This is an *unrevised, unedited* freewrite; I think there's a glimmer of potential under all this crap. Advice? Friendly fire? It's all good.
Elin flicked a sliver of gray bark off her thumb and watched it fall like ash from her perch, settling with painstaking care between two blades of grass below. A soft grunt of interest throbbed in her throat, and without looking away from the piece of bark, she peeled another from the paper-thin skin of the tree in which she sat. This time she blew it from her palm, cheeks distended like a harvesting squirrel, hand slightly convex like the curve of the earth. The bark fell inches away from its predecessor.
“It is so easy to amuse you, little Elin.”
Her eyes flickered darker as she looked back over her shoulder. Standing on the other side of her tree was Gerard, the Lord Constable’s son. When she responded with nothing more than a stare, he leaned forward against his tall stave, peering up at her.
“Your mother is calling for you,” he said conversationally, his gaze flitting between her eyes. “Some fellow came by the keep earlier, asking after the Fhos place. Last anyone saw, he was unhitching his horse in your barn. We reckoned maybe that also-ran father of yours finally came home from the wars.”
Elin’s fingers tightened, digging into the bark, and she lowered herself from her favorite fork to a lower branch.
“Tell me, little washerwench, has he always had these memory problems? Last I heard, the war ended six years ago.”
The callused soles of her bare feet scraped against the trunk as she swung down from the branch; the toes of one foot found hold in a knot, and she launched herself a little clumsily to another limb. And further from Gerard, thank the Four.
“My father came back a week after the treaty was signed,” he continued blithely, running his fingers over the runes carved into his staff. Now and again, his green eyes peered demurely up at her from behind a screen of dark lashes as she dropped to the lowest branch. He was a handsome one, the Lord Constable’s son; everyone said so. Fifteen and already breaking hearts. Elin had heard the older women gossiping about his prospective conquests as they carried their washing boards and baskets down to the river; she always ducked her head and walked closer to her mother. Not that they would ever entertain the concept of strange little Elin Fhos catching anyone’s eye...
Her throat tightened at the memory of their well-meant whispers, their pitying glances. “Your father,” Elin hissed down at the boy, “came back a drunkard and cruel.”
He was a handsome one – but not accustomed to keeping his temper. That was one of the luxuries afforded those who lived in the keep proper, Elin supposed; they never had to worry about offending the wrong person or defying the wrong edict. If they did, surely they’d just settle it with a game of knucklebones and name the victor in the right. But Gerard, it seemed, had left his knucklebones at home.
The stave fell unheeded to the ground, rebounding before settling still into the thick grass of the copse. Gerard lunged forward with a savage growl and before Elin could retreat back into her tree, had leapt upward and wrapped his large hands around one of her ankles. A swift tug, and she lost her grip on the trunk, skidding painfully down to the ground. Before she could find her feet again, the heavier boy had straddled her waist and pinned her wrists to the earth; she kicked her knees upward and beat them against his back, but he seemed not to feel it, or to hear her shrieked obscenities.
“Never,” he snarled, “insult my father.”
After another hand of time he seemed just as unperturbed by her struggles as by those of a nit; she was thirteen and of the Old Folk, and a girl besides – he was a strapping paradigm of Balfourian youthhood. Gulping with fury that would never be realized, she let her head fall back against the grass, feeling the young blades pierce through the unwashed red strands. Gerard chuckled, and it sounded to Elin like the growl of a stalking predator.
“Get off me,” she said hoarsely.
“Take it back.”
“Get off me!”
“Take it back!”
Green eyes met gray, and his fingers tightened around her wrists; her breath caught in her throat, and tears were hastily repressed as he dug his grip into quick-forming bruises. “Take it back,” he demanded, his voice low.
“I hate you.”
“You should. Now take it back.”
“My mother will be wondering where I am,” she ground out, her jaw clenched so hard it ached.
“That varlet probably has her bent over a bed somewhere, and it isn’t your name she’s screaming,” he whispered cruelly, his face so close to hers that she could feel his every breath on her cheek. She held her breath, unwilling to share his air, and turned her face to the side.
He inhaled swiftly, the air hissing between his teeth, and jumped to his feet in one motion. Elin gasped at the sudden freedom of movement, and wondered at how light her body felt without his pressing hers into the earth.
“Get home to your whore mother, little Elin. And next time you decide to go rambling in Sir Bentwick’s wood, think better of it; I will know.”
Thanks, guys!
) - I'll get right on it! Unfortunately, I don't have too much of a plot yet, but... watch for more Founderstone in the future!
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