Tag: femslash

tc-doherty:

A quickie rewrite of a femslash drabble I wrote last year. The characters are Brynn Erin and Avalbane, from my novel On the Trail of the Fox.

Avalbane always dressed for dancing, in full skirts with
petticoats just made for spinning and low-heeled shoes. She always danced, too,
with the grace that only a water spirit possessed. She would hum and dance
around the library with her skirts floating around her. Brynn loved to watch
her – catching a glimpse now and again on her way to perform her own numerous
tasks around the house. With everyone else, Ava would stop and blush and run
deeper into the library to hide among her books and her solitude. She never ran
from Brynn.

She learned from Ava, in small stolen moments of time. A
step here, a turn there, a dip somewhere else. Always a quick lesson, a few
measures, and a furtive escape before anyone noticed. She wasn’t nearly as good
at it, as graceful, as fast, as light on her feet. There was never enough time
for that, but Ava didn’t seem to mind
that at all. They did what they could with the time available.

“A big job,” Laurette announce to the room at large. “Very big, yes. We won’t return before
dark, I’m sure.” Laurette was always like this, never revealing anything in
advance. Brynn waited as the mage picked the spirits she would need. But she
skipped Brynn, and Ava.

“Don’t you need me for a big job?” Brynn asked. But Laurette
was adamant.

“No, you stay here this time. You and Ava, both, stay here.
I don’t need you.” Then she smiled in that way she had, and Brynn knew
something was up.

She never asked how the mage had found out, because Laurette
wouldn’t have told her anyway. But it was certain that a whole day alone in the
house had been arranged, as carefully as the bottle of wine left chilling in
the fridge and the stack of brand new records in the library.

When the group returned the next day, Laurette
did not ask about the missing wine, or the scuff marks on the library floor, or
the fact that swing music was still playing from the record player that had, to
date, known nothing but classical tunes. She only smiled that smile, and asked
them if they’d had a nice day off.

Morning reblog. Got lazy and rewrote one from last year haha.

tc-doherty:

In honor of Femslash February, enjoy this small snippet from the 1st draft of Dragon’s Daughter. This scene is silly but I like it anyway.

Felisjyta pulled her into the
hallway.

“I’m going to have to go out to the
front lines,” the knight said. “I just wanted to let you know. Errys and I are
both going.” Patrice felt her heart freeze up, the same way it had when she
realized her mother was dying. When she didn’t say anything, couldn’t say
anything, Felisjyta kept talking.

“I need to take Vasjya with me,
since trained for fighting. I know I can count on you to take good care of
Vanji though, even if he is a brat. And…I wanted to give this back to you,
while I still had a chance.”

Felisjyta handed her back the necklace
Patrice had given her – her mother’s scale, with its carved impression of a
dragon in flight. The lump in her throat receded just enough for her to talk.

“No!” Patrice said, and pushed the
necklace back into Felisjyta’s hands. “If it brought you luck in the tournament
it might bring you luck on the field. And you can…you can give it back to me
when you get back. Because you will, of course.”

“Patrice…”

“You knights can be irritating and
confusing to me, but you are the only friends I have. You can’t leave me and
then go somewhere I can’t follow. I won’t forgive you,” she said. Felisjyta
sighed, but then smiled.

“How could any knight fighting
under your favor do anything else? After all, didn’t I already promise that I
wouldn’t do anything hurt you? I’ll come back, and then we can both go to Serze
together. Maybe you’ll like it better there.” Felisjyta slipped the necklace
back around her neck, then leaned forward and pressed her lips to Patrice’s
forehead – the same thing she had done before, Patrice realized.

“What’s that supposed to be?” She
demanded. Felisjyta looked back at her.

“A kiss. A sign of affection.”

“Well I know what it is. I’m not as naïve as I was when we
met,” Patrice said. Felisjyta laughed.

“Then call it a promise, that I’ll
come back. And it’s still a sign of affection. I’d make it more serious, but
I’m afraid you’d be angry and burn me up,” Felisjyta said. Patrice thought of a great
many things, just then, far too many to make any sense of.

“I don’t think I’d be angry.” Is
what she said. And when Felisjyta moved in to say good-bye to her properly, she
found that she might understand why her mother had loved humans so much after
all.

Time to reblog this!

Is it cheating if I didn’t actually write it for Femslash February? More importantly, does anyone care?

A short scene from my gay, psuedo-romance novel about knights and dragons.

“Jackanelli Shey.” Nelli had to smile at the way Retta said her name. It was a new development. As a child she had hated her name. She didn’t like how “Jack” was so much a boy’s name, not that Nelli was that much better. She hated how, when put together, the full name was all too serious, too rigid and too fussy. She had railed against it as a girl, forcing all of her friends to only call her Nelli and only enduring her full name from her superiors when she had to. She hated how, in spite of everything, she had grown into her name after all – too serious, too proper and altogether too fussy.

It had taken Retta, with her broad accent and lilting speech patterns to show the music in her name that Nelli had never heard before, and couldn’t possibly repeat. It shamed her that she couldn’t say her own name that way, and that her clumsy tongue stripped the magic out of Retta’s name too. Retta never seemed to mind, laughing it off the same way she had laughed off Nelli’s inability to learn her language. Nelli had tried, but she could never match the natural rhythm the seafolk had in their speech, and could not navigate in a language where each word had different meanings based on pitch alone. When she found herself saying sentences three times longer just to clarify her meaning, she stopped speaking it almost entirely.

“You are very quiet, Nelli love.” Retta said, drawing Nelli’s attention back to present day.

“Sorry. I was just thinking about the way you say my name.”

“Oh?” Nelli turned to face her, and Retta’s eyes were twinkling with…something. Probably mischief, if Nelli knew her at all.

“You always say it so much more broadly than any other word and I know your accent isn’t that strong. So, why do you push it so much?” Retta grinned.

“Ah, that is little joke.” She said. “I say it so much so because it sounds like our word for ‘love’, Nelli, love.” Nelli tried to remember what seafolk words she still knew.

“Giacca?” She guessed.

“Zyiaca.” Retta corrected, adding in the strange half-letters and lilt that made up half of the meaning of all her words. “So I say you are Zyiacanelli instead, or in Summertongue-“

“Nelli love.” Nelli said, repeating the phrase that Retta used most often. The woman beamed.

“Ah, you get it. Sorry, I forgot to tell you.” Nelli stared at her for a moment. Then she spoke again.

“Retta?”

“Yes?”

“You’re a dork.” Retta just smiled wider than ever and cut off further discussion with a kiss, which Nelli did nothing to stop.