![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lassarina posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
rose_in_winterCharacters: Kaim, Sarah
Rating: G
Contains: Spoilers
Wordcount: 923
Notes: Written forgenprompt_bingo, prompt: "The stuff of which things are made: iron/stone/clay"
Betas: None
Summary: There is a satisfaction in simple things made by one's own hand.
In the world she came from, buildings are towers of glass and steel, glittering with magic and purpose and sheer luxury. Things of wood and stone are either carven relics, meant to focus magical power, or else fripperies, the sort of meaningless trinket one gives as a casual gift because it takes little effort to find them. Things closer to the land are disdained for being insufficiently polished, insufficiently intricate, or else find value in being useful for adornment only, like pearls and emeralds.
She did not know then the details of how buildings were made—never had cause to learn, for as a professor of history, her quarters and meals were provided and maintained without her having to trouble.
Here, there is no such disconnect. Here, the people live closer to the land, in conditions her world might have scorned as primitive. Here, when something breaks, she must learn how to fix it herself.
Looking at the little carved wooden bird Kaim brought her on his most recent trip into the village, seeing the intricate veins of its feathers and beak, the texture of its wings and tail, she wonders what else she was missing, cocooned away in her tower and piles of books.
She sets the bird aside and walks outside, where Kaim is setting stone for his workshop. He is stripped to the waist, his skin gleaming with the healthy sweat of hard work, and already the wall is knee height on him. He meticulously spreads mortar and lays stone, aligning each with care along the frame he built yesterday. It astonishes her how quickly he took to building with his hands; he was a soldier before, and he wields a sword as easily as he breathes, but he seems just as comfortable with chisel and saw.
"Did you need something?" he asks.
"No," she says. "Unless you need help."
His smile is lightning-fast, gone almost before she sees it, but she does see it, and treasures it. "No, but I could use the company."
She perches on the rough bench he built, under the shade of an oak tree where she can rest while she's gardening, and watches a moment longer before she finds words. History to her has always been a series of stories, messy and complicated and leaving too many threads unresolved, but stories all the same. Today she tells him one about how magic was codified, because the rhythm of the story is the same as the easy, efficient motions that create a wall from nothing more than wood and stone and mortar. The house she helped him build is smaller than even the quarters allotted a junior professor in their world, but she helped him build it, and healed their strains and scrapes and scratches at the end of the day, and it is theirs in a way the quarters she once had never were.
She likes this world where things are made of the earth, where the song of magic is faint and distant instead of a constant swelling symphony. This world is dangerous to her home, she knows that, but to understand the danger she must understand the world, and she cannot do that without getting her hands dirty, literally feeling the building blocks of its reality.
"I haven't heard that one before," Kaim says, when her story winds down. Her throat aches a little from talking—she is out of practice at lecturing—but he has laid two more rows of stone. The workshop will be beautiful when it's finished.
"It's one of a series of competing versions," she says absently. "Not the favored explanation."
"Favored explanations have a way of being too easy." He puts his tools away carefully, as he always does.
"They do." She stands, and comes to admire his work up close. "This comes so easy to you," she says, her fingertips hovering above the wall.
"Back home," he says slowly, "I always felt a little bit like I was in a cage. It's why I came here. I wanted to see what else there was to life."
He's never before mentioned what drove him to accept the dangerous mission to live a thousand years among strangers, in a world that threatened his home. Sarah squeezes his arm. "And what is there?" she asks.
He gestures to the wall; no smile touches his face, but she can hear it in his words. "Something I can build with my own hands, and know where it comes from."
She hears the yearning under the easy tone. She had always thought he enjoyed the mercenary work he does in the warm months, that he tolerated this rustic existence in the chill season only because he must, but maybe there is more to it than that, just as she thought that life in this mountain village would pall, but instead she finds the quiet rhythm of life soothing in ways she never dreamed.
She squeezes his arm one last time, and heads for the house while he finishes tidying his workspace. She made a pie this afternoon, of the tart apples he loves, and there is satisfaction in that too, in things shaped by her hand and not her mind.
Perhaps they need not wrest safety for their home from this world after all; perhaps they can build it, stone by stone, by their own hands. She will write to Ming tomorrow, and see if Ming concurs.
Sarah smiles as she closes the door she built herself.
Rating: G
Contains: Spoilers
Wordcount: 923
Notes: Written for
genprompt_bingo, prompt: "The stuff of which things are made: iron/stone/clay"Betas: None
Summary: There is a satisfaction in simple things made by one's own hand.
In the world she came from, buildings are towers of glass and steel, glittering with magic and purpose and sheer luxury. Things of wood and stone are either carven relics, meant to focus magical power, or else fripperies, the sort of meaningless trinket one gives as a casual gift because it takes little effort to find them. Things closer to the land are disdained for being insufficiently polished, insufficiently intricate, or else find value in being useful for adornment only, like pearls and emeralds.
She did not know then the details of how buildings were made—never had cause to learn, for as a professor of history, her quarters and meals were provided and maintained without her having to trouble.
Here, there is no such disconnect. Here, the people live closer to the land, in conditions her world might have scorned as primitive. Here, when something breaks, she must learn how to fix it herself.
Looking at the little carved wooden bird Kaim brought her on his most recent trip into the village, seeing the intricate veins of its feathers and beak, the texture of its wings and tail, she wonders what else she was missing, cocooned away in her tower and piles of books.
She sets the bird aside and walks outside, where Kaim is setting stone for his workshop. He is stripped to the waist, his skin gleaming with the healthy sweat of hard work, and already the wall is knee height on him. He meticulously spreads mortar and lays stone, aligning each with care along the frame he built yesterday. It astonishes her how quickly he took to building with his hands; he was a soldier before, and he wields a sword as easily as he breathes, but he seems just as comfortable with chisel and saw.
"Did you need something?" he asks.
"No," she says. "Unless you need help."
His smile is lightning-fast, gone almost before she sees it, but she does see it, and treasures it. "No, but I could use the company."
She perches on the rough bench he built, under the shade of an oak tree where she can rest while she's gardening, and watches a moment longer before she finds words. History to her has always been a series of stories, messy and complicated and leaving too many threads unresolved, but stories all the same. Today she tells him one about how magic was codified, because the rhythm of the story is the same as the easy, efficient motions that create a wall from nothing more than wood and stone and mortar. The house she helped him build is smaller than even the quarters allotted a junior professor in their world, but she helped him build it, and healed their strains and scrapes and scratches at the end of the day, and it is theirs in a way the quarters she once had never were.
She likes this world where things are made of the earth, where the song of magic is faint and distant instead of a constant swelling symphony. This world is dangerous to her home, she knows that, but to understand the danger she must understand the world, and she cannot do that without getting her hands dirty, literally feeling the building blocks of its reality.
"I haven't heard that one before," Kaim says, when her story winds down. Her throat aches a little from talking—she is out of practice at lecturing—but he has laid two more rows of stone. The workshop will be beautiful when it's finished.
"It's one of a series of competing versions," she says absently. "Not the favored explanation."
"Favored explanations have a way of being too easy." He puts his tools away carefully, as he always does.
"They do." She stands, and comes to admire his work up close. "This comes so easy to you," she says, her fingertips hovering above the wall.
"Back home," he says slowly, "I always felt a little bit like I was in a cage. It's why I came here. I wanted to see what else there was to life."
He's never before mentioned what drove him to accept the dangerous mission to live a thousand years among strangers, in a world that threatened his home. Sarah squeezes his arm. "And what is there?" she asks.
He gestures to the wall; no smile touches his face, but she can hear it in his words. "Something I can build with my own hands, and know where it comes from."
She hears the yearning under the easy tone. She had always thought he enjoyed the mercenary work he does in the warm months, that he tolerated this rustic existence in the chill season only because he must, but maybe there is more to it than that, just as she thought that life in this mountain village would pall, but instead she finds the quiet rhythm of life soothing in ways she never dreamed.
She squeezes his arm one last time, and heads for the house while he finishes tidying his workspace. She made a pie this afternoon, of the tart apples he loves, and there is satisfaction in that too, in things shaped by her hand and not her mind.
Perhaps they need not wrest safety for their home from this world after all; perhaps they can build it, stone by stone, by their own hands. She will write to Ming tomorrow, and see if Ming concurs.
Sarah smiles as she closes the door she built herself.