backscene: the young and the restless Who: Aurin Demarc, Constans Ledaal. (Hopefully guest-starring Bethen Avilla!) Where: Kinloch Hold. When: The troop are 11-12ish years old. Summary: Lil' Constans and mini-Aurin will soon hate each others' guts. Lil' Aurin feels rather differently about lil' Bethen. Rating: C for Can't Rememeber the Rating Scale; also, Child Behaving Badly.
The sun shone over lake Calenhad, its waters glistening as they rippled in a warm summer breeze. The air was so clear and bright, the streets of Redcliffe could be seen with ease from the high windows of Kinloch Hold.
Constans had been up there a handful of times before. He had seen those streets from the windows, and imagined that he even saw tiny people moving to and fro upon them like gnats on the skin of an orange. He couldn’t be sure it hadn’t just been his imagination, but he wanted to have seen them. He’d made up lives for them now, imagined their jobs and relationships, their very normal world… he daydreamed of them constantly, and of sneaking up to see them again, but that was a difficult prospect. Apprentices were not permitted up to the highest floors without a mentor to guide them, which meant that he was never able to stay long before he was chased off or caught and punished. If he had to scrub down the bath basins or wash chalk slates one more time this month, he thought he might just start screaming and never ever stop.
Today it was beautiful outside, and the only reason he even knew was the vigil he kept on the Templars that guarded the great doors. An hour spent evading his tutor in frustration had so far yielded a most satisfying result; two eyefuls of brilliant sunlight as patrols had been admitted into and out of the tower, witnessed from the shadowed recesses of the alcove in which he hid. The two Templars who stood guard knew he was there, Constans knew that they knew he was there… it was an uneasy truce, but it held. He played idle games with himself in the dust that coated the flagstones, huddled behind a pillar, waiting with determination for another chance to see the merest glimpse of light reflect brightly off of the waters of the lake.