(A/N: Torin's stories have already been completed through part 3 on my tumblr, and I'm procrastinating on my massive mess of homework due tonight so I figured I could upload these here.
I know Torin isn't a main character, and he's basically an any man/boy, normal type bloke, but I'm actually really quite fond of him as a character. His shorts are the only things I've written for MIC for probably a month and a half now, maybe more. He gives me another way to look at and describe the events that occur in Gil'ead without it all turning into torture pr0nz and explore how my writing style changes depending on the main character viewpoint I'm writing. It's also a way for me to work on figuring out complexities of personality and characterization, as Torin is a young, gay, Anxiety Disorder that is, as my friend and reader Bees but it, 'pure of heart, dumb of ass.' So very different from my usual focus on Arya, Brom, and sometimes Murtagh.
Anyway, part 1 and two are short, but part 3 hit over 2k words and was personally a bit better writing in my opinion.
Hope you're enjoying Torin! As always feel free to leave crit, comments, questions and the like in the comments or on my tumblr! Cheers mates!
The elf woman in the hall regarded his offered hand with a cool stare. She did not move from her seat, arms settled lightly across her chest.
Torin waited, feeling the anxiety build from the base of his spine and creep up into his ribs as the seconds ticked on. What should he do? Pulling his arm back would be wrong, but leaving it out while his new jailer mulled over doing who knows what to it was starting to make his sternum hurt with built up tension. All he could do was wait, frozen as his heart hammered away.
Then the woman moved her gaze to his face and gestured slightly, pale fingers flicking a soft acknowledgement of his attempt at parley. "My name is Islanzadí Drötting. You my address me as Your Majesty or Ma'am."
Torin choked at that, the realization of just who this woman was bolting through his brain. He yanked his arm back through the bars when she motioned again towards him. A dull clunk reverberated through the cell door.
"I will not speak to you through a grate. You may open the door." Torin stared, dumbfounded, as the aged hinges slowly drifted the door inwards several inches. "You will not leave your cell. You will sit and answer my questions. Am I understood?"
The man's heart felt as though it would burst.
"Yes Ma'am."
This woman, this elf, the Queen of the Elven Nation, was giving him some modicum of freedom. As he carefully pulled the door open, fingertips barely gripping the edge of the barred window, Torin's mind raced. He had spent the years in his cell watching and listening to the people of Gil'ead through the ground level window above his cot. His eyes became accustomed to seeing what people left unsaid, picking them out in an almost obsessive way to pass the time. The subtle movements of unspoken hierarchy, plots of betrayal and scrambles to the top, he saw every move in the twitch of a finger or the shift of weight from one foot to the other. The motivations and meanings behind them were all as simple as reading a nursery rhyme for him now.
By unlocking the cell, she– no, it's Queen Islanzadí– the Queen had executed several strategic moves at once.
Her action displayed him a small kindness, but was not without its caveats. The removal of the physical barrier between them, with a display of magic no less, further enforced to Torin that the Queen had absolutely nothing to fear from him. His position of sitting on the ground while she occupied a chair reinforced the differences in their status, and put her physically above him.
Torin repressed a shudder as he settled down cross legged a meter back from the open door.
Once again he was a field mouse, the protective stone above his burrow removed so that he now faced the elegant hawk at the end of an inescapable ravine.
"Now," Torin looked up, waiting for the Queen's words. His arms tingled with anxiety again, and he had to resist shaking them to dispel the sensation. "Tell me how you knew the elf imprisoned here."
The man breathed deeply. "How…how much do you want to know?"
Islanzadí's golden eyes narrowed. "Everything."
Torin bobbed his head and looked down at his hands. Flexed his fingers before folding them in at the second joints. "I…I didn't know her name. She never talked." A small smile made its way through the nervousness as he toyed with his torn knuckles, half scarred and half healed. "Well…she swore a couple times. At the General and…" His throat went dry again. He dug his thumbnail into one knuckle unconsciously to lessen the itch a new surge of anxiety swarmed into his hands. "At…at the other guards."
"Other?" The sharp sting of the word made Torin flinch. She knew now.
The fresh gouge on his knuckle waited to fill with blood, white and empty with pressure as Torin clenched his free hand over the bent joints and hated himself for the words he spoke.
"I was one of them."
Islanzadí was silent for a long, heavy moment. Torin did not dare to look up, already feeling the gathering thunderheads around the Elf Queen. Near black at the base, they towered over him, rumbling in discontent and contained fury across a windswept field. A tailwind to drive the hawk down upon her prey with vicious speed.
And then, as if halted by an immovable wall, they stopped. The clouds retreated somewhat to await their commander's call.
Torin risked raising his eyes. Islanzadí was regarding him, eyes frigid and lips tight with restrained contempt as she drew herself up.
"My question still stands, Aldsson." Her voice was reminiscent of the distant promise of thunder. "Explain yourself. Tell me everything that you know."
Torin's shoulders slumped lightly in relief. He would live, for now. He had a chance to tell his story.
"Yes Ma'am." He wet his lips and again rain his fingers over his torn knuckles before he began. "I first saw her when I was being trained for High Risk Ward patrol…"
"What did she do?"
Torin flinched when Himel's initial response proved to be a rough slap to the head. "What do you mean, 'what did she do,' you idiot?"
Torin shrugged apologetically, rubbing his now reddened ear. Himel was his guard partner, soon to be reassigned as the young man reached the year long mark at his post. After that, Torin would be free to patrol and work alone on any of the nearly empty wards of Gil'ead's prison.
Cuffs to the head and gruff demeanor aside, Torin admitted only to himself that he would miss his companionship. The halls were lonely, and the prisoners were not much for talking if they had the rather horrific honor of occupying this particular ward of the prison.
"I'm just wondering, you know?" The young man again peeked through the barred window of the cell, watching the bloodied, unconscious occupant where she lay slumped on the floor. "The General is always so…brutal. She had to have done something crazy to have him as her interrogator."
Himel pinched the smashed bridge of his crooked nose. The man was over twice Torin's age and had been a guard in the High Risk Ward for longer than the youth was alive. To say he had little patience for the boy's curiosity would have been a severe understatement. "It's not our business what she did. She pissed off the King. Not to mention if you had anything between your ears you'd already have noticed that thing isn't human."
All the moisture in Torin's mouth fled at those words. The fine sawdust of ingrained fear that coated his tongue was a familiar feeling. He always felt it when the General was near, every nerve telling him to run, or, better yet, find a deep dark crevice to cower in well out of his clawed reach.
Torin moved back from the cell door, hands twitchy with anxiety. "So she's like…She's another Shade, then?"
The youth's partner snorted. "Course she ain't." Himel spat to the side, distaste coloring his features. "The General woulda killed any other competition if she were a Shade. That there's an elf."
"Are you serious?" At that Torin was back at the bars, straining to pick out any identifying features that would confirm Himel's assertion.
"Of course I'm feckin' serious, idiot." Torin let out a whuff of breath as the veteran clamped a hand down on his shoulder and pulled him back. "And you'll be seeing plenty of her. She's not going anywhere any time soon. 'nless the King himself wants at crack at at breaking the General's new toy himself, that is.
"Come on. It's almost lunch break and I want to get a head start on the mess hall. Pick up the pace."
Torin risked one last glance at the elf's cell before following Himel down the hall for the last lap of their patrol.
Sycamore Blossom: Curiosity