300 word drabble: Stitching Together
Feb. 12th, 2012 12:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
attackfishWritten for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
avatar_500 prompt #46, Hold.
Summary: Song watches the colonists leave, and watches the Earth Kingdom soldiers return.
Stitching Together
The needle and thread slid, catching, and then tugging free of the impediment. The stitches formed a crooked, sloping line. "Stop squirming," she said, laying her hand down on his head for a moment before she picked the needle back up.
"I'm sorry," he grumbled, "but it hurts, and you keep sticking your stupid needle into it."
She stitched another neat X on he skin of his stomach. "If you didn't want me doing this, maybe you should have ducked out of the way of his spear." The needle jabbed into him again. "Or maybe you shouldn't have gotten into a fight to start with."
Out of the corner of her eye, Song could see her mother rubbing aloe-mint paste thickly over the burns on the Earth Kingdom spearman's chest. Sometimes, she wondered if the colonists who streamed through her village on their way back to the coast would ever leave their shores and go back to the Fire Nation, which rumor said had no room for them anymore.
She sank the needle into his flesh again, and he yelped like a child. "Careful!"
"I told you to stop squirming." She pulled the thread hard. "You're lucky it was a glancing blow. He could have killed you."
"I didn't do anything wrong," he pleaded. "I have six daughters, and that soldier of yours was saying we should get less food than the other families because my wife's dead! They would starve!"
Song ran her needle under the string and pulled the new knot tight. This was what the Fire Nation had done to the Earth Kingdom, humiliated them, killed them, beat them, starved them, starved their children. It couldn't last. "Be careful," she told him instead of what she thought. "Take it easy for a few days, and that should hold."
avatar_500 prompt #46, Hold.Summary: Song watches the colonists leave, and watches the Earth Kingdom soldiers return.
Stitching Together
The needle and thread slid, catching, and then tugging free of the impediment. The stitches formed a crooked, sloping line. "Stop squirming," she said, laying her hand down on his head for a moment before she picked the needle back up.
"I'm sorry," he grumbled, "but it hurts, and you keep sticking your stupid needle into it."
She stitched another neat X on he skin of his stomach. "If you didn't want me doing this, maybe you should have ducked out of the way of his spear." The needle jabbed into him again. "Or maybe you shouldn't have gotten into a fight to start with."
Out of the corner of her eye, Song could see her mother rubbing aloe-mint paste thickly over the burns on the Earth Kingdom spearman's chest. Sometimes, she wondered if the colonists who streamed through her village on their way back to the coast would ever leave their shores and go back to the Fire Nation, which rumor said had no room for them anymore.
She sank the needle into his flesh again, and he yelped like a child. "Careful!"
"I told you to stop squirming." She pulled the thread hard. "You're lucky it was a glancing blow. He could have killed you."
"I didn't do anything wrong," he pleaded. "I have six daughters, and that soldier of yours was saying we should get less food than the other families because my wife's dead! They would starve!"
Song ran her needle under the string and pulled the new knot tight. This was what the Fire Nation had done to the Earth Kingdom, humiliated them, killed them, beat them, starved them, starved their children. It couldn't last. "Be careful," she told him instead of what she thought. "Take it easy for a few days, and that should hold."
