Something new
Jul. 29th, 2009 07:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceOkay. Purely for fun, and with no commitments on either side: which of the following two openings is more likely to make you buy the book? Give reasons if you want to.
(a)
Yann Toffit used to talk a lot more, and say a lot less.
In his age now, married and married - a wife in the hills and a wife in the valley, the old way, a cuff on each wrist as they say and a chain between - he was a quiet man, contented.
It used to be otherwise. His shoulders and his scars attested to it. The youngsters of the village would have disbelieved them, perhaps. Long tenancy in a smithy would give a man such shoulders, yes, and such scars too, with no need for any wild youthful adventuring. But there was a story for every scar - stories that their uncles and their cousins told, not Yann - and a souvenir in his house for every story: strange weapons and fine glassware, extravagant clothes that no one could imagine actually wearing, a box that no one could open though nimble-fingered children had tried and tried when they thought his attention elsewhere.
(b)
The sea is the midden of the Martel Fast.
A kitchen-boy on the battlements looked one way and the other with a practised, casual caution, then knocked the lid off his honey-bucket and tipped the contents down a chute cut through stone and rock together, to carry away on wind and spume till it fell to the grey waters a long, long drop below.
He should have looked behind him. A voice from the shadowed doorway said, "You're not too big to beat, you know. Even yet. Let Laran catch you wasting good nightsoil that way, you'll carry bruises to bed tonight. Whosever bed you bring them to."
Just the sound of it, the knowing himself caught, had tightened the boy's shoulders. By the time his unseen watcher had mentioned the dread castellan's name, that tension was already ebbing, in recognition of the voice itself.
"Reyne," he said, not looking round yet, not quite yet. "What are you doing, lurking up here?"
"I was lurking for you."
(a)
Yann Toffit used to talk a lot more, and say a lot less.
In his age now, married and married - a wife in the hills and a wife in the valley, the old way, a cuff on each wrist as they say and a chain between - he was a quiet man, contented.
It used to be otherwise. His shoulders and his scars attested to it. The youngsters of the village would have disbelieved them, perhaps. Long tenancy in a smithy would give a man such shoulders, yes, and such scars too, with no need for any wild youthful adventuring. But there was a story for every scar - stories that their uncles and their cousins told, not Yann - and a souvenir in his house for every story: strange weapons and fine glassware, extravagant clothes that no one could imagine actually wearing, a box that no one could open though nimble-fingered children had tried and tried when they thought his attention elsewhere.
(b)
The sea is the midden of the Martel Fast.
A kitchen-boy on the battlements looked one way and the other with a practised, casual caution, then knocked the lid off his honey-bucket and tipped the contents down a chute cut through stone and rock together, to carry away on wind and spume till it fell to the grey waters a long, long drop below.
He should have looked behind him. A voice from the shadowed doorway said, "You're not too big to beat, you know. Even yet. Let Laran catch you wasting good nightsoil that way, you'll carry bruises to bed tonight. Whosever bed you bring them to."
Just the sound of it, the knowing himself caught, had tightened the boy's shoulders. By the time his unseen watcher had mentioned the dread castellan's name, that tension was already ebbing, in recognition of the voice itself.
"Reyne," he said, not looking round yet, not quite yet. "What are you doing, lurking up here?"
"I was lurking for you."
(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-29 07:15 pm (UTC)