Happy Holidays, refche
Title: Hoofbeats on the Snowy Ground
Author: blueeyedtigress
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Many thanks to our mods; to sff_corgi for some mighty handy research; and to Browncoats.com for Pinyin Chinese translations! Any and all errors are mine and mine alone! One Firefly/Good Omens crossover, coming up! I'm rating this PG-13 for the circumstances appropriate to the battleground setting. (While there's a touch of mild swearing, it happens in Chinese.) My apologies: this is not particularly Christmassy nor festive. I hope you enjoy it, Refche!
A tall lanky Black woman hunkered down in the relative shelter of the rough trench, and tried not to think too hard on food. Now, Corporal Zoe Alleyne wasn't the type to think overmuch about food -- she enjoyed it, sure -- but the circumstances fostered an obsession with it, you might say. Hun dan(1), what she wouldn't give for a bowl of stew right now... best get her mind off it, somehow. The snow-covered countryside she sat in might have been pretty once. Now it was a wasteland: dirty snow mounded here and there, fields pocked by muddy shell-holes, corpses scattered about. No orders, no ammo, no food. There was a trenchful of Purplebellies not ten yards off, and Zoe could smell the tantalizing scent of their rations in the bitterly cold air. Helluva way to run a war. She wouldn't be sorry to see the back of New Kasmir, and the whole gorram planet. There was a familiar slither of loose mud and debris as Zoe's sergeant, Malcolm Reynolds, half-vaulted-half-flopped into the trench next to her. His pale skin was filthy and scraped, but there was a glint in his eye that reassured her -- that look said clearly he would keep fighting to survive. Man like that doesn't give up. Man like that, she would follow his orders right through this fahng-tzong fung-kwong duh jeh(2) and out the other side.
Whatever Mal had been about to say went right out of his head as his eyes grew wide -- he was looking at something further down the near-empty trench, past Zoe's shoulder. He breathed something that might have been, "Wuh de tyen, ah..."(3)
Zoe cocked an eyebrow as if to say 'just when was it you got religion, sir?' and turned to follow his gaze.
Four figures seemed to be coalescing out of the cold mists in the trench. The first to come into focus was a sickly-looking, filthy kid in winter Alliance cammo; standing close next to him appeared a painfully slender, darkly bearded man in the immaculate uniform of a Purplebelly officer. In a thought, Zoe and Mal both had weapons trained on the pair, their reflexes ignoring the fact that their guns had been empty for days.
Standing casually beside these enemy personnel, a gorgeous redheaded woman was just suddenly there, wearing a Browncoat corporal's uniform -- like Zoe's, but perfectly issue-fresh. The redhead smiled like beautiful bullets at the two startled Browncoat soldiers. In that moment, they felt they had known her all their lives; neither was sure they liked that thought.
Behind these three intruders a dark shape faded into existance, looming like a raw recruit's worst screaming nightmare. The cloak could have been composed of the Black itself. There was a hint of white bone. A flash of relentlessly sharp micro-thin steel curved in an arc where a sythe-blade might perhaps be. The clearest thing about the figure were its eyes, burning in the Black like a pair of the most vividly blue Class-B stars.
As those eyes held Mal and Zoe transfixed, a voice like all of eternity said, FAHNG-SHEEN.(4) IT IS NOT YET YOUR TIME.
After a seemingly endless moment, Mal said with a certain forced cheerfulness, "Okay. Ee-chee shung-hoo-shee(5), here." He huffed out a breath and shook himself. "So to what do we owe the dubious pleasure of your oddly mixed company?" With a half-shrug toward DEATH he added, "Due respect." The dark figure appeared to nod back.
The redhead stalked toward Mal, her walk a complex symphony of motions that was at once all woman, and all warrior. Mal stood his ground.
Zoe took a step forward to meet the other woman. War smiled, in a way that seemed to acknowledge a shield-sister: the dark human in the battle-stained uniform and the pale-skinned woman with the flaming hair sized each other up, their eyes locked. Watching them, Mal got the odd impression that he was seeing mirror images, different in appearance yet somehow the same, somewhere deeper than the surface. But just how deep did it go? On a gut, instinctual level, he had recognized War; it was his Corporal he was seeing with new eyes here.
Still the two women stared at each other, looking like they were involved in a complicated yet wordless conversation, or a contest of wills. Finally the figure who couldn't really be an Alliance officer laughed, remarking in a smooth and polished voice, "You're so intense, Red! Are you going to kiss her, or start a pissing contest?"
War smiled, a soft smile only for Zoe, and whispered, "Most people don't get it. Sometimes all that's left for you to do is take on an army single-handed, dong-ma?(6) You'll remember that when the time comes..." Abruptly War turned on her heel and walked back to the other apparitions, leaving Zoe with the empty, tingling feeling that someone had walked across her grave.
"Anybody got a mind to answer my question? Or we all just gonna posture at each other for a piece longer?" Mal was a survivor, so adapting to the insanity of any given situation was second nature.
The kid in the filthy Alliance gear was the one who answered, his eyes a little too bright. "We like to see our handiwork sometimes, close-up. There's something for all four of us here, so we thought we'd say hi. Things are about to get busy, you see..."
Famine smiled at Pollution's semi-explanation, then added. "I had one of my more brilliant ideas. Your troops have been talking to the enemy, and the enemy is about give them a gift." He added wistfully, "I've always enjoyed the idea, the irony, of food that kills."
Zoe muttered, "Ta ma de(7)..." as she and Mal ran as one person toward the place where they knew most of their soldiers were crouched against the cold.
"Zhu yi(8), mei-mei(9)!" War called after them.
In a tone tinged with wonder, DEATH said, THEY WILL NEVER EAT APPLES THE SAME WAY AGAIN. IT REMINDS ME OF THAT INCIDENT IN THE GARDEN... The other Horsepersons laughed as they all faded from sight. There was the hint of the sound of four sets of hoofbeats, then three horrifically soft pops....
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Chinese used in this piece:
1. "Hun dan" ~ "Damn!"
2. "fahng-tzong fung-kwong duh jeh" ~ "a knot of self indulgent lunacy" [a knot that indulges insanity]
3. "Wuh de tyen, ah." ~ "Dear god in heaven."
4. "FAHNG-SHEEN." ~ "Don't worry."
5. "Ee-chee shung-hoo-shee." ~ "Let's take a deep breath."
6. "Dong-ma?" ~ "Understand?"
7. "Ta ma de." ~ "Dammit."
8. "Zhu yi." ~ "Watch your back."
9. "Mei-mei" ~ "little sister"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For the interest and edification of those unfamiliar with Firefly, here is the exchange upon which this fic was based:
KAYLEE : Her an' the Captain both, whenever we get fresh fruit you never just munch on 'em.
ZOE: Do you know what a Grizwald is?
JAYNE: (entering) It's a grenade.
ZOE : (shows with fingers) 'Bout the size of a battery. Responds to pressure. Our platoon was stuck in a trench outside New Kasmir during the winter campaign... More'n'a week, completely cut off and the Alliance entrenched not ten yards away. We even got to talking with 'em, yelling across insults and jokes and such, 'cause no ammo to speak of, no orders, what are you gonna do? We mentioned we were out of rations and ten minutes later a buncha apples rained into the trench.
WASH : And they grew into a big tree and they climbed up the tree into a magical land with unicorns and a harp. Honey, there are children present.
RIVER: Tiny helpless children...
KAYLEE : Blew off their heads, huh?
ZOE : Captain said wait, but they were so hungry. Don't make much noise, just little pops and there's three guys kinda just end at the ribcage.
(Read more here: http://www.twiztv.com/scripts/firefly)
Enjoy, refche, from your Secret Author!
Author: blueeyedtigress
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Many thanks to our mods; to sff_corgi for some mighty handy research; and to Browncoats.com for Pinyin Chinese translations! Any and all errors are mine and mine alone! One Firefly/Good Omens crossover, coming up! I'm rating this PG-13 for the circumstances appropriate to the battleground setting. (While there's a touch of mild swearing, it happens in Chinese.) My apologies: this is not particularly Christmassy nor festive. I hope you enjoy it, Refche!
A tall lanky Black woman hunkered down in the relative shelter of the rough trench, and tried not to think too hard on food. Now, Corporal Zoe Alleyne wasn't the type to think overmuch about food -- she enjoyed it, sure -- but the circumstances fostered an obsession with it, you might say. Hun dan(1), what she wouldn't give for a bowl of stew right now... best get her mind off it, somehow. The snow-covered countryside she sat in might have been pretty once. Now it was a wasteland: dirty snow mounded here and there, fields pocked by muddy shell-holes, corpses scattered about. No orders, no ammo, no food. There was a trenchful of Purplebellies not ten yards off, and Zoe could smell the tantalizing scent of their rations in the bitterly cold air. Helluva way to run a war. She wouldn't be sorry to see the back of New Kasmir, and the whole gorram planet. There was a familiar slither of loose mud and debris as Zoe's sergeant, Malcolm Reynolds, half-vaulted-half-flopped into the trench next to her. His pale skin was filthy and scraped, but there was a glint in his eye that reassured her -- that look said clearly he would keep fighting to survive. Man like that doesn't give up. Man like that, she would follow his orders right through this fahng-tzong fung-kwong duh jeh(2) and out the other side.
Whatever Mal had been about to say went right out of his head as his eyes grew wide -- he was looking at something further down the near-empty trench, past Zoe's shoulder. He breathed something that might have been, "Wuh de tyen, ah..."(3)
Zoe cocked an eyebrow as if to say 'just when was it you got religion, sir?' and turned to follow his gaze.
Four figures seemed to be coalescing out of the cold mists in the trench. The first to come into focus was a sickly-looking, filthy kid in winter Alliance cammo; standing close next to him appeared a painfully slender, darkly bearded man in the immaculate uniform of a Purplebelly officer. In a thought, Zoe and Mal both had weapons trained on the pair, their reflexes ignoring the fact that their guns had been empty for days.
Standing casually beside these enemy personnel, a gorgeous redheaded woman was just suddenly there, wearing a Browncoat corporal's uniform -- like Zoe's, but perfectly issue-fresh. The redhead smiled like beautiful bullets at the two startled Browncoat soldiers. In that moment, they felt they had known her all their lives; neither was sure they liked that thought.
Behind these three intruders a dark shape faded into existance, looming like a raw recruit's worst screaming nightmare. The cloak could have been composed of the Black itself. There was a hint of white bone. A flash of relentlessly sharp micro-thin steel curved in an arc where a sythe-blade might perhaps be. The clearest thing about the figure were its eyes, burning in the Black like a pair of the most vividly blue Class-B stars.
As those eyes held Mal and Zoe transfixed, a voice like all of eternity said, FAHNG-SHEEN.(4) IT IS NOT YET YOUR TIME.
After a seemingly endless moment, Mal said with a certain forced cheerfulness, "Okay. Ee-chee shung-hoo-shee(5), here." He huffed out a breath and shook himself. "So to what do we owe the dubious pleasure of your oddly mixed company?" With a half-shrug toward DEATH he added, "Due respect." The dark figure appeared to nod back.
The redhead stalked toward Mal, her walk a complex symphony of motions that was at once all woman, and all warrior. Mal stood his ground.
Zoe took a step forward to meet the other woman. War smiled, in a way that seemed to acknowledge a shield-sister: the dark human in the battle-stained uniform and the pale-skinned woman with the flaming hair sized each other up, their eyes locked. Watching them, Mal got the odd impression that he was seeing mirror images, different in appearance yet somehow the same, somewhere deeper than the surface. But just how deep did it go? On a gut, instinctual level, he had recognized War; it was his Corporal he was seeing with new eyes here.
Still the two women stared at each other, looking like they were involved in a complicated yet wordless conversation, or a contest of wills. Finally the figure who couldn't really be an Alliance officer laughed, remarking in a smooth and polished voice, "You're so intense, Red! Are you going to kiss her, or start a pissing contest?"
War smiled, a soft smile only for Zoe, and whispered, "Most people don't get it. Sometimes all that's left for you to do is take on an army single-handed, dong-ma?(6) You'll remember that when the time comes..." Abruptly War turned on her heel and walked back to the other apparitions, leaving Zoe with the empty, tingling feeling that someone had walked across her grave.
"Anybody got a mind to answer my question? Or we all just gonna posture at each other for a piece longer?" Mal was a survivor, so adapting to the insanity of any given situation was second nature.
The kid in the filthy Alliance gear was the one who answered, his eyes a little too bright. "We like to see our handiwork sometimes, close-up. There's something for all four of us here, so we thought we'd say hi. Things are about to get busy, you see..."
Famine smiled at Pollution's semi-explanation, then added. "I had one of my more brilliant ideas. Your troops have been talking to the enemy, and the enemy is about give them a gift." He added wistfully, "I've always enjoyed the idea, the irony, of food that kills."
Zoe muttered, "Ta ma de(7)..." as she and Mal ran as one person toward the place where they knew most of their soldiers were crouched against the cold.
"Zhu yi(8), mei-mei(9)!" War called after them.
In a tone tinged with wonder, DEATH said, THEY WILL NEVER EAT APPLES THE SAME WAY AGAIN. IT REMINDS ME OF THAT INCIDENT IN THE GARDEN... The other Horsepersons laughed as they all faded from sight. There was the hint of the sound of four sets of hoofbeats, then three horrifically soft pops....
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Chinese used in this piece:
1. "Hun dan" ~ "Damn!"
2. "fahng-tzong fung-kwong duh jeh" ~ "a knot of self indulgent lunacy" [a knot that indulges insanity]
3. "Wuh de tyen, ah." ~ "Dear god in heaven."
4. "FAHNG-SHEEN." ~ "Don't worry."
5. "Ee-chee shung-hoo-shee." ~ "Let's take a deep breath."
6. "Dong-ma?" ~ "Understand?"
7. "Ta ma de." ~ "Dammit."
8. "Zhu yi." ~ "Watch your back."
9. "Mei-mei" ~ "little sister"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For the interest and edification of those unfamiliar with Firefly, here is the exchange upon which this fic was based:
KAYLEE : Her an' the Captain both, whenever we get fresh fruit you never just munch on 'em.
ZOE: Do you know what a Grizwald is?
JAYNE: (entering) It's a grenade.
ZOE : (shows with fingers) 'Bout the size of a battery. Responds to pressure. Our platoon was stuck in a trench outside New Kasmir during the winter campaign... More'n'a week, completely cut off and the Alliance entrenched not ten yards away. We even got to talking with 'em, yelling across insults and jokes and such, 'cause no ammo to speak of, no orders, what are you gonna do? We mentioned we were out of rations and ten minutes later a buncha apples rained into the trench.
WASH : And they grew into a big tree and they climbed up the tree into a magical land with unicorns and a harp. Honey, there are children present.
RIVER: Tiny helpless children...
KAYLEE : Blew off their heads, huh?
ZOE : Captain said wait, but they were so hungry. Don't make much noise, just little pops and there's three guys kinda just end at the ribcage.
(Read more here: http://www.twiztv.com/scripts/firefly)
Enjoy, refche, from your Secret Author!