Prompt - story excerpt

Another dry period, another litany of what I promise are very good excuses.

But that's not interesting. About a month ago, I joined a LiveJournal writing community, and though they post prompts every week for a 100-500 word work, I've never actually written anything for them until this week.

The prompt was a quote by Neil Gaiman: “Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”

Very dramatic. I was initially thinking of writing something with another character I've mentioned here, Illunova, but I wanted to write it right then and there, and the story I'd have for her would take a little bit of plotting to develop. Instead, I wrote something for the UFPE from the Bad Guy's POV. I've been trying to write his backstory for awhile now, but I've been stuck. This isn't exactly backstory, more of a 'Might Have Been' (phrase stolen from the incomparable Madeleine L'Engle), and it didn't go exactly where I had envisioned.

It has nothing to do with romantic love, as suggested by the prompt, but love more in the sense of patriotism and loyalty to one's own people (especially, in this case, when they probably don't deserve it), which is a major part of Bad Guy's motivation. I've really enjoyed developing his backstory, and sadly, I imagine he's a lot more interesting a character than the MC.

Enough rambling. The whole point of this post was to share the piece I had written. It's Luzeoir on the ever of a battle that (at least as I'm imagining the story arc so far) never will happen but could have, if not for the intervention of our heroic MC.

*~*

The nights were darker now. Structures of wood and stone that had reached into the sky lay in haphazard heaps of debris, and the buttery yellow light that had streamed from their windows had died in the destruction. Standing in this valley once used for farming, Luzeoir could see the stars wheel above him clearer and brighter than he had seen them the last time he was here. He drank in the sight, reveled in the soft insect song that told him he had succeeded, but he still could not read the stars.

Unimportant. A shadow quivered beside him, and a moment later, one of his disciples stepped into the starlight. “We engage them tomorrow,” the other man murmured. “here in the valley. The rivers will run red.” Alhreas bowed his head after he had finished his report. “What do you see in the stars?”

Long ago, a man here had told Luzeoir a secret. You must understand them, and they will consent to anything you ask of them. He did not smile, but had he been alone, he might have. “They speak of strife and tears. Darkness covers the land and extinguishes the false sun. They speak of balance and vengeance.”

Alhreas peered up at the night sky, as if he could see any of the things Luzeoir had described. The man was the best Shade Walker among them, but he lacked the slightest trace of Far Sight. When his disciple murmured his farewells and disappeared again, Luzeoir allowed himself a very thin smile. Alhreas would never have advanced so far, skilled as he was, had Luzeoir not personally chosen him for a messenger. 'Forgiving' was not a word commonly used to describe the Onyx Elves, and above all things, they loved to think that they knew things others did not. Alhreas's problem, Luzeoir had often mused, was not his lack of Sight but his forthright acknowledgment of this flaw.

You must understand them, and they will consent to anything you ask of them. The Onyx Elves had not left their jungles for centuries, and now they had consented to follow their general into the arid lands to the south. They had kept to themselves, obsessed with divining secret knowledge from the depths of the world, and now he had taken them into the heart of the enemy's territory.

Until he came along, they had not even known they had an enemy.

Until he came along, they were content to remain a fairytale. They had been a brittle people, turning ever inward and calcifying in their beloved shadows. Now they were proud again, a terror and a scourge, and the world would weep to hear their name.

His smile grew. He loved them so.