A couple of flashfics

[igenlode]

Two little snippets I perpetrated recently:

The minstrel struck a resounding chord on her harp and announced the Lay of Vinessa Silvertongue and the Outland Merchant, and all eyes turned towards us. I should have been used to it by now -- the tale of our adventures had grown more and more embellished in the two months since we'd returned -- but despite myself I could feel my cheeks start to burn. Gedroth at my side tossed back his heavy braids and preened visibly beneath the attention, and I elbowed him sharply, getting a wounded look in response.

"You might let a fellow reap the harvest of his bold deeds, Essie m'dear. It isn't every day a humble trader like yours truly can find himself a hero of the Empire--"

Two of the high-born ladies seated behind the screen exchanged an all too audible comment on the length of a man's hair and his other endowments, and I watched with interest as Gedroth choked visibly and began to go crimson in his turn.

"Don't these--" Words caught in his throat and he spluttered, biting his tongue against a more descriptive term. "Don't these *females* of yours have any sense of public decency? Where I come from--"

But the minstrel had begun to sing, and he subsided, grumbling.

---

On the short cropped turf of the fairy mound, Tristan could just make out a faint shape in the dusk. He urged the dapple-grey closer, but the horse snorted and side-stepped, and with reluctance Tristan dismounted, one hand moving to his dagger-hilt.

The girl lay not *on* the flower-starred grass but somehow *within* it, as if the scattered blossoms had begun to cluster together and take on human form. Vervain trailed across the shape that would be her shoulder; buttercups and speedwell crept along the delicate line of her collar-bone, and a spray of ferns formed her cheek and framed the long lashes that hid her eyes. Tristan crossed himself convulsively, half-enthralled and half-afraid at the same time. He could not take his gaze from her, and with every moment, as the light ebbed from the sky, he could have sworn that her breast had begun to rise and fall beneath the white foam of meadowsweet that clung there.

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Not exactly off-the-cuff stuff, as I'm still agonising over word choice and revising every sentence as I go, but it's always interesting to watch random plots starting to emerge in material written for other purposes!