Because Jheti asked me to,
and because I was bored in macroeconomics
but had already finished the last differential equations assignment of the year
and thus couldn't do my diff eq homework in macro
and therefore had to do something else or risk insanity
a Tanya/Rain 'shipper drabble
entitled
Sand/Silk
by Nyohah
No matter how uncooperative or hostile the mutants got, Rain could always say there was one advantage to working with them, out in the wastelands, over working with any other soldiers around the palace. Black sand was coarser than brown sand. There was black sand around the palace, brown sand in the wastelands. Therefore, it hurt more to work around the palace than out in the wastelands.
The argument was flawed: at the palace he could go inside, escape the sand, clean it out of his clothing, off his skin. But a week in the wasteland was enough to cause grasping at straws. The need to be gone increased as the time till departure decreased.
A blast of wind whipped sand against his face. He closed his eyes a little too late and was left blinking in pain when the wind subsided.
He had heard that in places—though nowhere in Outworld—there was white sand, even finer than brown. He imagined even finer sand would have an even more special talent at working its way into everything. And even sand that soft would still irritate skin. Sand would never be silk.
He tried to work some sand back out of his ear with his finger, knowing that he was really only pushing it farther in.
He left in an hour.
Tanya ran a bracelet through her fingers quickly and dropped it on the floor. She whirled around, searching, and lunged. She made it two steps, the second landing on a ring already on the floor. She cursed, pulled the gem out of her heel, and rubbed the wound. She wasn't bleeding. Good.
She finished the lunge, flinging herself across the silk sheets on her bed to grab the bracelet on the bedside stand. She ran it through her fingers, smiled, and slid it onto her wrist.
This would be so much easier if she had anything Rain had bought her.
She shuffled back across the room, tangling her feet in a discarded dress and almost tripping, but freeing her feet and recovering. She stopped in front of the full-length mirror arrangement Rain had set up for her so she could 'see her back and thus spend less time trying to see her back'. She took a deep breath, nodded, and hurried back across the room to her vanity to begin working on her hair.
Rain arrived back at the palace at an hour and ten minutes till midnight. He was tired, filthy, and if it were a crime, could be arrested for smuggling sand. He stomped his way up to the quarters he shared with Tanya. He opened the door and stared.
Every wardrobe Tanya owned was open, contents spilling out, the more adventurous items mingling on the floor. Things were strewn everywhere. His room was, in short, a mess.
Tanya stood up from her vanity and slid her way across the room until she leaned against the open door. Every bit of her shone.
The room got messier.