Settlement

[zopyrus]

Title: Settlement
Challenge/Prompt: Yesterday
Original Fiction
Rating: PG
Warnings: Mention of self-harm.
Disclaimer:  Plot and characters are mine.
Summary:  Hippothoe's marriage ends messily; she goes to live in her brother's house.

She hasn’t moved since yesterday, hasn’t made a sound since I brought her home. Her hair tangled, her dress askew, and the angry scratches she made, from throat to breast, red against the pale of her skin.

The house feels huge, and empty. Even the servants have caught her sadness, like another kind of plague, choking the sound from their throats.

When I sit down beside her, I can hear the rustle of cloth, raw and loud. I take her hand, but she flinches away.

I wish, desperately, that she would scream--that I could scream.

The silence gets louder.

Comments

[ieune]

Oo--lots of tension in this piece, and you heighten it with your last line; a great play on opposites, scream and silence. You really captured her brother's sense of helplessness--he wants to help her but she'sfrozen within herself. You pack a lot of emotion into 100 words; Hippothoe's anger, sadness and loss (or so I read from her almost catatonic state) I especially like the line, 'even the sevants have caught her sadness...' It sounds so right for the period!

I found I interpreted this line: and the angry scratches she made, from throat to breast differently after reading your A/N. On first reading I thought another woman had scratched her, a woman known to her brother, the ex's mistress/ newest amour, was my first thought. Perhaps that says more about the way I italicise certain words in my own writing that what you intended to convery (his shock at her harming herself) but I felt the insight might interest you. : )

[zopyrus]

I wondered if I should italicize "she"--I tried it without, and the sentence just didn't sound right. I can definitely see why you'd think it was referring to another character. (In fact, if that were the case, I would also have been tempted to italicize it!)