L M Dee

It's NaNoWriMo and if you're participating, good luck! For this month I'm posting snippets of things I've worked on during previous NaNoWriMos.

WiP: Sorceress Apprentice

“Sir,” the mayor said, approaching Emeri. “Would you do us the honour?”

“It would be my pleasure,” Emeri said. “If Bryony wishes.”

"Me?" Bryony felt the world spin, grasped for stability using every trick she'd learnt these past weeks. She and Emeri, dance the fire dance? This was something she'd dreamt of, of being the Festival's Queen, of dancing with The Sorcerer, of being The Sorcerer's Queen.

It was too much. A dream wasn't supposed to be real. What if wasn't like her fantasies, what if she trod in the fire, she wasn't that great a dancer, what if she embarrassed herself, what if she embarrassed Emeri, what if –

"Who else?" Emeri asked, his hand still outstretched.

She swallowed, placed her hand in his. He gave her a warm smile as he closed his fingers over hers. He understood how much it meant to her.

They made their way to the ritual fire and there was a smattering of applause and then silence as they took their places.

For this week's #writingwednesday here's a fic snippet looking at the developing relationship between Bryony and Emeri in the WiP: Sorceress Apprentice.



Emeri knocked on the bedroom door, though it was open. Bryony turned to face him.

"When you've finished with that book," he said, "I thought you might like to read this one, The Prince and Princess of Pandark." He proffered a green leather book with gilt-edged pages. "One of my favourites. I warn you the first chapter is very slow. You can skim through it without missing much plot though, and the second chapter is where the action begins and doesn't let up. I think you'll find the ending very satisfying."

She took the book. "Thank you."

On impulse she leaned up and kissed his cheek. He gave her a look she couldn't immediately interpret. She wished she were better at reading people, or that Emeri were easier to read.

"Was that wrong?" she asked when he didn't move or speak.

He shook his head. "No." He paused before he added, "Only unexpected."

She placed the book on the bed to free up her hands, so that she could take his hand in hers. "We touch often," she said, and her brain raced ahead, trying to make sense of things that were only making themselves apparent now. Every hug, every hand-holding, every caress had been for comfort. "But only when we're hurting."

When he was hurting. When she'd held him while he wept, for example

"I don't want that. I want us to be happy, whenever we can be, and I don't think being happy should make us less – "

Damn, damn, what words did she need? She read voraciously, that was where she'd learnt the word voraciously, she knew hundreds or thousands of words. Yet so often when she opened her mouth it was as if she was five years old again, reduced to babbling trite phrases and lacking the vocabulary to fully express herself.

Emeri was still waiting for her to finish her thought.

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A ficlet taking place in the Sorceress Apprentice world. Pre-canon, a young Bryony watches Emeri at the annual Summer Dance and indulges in a foolish fantasy of being his dance partner.

The Summer Dance, held at the solstice, was one of the most important festivals for the village and the ritual fire dance was the highlight of the celebration.

Bryony watched as Emeri held out his hand to his sister, Sabrina, to join him for the dance. They were so elegant and refined. Emeri was rarely the tallest man in any gathering but he had an undeniable presence, and Sabrina, almost as tall as her brother, drew many an admiring glance.

Logically his dance partner had to be Sabrina, another clan member. Traditionally the dancers were of equal status, and intimates of some sort. Emeri had no wife to dance with and there was no-one else present who was even close to his social rank.

Despite this, Bryony chewed at her lower lip as the music began, longing to be the one to dance. To be partnered with the sorcerer himself. It was a foolish fantasy, childish when she was almost a woman now, but she couldn't help herself from imagining being in Sabrina's place.

Kerine clapped along with the music and Bryony joined in with her sister, their mother beaming and fanning herself against the heat of the flames. Bryony had once mentioned her attraction to Emeri and her mother had scoffed. Kerine had gently reminded her that whatever all those love stories Bryony read showed, it didn't mean that life worked that way.

Of course Kerine was right. Besides her lowly status, Bryony was almost ten years younger than Emeri, and while her skill with a needle was something she could be proud of, her education was lacking. What could a non-magical girl offer such a man as the village sorcerer?

After the dance had finished to thunderous applause, Sabrina linked her arm with Emeri's and they wandered around, talking to the villagers. Bryony curtsied, heart in her mouth, when Sabrina stopped in front of her.

"What a beautiful dress," Sabrina said, running her gaze over the emerald green silk. Bryony had purchased it cheap because of some damage to the fabric, carefully cutting and stitching a dress from the best of the material and covering the rest of the marks with elegant embroidery, the highlight being details picked out in metallic threads that caught the firelight as she moved.

"Thank you, my lady," Bryony said, adding, "I made it myself."

"It is exquisite," Sabrina said and Emeri gave a smile.

"The stitching is remarkable," he agreed. "It is truly beautiful."

They'd moved off then to talk with the blacksmith, little knowing the effect of their words. The warmth in a giddy Bryony's cheeks was not merely due to her proximity to the fire.

Bryony went to bed that right reliving every moment of the dance, skirting the flames across from her partner, the music's tempo increasing and her steps more frantic until at the climax of the dance she was in Emeri's arms and the villagers cheered them on.

 

A short excerpt from my fantasy romance WiP, Sorceress Apprentice.
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The one_sentence_only community has a number of prompt tables with the challenge to fill all the prompts with a single sentence. Here are five more fills from the fluff/romance table, written for my WiP novel Sorceress Apprentice.

Secret
“There were few secrets between us,” Emeri said, and Bryony again thought of how his closeness to his sister mirrored her bond with Kerine, and the agony of the separation he’d endured for so long that far outweighed the few weeks she would be parted from her sister.

Music
Bryony loved to listen to Emeri play the lyre, and she appreciated how it could be a distraction for him from his melancholy, losing himself in the notes and only as the tune finished remembering where he was or even that she was here with him and he was no longer alone.

Gift
“I know you don’t like it when I give you expensive things,” Emeri said hesitantly, gesturing to the family heirloom he had loaned her and recalling how Bryony had once accused him of trying to pay her for her affection which was freely given, “but I would dearly love for you to keep this necklace for it suits you, and I can think of no-one I would rather give it to.”

Roses
Bryony knew roses were often given as love tokens, adored their sweet scent and varied colours, but now she learnt of their many uses in magical workings and practical applications, rose hips, rose buds, and petals all having numerous purposes.

Whirlpool
Bryony dreamt of water, a rushing river, a whirlpool, the sea; her element was air and yet it seemed Emeri was right that water too called to her and that she might be a weather witch, a storm sorceress.

There are a lot of posts, articles, and prompts asking about themes and characters in you WiPs. For my WiP Sorceress Apprentice there are a number of themes and motifs. One of the important features of the novel is sibling bonds, both between protagonist Bryony and her sister, Kerine, and Emeri and his sister, Sabrina. While the romance between Bryony and Emeri is at the heart of the novel, the sibling bonds are a vital part of the book.
I find that in too many books and TV shows the sibling bonds are often tossed aside in favour of, or overshadowed by, the protagonist's sexual partner. I didn't want that to be the case here. Here are some excerpts illustrating the depth of the sibling bonds in SA – please remember that this a WiP so there'll be further editing in the future.

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