That I got myself off my ass and wrote myself out of that corner. Thank god. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so trapped by my own creation before. I’m not gonna lie, I hated that plains sequence once I got to it. I don’t excel at fish out of water sequences, and frankly my grasp of what a nomadic society would be like was a little thin and somewhat shitty. So I apologize on behalf of my ineptitude, for all that time I spent laying the groundwork for THIS scene, wherein Toil gets rightly shat on for being a coward and just leaving Tellan’s clan with no word as to why, right after the birth of Fharr’s child. (not posted. Scene so ugly, can’t look at it right now)
So this scene I wrote in about an hour, even though I wrote it in my head a year ago. And thank god it was painless and flowed out of me like writing should. I was trying to achieve a sense of Toil’s boredom, her disgust and resignation with the gladiators, and also the broader context of the High City society. Also, the fact that the war between the two nations has begun again, with vigor. I like the scene, I think its decently successful, despite changing tenses ten times. I feel a writing bug coming on.
Medieval wimmins like pokey items
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PART IV: THE ARISTOCRAT
Swirling the wine in the expensive glass, wishing it was ale. One elbow on the table, knuckle beneath her chin, Toil watching the brightly outfitted dancers swirling on the floor. Strains of music from the band flowing around them. She’s sitting near the heavily laden food table at the side, long limbs carefully swathed in uncomfortably tight ad nd scratchy clothing. Someone had brushed her hair for her, or tried to, she’d swatted them away before the servant was done. Watching as Videl and the other gladiators sauntered about with ten women on each arm, soaking up the party like drought-stricken plants. Glad that Solace kept her out of it. Sworn the gladiators and staff to secrecy, and by the looks of things, when Solace laid down the law, she laid it hard. No one had approached her about the Arena. Not once. As she was watching, Videl’s black, sleek head turned to her. She couldn’t hear what she said but the women on Videl’s arms turned to look at her and giggled. Toil forced her mouth to crack a smile and nodded with her wine. They moved on and she snorted to herself. Looked into her wineglass again, thinking she’s going o need ten more to make this evening less than agonizing.
Crowds didn’t make her nervous, Toil just didn’t like them. The music was cloying. A few garishly outfitted aristocrats had attempted to speak with her, looking young and done up. Tellan would never allow herself to look like that. These girls looked at her with coy smiles, strange words and accents emerging out of their mouths, eyes darting. Toil asked them if they knew what type of valkyrie armor they were faux wearing. They didn’t. The conversation ended there.
Across the room, Solace glided amongst the guests in shimmering blue and with a complex overlay of copper faux-armor. Making mental tallies of which Motherhouses were represented here, which members they sent, if they were wearing the most recent fashions. Many of them were. Solace was pleased with the turnout. The occasion was supposed to be founder’s day, commemorating the first Hath woman to find the High City when it was still abandoned. A Greeth clan member had put it on, a suitable middle range bloodline. It was a good time to showcase her gladiators, to talk about the Arena’s new rules. On that thought, her eyes turned to Toil, sitting alone and looking disinterestedly into her wineglass. Arena attendance had shot up wit her return. It helped, of course, that they were at war.
Everyone wanted to see the Tombstone annihilate some Greylanders.
A cheer goes up from one side of the great hall, a great toast to the four or five gladiators gathered there. She can hear them toasting their valiance, recounting kills from the week before. “To victory! Death to the Greylands!” They cried. Toil leveling a resigned gaze at them as she downs the fourth glass of wine. Shakes her head. More wine.
Just before the host is supposed to deliver a speech, the room floods with more guests, many of them from different areas in the City. Well dressed aristocrats, clearly coming from other parties, politicians, thank the Goddess no soldiers, but it was only a matter of time, Toil thought sourly. Without her knowledge, as she speared some meat with a fork, the crowds parted, and a group of elegantly dressed Sisters entered the hall. One of them with a valkyrie in leather uniform. It was a laugh that lifted Toil’s head like it was on a string. Squinting, eyes settled on a small aristocrat, laughing loudly about something. The aristocrat was overdressed, with armor modeled after a Chimera. So she thought she was a few steps below the General huh? Faces next to her, long faces, one of them smiling shyly with downcast eyes. Then suddenly like she been struck by lighting, Toil got up from her seat, looking frantically for a place less exposed.
Fharr looked across the room, catching the eye of a few ladies here, giving them an award-winning smile. Saw a broad back of a very tall person. Not exactly the grace of a horserider, the blunt power of a pikewoman or front-liner. Must be a blacksmith. She liked those. Nice, strong hands, especially the fingers. Then just as suddenly as she’d appraised the stranger, she frowned expression darkening from something genial into something black as pitch.
Tellan looked after her sister, who’d shot off and disappeared. Leaving her alone with Hrey, The aristocrat was smiling at her in a particular way. Hrey’d just finished telling her about a pilgrimage she’d made to the mountains of the Inner Sea. Tellan was entranced. The artistocrat told her she was beautiful. Tellan blushed. Hrey took her hand and drew her towards a group of young women, all dressed to the nines in faux-armor. In her Sister robe, Tellan gulped.
At a segregated table, where the women only wore their faux armor modeled in real gold, the aristocrat looked up from giggling about so and so’s choice of mate (big nose) to see Hrey leading a sweet faced Sister across the dance floor. She gestured to it with her chin. “Hrey’s thinking she’s getting free roses tonight,” she observed. The table erupted with laughter.
Just as Hrey was telling Tellan about the meaning in egg tempura painting on the wall, Fharr yanked Toil around by the arm and let her have it. Threw Toil’s remaining fifth glass into her face. A few people around them gasp and move away. Toil curses in exasperation, wiping the stinging liquid out of her eyes.
“I have had just about enough of you!” she hissed, eyes showing white all around. “You don’t know what kind of idiot you are. My sister, she spent days weeping and praying! The same week that she was supposed to be so happy to leave for her rightful place in the Sister school, she was red eyed and convinced that if she prayed hard enough you’d emerge out of the night unscathed! Because she thinks you’re a damn saint. At least she did, until Captain broke it to her that you’d been dismissed two days before!”
Fharr reached over and took the glass of wine out of the hand of a gorgeous woman with red hair. She tossed it back, said, “You’d better get over there and apologize to my sister. Don’t bother to try to talk to me. We’re done.” She turned to the angry redhead, suddenly seven kinds of charm, and bore her away into the crowd. Toil stared after her, wine still dripping off her face.
And the countdown to Toil laying the beatdown on Hrey for messing with Tellan begins now.
