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legendland challenges.
Title: Scars
Author: alyse
Fandom: Legend of the Seeker
Genre/Category: Missing scene, hurt comfort
Pairings/Characters: Gen, Kahlan, Zedd, Richard
Rating: PG13
Word Count: 435
Author's Notes: Written for the Legendland 'director's cut' challenge, which was around writing a missing scene from an episode.
Summary: If she had not left, if she had not abandoned him, leaving him to complete his quest on his own - a Seeker without his Confessor by his side - none of this would have happened.
Zedd, as expected, is overwhelmed to see them. He flutters around them like one of his hens, sleeves flapping and face stricken. Kahlan can't blame him for that. Richard has been silent since they left the Mord-Sith Temple; not a word has escaped him, not a sound passing his lips, but he doesn't need to say anything. The marks on his body say it all. There are shadows underneath his eyes that speak of his pain and exhaustion, and the look in their brown depths begs her to keep her silence, too.
This, at least, she can do for him. She owes him more, much more than this, and the guilt of it consumes her. If she had not left, if she had not abandoned him, leaving him to complete his quest on his own - a Seeker without his Confessor by his side - none of this would have happened.
Zedd would disagree, she knows, and that thought keeps her as silent as the look in Richard's eye. She doesn't want Zedd's pity or his sympathy. She doesn't want anything but Richard, whole and hale and hearty. She wants his smile and his laugh, the way he ducks his head when he looks at her, inviting her to share in his amusement. But more than anything else she wants his touch, Spirits help her, even now. Even knowing what it has cost him, and what it could cost him in future.
She wants her guilt. It is the only thing stopping her from reaching out and touching him, from letting her fingers brush the hair from his brow and stroke gently over the cuts and bruises that litter his torso, each a reminder of Denna's less than gentle touch. But she cannot touch, for to touch him is to lose him. To touch him is to be lost, too.
Zedd fusses and clucks over him instead, fingers gentle on Richard's skin, on Richard's bruises. Each touch is designed to ease a little of the pain that still runs through Richard's tense frame; Zedd can work magic, even without his wizard's touch, and Richard relaxes, inch by inch, his body slumping with exhaustion as the pain eases from his face. Each soft sigh Richard lets out, each muscle that slowly unclenches, eases Kahlan's heart inch by aching inch, too.
But Zedd cannot heal the scars that Kahlan has left, the ones that curl underneath Richard's skin and slice straight into his heart. The scars that Kahlan has left cut deeper than any Denna could inflict, and Richard will bear them until the day he dies.
-o-
Title: Message
Author: alyse
Fandom: Legend of the Seeker
Genre/Category: Humour, crack
Pairings/Characters: Cara-centric, references to Kahlan/Richard
Rating: PG13
Word Count: ~500
Author's Notes: Written for the Legendland 'message in a bottle' challenge.
Summary: It said something for Cara's levels of irritation that the arrival of a particularly chatty pinprick of light was a welcome relief from all the sighing and moping.
Cara had expected Richard to be quiet after they'd left Kahlan in Aydindril, but the soft sighs he let out every so often were irritating her. Not that Zedd was much help; whenever Richard felt the need to fondle Kahlan's dagger, Zedd's eyes misted over.
It said something for Cara's levels of irritation that the arrival of a particularly chatty pinprick of light was a welcome relief from all the sighing and moping.
"Well," she demanded as soon as the Night Wisp - Kyr, the buzzing ball of light informed her delightedly - paused for breath. Maybe that was why they never seemed to shut up for more than a millisecond - something that small couldn't possibly need to take deep breaths. "What exactly is it Kahlan wants me to tell the Lord Rahl?"
It had better not be more moping or lovelorn Journeybook 'I missed yous'. If Richard cut himself any more to write long notes to Kahlan, Cara suspected she'd end up carrying him all the way back to D'Hara.
Richard blinked at her and opened his mouth. Not to sigh, for once, but there was a long pause before he finally said, "You understand Night Wisps?"
She rolled her eyes. "No," she said sweetly. "I thought I'd just witter at it for a while until it went away again."
Kyr laughed, a high pitched humming sound that - in spite of herself - had Cara's lips curling, too. And then Kyr burbled some more, words falling over themselves.
Cara frowned and Richard's hand flew to his sword, his brow immediately furrowing and his eyes worried. She held up one peremptory hand when Richard tried to rush her for an explanation.
Well. This was going to cause complications. She threw Richard a sidelong look, one that had his brow furrowing further. "Kahlan wants you to return to Aydindril," she said briefly, not really wanting to have this conversation.
"Is everything alright?" he demanded; she rolled her eyes.
"Fine, but she wants you back as soon as possible, so I suggest we leave now."
That got Richard moving, at least.
"Is everything alright?" Zedd asked.
Cara lowered her voice, searching for the right words, before settling on, "I don't need to worry about a future heir for D'Hara."
Zedd got her point; his eyes widened delightedly and he rubbed his hands together in a way that was far too gleeful. "Well, this is good news!"
"We should let Kahlan tell him," she added hurriedly. She didn't want three days of a stunned Richard on her hands, even if Kyr hadn't made Kahlan's feelings on exactly who should break the news to her beloved very clear.
"Of course, of course," Zedd said, clearly not listening to her. "I'll be as silent as the grave..." He beamed broadly, which was hardly discrete. It was her turn to sigh; if he kept this up it was going to be a long three days back to Aydindril.
"A great grandchild..." he murmured giddily.
A very long three days.
-o-
Title: Scarlet Skies
Author: alyse
Fandom: Legend of the Seeker
Genre/Category: Character study
Pairings/Characters: Gen, Scarlet
Rating: PG13
Word Count: ~400
Author's Notes: Written for the Legendland 'triple threat' challenge, where you had to find something in your house that reminded you of LotS, post a pic and then find out you had to write a story about it. Yes, I do own a red dragon. More than one, in fact.
Summary: The skies over the Midlands are clear and blue. The humans think that they stretch forever, but Scarlet knows better. Nothing stretches out forever, not even the lives of her kind.
The skies over the Midlands are clear and blue. The humans think that they stretch forever, but Scarlet knows better. Nothing stretches out forever, not even the lives of her kind.
Once the skies were filled with those like her. They were the true Lords of this world, the ones who rained down death from above, perilous and merciless, above it all. They lived far longer than the pitiful human lifespan, and saw such wonders, ones that the ants below could not possibly comprehend.
And yet it is these ants, these insects who think they own the world now and call themselves Lords of it. Lords, when all they do is scratch at the earth and stain it red with each other's blood while Scarlet's kind pass into legend.
The red of Scarlet's scales is far more brilliant than any blood they could spill, and her flames light up the evening sky more brightly than any sunset and more deadly than any dawn. But the time for soaring has ended.
She longs for it, the sky. Longs to surge upwards to where the earth is but a dim memory and the clouds stretch out, soft and feathery, rolling like the ocean's waves. Up there, the air is thin and cold, and the only sound to be heard is the beat of her wings, the panting of her mighty lungs. Up there, beyond the sky, it is the stars that stretch out forever, and Scarlet's kind are lost amongst them.
She cannot join them, not yet.
The skies over the Midlands are clear and blue, but they do not stretch as far as they once did, not for Scarlet. Scarlet is chained to the earth now, tied down by the creatures that crawl on their bellies there, the ones who will never soar, never see. They envy her freedom - long for her cold, brilliant skies - and, twisted and made mad for it, have taken her child.
The skies still call to her, the stars' twinkling a siren call of longing, but she is bound to the earth now, tethered there by the ties of love and hate, of rage and regret.
Scarlet longs for the skies, for the stars, for her kind. But it is nothing to her longing for her stolen child.
-o-
Title: Red Flowers
Author: alyse
Fandom: Legend of the Seeker
Genre/Category: Character study
Pairings/Characters: Denna
Rating: PG13
Word Count: 200
Author's Notes: Written for the Legendland 'love in the Midlands' challenge.
Summary: There is an art to bringing pain, and Denna is a mistress of it.
There is an art to bringing pain, and Denna is a mistress of it. She coaxes red flowers to bloom, bright and brilliant, on flesh that is pale and trembling; when the blood drips to the floor it falls gently, like spring rain, splattering softly against her leathers, which are the dark red of heart's blood.
The sighs and the moans her pets let out are for her ears only, and the whispered pleas for mercy fall from their lips like the sweetest of music. She lets her fingers drift, swirling patterns on her palette, and the flinches and gasps that result are a dance of which she never tires.
She is a mistress of this, as all things, and once she has weaved her magic, the men in her care will gaze at her longingly, as though she is the centre of their entire world, the only thing that matters.
She is. And, at the last, when their heartbeats slow against her palm, when their skin starts to cool against her touch, her fingers curl as though she can feel each last, slow beat of each one against her skin.
This is the closest to love she's ever been.
-o-
Title: Hunted
Author: alyse
Fandom: Legend of the Seeker
Genre/Category: Humour
Pairings/Characters: Gen, Cara, Richard
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~400
Author's Notes: Written for Legendland, but I can't remember exactly which challenge.
Summary: Cara hears it first, holding up her hand to stop Richard in his tracks.
Cara hears it first, holding up her hand to stop Richard in his tracks. He opens his mouth as if he's going to say something and she silences him with a glare and one raised finger.
The corner of his mouth quirks, but he stays quiet, his eyes darting around the clearing they've stopped in. Cara does the same, but unlike Richard she's not admiring the trees; she tilts her head and listens for that sound again, the sound of vengeance.
There.
She narrows her eyes, glaring off into the gloom amongst the trees. Her arrow slides neatly and near silently from her quiver, and she notches it, ready at a moment's notice to draw her bow back, just as Richard taught her. Richard stays out of her way, straining to hear or see what's caught her attention.
There, again. A movement this time, not a sound, a flash of something fawn against the dark velvet green of the trees.
She draws her bow and lets the arrow fly, straight and true.
She misses.
Richard lets out a sound beside her, one that sounds like he's being strangled. When she turns her head, his eyes are dancing and his face is flushed, his lips pressed suspiciously tightly together. He catches her eyes, his mouth quivering, but she silences him again with a single look, one that promises retribution if he says so much as one single, solitary word.
Richard isn't stupid, and for someone who rushes into danger without a moment's thought for his own safety as often as he does, he manages to maintain enough of an instinct for self-preservation to keep his tongue, even if he can't quite mask the dimples in his cheek, brought there by the smile he's trying so hard to keep off his face.
Cara lets out a harrumph of disgust and turns back towards her errant prey, her eyes narrowing again as she searches the tree line for that pesky little...
There! Another flash of fawn and black, and a sound echoes back towards her, a quiet, mocking 'chittering' that sets her teeth on edge.
She sets her mouth in a grim line of determination, pulling another arrow from her quiver and setting off in pursuit.
That chipmunk will pay for its insolence, or her name isn't Cara Mason.
(Yes, I still have more to come, but this is most of the short LotS stuff. I need to stop writing as much, obvs ::g:: Or post more frequently.)
legendland challenges.Title: Scars
Author: alyse
Fandom: Legend of the Seeker
Genre/Category: Missing scene, hurt comfort
Pairings/Characters: Gen, Kahlan, Zedd, Richard
Rating: PG13
Word Count: 435
Author's Notes: Written for the Legendland 'director's cut' challenge, which was around writing a missing scene from an episode.
Summary: If she had not left, if she had not abandoned him, leaving him to complete his quest on his own - a Seeker without his Confessor by his side - none of this would have happened.
Zedd, as expected, is overwhelmed to see them. He flutters around them like one of his hens, sleeves flapping and face stricken. Kahlan can't blame him for that. Richard has been silent since they left the Mord-Sith Temple; not a word has escaped him, not a sound passing his lips, but he doesn't need to say anything. The marks on his body say it all. There are shadows underneath his eyes that speak of his pain and exhaustion, and the look in their brown depths begs her to keep her silence, too.
This, at least, she can do for him. She owes him more, much more than this, and the guilt of it consumes her. If she had not left, if she had not abandoned him, leaving him to complete his quest on his own - a Seeker without his Confessor by his side - none of this would have happened.
Zedd would disagree, she knows, and that thought keeps her as silent as the look in Richard's eye. She doesn't want Zedd's pity or his sympathy. She doesn't want anything but Richard, whole and hale and hearty. She wants his smile and his laugh, the way he ducks his head when he looks at her, inviting her to share in his amusement. But more than anything else she wants his touch, Spirits help her, even now. Even knowing what it has cost him, and what it could cost him in future.
She wants her guilt. It is the only thing stopping her from reaching out and touching him, from letting her fingers brush the hair from his brow and stroke gently over the cuts and bruises that litter his torso, each a reminder of Denna's less than gentle touch. But she cannot touch, for to touch him is to lose him. To touch him is to be lost, too.
Zedd fusses and clucks over him instead, fingers gentle on Richard's skin, on Richard's bruises. Each touch is designed to ease a little of the pain that still runs through Richard's tense frame; Zedd can work magic, even without his wizard's touch, and Richard relaxes, inch by inch, his body slumping with exhaustion as the pain eases from his face. Each soft sigh Richard lets out, each muscle that slowly unclenches, eases Kahlan's heart inch by aching inch, too.
But Zedd cannot heal the scars that Kahlan has left, the ones that curl underneath Richard's skin and slice straight into his heart. The scars that Kahlan has left cut deeper than any Denna could inflict, and Richard will bear them until the day he dies.
-o-
Title: Message
Author: alyse
Fandom: Legend of the Seeker
Genre/Category: Humour, crack
Pairings/Characters: Cara-centric, references to Kahlan/Richard
Rating: PG13
Word Count: ~500
Author's Notes: Written for the Legendland 'message in a bottle' challenge.
Summary: It said something for Cara's levels of irritation that the arrival of a particularly chatty pinprick of light was a welcome relief from all the sighing and moping.
Cara had expected Richard to be quiet after they'd left Kahlan in Aydindril, but the soft sighs he let out every so often were irritating her. Not that Zedd was much help; whenever Richard felt the need to fondle Kahlan's dagger, Zedd's eyes misted over.
It said something for Cara's levels of irritation that the arrival of a particularly chatty pinprick of light was a welcome relief from all the sighing and moping.
"Well," she demanded as soon as the Night Wisp - Kyr, the buzzing ball of light informed her delightedly - paused for breath. Maybe that was why they never seemed to shut up for more than a millisecond - something that small couldn't possibly need to take deep breaths. "What exactly is it Kahlan wants me to tell the Lord Rahl?"
It had better not be more moping or lovelorn Journeybook 'I missed yous'. If Richard cut himself any more to write long notes to Kahlan, Cara suspected she'd end up carrying him all the way back to D'Hara.
Richard blinked at her and opened his mouth. Not to sigh, for once, but there was a long pause before he finally said, "You understand Night Wisps?"
She rolled her eyes. "No," she said sweetly. "I thought I'd just witter at it for a while until it went away again."
Kyr laughed, a high pitched humming sound that - in spite of herself - had Cara's lips curling, too. And then Kyr burbled some more, words falling over themselves.
Cara frowned and Richard's hand flew to his sword, his brow immediately furrowing and his eyes worried. She held up one peremptory hand when Richard tried to rush her for an explanation.
Well. This was going to cause complications. She threw Richard a sidelong look, one that had his brow furrowing further. "Kahlan wants you to return to Aydindril," she said briefly, not really wanting to have this conversation.
"Is everything alright?" he demanded; she rolled her eyes.
"Fine, but she wants you back as soon as possible, so I suggest we leave now."
That got Richard moving, at least.
"Is everything alright?" Zedd asked.
Cara lowered her voice, searching for the right words, before settling on, "I don't need to worry about a future heir for D'Hara."
Zedd got her point; his eyes widened delightedly and he rubbed his hands together in a way that was far too gleeful. "Well, this is good news!"
"We should let Kahlan tell him," she added hurriedly. She didn't want three days of a stunned Richard on her hands, even if Kyr hadn't made Kahlan's feelings on exactly who should break the news to her beloved very clear.
"Of course, of course," Zedd said, clearly not listening to her. "I'll be as silent as the grave..." He beamed broadly, which was hardly discrete. It was her turn to sigh; if he kept this up it was going to be a long three days back to Aydindril.
"A great grandchild..." he murmured giddily.
A very long three days.
-o-
Title: Scarlet Skies
Author: alyse
Fandom: Legend of the Seeker
Genre/Category: Character study
Pairings/Characters: Gen, Scarlet
Rating: PG13
Word Count: ~400
Author's Notes: Written for the Legendland 'triple threat' challenge, where you had to find something in your house that reminded you of LotS, post a pic and then find out you had to write a story about it. Yes, I do own a red dragon. More than one, in fact.
Summary: The skies over the Midlands are clear and blue. The humans think that they stretch forever, but Scarlet knows better. Nothing stretches out forever, not even the lives of her kind.
The skies over the Midlands are clear and blue. The humans think that they stretch forever, but Scarlet knows better. Nothing stretches out forever, not even the lives of her kind.
Once the skies were filled with those like her. They were the true Lords of this world, the ones who rained down death from above, perilous and merciless, above it all. They lived far longer than the pitiful human lifespan, and saw such wonders, ones that the ants below could not possibly comprehend.
And yet it is these ants, these insects who think they own the world now and call themselves Lords of it. Lords, when all they do is scratch at the earth and stain it red with each other's blood while Scarlet's kind pass into legend.
The red of Scarlet's scales is far more brilliant than any blood they could spill, and her flames light up the evening sky more brightly than any sunset and more deadly than any dawn. But the time for soaring has ended.
She longs for it, the sky. Longs to surge upwards to where the earth is but a dim memory and the clouds stretch out, soft and feathery, rolling like the ocean's waves. Up there, the air is thin and cold, and the only sound to be heard is the beat of her wings, the panting of her mighty lungs. Up there, beyond the sky, it is the stars that stretch out forever, and Scarlet's kind are lost amongst them.
She cannot join them, not yet.
The skies over the Midlands are clear and blue, but they do not stretch as far as they once did, not for Scarlet. Scarlet is chained to the earth now, tied down by the creatures that crawl on their bellies there, the ones who will never soar, never see. They envy her freedom - long for her cold, brilliant skies - and, twisted and made mad for it, have taken her child.
The skies still call to her, the stars' twinkling a siren call of longing, but she is bound to the earth now, tethered there by the ties of love and hate, of rage and regret.
Scarlet longs for the skies, for the stars, for her kind. But it is nothing to her longing for her stolen child.
-o-
Title: Red Flowers
Author: alyse
Fandom: Legend of the Seeker
Genre/Category: Character study
Pairings/Characters: Denna
Rating: PG13
Word Count: 200
Author's Notes: Written for the Legendland 'love in the Midlands' challenge.
Summary: There is an art to bringing pain, and Denna is a mistress of it.
There is an art to bringing pain, and Denna is a mistress of it. She coaxes red flowers to bloom, bright and brilliant, on flesh that is pale and trembling; when the blood drips to the floor it falls gently, like spring rain, splattering softly against her leathers, which are the dark red of heart's blood.
The sighs and the moans her pets let out are for her ears only, and the whispered pleas for mercy fall from their lips like the sweetest of music. She lets her fingers drift, swirling patterns on her palette, and the flinches and gasps that result are a dance of which she never tires.
She is a mistress of this, as all things, and once she has weaved her magic, the men in her care will gaze at her longingly, as though she is the centre of their entire world, the only thing that matters.
She is. And, at the last, when their heartbeats slow against her palm, when their skin starts to cool against her touch, her fingers curl as though she can feel each last, slow beat of each one against her skin.
This is the closest to love she's ever been.
-o-
Title: Hunted
Author: alyse
Fandom: Legend of the Seeker
Genre/Category: Humour
Pairings/Characters: Gen, Cara, Richard
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~400
Author's Notes: Written for Legendland, but I can't remember exactly which challenge.
Summary: Cara hears it first, holding up her hand to stop Richard in his tracks.
Cara hears it first, holding up her hand to stop Richard in his tracks. He opens his mouth as if he's going to say something and she silences him with a glare and one raised finger.
The corner of his mouth quirks, but he stays quiet, his eyes darting around the clearing they've stopped in. Cara does the same, but unlike Richard she's not admiring the trees; she tilts her head and listens for that sound again, the sound of vengeance.
There.
She narrows her eyes, glaring off into the gloom amongst the trees. Her arrow slides neatly and near silently from her quiver, and she notches it, ready at a moment's notice to draw her bow back, just as Richard taught her. Richard stays out of her way, straining to hear or see what's caught her attention.
There, again. A movement this time, not a sound, a flash of something fawn against the dark velvet green of the trees.
She draws her bow and lets the arrow fly, straight and true.
She misses.
Richard lets out a sound beside her, one that sounds like he's being strangled. When she turns her head, his eyes are dancing and his face is flushed, his lips pressed suspiciously tightly together. He catches her eyes, his mouth quivering, but she silences him again with a single look, one that promises retribution if he says so much as one single, solitary word.
Richard isn't stupid, and for someone who rushes into danger without a moment's thought for his own safety as often as he does, he manages to maintain enough of an instinct for self-preservation to keep his tongue, even if he can't quite mask the dimples in his cheek, brought there by the smile he's trying so hard to keep off his face.
Cara lets out a harrumph of disgust and turns back towards her errant prey, her eyes narrowing again as she searches the tree line for that pesky little...
There! Another flash of fawn and black, and a sound echoes back towards her, a quiet, mocking 'chittering' that sets her teeth on edge.
She sets her mouth in a grim line of determination, pulling another arrow from her quiver and setting off in pursuit.
That chipmunk will pay for its insolence, or her name isn't Cara Mason.
(Yes, I still have more to come, but this is most of the short LotS stuff. I need to stop writing as much, obvs ::g:: Or post more frequently.)