meretricula | fic: thorn among lilies (circle of magic)

yuletide reveals are up! I can now reveal myself as the author of three fics in three different fandoms. one at a time...

title: thorn among lilies
fandom: Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic series
pairing: Briar/Tris
rating: G
word count: 3200
summary: In which Briar and Tris grow closer while apart. Or at least they would if Briar didn't visit her nearly every Sunsday.
notes: this was written for

seawench and was my official

yuletide assignment. it was a bit strange to write, actually, because my very first story for

yuletide, which pretty much no one has ever read, was a NYR for

elucreh with exactly the same plot that

seawench asked for, namely Tris/Briar at Lightsbridge. but never let it be said that I ducked away from using the same plot twice! ultimately I think (hope) that I came up with something a little new and different. I had fun writing from all the different points of view, at least.

As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.
As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons.
Canticle 2:2-3

"Hey, Nana!"

Tris was halfway up the stairs to her dormitory room, long nose stuck firmly in a book, when she finally registered, with a start, that someone was calling her. It was only her second sevenday at Lightsbridge, and she already had a reputation for perpetually having her head in the clouds. It was hard enough to notice being hailed by her real name when she was reading, she thought a little crossly as she made a note of her page and turned around. She hadn't thought all the difficulties of using a fake name while she was studying through. She couldn't have used her real name anyway - Trisana Chandler had done too much flashy magic to pass unnoticed here - so it was moot, really. She'd just have to get used to it. "What is it..." She vaguely recognized the young man who'd been calling her; he was in her class on Theory of Illusion. He was good-looking but, she thought scornfully, nearly illiterate, or at least so she gathered from his apparent inability to get through the readings. "Deven?" That was his name, she was almost certain.

"Bevan," he said, flashing a cheerful grin. "Good job on your lad, eh? Let me know if you want me to distract Alys for a few hours, always happy to help."

Tris frowned. Alys was the girl who lived in the room next to hers, possibly. Or maybe that was Annette. Probably Alys, though. She hadn't paid much attention to her fellow students, not when there was such an amazing library readily available. "What?"

"Oh, is it a surprise, then? Never mind, mum's the word!" Bevan held a finger to his lips in an exaggerated gesture and backed away down the steps. Tris stared after him, then found her place in the book and continued reading as she climbed up to her room. Bevan came from some island far to the northwest, so far it wasn't on half the maps in the university library, and had a thick, outlandish accent; she couldn't understand him perfectly even when she knew what he was talking about.

If the book hadn't been so interesting, she probably would have known right away what Bevan was referring to, but as it was, she was frightened nearly out of her wits when she tried to sit on her bed, still engrossed in her book, and found there was already a body in it. She only shrieked a little.

"Briar!" she snapped, heart pounding. "What are you doing here?"

Briar, who had apparently been napping, rolled out of her way and flopped back down, still monopolizing her pillow. "I'm bored, Coppercurls," he announced.

"With what, life?" she asked tartly. "You're a bit young for an attack of ennui."

"The house feels weird without you," he complained, ignoring her interjection. "And I don't like the new cook."

"I've been gone less than a moon! Wavewalker as my witness, you'd think you never spent two whole years so far away from me we couldn't even mindspeak."

"Yeah, well," Briar muttered, and looked away. "Doesn't mean I liked it."

Tris sighed, and scooted over to press against Briar's side. Dreams, still?

Don't want to talk about it, he replied, turning his face so it was hidden in the soft cotton of Tris's dress. She frowned.

Are you still seeing that soul-healer? When he failed to reply, her mental voice grew sharper, hinting at lightning strikes and riptides. Briar!

She makes me feel stupid, he said at last. Like I should be able to remember they're just dreams when I'm dreaming them.

Then she's the stupid one, and we'll find you a new healer, Tris said prosaically. She's not the only one in all of Summersea. You can rest here for a while, if you want, she added. I have to read this book. I'll wake you up for dinner.

The noise Briar made, muffled against Tris's side, was somewhere between a laugh and a yawn. You know, Coppercurls, anybody ever tell you that sometimes you can be kind of nice?

Lies and slanders, she thought absent-mindedly, already paying more attention to her book than the sound of Briar's breathing as it slowly evened out into sleep. One hand tucked protectively around his back, she settled down to read.

*

Briar woke slowly, to the sound of rustling pages and the growling of his own stomach. For a moment he lay still, registering the blanket over his legs, Tris's hand on his shoulder, and the blind bone-deep certainty he felt that he was safe, knowing that Tris was there. After the pirates, he knew she would never willingly do war magic again, but he also knew that if anyone or anything threatened her family - threatened him - she would rip them apart without a moment's hesitation. Tris would never have let Gyongxe happen, if she'd been with him.

Tris was capable of doing truly horrible things. He knew she wasn't proud of them. He wasn't necessarily proud of the fact that he felt better knowing she would do them in a heartbeat for him.

"Almost done with your book?" he asked, sitting up.

"Finished it; this is a new one," she said, her eyes still flicking back and forth across the page. Briar, who had long since learned the futility of interrupting Tris while she was reading, waited patiently until she reached some acceptable stopping point and put the book aside. "Are you hungry?"

"Enough to eat a cow," he replied, smiling. "Or a rat, for that matter."

"You're disgusting," she sniffed. "The food in the common hall will probably suit you perfectly."

"Not up to your standard?" Briar inquired, and stretched a little. He knew exactly what she thought of the food they served the students at Lightsbridge; all three of them had been audience of an awe-inspiring rant on her first night at school. He didn't mind hearing it again, though. It was sort of fun to listen to Tris when she was riled up about things.

She only wrinkled her nose this time. "Maybe they'll let me into the kitchens to make you something."

Briar laughed. "We're not all as finicky as you, Coppercurls. If it won't poison me or give me the runs, I'm happy to eat it."

"And still you complain about Daja's cook," she pointed out as she got to her feet and then sat on the floor to put on her shoes. Briar got up more slowly; he didn't need to lace up his sandals.

That's different. That's home food, he said. It wasn't a concept he could express in words, really, but he knew Tris would understand.

I'll come home and cook for your birthday, she said, instead of replying directly. "And hurry up," she added as she opened her door. "They only serve supper for a bell, and they're draconian about letting people in late."

Briar rolled his eyes and obediently hurried up, and consequently nearly walked into Tris when she stopped dead just outside her doorway. What are you -

"Nana, hello! Are you going to dinner now?" Briar slipped out beside Tris, curious, and the girl in the hallway paused briefly before continuing, "Oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't realize you had a guest. My name is Alys! Are you a student here, too?"

"This is my brother, Briar," Tris said shortly. "He's visiting."

"Pleasure to meet you," Briar said with a smile. There's no need to be rude, Coppercurls. She's trying to be friendly. "We are going to dinner, actually. Would you like to join us?"

Alys gave Tris a very strange look, which almost immediately cleared into another cheerful smile. Briar noticed; Tris was, as usual, oblivious. "That would be lovely, thank you. I'm meeting Bevan in the hall, if that's all right with you?"

"Of course," Tris said, teetering on the edge between chilly courtesy and outright incivility. She set off at a pace fast enough that Briar had to stretch his legs slightly to keep up, and Alys was forced to trot. Chattering imbecile. Her and Bevan both.

She seems nice, Briar retorted. Don't pull your high-and-mighty airs if you don't want to work the magic to back them up, Nana. And isn't Bevan the one who told me how to find your room? I liked him.

You would, was her only reply. Briar grinned a little and did his best to keep a conversation going between Tris and Alys, in spite of the fact that Tris would only answer in monosyllables. Tris was always prickly with strangers; she was almost endearingly predictable about it. Briar had a good feeling about Alys, though, who was currently barreling through her icy silence with a torrent of words, and he really had liked Bevan. A bell later, when Tris, Bevan and Alys were all engaged in a spirited debate about some obscure point of magical theory over long-since empty plates, the frost in Tris' attitude completely gone, Briar sat back to congratulate himself. He was a genius. At least, a genius when it came to handling Tris.

*

Daja was actually looking for Sandry when she went out to the roof of the Discipline Cottage which Briar had built for them in his magic. She knew better than to expect to find Tris, who never seemed to be finished with classes, and while she was always happy to talk to Briar, Daja lived with him; she saw him at every meal, except on the occasions, increasingly frequent over the past few moons, when he went off to see Tris at Lightsbridge.

Sandry wasn't there, and for a moment Daja thought she was alone - there was no one straddling the peak of the roof, where they usually sat. When she looked down the other side of the roof, however, she saw both her other foster-siblings sprawled out on the thatch, watching the clouds overhead. Tris was watching the clouds, anyway; Briar was dozing with his cheek pillowed on her stomach, their bodies forming a lopsided T. Daja frowned. "You can move him, you know, if he's in the way," she said.

Tris twisted her neck around to look at her. "How long have you been standing there? Come sit with us." She beckoned to Daja vaguely, then let her hand drop to Briar's chest. He stirred slightly. "Wake up, Daja's here."

"I saw Daja at breakfast, it ain't that exciting," he muttered. "No offense, Daj."

"Isn't that exciting," Tris corrected automatically.

"How long have you been out here?" Daja asked. "Have you seen Sandry?"

"No," Briar said.

"I don't know," said Tris, in response to Daja's other question. "What time is it?"

"Third bell past noon."

"Blast it!" Tris yelped, and shoved Briar away so she could scramble up over the rooftop. "I've got lecture. I'll see you later!" She climbed down the trap door and vanished from sight and earshot as she returned to the physical world.

"What are you playing at, boy?" Daja demanded as soon as she was gone. "Tris isn't one of your cookmaids. If you think you can toy with her, you'd better pray to Shurri Fire-Sword to protect you, because I will gut you like a fish."

"What if I'm not playing?" Briar asked quietly.

Daja blinked. "So... you're serious, then. About Tris. Tris, makes hedgehogs look cuddly, Tris. Tris, likes books better than men, Tris. Our sister, Tris."

"She's not actually related to me, you know." Briar lay back down and stared up at the sky, where a storm was always brewing but never actually struck, because he had remembered watching clouds grow with Tris when he created it. Daja hesitated, then sat beside him.

"You're going to have to work at it a little more, if you ever want her to know," she said.

Briar smiled, and let his eyes drift closed. "I'm working on it."

*

Bevan wouldn't have said he was a meddler. He just liked to help people, and sometimes they didn't ask him for help first. Nana Weaver wasn't the type to request assistance anyway; she was an odd sort, and he'd be the first to admit it, though he liked her very much: prickly and always determined to be right about everything, even though she was one of the worst in their class when it came practical magic. He therefore felt no qualms whatsoever about taking Nana aside during another of her "brother's" visits to inform her, unprompted and uninvited, that she was fooling precisely no one with her little charade, and furthermore, considering that she had known her Lightsbridge friends for over six moons, it was a little insulting that she kept trying. "After all," he concluded, "it's not like we're going to report you for cohabitation."

Nana stared at him. "Briar doesn't live here. Ergo, there is no cohabitation to report."

"Exactly," he agreed. "And even if there were, we wouldn't report it. So there's no need for you to keep up this ridiculous story about him being your brother."

"He is my brother," she said. The tapestries on the wall behind them flapped in a particularly strong draft, although there was no visible source of air flow.

"Nana, don't be absurd, you don't even look like him."

"Foster brother," she conceded. "Bevan, you're the one being absurd. There's no need to even discuss this." She half-turned away, looking back into her room, where Briar was talking with Alys and Elris, who lived down a floor from Bevan. "If Briar doesn't make a move soon, Elris is going to get Alys to go out walking with him instead," she remarked.

"He doesn't come here every Sunsday, or nearly, to see Alys," Bevan said, and refused to oblige her rather obvious attempt to change the subject. "I have sisters at home, you know. I don't look at them the way Briar looks at you."

Nana rolled her eyes at him, but before she could retort (and Nana, Bevan knew from experience, always had a retort waiting) Briar sauntered out to find them. "Why are you two talking out in the hallway?" he asked, draping a casually possessive arm around Nana's shoulders. She leaned into his side immediately, and Bevan felt simultaneously vindicated and irrationally annoyed. "Gossiping about me behind my back?"

"Oh, yes, Briar, we have nothing better to discuss than your manifold less-than-sterling qualities," Nana snapped. "If you weren't here to provide us with subject matter I'm sure we'd never have a thing to say."

"I've yet to see you without a thing to say," Briar said, and gave her a quick squeeze. "Come on, I'm hungry. We can eat in town, I'll treat you all."

"You're always hungry," she complained. The conversation moved on in the familiar pattern of their bickering, and Bevan decided not to bother bringing the subject up again. If Nana thought that her friends couldn't tell that she and Briar even argued more like a husband and wife than brother and sister, there was nothing he could do about it.

*

Tris hummed to herself as she pulled a batch of Briar's favorite spice cookies out of the oven, and put an unbaked cake in their place. Her breezes were keeping the summer heat at bay, she had the kitchen to herself, Daja's cook banished until Tris returned to Lightsbridge, and she was home for a whole week to celebrate Briar's birthday: all was right with the world.

"Someone's happy," Daja drawled, leaning against the doorframe that connected the kitchen to the rest of the house.

"Should I not be?" Tris inquired, most of her attention focused on transferring the cookies to a cooling rack. "It's a happy day."

"Just wondering when you're going to burst into song, merchant girl," Daja said with a grin.

"I refuse to quarrel with you today," Tris said. She ignored Daja's muttered, "That'll be a first," and continued serenely, "You'll just have to provoke me again tomorrow."

"I'll be happy to. In the meanwhile, Sandry says she's trapped in a meeting in the Citadel, but we're not to serve cake until she can be here."

Tris shrugged. "The cake isn't finished yet. And we can't do anything until Briar gets home, anyway."

"I hear my name, and I smell my cookies!" Briar called, as the kitchen door slammed shut behind him. "Oh, they're done, excellent," he added, making a beeline for the cookies cooling on the table.

"They're still hot," Tris warned, and snorted when Briar ignored her. He yelped, tossing his stolen goods from hand to hand to keep from getting burned.

"Happy birthday, thief-boy," Daja said mildly, and ducked back out of the kitchen. Tris barely noticed, passing Briar a dishtowel to shield his hand while his treat reached edible temperatures.

"Happy birthday," Tris said, smiling. "Don't eat too much; the cake is in the oven now. We'll eat when Sandry gets here."

"No such thing as too much dessert," Briar retorted. "Thanks for baking all this, Coppercurls." He tugged on one of her braids, grinning, and started to bite into his cookie.

"No, wait!" Tris cried. "You break it in half and make a birthday wish, stupid."

Briar blinked, but obediently broke the cookie in two. He stuffed one half in his mouth and handed the other to Tris, who nibbled much more daintily. And you made your wish, right?

His mouth full of cookie crumbs, Briar replied very seriously, I wish you would kiss me.

Tris went pale, and her smile immediately evaporated. The shutters began banging in sudden gusts of wind. "That isn't funny, Briar."

Do I sound like I'm joking? He caught her wrist when she started to back away, and tugged on her mind when she pulled away from his magic as well. Please, just - could you just listen to me? It's my birthday. You know I can't lie to you like this. Just look, and see if I'm telling the truth.

Bewildered, Tris listened, and looked through his eyes at herself. He let her see what he saw: prickliness that kept others at bay, but made him want to tease a smile from her grumpiest moods; ferocious protectiveness that would keep him safe from any danger; a love of children and animals that she hid out of embarrassment. He really did want to kiss her, she thought, bemused, as she also saw his appreciation for her short, chubby frame, with soft breasts and wide hips and pudgy stomach, and the wiry muscle underneath.

If you don't want - I mean, I'll never bring it up again, I promise, and it'll all be the same as always, Briar said awkwardly. But I've been hinting for a year and you never seemed to get it, so...

Don't be any stupider than you have to be. You could have just told me, Tris said, and determinedly pulled him down for a kiss. Happy birthday, idiot. They both tasted like cookies.

I am come into my garden, my sister, my bride: I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk: eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved.
Canticle 5:1