Monday, September 20, 2004

Morning Star, take 1

It wasn't so much that the new kid was good, Bren reflected, it was more that he was really good, and that he just didn't seem to care.

Living in the ass-crack of nowhere made strangers interesting, and the rumors about the diminutive dark-haired boy and his family were already flying, for all that they'd only just moved in. said his father had been a Blacklisted for crafting Mistletoe, and that his mother was a whore for the dead; Bren personally thought it couldn't be anything nearly as exciting as that. The only certain thing was that they were city-bred, and with their dark looks in a town of fair-featured simple crafters, they stuck out like the dead at a wedding.

The new boy- Ther, an odd name even for a city brat- had been enrolled in Bren's crafter class even though he was a year younger than the youngest of them. He was already leaps and bounds ahead of the best of them though, breezing through weaving techniques and ceramics as though he were spinning lanyards. He just sat through lessons with a blank look on his face, seemingly attentive- but Bren could see his mind drifting as clearly as the patterns on a loom.

His attitude was already grating on the older students; by the end of the week, he'd be sporting a black eye in addition to his blank expression. Bren almost felt sorry for him- but if the kid couldn't see the trouble he was causing, it was his own fault. Watching him sketch a flawless flame pattern on his sandtable made Bren almost rethink his personal aversion to violence; it wasn't right for someone so young to be so talented.

He was a curiosity, like the trinkets Whimsy brought back from the north that whistled when you left them in the sun. The idea of the quiet, somber boy decked out like Whimsy's trinkets brought a brief, manic grin to Bren's face. He began to sketch a few patterns of his own, liking the way they clicked in his head.

New people were always interesting- or, at the very least, entertaining.

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-on: crafter
-il: magi
-vai: teacher
-wai: master (highly respected, very rare- usually only used for the Voyance)
-keth/reth: dead (All other suffixes are dropped when one becomes dead)
-trae: trader/merchant, usually attached to last name (Whimsy Rochestrae)

The "th" sound in Theron's name is hard, like in smith, which is probably intentional on his part. His original name is Ther, which is uncommon because it ends in an 'r', which, like ending a name in 'k', is considered bad luck in backwater communities like Bren's.

Bren was an evil child- he's about thirteen here, and Theron's twelve. And alternate occupations for Weavers include fashion designers, so yes, you could say he's a little bit flaming. Only a little, though. :)

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