loving you was like throwing a lasso around a tornado

[gidge]

sentence prompts from plurk!

river; completion (orly) They come in pairs, Answer and Question. Bonded together as atoms in spinning indifference, always backwards and accidental, Answer never knowing what to do with itself until Question comes to define its context. River thinks it feels like progress and wet grass, sounds out the syllables as they come like dance steps of tongue against teeth. (What do you do with a daughter like River? Have a son like Simon.) malik & shirley; wasteland (lisa) He hadn't expected the land across the sea to look like this. Not the vast grasslands or the sand that blows at them sideways as they make their way to Asshai. The familiarity is jarring and once, when the winds are calm, Shirley tsk's him over it. "You should have known 'by the Shadow' wasn't an endorsement, Malik." When they make camp that night he takes first watch and remembers Jerusalem while the others sleep. stefan & river; apples (rumi) "Try to not get juice everywhere." River just looks up innocently at Stefan from her place half-on the recliner. (Feet over one arm, head and shoulders over the over, draped just so.) The apple, for now, obliges and doesn't drip a single drop beyond her wrist. He sighs, resigned, and heads to the kitchen for paper towels. "At least it's not another peach." malik; burning (lisa) The wound burns for weeks, aches and fills him with dread while the threat of infection hounds him at the edges of flesh where flesh used to be. Al Mualim visits him twice. Once to check on him personally after the Templar attack is over and again to make him Dai while Malik lays in what everyone assumes will be his deathbed. By the time he is sent to be the rafiq at Jerusalem's bureau it is only his phantom limb and bitter resentment that sit in flames. malik; hands (lisa) He practices in the empty bureau, makes small goals and forces himself to reach them again and again before reassessing and making new ones. Where once there were hands there is now one arm, one set of fingers to find a hold and pull his weight. Malik relearns basics slowly. First balance, then endurance, then height. Many things remain unaccomplished (he refuses the idea of impossible), and he will never have the speed he once did, but he isn't helpless. The ladder they provided him sits unused behind the counter after the second month, and he's certain Altair has never seen it. malik and kadar; wind (lisa) Kadar is faster. He runs reckless, blurred limbs and head down as he ignores the obstacles between himself and the goal. The sprint is admirable, but Malik makes up for it in stamina and stealth, able to keep his speed and slip through crowded streets of Masayaf with ease. Even so, their footraces always end the same way, with Kadar holding victory and apologies in his arms.