The little AU: Fallow: day one: outside
The little AU: Fallow: day one: outside
slashfairy
In the Mayan calendar, the week between what we call Christmas and New Year's is actually not in the calendar of the year. Or so Orli understands it from how Hunter tells about it after dinner on Christmas Eve.
Hunter traces the calendar Mask, showing the different hieroglyphs that mean "year" and "day" and so forth, and they might for all Orlando knows- he'll look it up later, after Hunter's gone to bed with his new book, and his stuffed horse, and the other things he's opened tonight.
For now the idea of a week, a whole seven days, that's outside the turning of the year, attracts him enormously. To be outside the sparks the year gives off now, as it grinds up against the dark in one hemisphere and the light in the other, would be such a relief. The relative darkness of unlit ordinary life, just to breathe and be... His sigh is deep and heartfelt, and earns him a pat on the hand from Hunter as he reads on in his book about the Mayans.
Later, walking the dogs down the beach under the waning moon, Orli will think about this time last year, and how lost he'd been, and how they came to find him, and how feeling found felt, how it felt like the best kind of waking up even though the nightmare'd been the worst kind of being lost, because it'd all been inside himself to himself, and no explaining it to anyone outside had done the pain justice.
Tomorrow there will be the rest of presents, there will be phone calls to family, there will be dinner, there will be lovemaking and satiety and celebration. And then there will be midnight, and the fallow week will start.
I'll have to look that up, he thinks. It just sounds- right.
previously: Solstice Prayers
next: Res Ipsa Loquiter
slashfairy
In the Mayan calendar, the week between what we call Christmas and New Year's is actually not in the calendar of the year. Or so Orli understands it from how Hunter tells about it after dinner on Christmas Eve.
Hunter traces the calendar Mask, showing the different hieroglyphs that mean "year" and "day" and so forth, and they might for all Orlando knows- he'll look it up later, after Hunter's gone to bed with his new book, and his stuffed horse, and the other things he's opened tonight.
For now the idea of a week, a whole seven days, that's outside the turning of the year, attracts him enormously. To be outside the sparks the year gives off now, as it grinds up against the dark in one hemisphere and the light in the other, would be such a relief. The relative darkness of unlit ordinary life, just to breathe and be... His sigh is deep and heartfelt, and earns him a pat on the hand from Hunter as he reads on in his book about the Mayans.
Later, walking the dogs down the beach under the waning moon, Orli will think about this time last year, and how lost he'd been, and how they came to find him, and how feeling found felt, how it felt like the best kind of waking up even though the nightmare'd been the worst kind of being lost, because it'd all been inside himself to himself, and no explaining it to anyone outside had done the pain justice.
Tomorrow there will be the rest of presents, there will be phone calls to family, there will be dinner, there will be lovemaking and satiety and celebration. And then there will be midnight, and the fallow week will start.
I'll have to look that up, he thinks. It just sounds- right.
previously: Solstice Prayers
next: Res Ipsa Loquiter