Weekend Writing Warriors: Odd Duck (Cuffs)

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Last week had a bit of Turner wit and also a Three Little Pigs pun.

I’m skipping over a few lines of taunting and growling between that and this. I also added a semi-colon so I could get in the last sentence.  Tom is fond of short stinger lines, which are fun, but sometimes difficult to fit into the limit.

Turner came back around and helped buckle the thick, silver-studded leather binders to the thug’s forearms, securing them together from elbow to wrist. The reinforcements and the awkward angle would keep him from ripping them apart, and even if the silver content wasn’t enough to stop him from changing, the pain would—Canidae aren’t built to have their front legs bound back along their spines.

Bryan had taught me that.

“Want the legs, too?” Turner said.

I got to my feet and backed away. “Don’t bother. Pick him up.”

Wolves were heavy for their size, even in human form, but Turner pulled the guy up and sat him in the client chair without any visible effort; he was a handy guy to have around.

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Before y’all think I’ve taken this book in a new direction—I’d say “totally unexpected”, but I know a few of you better than that by now and vice (pun intended) versa—it’s really more of an ode to the memory’s junk yard and how it can stick random stuff together in odd ways.

So. Used to be a fan of Ann Rice waaaaay back in the day, and in one of her books—–East of Eden, I think, since I don’t remember much of the far less interesting Sleeping Beauty trilogy—a character was put in a set of leather arm binders that laced together in the back.

I also have a friend who was the seneschal of a local SCA kingdom when I met her.  Her husband fights melee-style and I picked up all sorts of things about medieval armor, some of which is made of leather with metal plates riveted in, making the leather look studded on the outside–decorative and practical.

Years later, I asked myself how  someone would cuff a person who was not only strong enough to break most of the usual wrist restraints, but also had a legendary allergy to silver.

Scene kind of wrote itself.

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Image provided by nycleather1022 via eBay, where you can find all sorts of interesting things about your fellow human beings if you type Leather Arm Binders into Google Images.  Viewer discretion is crucial.

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