POST YOUR NOVEL EXCERPT HERE!!!!

[jynxgirl.livejournal.com]

POST YOUR NOVEL EXCERPT HERE!!!!

Please keep it relatively short, and only in this thread. Thanks!

No more than 4000 words, and please no multiple posts!

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[lowbatterie.livejournal.com]

“Cleo is a slave driver!” Peregrine declared, flopping down on the Commons’ main couch, her red-striped staff thrown down beside her.

“She only does what she thinks is best,” Hawthorne countered, wiping at his face and wishing he could go for a swim.

“Well, what she thinks is best is inhuman,” Peregrine replied stubbornly.

“What, can’t hack it Per?” Romulus drawled, poking his half-black staff at the younger girl. He received a growl and a vaguely coherent threat about where he might find that stick were he do to something unfortunate. “What is this sudden fascination with sticking objects up my—“

“Look,” Aurelia cut in very specifically, cutting eyes at Romulus’ unapologetic expression. “She didn’t become High Vesta by sitting on her ass every day,” she argued, pulling off her gloves and laying them on the back of the couch.

“Gideon is High Vestor and he does nothing except walk around barefoot all the time,” Octavian observed, calmly spinning his intricately, though only partially, carved staff.

“Have you ever worked out with Gideon one on one?” Aurelia asked, turning her head enough to make Perry go weak at the knees for the sight of her long, graceful neck.

“No,” he conceded, twirling the staff from left hand to right and ending with it vertical parallel to his spine behind his back, the leather of his gloves straining slightly in protest of his tight grip.

Aurelia scoffed. “Then don’t make comments about what Gideon does and does not do,” she warned, pulling her long brown braid forward to unravel the twisted locks. Peregrine was doing her level best not to stare at her slender fingers as they danced through her silky russet locks, but Hawthorne was having a hard time hiding the smile forming at her nervousness.

“Don’t pretend you know so much, dearest Aurelia,” Romulus interjected, his eyes focused upon his staff as he rubbed it gently against the thigh of his pant. His perch upon the tall stool was met with a flashing stare and a sudden tumble. Disheveled, Romulus put a hand to his hair, pale fingers combing it back as he glared right back at his childhood… well, friend didn’t seem to be the right word. “Very mature.”

A practiced, angelic expression softened her dark brown eyes. “Whatever are you talking about, dearest Romulus? I hope you’re quite alright. That was quite a fall.” Her head tilted sympathetically.

A snicker traveled around the room, and Peregrine even sat up to glance over the back of the plush sofa. When she spied the tall teenager sprawled, discombobulated and furious upon the floor, she fell back into the pillows with a cackle. Aurelia’s eyebrows seemed curious at her explosion of laughter, but both corners of her mouth turned upward with amusement, more so because Per seemed to take such delight in her juvenile tricks.

Romulus slowly gathered himself, careful not to mar his meticulously polished staff on his way back to standing.

“I’ll be in my room,” he all but muttered, the closest the put-together young man ever came to a typical teenaged tantrum. He left with all the dignity he could, though most of it remained on the floor with the toppled stool.

“I’ll bet his ego is more bruised than his butt,” Hawthorne ventured, grinning from ear to ear.

“I’m not sure, that was quite a fall, socially and literally. However, that’s a contest I’m sure I don’t want to discover who wins,” Octavian said blandly. He pushed a rogue lock of white-blonde hair behind his ear and then made a frustrated noise. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to clean up.”

Aurelia placed a thoughtful hand on her chin and strapped an arm across her stomach to brace the elbow of her first arm, watching as Octavian swept upstairs almost as gracefully as Cleo, a thoughtful look upon her face. “It’s interesting to find a man with such self-confidence that he can leave the room with more elegance than I,” she mused aloud, pursing her lips against a smile despite her peers’ chorus of laughter again.