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Ninehounds
Topic Started: Aug 6 2008, 01:38 AM (707 Views)
Kedros
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Bard
[ *  *  *  *  * ]
Ninehounds' brows pinched over the little ember of his cigarette, as if the smoke within was whispering something he had to listen to very carefully. Dragging slowly, relishing it as much as dry land turns fragrant when the early rains come. A languid upward nod and the draping fringe lifts like golden smoke. Slowly he blinks -his breath making the sound of waves rolling onto shore in his throat- hurriedly taking another drag to exhale the blue haze into the pale morning, before he stubs the cigarette in an overflowing ashtray.
"You smoke too much." said his cousin, tottering from within the cottage and haunching beside him -eyes screwed closed against the acrid smoke and glare -the gravel of having only recently roused in her voice.
Ninehounds' own shadowed eyes dimly lit with humour, nodding, looking into hers unrepentantly before taking her head playfully for a moment in the crook of his arm, smirking down at her. "Oh?" he said, inferring more aptly than any length of words who's asking you?
She swatted the back of his head and staggered back inside of doors, rattling at the hearth to return with searing coffee -black as nightmares and sweet as summers-end figs. This earned an appreciative grunt as he drew the crema in a single sip -a kind of humming thrumm from somewhere as deep as his heart. He sipped again and nodded, a vast benediction of his quiet approval, of dawn, of company, and coffee -reaching into his hip-pocket for the tobacco. "This is nice Blewie." He spoke, waving his tobacco pouch at her coffee, her new cottage and holding, and out at the horizon where one of the many bright triangles was the mainsail of her new husbands scallop-boat, out dredging while the winds were favourable.
Blewie nodded, screwing a balled fist into her squinting eye, blowing -characteristically- at her coffee until Ninehounds assumed it must be near-cold. He watched her, at the furrow that stretched up from darkling eyes which all of their bloodline shared. At the silk hem of her nightshirt and the shadowy hint of a full breast beneath. He shook his head, still unable to reconcile the flittering golden thing that had been his two-year old cousin and this woman in the fullness of blossom, a bride no less. He struck a match and took a long steadying draught of the tobacco, his thought turning for a second to his flock.
"You're going to leave today, aren't you?" Blewie asked, perhaps sensing where his heart and roamed. "Everyshell will be gutted you're slipping away. He knew as soon as he headed out, you'd scarper." This with a sleepy grin, and a feigned scowl.
Ninehounds only nodded, with a shrug, "I left the girls with the gypsies up there. I'd leave them with the hounds, but I need them all mustered east before it gets too hot, and Cloudram has agreed to let me have the run of one of his boys for the season." He blew a billowing tree-canopy of smoke about his ankles, looking down at the ground -but seeing the lay of the high-tundras, hearing the flocks voices, and smelling the dry air. "I plan to meet them on the terrace above Widedock."
Blewie smiled sadly, knowing that even though her beloved cousin and godfather was sitting beside her, he had already left sometime in the night, and his body yearned now to catch up with the soul which was already in the highcountry. She gripped his shoulder with a comparatively tiny hand in a kind of half-hearted massage, and felt him lean against it, knowing that he was smiling one of his private, and strangely mournful smiles. "You're happy, aren't you Nino?"
Ninehounds turned to look at her, hearing something alarming in her voice, and seeing twin tears welling in her dirty-green eyes. His brows flickered, expressing his confusion, and he held her face in his hand, staring at her until she was calm, nodding wordlessly at that, before turning away again.

Lumbering with a top-heavy lack of elegance, Ninehounds struggled past the rocks, and down onto the black-sand beach with a nod at the approaching charter. A round-bottomed boat of a thing, crafted in the old style, with twin oars to steer and keel it at the rear, and a single triangular sail. He bound the blood-red cowl of his Kindred about his head and chest, shrugging down in the gathering chill of an energetic westerly.
The grayish brine slapped against the hull with a sound like the chuckling of an old grandfather, and Ninehounds found himself nodding at the craft: old but sound, and well loved. The sea-eye had been recently painted, and the loomed woolen sail was dark with diligently applied tar. The young skipper edged The Foamflower against the sheer beach with a practised inflection of the rear oars, and loaned Ninehounds an arm up. They exchanged the small purse of coppers, without a word, and turned out to open water. Once they had cut beyond the obscuring headlands Ninehounds marked the deepening bruise of a storm in the west, gauging its' approach against their speed, nodding again at Foamflower who scudded on the fore-winds so that the storm could never hope to catch them.
Well above them, a tiny pale matchbox, Blewies cottage peered down over the coast, and Ninehounds fancied he could just discern his god-daughter pause from hanging laundry on the line he had put up for her, and wave a slender arm. The skipper marked Ninehounds gaze, looking up, and back at his passenger with a nod that said he'd figured whose kin Ninehounds belonged to, and approved. "You're the High-musterer, is that you?"
Ninehounds half-smiled -little more than drawing his lips taut over his teeth- and passed his lighted cigarette to the skipper, rolling himself another. The skipper half-shook his head, chuckling -he knew that the musterers had a custom of offering a cigarette when they didn't feel like speech. "Was a good thing you did, laying out the coin to fix the sea-wall. Even if it was the dowry-price for giving away your girl on the bluff up there. Still -there's more than a few of us will lift a drink in your name over the years to come."
Ninehounds gave the man his newly rolled cigarette and looked out over the sea. The skipper, bound to accept it, smiled a little sadly, but nodded. "Only a day to Widedock, mister -or maybe less the way wee Foamy here is dancing. I think she likes you." He laughed, and began to whistle -loudly and tunelessly, but with a relish that Ninehounds would not deny him.

Fleet as the smoky-winged petrel, the Foamflower scudded before the storm, the wind of their speed rushing in the ears of the two men, both squinting streaming-eyed toward the east with cigarettes sticking stubbornly from grimly pressed lips.
The skipper reached over, tapping Ninehounds on the shoulder, but over the groan of the timbers, sheets, and sail; the plashing of the water, and the shout of the wind, the words were stolen away. Ninehounds shrugged, pinching his brows tightly, torn between wanting to hear the skipper, and wanting to turn back and see what the source of the increasingly powerful throbbing noise was.
The skipper pointed up, high above the sea-surface. And Ninehounds pulled his cap off his head, his hair whipping out, his cigarette forgotten in the hand that dropped to his side -dumbfounded.
It was as if someone had taken a stick of char, and cut a solid black line across the sky -and it was this mighty black line from which the humming was emanating. The wind shouldered against the black line with all its' strength, trying to put a sway in it, but the line only hummed, a deep breathless bass note, which Nino felt in the pit of his stomach, felt vibrating in his chest with a warmth like rum.
He looked back at the skipper with a -is that what you're talking about- toss of his head. The skipper laughed -even that sound unable to be heard, and took a long drag at his cigarette before he flicked it expertly into the wind. Skipper put his foot on the tiller, and leaned right over, so that his warm stubbly face pressed against Ninos' cheek, the sharp metallic tang of his voice at full-shout only just able to be heard. "Some new magic they've connived! The Black-Ones, they say the Black-Ones can pass their minds through that line, and their powers."
Ninehounds shook his head, eyes wide with astonishment. "How the fuck did they build them, the lines?"
Skipper shrugged, "Fucked if I know mate. One fucking big spider, that's for sure! All I know is it's something to do with light, it's not solid." He raised his eyebrows and laughed.
Now tracing the line between the archipelagos isles, Foamflower was forced to tack and jibe, with the winds racing out of the west, currying increasingly moody and testy waves with them. But soon enough the details of Lufred grew clearer, the cubical villas and cottages rambling on the steep sides of the dormant volcano, amidst caper-bushes and sweet-scented reeds. Drawing into the lee of the island the sail hung from the boom, and the over-riding thrum of the Line fell quiet. Skipper produced two pairs of long oars, and the men leant their backs into long easy strokes, their chins held high, their ears and noses straining for the earliest rumours of the shore.
Ninehounds looked up at the summit of the near perfectly conical volcano, and whistled, seeing how the Line was fastened at the Lufred end, where partly through the primordial shape of the mountain, and partly through the vast and mighty labour of cunning hands, the like of a gargantuan ships-prow in behemoth dry-cut stone blocks reared up. The few steamy clouds that the island itself had breathed off the seas whisped about the Key-Stone, eyrie of giant ravens and eagles. And this was but the little brother of the High-Line which shot directly south- cutting inexorably toward Widedock on the mainland. The Key-Stone of this mighty Line rivalled the apex of the volcano itself, and Ninehounds found himself shaking his head, wondering what manner of man or woman had conceived these, and the likes of whom used them, and how.
"You're grinning like a kid whose seen his first four-master!" the Skipper teased.
Ninehounds did not begrudge the mariner for taking advantage of his moment of open wonder and marvel, for he was grinning, and shaking his head, and slapping his thigh in amazement.
"There's something beautiful about it!" Ninehounds had to admit.
Skipper grinned. "Wait till you see the women here."
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Kedros
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((OOC

another drama/novel on the go.
If you feel like commenting, you have my thanks

Love and fuss
SBM
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Links:
Characters

Open Topics
Misplaced Hope in a Place Unlooked For Is Perhaps Not Misplaced
Featuring Ostler, Open but Pls PM

Means and Ends of Oath-Keepers
Featuring Rilangren, Open but Pls PM

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Featuring Ferdibrand Rumble, Open but Pls PM

The Windblown Seed
Featuring Curin & Riele


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