Title: Painting Set
Word Count: 398
Rating: K+
Characters: Kel, Thom, a fat bee
Summary: It's a burgundy whip. Really.
Disclaimer: Protector of the Small – not mine. Tamora Pierce's. It's better that way. :D
Notes: Drabble collection/thing. Because those are awesome. Centered on the (very vague, very strange) idea of Alanna taking Kel in when she was young. See? Vague. :D The gaps will get filled in. Eventually. I think.
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Painting Set
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"Burgundy. Bur-gun-dy."
"Idiot. I-di-ot."
There's silence. The boy scrunches his nose (either from the words or from that fat bee buzzing around) and sends his brilliant red hair flying all around. "It's burgundy."
The girl sits up, legs crossed like a boy's (she's no pretty girly-girl, she's a lioness-in-the-making thank you very much), and stares at the sky where the subject of their debate awaits. It's some sort of cloud—Thom knows the name; she could care less—and it's thin and weird and they've never really seen it before.
It reminds Kel of horses and whips and Thom calls it a burgundy whip against the paling sky.
"I think," she says, chin propped by a hand, "that you were never ever meant to be a knight. At all."
Thom snorts. He rather looks like a frog prepped for dissection, eagle-spread like that, but Kel makes no comment. "Then it's just as well we have you, oh great Lady Knight Keladry. Where would the world be without you?"
"Stuck with fools like you." Kel offers him a beaming grin and leans out of the way when he shoots out a too-slow arm. He grumbles (like an old man) and the arm flops back down.
She stands, hands clasped behind her and loose strands of hair tickle her face. She's loath to admit it, but that one trailing cloud in the sky does resemble a burgundy whip—but the sky isn't pale, it's ready for a new beginning. (But Kel would never admit that to Thom because the boy's head is too big to begin with.)
They're eight and seven, too young in Kel's opinion and too old in Thom's, and the world is out there. Waiting. And Kel's waiting for that sign, that something that will shove it in her face, make it clear to her that she's gonna be a somebody, not just some girl who got picked up by the hot-tempered Lioness on a whim. Thom thinks she's a dork, that she should be missing her family who's off with the freaky Yamani.
The Lioness had told her that waiting was useless. That she'd be better off spending her time learning all she could before get shipped to the palace.
"I'm going to miss this, Thom."
And because they're kids and foolish and all sorts of other things, all Thom retorts is: "You old lady."