Challenge: Legal Theft: To Fly (291 words)

“It’s a shame about your face.” It was a stupid thing to say, but it smothered the insults that Darryn might otherwise have shouted.

Aidan touched his cheek then looked at the blood on his fingers. “A few scars never hurt anyone,” he told Darryn.

“I guess,” Darryn babbled, “no one but you was hurt, and nothing broke—except the sled—so—”

“So how many seconds was I in the air?” Aidan begged. His grin stretched the cuts on his face so that they leaked a few more droplets of blood. “How many?”

“I—” Darryn had promised to count, but that promise had been drowned out by Aidan’s exhilarated yell, and the silent scream in Darryn’s mind as he had watched the sled shoot off of the roof like an arrow loosed through the air where no man had a right to be for as long as Aidan had been, then by the crunch of his own feet on the snow as Darryn had run after the sled, trying to determine where it would fall.

Aidan groaned, tossing his head back. “Darryn.”

“I’m sorry. I thought you would die when you crashed, and I—”

“Well, I guess it doesn’t matter.” Aidan smirked. “I’ll just have to try again, and now that you know that I wo—”

“Don’t you dare! Don’t you ever do that again!”

“You are such a wet cat.”

“Better a wet cat than a skinned one.”

Aidan touched his cheek again. “It’s not that much skin.” He looked up at Darryn. “Is it?”

Darryn shook his head. He grabbed Aidan’s arm and tugged his friend to his feet. “Come on,” he grunted. “We’ll get you to Gitta. She can patch you up. I hope.”

—

This week and for the remainder of the summer, we’re doing something a little different for legal theft.  Each Thursday, we band of thieves will all steal the same line so that there will be up to 6 short fiction pieces all using the same first line.  This week, the line was stolen “Old Prejudices” by Bek at Building A Door.  I’ll provide links to all of the pieces using the line too.

I misread the line a bit.  It should actually have read: The first thing that she ever said to him was, “It’s a shame about your face.”  I plan on rectifying this and posting another more properly thefted piece later, but in the meantime, I was proud of this one, and it’s staying up.

While you await my corrected piece, please enjoy:

“First and Last” by Gwen on Apprentice, Never Master.

“When You’re Blue” by Kate Kearney on More Than 1/2 Mad.