New stuff!!! Finally!!!

For Ing, hoping the double vision will make this twice as good. =)

David lay on his stomach, his head turned to the left, his right ear pressed against the wooden table. He stared hard at the folding screen that stood between him and his mother.

He was surprised by how little noise came from beyond the make-sift wall. The soft shuffling of slippered feet, the low rumble of a male voice, his mother's breaths - she was practically panting - and her occasional muffled cries at the pains of childbirth.

A young woman slipped from behind the screen and padded silently to David. She bent and spoke into his ear so softly that he nearly missed the words hidden in the currents of her warm breath.

‘The Speaker is coming. Remember, you must be silent throughout.'

Then she disappeared from his peripheral vision.

Another muffled cry sounded beyond the screen.

And then the young woman was back, carrying a large, flat sheet of copper. Black lines snaked across it. She placed it on his back, and the cold of it made David's bare skin pebble. It was twice the width of his back, centered so that it extended out on both sides, and long enough to cover him from shoulders to waist. The young woman drew a pair of tongs from her belt, and bent over a brazier that had been smoldering nearby. She straightened, a white-glowing coal held firmly in the tongs. She placed the coal on one corner of the copper sheet. She retrieved another, and another, until each of the four corners held a glowing white coal.

His mother gave one more muffled cry, and David tensed. Any sound at all could set the copper plate vibrating, making the coals dance across it. That was the function of the ting, after all. When a Speaker was born, the one who was to be her Protector was brought into this same room, laid on this same table, weighted down with this same sheet of scarred copper, and branded by his Speaker's first cry.

Quiet footsteps sounded, and a man darted from behind the screen and hurried to kneel at David's side. The plate would react to any sound the new Speaker made. He gritted his teeth, trying to calm himself. He'd been prepared for this since his birth, but suddenly those twelve years did not seem long enough.

Any moment now, the baby would cry, the coals would skitter across the plate to the vibrations, burning their crazy dance into the flesh of David's back.

Any moment now...

Nothing.

The Speaker was silent.

David could hear the other people in the room whispering, wondering why the baby didn't cry. Finally, the man stood and gestured for the young woman to remove the coals. She stepped to David's side, and in a perfect reversal of her motions earlier, replaced them into the brazier.
He waved a second young woman over to him. ‘Fetch one of the Speakers. We must know why this has happened.' Then he sighed deeply. ‘Remove the plate.'

The young woman grasped the copper sheet, lifting it from David's back.
David realized that his eyes were squeezed shut. He opened them slowly and looked at the serene face of his new sister.

Slowly, baby-grey eyes opened, then locked onto David's. His sister thrust violently into his mind. Suddenly his back was screaming in agony as fire seemed to burn across it. He was not supposed to allow himself to scream, cry, or even flinch, lest he alter the course the Speaker's cry lay forth for the coals to follow, but the agony was beyond the simple burning of his flesh. David's muscles cramped as his body reacted to the pain. He bit down on his lip and tasted blood. The bone-deep knife of pain sliced its way across his shoulderblades.

David screamed.

And as suddenly as it had begun, the pain ended. The newer conciousness disappeared from his own.

The baby's eyes drifted closed.

David felt the copper falling before it hit the floor, ringing loudly, startling everyone in the room.
‘His back...' the young woman murmured.

For a long moment, no one moved.

The man spoke quietly to himself. ‘The Speaker is silent, yet the Protector is marked...a silent Speaker...no less, a baby who does not utter a cry...?'