So many words, none of them "the end."
Feb. 16th, 2012 11:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stillsostrangeSpurred by today's hopefully-not-brief dam breaking, it's time for the first lines meme again. Any or all of these stories might be improved with Moar Lance Henriksen.
Of course, the story I need to finish in less than a month doesn't have a first line yet.
"Birthgrave"
The storm hadn't broken by midnight, and neither had Ziya's fever. Isyllt slouched on the floor beside the sweat-stained mattress, listening to her friend's harsh breath through the rush of wind and rain and distant thunder, the steady drip of the leaking roof. Winter had finally left Erisín, but so far spring had proven no kinder.
"Flood"
Nan doesn't mean to fall asleep--she never does. But Evie's soft breath and the steady creak of the ceiling fan lull her, till her eyes sag and the worn paperback slides from her fingers.
"Music From a Farther Room"
Alex found his wife waiting on the threshold, at the divide between memory and dream. He was used to finding her here, one of the many memory-ghosts to haunt these halls. But this was different. The door she stood in was one he couldn't cross.
"Needlepoint"
You wake crumpled on the floor, legs folded awkwardly and one arm twisted behind your back. The room is dark and still, except for the green blink of the timer behind your right eyelid.
"Serpentskirt"
All Souls Night and the gutters still brim with shed Hallows skin. Broken glass crunches under Jane's boots as she carries an amp to the van, glittering beside limp feathers and cracked sequins, tattered black and orange fliers. One hell of a party, she heard--Sixth Street is still subdued and sleepy. But even for the day after Halloween and a Monday to boot, the crowd is still better than last night's in Dallas.
"Snakebit"
The horses were restless.
"Teneral"
"Take off your mask," the arachne tells me.
"Waiting For the Train" (also waiting for a different title)
When it's raining here, you hear the trains. You hear them other times too, with the tracks so close, but the dusty heat of summer bakes the sound out of the air, till it gets buried under cars and trucks and TVs and voices and all the other small-town noises. But when the rain comes, and the trains come, the whistles carry all over, low and mournful and rumbling in my chest.
It was raining the first time Jimmy Lafayette walked into the bar.
The Ashen Throne
The Blue Wish left Suranë on the evening ebb tide, bound north for Andemar. She was a Ninayan merchant ship, three-masted and barque-rigged, carrying four passengers and a hold full of cotton and spices and Assari wine. In other seasons more berths might be full, but few travelers wanted to sail at the end of autumn, when the fierce ghibli winds spawned storms across the Caelurean and winter sharpened its teeth in Erebos.
Changeling Hearts
The girl whose name was not Aletheia Rampion woke to thunder, and the surety that something was wrong.
Daughter of Jackals
The empress’s antechamber was dim and hushed, warm from two bodies and a single lamp. Voices drifted through both doors: from the interior, the soft tones of the physician and his attendants and the occasional cry and curse from the empress; from the exterior, the muttered talk of courtiers awaiting news. Indihar al Seth sat on a cushioned bench, breathing in the taste of lamp oil and nerves, and waited for her life to change.
Mist & Chill
The Terminal is a dive on its best day.
Not The Monster Garden
The bombs fell again the night the stranger came.
Pinion
Lilah runs and darkness follows.
Prayers To Broken Stone
Springtime in Paris—the cruelest month come and gone, but storms still lingered. Rain washed the city, speeding the Seine in its rush to the sea. In the Left Bank it poured from the gutters and dripped from curling wrought iron balconies. Moisture darkened white walls, new paint and plaster over centuries-old bones. On rue du Four, water drummed against the awnings outside Les Vieux Os and fell in shining ribbons to the flooded cobbles.
Of course, the story I need to finish in less than a month doesn't have a first line yet.
"Birthgrave"
The storm hadn't broken by midnight, and neither had Ziya's fever. Isyllt slouched on the floor beside the sweat-stained mattress, listening to her friend's harsh breath through the rush of wind and rain and distant thunder, the steady drip of the leaking roof. Winter had finally left Erisín, but so far spring had proven no kinder.
"Flood"
Nan doesn't mean to fall asleep--she never does. But Evie's soft breath and the steady creak of the ceiling fan lull her, till her eyes sag and the worn paperback slides from her fingers.
"Music From a Farther Room"
Alex found his wife waiting on the threshold, at the divide between memory and dream. He was used to finding her here, one of the many memory-ghosts to haunt these halls. But this was different. The door she stood in was one he couldn't cross.
"Needlepoint"
You wake crumpled on the floor, legs folded awkwardly and one arm twisted behind your back. The room is dark and still, except for the green blink of the timer behind your right eyelid.
"Serpentskirt"
All Souls Night and the gutters still brim with shed Hallows skin. Broken glass crunches under Jane's boots as she carries an amp to the van, glittering beside limp feathers and cracked sequins, tattered black and orange fliers. One hell of a party, she heard--Sixth Street is still subdued and sleepy. But even for the day after Halloween and a Monday to boot, the crowd is still better than last night's in Dallas.
"Snakebit"
The horses were restless.
"Teneral"
"Take off your mask," the arachne tells me.
"Waiting For the Train" (also waiting for a different title)
When it's raining here, you hear the trains. You hear them other times too, with the tracks so close, but the dusty heat of summer bakes the sound out of the air, till it gets buried under cars and trucks and TVs and voices and all the other small-town noises. But when the rain comes, and the trains come, the whistles carry all over, low and mournful and rumbling in my chest.
It was raining the first time Jimmy Lafayette walked into the bar.
The Ashen Throne
The Blue Wish left Suranë on the evening ebb tide, bound north for Andemar. She was a Ninayan merchant ship, three-masted and barque-rigged, carrying four passengers and a hold full of cotton and spices and Assari wine. In other seasons more berths might be full, but few travelers wanted to sail at the end of autumn, when the fierce ghibli winds spawned storms across the Caelurean and winter sharpened its teeth in Erebos.
Changeling Hearts
The girl whose name was not Aletheia Rampion woke to thunder, and the surety that something was wrong.
Daughter of Jackals
The empress’s antechamber was dim and hushed, warm from two bodies and a single lamp. Voices drifted through both doors: from the interior, the soft tones of the physician and his attendants and the occasional cry and curse from the empress; from the exterior, the muttered talk of courtiers awaiting news. Indihar al Seth sat on a cushioned bench, breathing in the taste of lamp oil and nerves, and waited for her life to change.
Mist & Chill
The Terminal is a dive on its best day.
Not The Monster Garden
The bombs fell again the night the stranger came.
Pinion
Lilah runs and darkness follows.
Prayers To Broken Stone
Springtime in Paris—the cruelest month come and gone, but storms still lingered. Rain washed the city, speeding the Seine in its rush to the sea. In the Left Bank it poured from the gutters and dripped from curling wrought iron balconies. Moisture darkened white walls, new paint and plaster over centuries-old bones. On rue du Four, water drummed against the awnings outside Les Vieux Os and fell in shining ribbons to the flooded cobbles.
