Alfern!”

Fern ducked behind an ostentatious hydrangea and tried not to breathe. His escape was two-thirds complete. If it wasn't for that whiny, fragile sister of his—

“Alfern! Come here at this exact moment!”

Natha was altogether too nosy for her own good, he thought, but she was bound to wander away soon. He heard her wood-bottomed shoes, the steps muffled in the dirt, walk closer to the bush he'd chosen to hide behind.

“Alfern!”

She was right over top of him now. For a heart-stopping moment, he thought she had found him, but then she walked away again. After he could hear her calling in another section of the garden, Fern leapt to his feet and raced away. The woods were so close, now. His bow and arrow were strung to his back, his pack was full of food, and a water canister sloshed at his side. Whoever said Wilderness classes were useless was obviously someone who had never planned to run away.

What boring people.

He dove and rolled into the underbrush and lay there for a few minutes, listening for any sound that would indicate he had been followed. When nothing was apparent, Fern got to his feet and brushed himself off, congratulating himself on his lucky escape.

He then found himself face to face with a figure clothed in black, and a sword was at his throat before he had time to make any friendly introductions.

“If you're going to run away, laddie, you've got to learn to listen better,” the man said. His voice was curiously thick and lilted, an accent that Fern couldn't quite recall. “I've been standing here the entire time.”

“Oi, put that away,” Fern said, face reddening in embarrassment. “I'm the Crown Prince. If you hurt me, my parents will have you hanged.”

“Hung,” the man corrected absently, putting his sword away. “I wasn't going to hurt you. You're the crown Prince? Of Ellymie?”

“Where else?” Fern said rudely.

The man examined him for a moment with a strange look on his weathered face.

“What's your name, laddo?”

“Alfern,” Fern said with some dignity.

“I trust that was your mother's idea?”

“It means 'Prince of Mountain Forests'.”

“Of course it does,” the man said with a funny smile. “Well, I'm sure you have somewhere interesting to get off to, so I'll leave you to that. Remember: use your ears.”

Fern didn't even deign to reply. He darted off into the woods before the man could blink.

Inspiration: Idle thoughts from 'Winter Rose' (McKillip) spun together with a string from an old story I haven't written in years, and this is what comes of it. I'm rather fond of Fern and Nol. You might see more snippets of them and theirs in the future.