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31_days2005-08-09 10:38 pm
cibeles.livejournal.com) wrote in 31_days2005-08-09 10:38 pm
[August 9] [Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell] Nameless
Title: Nameless
Day/Theme: August 9 / Anno mirabilis
Series: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Character/Pairing: Stephen Black / the silver-haired fairy
Rating: PG-13
Nameless
He had been told that the word for this emotion was ‘awe’, but did that explain it all? Somehow he felt that such a tiny word couldn’t express something so vast, something that dwarfed him into nearly nothing. Magic had been the awe-inspiring force, its wielder an enigma, and a beautiful one at that.
Emotions had been distant for him. As a servant, his purpose was the pleasure of others, and their feelings and petulant whims mattered a very great deal in this business. His own were mere trifles other people dangled on silken strings, and he had learned what numbed pain and elation best.
But this little shadow dance was neither pain nor elation. It was something suspended between the two – and not on silk. It was suspended on a thread crafted of pure beauty, which is what he knew now, and what he had seen. Beauty, he had seen, wore frock coats of a green so deep it might have been crafted from the English horizon. Beauty, he knew now, had shining silver hair and perfect manners.
Fear resembled Beauty quite closely.
To Stephen, the two were subtle greys, elusive to him as he tried to deduce quite what it was that he felt.
Physically, the brush of lips on his dark neck – that was pleasure. A hand that knew precisely how best to untie a cravat or unbutton his shirt – that was plainly dexterity. The hand doing things he had never dared to dream for fear he might never awaken from the reverie - that was clever wickedness. The eyes, nearly unblinking and certainly shocking - they were passion and temptation.
And they were all such varying colours, shades of desire at times so bright and so bold he feared his heart might simply cease its furious drumbeat.
Mentally? He couldn’t say. While he knew Fear, he was not frightened. Somehow he had passed that stage of being.
On a blistering summer day, he felt a cold touch on his neck, and heard a single word that described it all, yet he did not know it. The past year had brought so much – what could come? The word told him in a language he could not comprehend. Glory? Change? A darker lust, even? For he had seen the way he glanced at him as though certain things had never occurred, as though they both did not know that in the echoing chambers of Lost-hope that remained dim in the brightest of lights, men not only spoke and paraded terrifying treasures of conquest: men danced, and they danced well. He had seen the truly extraordinary orbs too dangerously blue to even be called ‘eyes’ and be cast in a group with ordinary human features, and he had seen them beneath fluttering eyelashes, long and almost feminine.
The word was king in a tongue he would one day master, in another year of wonders greater than even these.
Day/Theme: August 9 / Anno mirabilis
Series: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Character/Pairing: Stephen Black / the silver-haired fairy
Rating: PG-13
He had been told that the word for this emotion was ‘awe’, but did that explain it all? Somehow he felt that such a tiny word couldn’t express something so vast, something that dwarfed him into nearly nothing. Magic had been the awe-inspiring force, its wielder an enigma, and a beautiful one at that.
Emotions had been distant for him. As a servant, his purpose was the pleasure of others, and their feelings and petulant whims mattered a very great deal in this business. His own were mere trifles other people dangled on silken strings, and he had learned what numbed pain and elation best.
But this little shadow dance was neither pain nor elation. It was something suspended between the two – and not on silk. It was suspended on a thread crafted of pure beauty, which is what he knew now, and what he had seen. Beauty, he had seen, wore frock coats of a green so deep it might have been crafted from the English horizon. Beauty, he knew now, had shining silver hair and perfect manners.
Fear resembled Beauty quite closely.
To Stephen, the two were subtle greys, elusive to him as he tried to deduce quite what it was that he felt.
Physically, the brush of lips on his dark neck – that was pleasure. A hand that knew precisely how best to untie a cravat or unbutton his shirt – that was plainly dexterity. The hand doing things he had never dared to dream for fear he might never awaken from the reverie - that was clever wickedness. The eyes, nearly unblinking and certainly shocking - they were passion and temptation.
And they were all such varying colours, shades of desire at times so bright and so bold he feared his heart might simply cease its furious drumbeat.
Mentally? He couldn’t say. While he knew Fear, he was not frightened. Somehow he had passed that stage of being.
On a blistering summer day, he felt a cold touch on his neck, and heard a single word that described it all, yet he did not know it. The past year had brought so much – what could come? The word told him in a language he could not comprehend. Glory? Change? A darker lust, even? For he had seen the way he glanced at him as though certain things had never occurred, as though they both did not know that in the echoing chambers of Lost-hope that remained dim in the brightest of lights, men not only spoke and paraded terrifying treasures of conquest: men danced, and they danced well. He had seen the truly extraordinary orbs too dangerously blue to even be called ‘eyes’ and be cast in a group with ordinary human features, and he had seen them beneath fluttering eyelashes, long and almost feminine.
The word was king in a tongue he would one day master, in another year of wonders greater than even these.