In The Kink of Every Vein

I will hold your hand, loveAs long as I can, loveThough the powers rise against usThough your fears assail youAnd your body may fail youThere's a fire that burns within usandrew peterson, "carry the fire"
I said I would do another snippets post when I reached 100,000 words; I'm not quite there yet: I'm at roughly 92,000 words.  That number will have changed by the time you read this.  I've noticed that, unlike Mirriam, who can write good stories and make her stories action-packed and snappy, I take longer to unpack my plots.  Whether or not I can hold your attention remains to be seen...  I confessed to Joy that I do have another post in the making, one to be tacked on after "A Common Provenance In Pain," but that I have been busy - busy with writing Gingerune, busy dividing up Plenilune into chapters and coming up with good titles for those chapters, kicking idly at the opening scene of Adamantine which needs to be born again or else it will never see the kingdom of heaven...  Is now a bad time to bombshell that I'm also gearing up to spend this coming autumn semester in Scotland?

"these wretched eminent things"
“Why doesn’t he look like a monster? He always looked like one to me. He looks—I could have broken his skull. I could have killed him. Why didn’t I kill him?”gingerune
Mazelin smiled encouragingly. “Eating: the answer to all the heart’s problems. Ah, how I’ve missed Thera…”gingerune
She turned over her hand and saw the lines defined by the charcoal. Some people claimed to read fates in the lines that crisscrossed a person’s palm: if that were possible, her fate looked like a spider’s web. gingerune
The bench was cold, the night air was chilly, but a fierce and shining glory was burning at the kink of every vein in Ginger for she was acutely glad for Roxane’s company, for birth and life and warm fellowship: not even Philon could sour that. gingerune
Faces came back to her out of the unwelcome sense of loneliness and fate: Melitta’s, Philon’s, haughty Anehawk's, immobile Akmennades’—the bull’s. It seemed everywhere she turned save in this hollow of earth that was like a grave were faces that despised her, mocked her, counted her as nothing. If she crawled down off her bench and leaned out over the pool—and if the light were good enough—she would see yet another face which looked back at her with quiet, desperate loathing. I roar in defiance and strive to be great, yet I will never conquer my blood. O Elohim—impulsively she flung an arm over her eyes to shut out the sight of the dark—what am I, and what wretched thing is man?gingerune
Their eyes met, warning and instantly serious where before Ginger thought they had been sharing a violent kind of joke. In the dark, colourless ring of Mazelin’s eye she saw the predetermined, cold-blooded desire to kill.gingerune
Between the broken pillars that marked the beginning of the lane Ginger looked up and around, dumbstruck: the massive structure lifted itself like a man hefting himself out of a pool, its great shoulders rising over the edge of the cliff, its shattered walls and leaning, roofless pillars gleaming in the hot, unadulterated Middle Sea sun. Everything was built on a huge scale. The doorways—what were left of them—rose like gateways to the sky. Stairways would have been uncomfortable to climb for people of an average height. The weight of a single vertebrae of one of the columns took Ginger’s breath away to estimate. gingerune
“The Argolime,” whispered Roxane—it was the time and place to whisper. “It fits it better for a name: like a wreath of laurel.”gingerune
The blacksmith watched dispassionately, his bottom lip a little thrust out in the expression of a man who is longsuffering, but would rather be elsewhere.gingerune
In the space of quiet Akmennades seemed to have found his temper again. With his voice muffled a little by the crook of his elbow, he remarked, “The light-well catches sound admirably. I have been listening to your talk below. I have learned two things: that the man Mazelin grows almost careless when he is excited, and that, when she is not angry, the girl has a very pleasant voice. It is like yours,” he added, lifting his head a little as a bird soared upward on a bank of wind, “but nicer.”gingerune
Beneath the ugliness of it all there was a beautiful irony in that, but she still hated that he had betrayed them again, lied to them all, and dumped them all back into Anehawk’s palm like so many pieces of silver. Well, his debt was paid. She hoped he liked his reward.gingerune
She could not help swallowing: he had one of his thumbs under her jaw and had pressed just when he said ‘swallow,’ and the horrid liquid went down against her will. It burned on the way down. Like a horse caught in the mire her mind kept lunging, catching, falling backward, white-eyed with terror. gingerune
“A house in town,” [he said], tearing up the loaf of bread. “A respectable business, neighbours shuffling in and out without scraping their sandals on the threshold. Something to look forward to.” gingerune
He moved and, in moving, moved other things, built them up or tore them down, never lying still. It would be an all or nothing matter for him, she realized: either he must grasp the rudder of Thera and put his shoulder to her, or he must fade into obscurity. He could never survive being mediocre. gingerune
"We come from fighting stock. We may be the last of an old breed, but that is what makes us so damn beautiful." gingerune
"Yet you are stubborn,” he concluded, biting off the words with a sudden anger which baffled Ginger. “You might have been great, yet you are only pathetic: a tiny, fragile thing bloated with pride, a thing born of sweat and screams. I have given you great grace and you have only resisted me. You are but a man. If you will turn in my hand like an unbalanced tool, what shall I do with you? You are worth a woman’s blood to me.” gingerune
On a little marble table close beside the door she spotted a little masculine figurine done to perfection in obsidian, an arm uplifted, first two fingers spread in triumph. It seemed as if it should be familiar, but she could not place it. gingerune
“I see that, like your mother,” he said lightly, “you do not have the knack of respect. That, too, I will teach you." gingerune
With a feeling of sickened ecstasy she felt her body whirling and breaking free. Her foot hurt but she made herself put her weight on it, bounding, hands coming down to meet the floor. And then for a second she was a catapulting, weaponized thing before she crashed headlong into Mazelin’s rough and ready embrace. gingerune
“You poked the bees’ nest and you have no idea what to do about it.”gingerune