LOOK . . . story excerpt meme

LOOK
I've been Twitter-tagged by Lisa in a meme called "Look". If you, too, are tagged, do a search for the word "look" in your work in progress. Copy that paragraph, along with surrounding paragraphs, to your blog, to keep the game afloat. Don't forget to tag others. This excerpt is from The Wandering Place, Part I and is one of several upcoming stories in my Tales of the Phantom Court series (which begins with the story told in The Summoned).

She remembered pools of slick, inky blackness drawing in around her, pulling themselves up to make near-human forms, and then everything went blank. Was that it? Was she with them?

How could there be peace there, then?

Cautiously opening one eye, she saw black, only it wasn’t the black she now, dully remembered from her suffocating prison. It was glittering and smooth under the light of the sun, like strands of satin. Like black pearls. The thought struck her oddly- she recalled seeing hair that gleamed like black pearls somewhere before . . . and that somewhere had proven potentially lethal for her, hadn’t it? Opening her other eye, she realized it was a lock of Toh-Rinn’s hair that had fallen in front of her face. She frowned at the realization. What was his hair doing so close to her face?

She forced a gulp down her throat as she became sharply aware of the warm flesh her cheek was pressed to; in fact, one entire side of her body was pressed to it, as well. Lani moved minutely, maneuvering her head just enough to look down at herself, she saw her body curled up as feeling began to seep back into her limbs. As awkward as her angle of vision was, she could see that she’d basically been stuffed into Toh-Rinn’s haori. She corrected her earlier thought. How could there be peace here?

With another little gulp, she finally raised her eyes to look up at his face, to concentrate on the feeling of him breathing beneath her. His inhalations were slow and shallow, those icy silver eyes closed. Was he sleeping? She wasn’t sure Demons slept. Maybe that was why it felt peaceful- because he wasn’t in a readily threatening state, which was really all she’d come to know from him?

She laughed quietly to herself, then- it seemed like it had been so much longer than a handful of hours since she’d found him on that stupid beach. Lifting a hand that was still coming back from total numbness, she delicately touched the gleaming black hair. It really did feel like strands of satin, inhuman in how fine and smooth it was beneath her clumsy, human fingertips. He didn’t stir. For some reason, that worried her, but she couldn’t understand why she’d be worried about a monster like him. It was funny to her, though, that she thought him a monster not because of what he was, but because of how he behaved.

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People I tagged:
Ariel Flynn, Abigail Burke, Victoria Smith, Dawna Raver, Jessa Russo.

Those who participate, don't forget to leave me a comment and a link, so I can read your excerpt :)