thick wooden blocks could splinter.
Having an Aspect doesn’t give me a soft landing, it doesn’t give me anything soft. I hit just as hard as anyone; just then, as hard as Jacey. It’s not that I don’t feel it, it’s just that I don’t break.
Not as easily, at any rate. Little bits of me still break under sufficient provocation, blood vessels and such. I was going to be bruised, come morning.
It would have been totally mean of me to hope that the same was true of Jacey.
Totally mean.
So of course I didn’t do that.
Of course not.
No.
I rolled to my feet and never mind the ouchie in my back, I wasn’t going to show him that. Really I should have checked for the enemy first – it’s a bad combat move to worry about your wounded before you know for sure you won’t be joining them – but I did just glance aside, just to make sure Jacey wasn’t lying broken on the floor there, all our guesses wrong.
Not he. He was coming easy to his feet, much as I was. Looking round, much as I was, rather than looking up. Just to be sure of me.
I frowned at him for being frivolous, and lifted my head ostentatiously.
Crows are bright birds, they learn fast. I’d hoped to see a figure of shadow and bulk flowing down the long turns of the stairs, quicker than any real man reasonably might. Instead, here came a shadow of birds, enough to darken that whole high hallway: hurtling down at us, seeming faster even than we had been. Is it possible to fly faster than you can fall? I don’t know, my physics doesn’t stretch so far.
But here they came, diving like cormorants, right for us. Crows love eyeballs, and I’d never wished my Aspect to be more like a coat that I could wrap around my head for cover, and it had never felt less like that. Nothing was going to save my eyes unless I did it my own self, swift and aggressive and hyper-aware.
Which is actually what the Aspect is really all about. What it’s for, pretty much. It didn’t really settle in on my shoulders with a happy sigh, now you’re talking , but it did sort of feel that way as the first crow-missile reached me and my hand batted it aside.
I could write a list – actually, I think I am writing a list – of all the things an Aspect doesn’t feel like or act like. Sometimes I used to think that what I really needed was another list for the thing itself to read, telling it all the things it really wasn’t despite whatever it thought or wanted to be.
Except that of course it couldn’t read, because it really wasn’t aware. Certainly not self-aware.
Certainly not enjoying itself as we played crazy-cricket in the hall there, birds coming at us from any angle, both my hands independently deadly as I dashed them to the floor or swatted them into walls and pillars and newel-posts. If one of those birds had got through, I could have been in trouble; two could have finished me, one eye each. But I could, just about, handle this. Moment by moment, bird by bird.
By definition, if they wanted my eyes, they had to come where I could see them. That helped. The ones that attacked me from behind, that battered my head with their wings or tangled in my hair to peck and scratch at my scalp, I pretty much ignored. There wasn’t too much damage they could do back there. It did hurt but only distantly, folded away, to be considered later. I worried more that they might think to coalesce into a man again behind my back, where I wouldn’t see until he was manifest and deadly.
Which gave me the excuse I needed – no, the good military tactical reason – to check on Jacey and how he was doing. Peripherally, I was aware that he was on his feet and hurling crows around, much as I was; we weren’t exactly tag-teaming, but every now and then one of his came my way, and vice versa. I didn’t really need to concern myself with his, post-Jacey; they weren’t up to much. And vice, I hoped, versa.
Still, I stole a better look in the first instant I could afford to – and
Having an Aspect doesn’t give me a soft landing, it doesn’t give me anything soft. I hit just as hard as anyone; just then, as hard as Jacey. It’s not that I don’t feel it, it’s just that I don’t break.
Not as easily, at any rate. Little bits of me still break under sufficient provocation, blood vessels and such. I was going to be bruised, come morning.
It would have been totally mean of me to hope that the same was true of Jacey.
Totally mean.
So of course I didn’t do that.
Of course not.
No.
I rolled to my feet and never mind the ouchie in my back, I wasn’t going to show him that. Really I should have checked for the enemy first – it’s a bad combat move to worry about your wounded before you know for sure you won’t be joining them – but I did just glance aside, just to make sure Jacey wasn’t lying broken on the floor there, all our guesses wrong.
Not he. He was coming easy to his feet, much as I was. Looking round, much as I was, rather than looking up. Just to be sure of me.
I frowned at him for being frivolous, and lifted my head ostentatiously.
Crows are bright birds, they learn fast. I’d hoped to see a figure of shadow and bulk flowing down the long turns of the stairs, quicker than any real man reasonably might. Instead, here came a shadow of birds, enough to darken that whole high hallway: hurtling down at us, seeming faster even than we had been. Is it possible to fly faster than you can fall? I don’t know, my physics doesn’t stretch so far.
But here they came, diving like cormorants, right for us. Crows love eyeballs, and I’d never wished my Aspect to be more like a coat that I could wrap around my head for cover, and it had never felt less like that. Nothing was going to save my eyes unless I did it my own self, swift and aggressive and hyper-aware.
Which is actually what the Aspect is really all about. What it’s for, pretty much. It didn’t really settle in on my shoulders with a happy sigh, now you’re talking , but it did sort of feel that way as the first crow-missile reached me and my hand batted it aside.
I could write a list – actually, I think I am writing a list – of all the things an Aspect doesn’t feel like or act like. Sometimes I used to think that what I really needed was another list for the thing itself to read, telling it all the things it really wasn’t despite whatever it thought or wanted to be.
Except that of course it couldn’t read, because it really wasn’t aware. Certainly not self-aware.
Certainly not enjoying itself as we played crazy-cricket in the hall there, birds coming at us from any angle, both my hands independently deadly as I dashed them to the floor or swatted them into walls and pillars and newel-posts. If one of those birds had got through, I could have been in trouble; two could have finished me, one eye each. But I could, just about, handle this. Moment by moment, bird by bird.
By definition, if they wanted my eyes, they had to come where I could see them. That helped. The ones that attacked me from behind, that battered my head with their wings or tangled in my hair to peck and scratch at my scalp, I pretty much ignored. There wasn’t too much damage they could do back there. It did hurt but only distantly, folded away, to be considered later. I worried more that they might think to coalesce into a man again behind my back, where I wouldn’t see until he was manifest and deadly.
Which gave me the excuse I needed – no, the good military tactical reason – to check on Jacey and how he was doing. Peripherally, I was aware that he was on his feet and hurling crows around, much as I was; we weren’t exactly tag-teaming, but every now and then one of his came my way, and vice versa. I didn’t really need to concern myself with his, post-Jacey; they weren’t up to much. And vice, I hoped, versa.
Still, I stole a better look in the first instant I could afford to – and
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