![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wombat1138Baked chocolate-overload cupcakes for the wombat-consort's birthday: this recipe, using lots of Valrhona cocoa powder in the batter plus some extra substituted for about a quarter of the powdered sugar in the frosting recipe, which was further supplemented by a bit of Grand Marnier and decorative chocoballs. He seemed appreciative.
Meanwhile, will resume doujinshi transcriptions tomorrow, hopefully. It's raining again, as it did for most of March; some of the hillsides here in the Bay Area are starting to crumble into sloshy piles of mud, which is roughly what my eardrums feel like after a month of listening to rain. At the mo, feeling vaguely writey for no particular reason; no idea what this is or where it's going.
Her hair had the scent of burning flame-- not smoke or ashes, but the hot dry sharpness of dragon's breath. He flinched away from the sensation, soft tendrils brushing against his skin as if yearning for fresh tinder. "I can't help you," he said, willing himself to believe the words even if she wouldn't.
Her smile flicked upward, talon-sharp. "Of course not. But I think someone will come to fetch you who can."
So that was it. He was bait, and perhaps a minor plaything while she waited. She sat back, finally, after tightening the ropes just past comfort. The small bones of his wrists ground against each other in their bruises. Despite his misgivings, he pressed, "Are you sure? If anyone important were looking after me, I would've been better guarded."
"Importance has nothing to do with it. I need some very specific knowledge and I know who has it. You were sent out on an errand; when you don't return in time, your foster-father will look for you or at least come to fetch his own trinkets."
"They're not trink-- what do you mean, 'foster-father'?" He doubled back on his own sentence, not certain whether he was covering his tracks or unexpectedly lost in the conversation.
She shrugged. "Why, what do you call him? Uncle? Cousin? I suppose he is related to you in some way, considering the way your grandfather tomcatted through the landscape. You didn't think he was your real father, did you?"
He gaped for a moment, then bit his lip. Leaning forward, so did she. Her mouth was warm and sinuous as it whispered into his. "You must know who he is, or was. Don't you know your own name?"
"I--" He squirmed away, twisting painfully to the side. "Everyone else just calls him Dasri. It's not as if he has a position on the guild council or he's anyone's consort--"
She drew back again, looking suspiciously close to laughing at him. "And you are a remarkably stupid boy if that's all you know of him. Serredhe Tal-Asderel was the consort of the Lady of Berise until shortly before your birth. Since then, he's been left in exile with you. It's easy enough for most people to conclude that you're the reason for their estrangement, but really, he should have told you. Then again, I suppose I should have expected him to stay quiet, especially after Aisara died."
[Popping back into editorial mode: okay, the fragment has decided to place itself into one of my eternally-backburnered projects, but now it's getting into catastrophic infodump mode. Must be the influence from all those recent mudslides. Unfortunately, after this many years, I'm probably never going to be able to shift around all the names that begin with the letter A; the language variants and nicknames don't help that much even when they're culturally appropriate-- it's only the overseas types who refer to Aisara as "Yseirhe"; she's always "Aisara" to her own people and neighbors-- esp. with that one name that keeps morphing slightly through several generations of sideways inheritance: Asderel (Dasri), Astarel (Thalde), Astara (Asderhe), and whoever else got stuck with it somehow. I suppose it's not much worse than trying to wade through certain historical periods where every other woman is named Elizabeth/Isabella/Ysabeau, Mary/Marie/Maria, or Katherine/Catalina/Catherine, but still, feh. It may provide some sense of inner reassurance to have decided long ago that "as-/ys-" is an intensifier or whatever it was, but it doesn't help unsuspecting newbies with the simple task of keeping everyone's names straight. Damn Tolkien and his umpty-zillion generations of the Dunedain of the North all starting their names with Ar-, all piratical-like. Arrrr.]
Meanwhile, will resume doujinshi transcriptions tomorrow, hopefully. It's raining again, as it did for most of March; some of the hillsides here in the Bay Area are starting to crumble into sloshy piles of mud, which is roughly what my eardrums feel like after a month of listening to rain. At the mo, feeling vaguely writey for no particular reason; no idea what this is or where it's going.
Her hair had the scent of burning flame-- not smoke or ashes, but the hot dry sharpness of dragon's breath. He flinched away from the sensation, soft tendrils brushing against his skin as if yearning for fresh tinder. "I can't help you," he said, willing himself to believe the words even if she wouldn't.
Her smile flicked upward, talon-sharp. "Of course not. But I think someone will come to fetch you who can."
So that was it. He was bait, and perhaps a minor plaything while she waited. She sat back, finally, after tightening the ropes just past comfort. The small bones of his wrists ground against each other in their bruises. Despite his misgivings, he pressed, "Are you sure? If anyone important were looking after me, I would've been better guarded."
"Importance has nothing to do with it. I need some very specific knowledge and I know who has it. You were sent out on an errand; when you don't return in time, your foster-father will look for you or at least come to fetch his own trinkets."
"They're not trink-- what do you mean, 'foster-father'?" He doubled back on his own sentence, not certain whether he was covering his tracks or unexpectedly lost in the conversation.
She shrugged. "Why, what do you call him? Uncle? Cousin? I suppose he is related to you in some way, considering the way your grandfather tomcatted through the landscape. You didn't think he was your real father, did you?"
He gaped for a moment, then bit his lip. Leaning forward, so did she. Her mouth was warm and sinuous as it whispered into his. "You must know who he is, or was. Don't you know your own name?"
"I--" He squirmed away, twisting painfully to the side. "Everyone else just calls him Dasri. It's not as if he has a position on the guild council or he's anyone's consort--"
She drew back again, looking suspiciously close to laughing at him. "And you are a remarkably stupid boy if that's all you know of him. Serredhe Tal-Asderel was the consort of the Lady of Berise until shortly before your birth. Since then, he's been left in exile with you. It's easy enough for most people to conclude that you're the reason for their estrangement, but really, he should have told you. Then again, I suppose I should have expected him to stay quiet, especially after Aisara died."
[Popping back into editorial mode: okay, the fragment has decided to place itself into one of my eternally-backburnered projects, but now it's getting into catastrophic infodump mode. Must be the influence from all those recent mudslides. Unfortunately, after this many years, I'm probably never going to be able to shift around all the names that begin with the letter A; the language variants and nicknames don't help that much even when they're culturally appropriate-- it's only the overseas types who refer to Aisara as "Yseirhe"; she's always "Aisara" to her own people and neighbors-- esp. with that one name that keeps morphing slightly through several generations of sideways inheritance: Asderel (Dasri), Astarel (Thalde), Astara (Asderhe), and whoever else got stuck with it somehow. I suppose it's not much worse than trying to wade through certain historical periods where every other woman is named Elizabeth/Isabella/Ysabeau, Mary/Marie/Maria, or Katherine/Catalina/Catherine, but still, feh. It may provide some sense of inner reassurance to have decided long ago that "as-/ys-" is an intensifier or whatever it was, but it doesn't help unsuspecting newbies with the simple task of keeping everyone's names straight. Damn Tolkien and his umpty-zillion generations of the Dunedain of the North all starting their names with Ar-, all piratical-like. Arrrr.]