vignettes

[marycatelli]

This week's prompt is:
peaceful

Anyone can join, with a 50-word creative fiction vignette in the comments. Your vignette does not have to include the prompt term.

Comments

[marycatelli]

She lay still against the wood, and let her breath out. How peaceful it was to flow down the water. She wondered if she should sleep, though. There might be waterfalls too small to note outside the woods, and yet a peril to their boat.
Besides, she might have nightmares.

[marycatelli]

The plants in the garden had not grown that much, she told herself. Her sleep could not have been too long, or the entire castle would have been overgrown, and the garden turned into a wilderness of rank weeds, with all the lovely flowers choked out.
Horn, she reminded herself. She turned back to the room to find it in its satchel, which did not fall apart at the touch.
These reflections did not make her calm. She took up the satchel just in case, and the leather was still as supple as if she had napped. Rosaleen let her breath out. Perhaps she should go into the garden and contemplate flowers and bees. She would think better in a peaceful frame.
She should see what happened to the dwarfs, first, and perhaps even to the villagers. Duty before peace. Especially for a princess.
They might have news, at that.

[marycatelli]

Marcus fought to keep his breath steady. He did not dare let these three see him.
It could not possibly be the men who threw rocks at him, he told himself, but -- how many villages had sold the necromancers food? They had to be close for it to be fresh.
His heart hammered in his chest. They had sold food, even if they were not the ones who threw the stones. They had known what the necromancers were. Then he realized that these men, too, had come to bathe, and hung their clothes on bushes to keep them from the mud. Their clothes were not rags. Slowly, slowly, he stole around through brush and trees before reaching for their clothes. Too large for him, but not vastly. He could pass as a boy in his father's hand-me-downs.
He inched away from the pool. The men were loud enough to cover some noise, but he risked as little as he could, and in a grove of white birches, change into new clothes.
For a moment, he thought of going back and leaving his rags, but the men could kill him if they caught him. He took up his sack and went into the forest.
The sound died down behind. A bird trilled in the peaceful air. He picked his way to the road, and walked on in the sunlight. Eating up the sack would make him look far closer to human, and not like a necromancer at all. Except the hair.

[starshipcat.livejournal.com]

Sometimes Chelsea found it all too easy to forget that this world's United States was in the midst of a civil war. Although Shepardsport stood in opposition to the Administration's policies regarding people touched by genetic engineering, there was almost no overt violence, and in fact the greatest day-to-day danger she faced up here was the unforgiving environment that existed just beyond the sheltering walls and airlocks of the settlement. One could really get lulled into complacency by the appearance of a peaceful day-to-day life.

Yes, some appalling things had happened. Given that they were the sort of thing Everybody Knew, Chelsea had to be careful when she researched them. She knew about the destruction of Luna Station and the Kitty Hawk Massacre mostly because several of her students had been directly affected by it. Juss had lost a clone-brother, while two of Chelsea's students were survivors of the ordeal of the lander that had been trapped under a piece of Luna Station, and had survived only because Sid Abernathy had broken regs to rescue them.

[marycatelli]

Ah, the hidden things

[marycatelli]

Motion by a doorway drew the eye. Athelwulf blinked as Osric came out, bowing deeply.
"I come in peace," said Osric, straightening. "You have touched my conscience. I can not hold my tongue when you wish to know of us, who have offended so far. I wish to make amends."