truepenny | Work in Progress meme (Reply)

Because I'm loving reading them.

If you happen to be working on some creative writing project, post exactly one sentence from each of your current work(s) in progress in your journal. It should probably be your favourite or most intriguing sentence so far, but what you choose is entirely your discretion. Mention the title (and genre) if you like, but don't mention anything else. This is merely to whet the general appetite for your forthcoming work(s).

[Like

rysmiel I am modifying to "very very short excerpt" rather than "single sentence."]

Kekropia

I took a gander up the backside of the house. It had one of those dumb ornamental balconies that ain't wide enough for a cat, gilded like the front--the balcony, I mean, not the cat.

Summerdown

As one would expect from the great cathedral of Esmer, the choir was all but unearthly; the counter-tenor soloist sounded like the voice of the stars. I wanted to stand up, to scream, to tell them they had no right to create such heart-breaking beauty when Gerard was dead, my country doomed to servitude, and myself alone and afraid. Selfish, yes, but so were they. They did not care that this serene harmony was built on blood and death and pain.

The Mare's Nest

"Let us in, damn you," I said, "or we will die here in the pass and block your door with our stinking corpses."

Wulfcarl (with

matociquala)

Viradechtis's emphatic images in his head told him that she had caught the trolls' scent, and it was recent.
          Isolfr thought pointedly of the wulfheall, and the strength of wolves and men within it.
          But Viradechtis shook him off, already running along the trolls' tracks.
          The only thing stupider than following an unknown number of trolls would be to leave his sister to follow them alone. Isolfr cursed and went after her.

The Emperor of the Elflands

He touched the incised strokes of her name and said, low but clear, "I love thee still."
He turned then and left his mother's tomb, walking back toward where his Nóhechará waited for him in the light.

The Second Son

On the twenty-fourth of April, Medraut dreamed of Loheris again.

The Aftermath of the Glenalvon Rebellion

          "How do you tell each other apart?"
          Two of them shrugged, and a third said, "Scent, mostly."
          Like hounds, he thought, who trace their prey by the odors it leaves upon the earth. He waited, for he knew that they knew what he was asking. Arrexxen, whom he had been keeping his eyes on like a rube playing the shell game, said, "Humans have such stupid noses."
          "My nose and I cry you mercy," he said, and they laughed.

Byzantium

          "Who are you?" said Sutler.
          There was no answer; the silence was thick, cold, somehow ugly, all the peace drained out of it.
          "Who are you?" Sutler said again.
          "No one," the voice said, with a high, horrible giggle. "Dead and gone, dead and gone."

The Tale of Fur

          And hesitantly, the new cat padded delicately into view.
          She was lovely, a thick furred calico with high-pricked ears and golden eyes; her expression sweet, shy, and quite, quite stupid.
          [This is Mirabel,] said Gladstone. [She's inscrutable.]
          [Am I really?] said Mirabel, pleased.

"Draco campestris: Or, The Common Field Dragon"

You who visit the Museum, you will not see them. They are not the tour guides or the experts who give informative talks or the pretty girls in the gift shops who wrap your packages and wish you safe journey. They are the tithe-children Their eyes are large, pale and blinking, the color of dust. Their skin is dark, dark as the shadows in which they live.

"Moonwork"

Balancing a birth was always hard, a matter not undertaken lightly and not without feeling the deeper dance, a dance which Lizzie Butler listened to every hour of her life, Maggie Butler and Susannah Loomis and Bella Dawson heard only occasionally, and the other women of Winter Creek not at all. The moon could be worked without listening to the deeper dance, but it generally led to worse trouble, trouble that moonwork couldn't touch. Bella Dawson had known a woman who'd worked the moon for a birth without heeding the deeper dance; she would not talk about what that woman's sister had given birth to.

"To Die for Moonlight"