Theme 25: Touch
Today's theme:
Touch1. Submit your drabble that fits this theme as a comment to this post. It should be between 100-300 words, if you go over/under a bit that's fine! If it's longer than say 400 words, I ask that you post on your journal or fanfiction.net and then submit the link to this post. If you find that your story is going to be very long ( ( Read more... )
Touch1. Submit your drabble that fits this theme as a comment to this post. It should be between 100-300 words, if you go over/under a bit that's fine! If it's longer than say 400 words, I ask that you post on your journal or fanfiction.net and then submit the link to this post. If you find that your story is going to be very long ( ( Read more... )
Claim: Fandom
Rating: PG-13 to be safe
Drabbles completed so far: 7/100
On Earth, I quickly grow accustomed to life as a human. Despite the oddity of their society (their ridiculous social formalities continue to confuse me to this day, and I've never been able to make sense of their habit of constantly confining themselves in enclosed spaces for hours at a time) I adapt quickly, even learning to make do with their childishly primitive technology. However, the one thing I have never been able to conform to is their constant use of touch.
Handshakes, embraces, and other such things are an integral part of human culture. Even Loren sometimes forgets, and reaches out a hand to touch my shoulder or arm when I'm not expecting it. (With her, though, I don't really mind.) Brushing shoulders with a stranger on the street is so common they hardly even apologize anymore, although it seems that in simpler times it was considered rude not to excuse oneself. To an Andalite, physical contact with another being is the very height of intimacy, and as much disgust as I have for my people these concepts are rooted so deeply within my psyche that it's not an easy task to dig them out. Loren, however, is determined to try.
"Elfangor," she says (and I smile, for she only uses my full name in privacy), "take my hand." I do, but I shiver involuntarily, because as the great human author called Shakespeare wrote, And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss. (I often find his language confusing, but no more confusing than modern human society, and inexplicably also quite enjoyable.)
Her other hand drifts, the fingertips brushing the skin at my arm, my shoulder, my cheek. "Okay," she says, calmly, soothingly, as a child might speak to an injured djabala on the homeworld. "That's not so bad, is it?"
"No," I agree. "It was not." For some strange reason I usually don't mind Loren's touch, and actually tend to enjoy it. It's only when she takes me by surprise that I find it displeasing.
"Good." There's something different in her expression now, something I am unable to describe or to decipher. "Are you ready to move onto the next step?"
"Yes," I say, though I have no idea what that step might be. To my surprise, she leans forward, pressing her lips softly to the space where my neck meets my shoulder. Again she drifts, up the side of my throat and along my jaw, and I sit very still, unsure what to do. Finally she reaches my mouth, my unfamiliar human mouth, and presses her own lips to mine in what humans describe as a kiss. There's an odd sensation in the place where my legs meet my body, an unknown human reaction I have occasionally felt when watching Loren. It is not displeasing.
She leans back, her eyes gleaming, and smiles uncertainly at me. I reach forward and cup her cheek in one of my large, five-fingered human hands.
"This is an Andalite kiss," I say in my human voice with my human mouth. And I think silently to myself that perhaps this touching thing is not really so bad after all.
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