(no subject)

[idiosyncreant]

The door kept opening into her closet.

“...Come on, I don't have time for this,” Cyrie said, slamming it again.

                              That was the wrong attitude. She closed her eyes, tried to embrace the pursuit of Good and Romance, and smiled as she swung it open.

 

It opened on a forest. “Finally,” she muttered, and stepped in, closing the door behind her.

 

The forest was very neat, which she noted, and the wind was hard, driving down a shower of pine-needles. The tang of pine was just strong enough she almost closed her eyes to savor it, before she saw a movement behind one of the trees.

“Hello?” she asked, always an easy one for placing if she was dealing in her own language or pantomime.

It was a young man, her least favorite kind of Rescue. Then she saw the pine needles bouncing off her forehead and sticking in her hair were piercing his skin. Where he held his arms up over his face, small beads of red blood stood, some touching and running together into a web.

Cyrie ran over and pushed him down into a kneel, and leaned over him back to the way the wind was blowing, trying to protect him though she didn't know why his skin was just bursting under the needles. The wind started to move direction, and then the needles were coming from all directions, so she hugged him tighter.

“Are they cutting you through your clothes?”

“No,” he said. His voice wasn't as deep as she expected—maybe he was younger than the usual hothead-in-duress. “Leather.”

Whoa, hard-core. He was wearing leather armor, not just a leather jacket.

She started thinking, now that she knew he wasn't going to die just because there wasn't enough of her to completely surround him. It was hard to be clear-minded with her hand on the back of some young stranger's neck, and her head hanging over his, but she already knew this wind was preternatural. That meant she could fight it with magic, and starting with a simple spell to test out the waters would probably not backfire.

“Protect me,” she said, including the victim in her thoughts, and she stamped the ground since she couldn't spare a hand to lay on it. But it worked.

This kind of surprised her, because she knew she was dealing with intended magic. But she let go of the guy and scrambled to her feet. The needles stopped swirling even around them, and the wind died, so she braced herself.

“Where are we?”

“The witchwood. Who are you?”

“I'm the Prince,” she said, feeling like she was saying something far too obvious.

“But the Prince...” Was he going to be first to actually say it to her face? “Oh, you must be a prince from the future.”

That had to be true. He was speaking her language, luckily, but with a funny tang. And the Witchwood...

“Whoa, there's a standing castle.”

“I was trying to go there, but the forest is fighting me.”

“Oh...”

The witchwood was still magic, then. He didn't talk strange enough for the castle to still be standing there, though, unless--

“What are you here to do?”

He had an adorable face, though he was as tall as she was—he had to be only fourteen or fifteen. The grim look on it now both mismatched his looks and was made more poignant because of it.

“My sister disappeared, leaving a note about going to see if the Tower Witch was alive and taking apprentices. She must have come here.”

“Did she fight with someone before that?”

“I don't think so?”

“Your parents didn't tell her to do something that she didn't want to do?”

“No, she had just gotten honors in high school. She seemed mad later, maybe, but not at us so maybe it was a guy but—oh.”

“What.”

“I knew you weren't the Prince from now because he's a family friend. He just got a girlfriend and she was...”

“Okay, so she woke the witchwood so he would come. How old is your sister?”

“Sixteen.”

That was about right.

“Too bad she gets me,” Cyrie said. “This is one I have not had before...Prince-bait. Gotta love it. I'll try it next time I'm bored, swap war stories.”

***

I am a complete project hopper these days. The Conspiracy of Cons books ruined me somehow, and I'm still scraping together passion for the Next Thing like I'm trying to get the last smears of peanut butter out of a jar...

This short story is still being written, but I like it, so I thought I'd share a bit.
 Smile! It's October!

I am a project hopper these days--I hate it, but it's the truth. I think the Conspiracy of Cons books ruined me somehow.
Now I'm scraping together passion for the Next Thing like it's the last smears of peanut-butter in the jar. But! This is fun, and short stories don't seem to be so hard. The real test is if I write the end of it or not...

Smile! It's October!