Another Wednesday, another #1lineWed prompt. Today is sponsored by the word **FRAGILE** and doesn’t that present all sorts of possibilities?
In odd moments, I’ve been revisiting Roman, our intrepid gargoyle Sentinel and the Legate of New Orleans, if you are familiar with my Penumbra Papers series. If you aren’t, why not?!?! 😉 Anyway, I’ve been stalling on Roman’s story but as he’s nudging Iffy, I hope to have his tale told in time for Halloween. In the meantime, here’s a bit of a tease, coming as it does near the beginning of the story.
***
Roman stood at the window, a dark silhouette if anyone below chanced to look up. Early-morning fog swirled through Jackson Square, leaving the granite blocks and wooden benches with a silvery sheen as the first fingers of dawn poked through the gray miasma. Roman refused to count the number of times he’d stood here, waiting, watching.
As a bright swirl of color coalesced through the murk, the constricting pressure in his chest eased, a feeling he chose to ignore.
She was early this morning, lugging her wagon with the folding chairs, market umbrella, rickety wooden table, and her satchel filled with the exotic paraphernalia of her trade. Her tousled curls were tamed today, severe in a long, dark braid snaking over one shoulder. Fog swirled around her, lightened, leaving her poised like an island tinted by riotous hues.
He didn’t know her name but this young woman with haunted shadows in her eyes and the fragile sheen of magic clinging to her skin like glitter drew him as inexorably as that proverbial moth. Would she singe his wings if he got too close?
***
Still working on a title for this one. I have some ideas–tested the water with them on my FB author page. This is a hard one to write, knowing what Roman and his love will be forced to endure. But you know? I’ve missed the Penumbra folks and it feels a little like coming home to be writing in their world again.
So, do you have fragile words to share today?
Silver James 
Love it!
I didn’t think I’d have anything for you this morning, but I found this…
“Did you have any sense of a being like that in your midst before they did their work with Lyle?”
“I sensed it only when they brought it forth for the experiment.”
“So they wished it into existence?” I said more to myself than to Natalia.
“I think they wished it from somewhere else.” She gazed out over the river, but I had a feeling she wasn’t actually seeing the now. Lost in the past, she said, “Once, when I was young, I ventured forth from a stream I was using to travel from one land to the next. I had intended to hunt for a nice, plump, young man for a bit of sustenance. When I ventured into the village, every single living thing was freshly dead.”
“Like those Efreet?”
“The smell was the same. I vowed then to find the being that had deprived me, and then in the next instant, I realized that to meet the being was to face death. I went back to the stream and traveled until I no longer smelled the thing or the death that walked with it.”
“What was it?”
“I have asked myself that same thing many times. No one I have mentioned it to has ever known. Then again, I rarely get much time for conversation with the people I meet. Such fragile things humans are.”
Ooh! I got chills! Can’t wait for this book!!!