The boy was quiet when he told them.  His chin was held determinedly high over the brand new Church soldier’s uniform, and his face was a mixture of resolve and apology for the shock he was giving them.

It was almost enough to make the old man laugh despite it all.  They had been headed here all the boy’s life.  Longer — ever since the moment his daughter had led an Eastern mercenary in the door.  He might never forgive Dyan for marrying Ellin then dying on that pointless campaign, but he’d seen that coming the way he’d seen this coming.  Inevitable.  It had been in every line of the boy from the time he was six, an uncanny anticipation of the soldier now before him.

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He stood quietly, wind ruffling his hair, and watched her crush the talisman to powder.  The crunch of it under her boot was unnaturally loud, and this deserted corner at the edge of the city felt like the ends of the earth.

“You’re that sure.”

She didn’t even spare him a glance.  Her gaze was intent on the sparkling dust on the concrete, and a deep satisfaction showed on her face.  She spotted a thumbnail-sized fragment that had escaped destruction and hastened to remedy the situation, grinding it under her heel until what was left was lifted by the wind and blown away.

His hand lifted involuntarily to his own talisman, reassuringly safe and whole in his hip pocket.  “You’ll never be able to go back.”  He knew that she knew, that it was the whole point of the thing, but the words spilled out all the same.

She lifted her eyes to his, and they sparkled with an honest delight that he hadn’t seen in years.  “Never.”  Inexplicably, she gurgled a laugh, grabbed his hand, and pulled him off toward the city.

Welcome to this week’s Trifecta Writing Challenge!  This week called for 33 to 333 words on the third definition of the word CRUSH (verb):

1a : to squeeze or force by pressure so as to alter or destroy structure <crush grapes>
b : to squeeze together into a mass
2   : hug, embrace
3   : to reduce to particles by pounding or grinding <crush rock>

Thanks for reading!

It was the year that changed everything, they all agreed.  It was the year the revolution swept through the capital, the year ideas took flame and the new age began.  It was the year the young dreamers in the cities could hardly see for the stars sparking before their eyes, and everything seemed possible.

That was the only thing they seemed to agree on.  The discussions were complicated by the fact that no two scholars agreed on what to call it.  The elderly called it the 12th year of King Roland — the young firebrands at the university called it the Glorious Year — the new priests called it the Fourth Year of the Second Cycle of the Progenitor, whoever that was. Even all this time later, he still didn’t know.

He remembered it as an ordinary enough year.  The pear harvest had been moderately good.  One of the vats of fall ale had gone bad and had to be dumped out.  His youngest sister had gotten married.  The most unusual thing that had happened was that a mare two villages over had produced twins.  They hadn’t lived out the week, but he’d gone over to see them all the same.  The smith’s son had insisted it was an omen.  The whole village still laughed over that from time to time.

He trudged out onto the porch, dropped into the creaky old rocking chair, and smacked the old ashes out of his pipe against the bottom of his boot.  The leaves in the orchard rustled gently as he tamped in new tobacco.  The blossom was setting well this year; it should be a good harvest.  He leaned back with a creak.  The scent of the earth was rising like a wave under the morning sun.   The year that had changed everything.  He coughed out a laugh, and lit his pipe.

This week’s Trifecta Writing Challenge called for 33 to 333 words on the third definition of the word YEAR (noun):

The witch finished the incantation and held her breath for a long moment, waiting.  A gust of icy wind swept past the candles ringing her living room, and a hollow voice sounded.  “Who summons me?”  A figure stepped out of the shadows into the circle of flame.

The witch’s eyes widened.  Tall and bony she had been expecting.  Dark flames in the eye sockets, check.  And okay, the grimoire hadn’t actually said there’d be black robes and a scythe, but this…  It was wearing a white wifebeater and a baseball cap — backward. A shiny black button shirt was slung over its shoulder, and the waistband of a pair of striped shorts protruded from the top of the jeans.  She couldn’t keep herself from reading it.  Abercr–  She shook herself.

“You’re kidding me.”

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A clatter sounded from the other end of the room, cutting through the din.  Callie’s head jerked.  One of the other servants had dropped a charger of roast pig spectacularly on the floor.  She turned back to the table and filled another goblet.  These Atan loved their wine.

She brushed a sleeve.  Murmuring an apology, she withdrew.  She wasn’t at all sure they understood her, but it hardly mattered.  She kept her head down, and they ignored her.  She was happy to be nothing.

The duke sat at the head table by the guest of honor.  He was uneasy in his cousin’s seat, so newly come to him.  It was a very different gathering than the ones the old duke had used to have, these minor nobles in ill-fitting Atani robes bowing and scraping and laughing too loudly.  But he had fought, and so was gone. It made her face flush with shame, but in her memories of that day, the horror of the children’s execution was overwhelmed by her relief at being left alive.

The duke’s wife, white-faced, sat erect next to him.  Her smile was brittle and her movements tight and sharp.  Everyone knew why.  She had been a votary of Amala.  For anyone else, that would have meant an execution, but her life had been spared… for now.  Spared on condition of her husband’s obedience, his cooperation with their new overlords.  Callie wondered if the duchess felt the same way she did: kneeling before their altar, thinking she was damned, damned for betraying her faith.

The Primate, newly arrived from overseas, sat nearby, his forearms resting lightly on the table.  He was short, stocky, pale, and he coiled in the chair like a snake.  Callie shivered.  She was the littlest, the tiniest mouse.  There was bigger game under his eye.

The duke raised his glass in a shaking hand.  “To our glorious lord, the Dawn Emperor!”  The desperate roar of voices assaulted her ear, and she turned away.

Welcome to this week’s Trifecta Writing Challenge!  This week’s prompt calls for 33 to 333 words on the third definition of the word UNEASY (adj.):

1: causing physical or mental discomfort
2: not easy : difficult
3: marked by lack of ease : awkward, embarrassed <gave an uneasy laugh>

Thanks for reading!

Welcome to the weekend prompt at Trifecta Writing Challenge!  This weekend, they asked us to continue one of our 33 word responses with 33 more words.  I chose to follow up on Revelation.  Here’s my original response:

You’re my wife, mother of my children.  You can tell me.  What did the Oracle say?”  He clasped her hands earnestly.

Her voice was ghostly, remote.  “It said that I was your doom.”

And here’s the next bit:

A silence fell.  She stared doggedly into the distance.  Of course, of course it had to come to this.  He was thinking it, she knew. There was nothing else to think.

Her father.

Thanks for reading!

They fled into the night, Dala laughing hysterically and Hasari gritting his teeth.  He’d scraped his face in the rush to get out the window, and Dala had nearly been shot by a guard, but she kept laughing, laughing, as if they had never done anything so amusing.  They could both have been killed, and for what?

The city streets flew by, dark and too familiar.  Just the sight of them made him tired. “Stop.  STOP!”  He grabbed her arm roughly and dragged her into an alley.

“We can’t keep doing this, Dala.  We –” he ran out of words.  “We just can’t.”

“What do you mean?  Of course we can!”  There was a feverish shine on her face, a fretful energy that was afraid to rest.

“What do I mean?  I mean it’s only blind luck that we’re not dead yet!”  Her carefree nonchalance had stopped being convincing a long time ago.  It had been real once, and he’d loved her for it.  These days it had a manic edge, a desperation for the girl who’d existed before the Fall to still be there.  It had taken him a long time to recognize: she couldn’t stop.  She would keep looking for trouble until it consumed her.

He had nothing left.

“We should go back.”  A rough village in the middle of nowhere, a life in hiding.  It no longer seemed like the worst thing that could happen.

She reared back sharply, incredulous.  “They told us not to leave.”

“And they were right.”  The words fell between them like lead.  She was staring at him with a blank look on her face, like he was speaking a language she didn’t understand. He looked away.  “I’m going back.”  He didn’t have to ask.  She wasn’t coming with him.  He looked back at her face for a long moment, memorizing.

“Goodbye, Dala.”  He dropped the words over his shoulder and left her, standing in the alley and staring after him.

Welcome to this week’s Trifecta Writing Challenge!  This week called for 33 to 333 words using the third definition of the word BLIND (adj.):

“You’re my wife, mother of my children.  You can tell me.  What did the Oracle say?”  He clasped her hands earnestly.

Her voice was ghostly, remote.  “It said that I was your doom.”

Welcome to this weekend’s Trifextra challenge at Trifecta Writing Challenge!  This weekend’s prompt asked for 33 words on something that was three different things at the same time.  Thanks for reading!

Midnight.  Kate crept down the hallway, candlestick in one hand and the other raised to shield the flickering flame.  The stone floor was cold under her bare feet, but she was silent as a cat without the betraying shuffle of slippers.  The distant rumble of voices sounded belowstairs.  She slipped into the library.  Safe!

Kate straightened and let her hand fall away from the light of the candle.  The library smelled of old books and a faint hint of her father’s snuff.   Kate rather thought it was the Virgil that was so musty.  Anything that ancient could hardly smell any other way.  It was a man’s space, with solid furniture and long velvet curtains in a color her father called claret and her mother crimson.  Kate liked to think of them as scarlet, which made her mother, already nervous about Kate’s dubious attitude toward propriety, throw her hands up in despair.

Kate started to search.  She had her aunt to thank for bringing it into the house.  Her parents had immediately banished it to the back of the library, but at least they hadn’t consigned it to the fire.  Finally.  It seemed like everyone had read it but her, and Augusta Mainwaring had been a perfect pig about it.

There!  She pulled out the slim volume and looked at the cover.  Printed in thin gold letters was the scandalous name and the title: “THE CORSAIR.”  Kate grinned delightedly, tucked it into her dressing gown, and stole back to her room.

I am having so much fun with the prompts this week, I decided to go for a second round with a little splash of Regency for Write on Edge‘s Red Writing Hood prompt.  (Also, all the new books on hand available for reviewing are Terry Pratchett and I thought I’d give you guys a break.  I swear, a shipment of all new books from Barnes & Noble is on its way.  And none of them are by Pratchett.  Seriously.)  This week, in honor of the board game Clue, they asked for up to 250 words including the words “candlestick,” “scarlet,” and “library.”  For those not familiar with the period, suffice it to say that Lord Byron’s personal life was known to be scandalous by the standards of the time and rumored to be quite scandalous even by modern standards, and his works were considered not appropriate for Nice Young Ladies’ eyes.  Thanks for reading!

Cold beer, football, feet on the coffee table. Dan took a swig.  Every weekend should be like this.  They were even ahead.  He turned up the volume a little.  Callie wandered in with a yogurt in her hand and peered at the game.

He shook his head.  “Babe, why do you eat that stuff?  You don’t need to be on a diet.”

She snorted.  “Thanks, but I like yogurt.”

“Seriously.  You don’t need to lose weight.  You’re just –” he waved a searching hand, “ample.”

“Ample?  Ample?“  She turned to look at him.

The sharp rise in pitch and her expression rang the warning bells.  “No — I meant — you’re enough for any guy.”  He sloshed a little beer on his shirt in his rush to sit up.  His foot knocked a coaster off the table.  “You’re plenty.”

“Plenty?”  The pitch was even higher.  He winced.  Apparently that had been the wrong thing to say.  “Let me give you a tip.  When you’re giving women unsolicited opinions on their figures, avoid using words commonly applied to cornucopias, harvests, or Victorian nannies.  I don’t need a commentary on the quantity of me you think is appropriate.  And if you so much as mention Peter Paul Rubens, so help me, I will throw you out the window onto your meager ass.  Trust me, I’m strong enough to do it,” she growled.  “I’m ample.”

Dan zipped it.  He wasn’t sure who Rubens was but he was positive it wasn’t the time to ask.  After giving him a searching glare, Callie wheeled and flounced out.  Dan kept it zipped until he couldn’t hear her any more, then peered carefully down the hallway to see if she was out of sight.  “Whoa.”  He slumped back into the couch, shrugged, and went back to the game.  “Maybe she’s hungry.”

Welcome to this week’s Trifecta Writing Challenge!  This week called for 33 to 333 words on the third definition of the word AMPLE (adj.)

: generous or more than adequate in size, scope, or capacity<there was room for an ample garden>
2: generously sufficient to satisfy a requirement or need<they had ample money for the trip>
3: buxom, portly <an ample figure>

Thanks for reading!