Fic: Unknown but remembered
Title: Unknown but remembered
Author: jactrades
Written for: this picture prompt from igrockspock
Fandom: The Giver
Characters/Pairing: Lily
Rating/Warnings: G
Wordcount: ~250
Summary: "I don't think we've had a Storyteller in the community for a long time."
Notes: Part of igrockspock 's A Picture is Worth 1000 Words: A Multifandom Comment Fic Meme. Unbeta'd comment fic.
Lily finds the photograph in the archive within the Annex of the House of the Old.
The colors are all wrong, she thinks as she lifts the tattered sheet from the dusty file, and smiles at the thought.
There’s no reason that she can see for the image to exist at all. The details of the plants are too hazy for it to be a learning aide - besides there's no botanical name given. The file itself has a label, as uninformative as it is precise, tidily written in a firm hand: Place - Elsewhere, Time - Before.
The Community now has a new definition for Before. There's the slight hesitation, always: "It happened a few years before... Before." Before he left the Community. No one mentions the name, ever, although it hasn't been designated Not-To-Be-Spoken.
There aren't many decrees from the Elders anymore.
The edges of the photograph have been worn away from more than time, she realizes, looking closer. Someone once looked at - held - touched this image often. Someone once valued it enough to keep it, keep it safe for a future that didn't - wouldn't - couldn't see the possibilities in the faded colors.
The unknown and unknowable stories are always the ones that set her mind flickering about, like the fireflies she now dreams of.
Lily's Assignment may be Historian, her life's task to record the Not-My-Memories. (A lie, not merely imprecise language. They were all their memories now.) But that's not who she is.
She gently places the photograph aside. On the next Unscheduled Holiday she'll try to write the story of this photograph, and the someone who loved it.
Author: jactrades
Written for: this picture prompt from igrockspock
Fandom: The Giver
Characters/Pairing: Lily
Rating/Warnings: G
Wordcount: ~250
Summary: "I don't think we've had a Storyteller in the community for a long time."
Notes: Part of igrockspock 's A Picture is Worth 1000 Words: A Multifandom Comment Fic Meme. Unbeta'd comment fic.
Lily finds the photograph in the archive within the Annex of the House of the Old.
The colors are all wrong, she thinks as she lifts the tattered sheet from the dusty file, and smiles at the thought.
There’s no reason that she can see for the image to exist at all. The details of the plants are too hazy for it to be a learning aide - besides there's no botanical name given. The file itself has a label, as uninformative as it is precise, tidily written in a firm hand: Place - Elsewhere, Time - Before.
The Community now has a new definition for Before. There's the slight hesitation, always: "It happened a few years before... Before." Before he left the Community. No one mentions the name, ever, although it hasn't been designated Not-To-Be-Spoken.
There aren't many decrees from the Elders anymore.
The edges of the photograph have been worn away from more than time, she realizes, looking closer. Someone once looked at - held - touched this image often. Someone once valued it enough to keep it, keep it safe for a future that didn't - wouldn't - couldn't see the possibilities in the faded colors.
The unknown and unknowable stories are always the ones that set her mind flickering about, like the fireflies she now dreams of.
Lily's Assignment may be Historian, her life's task to record the Not-My-Memories. (A lie, not merely imprecise language. They were all their memories now.) But that's not who she is.
She gently places the photograph aside. On the next Unscheduled Holiday she'll try to write the story of this photograph, and the someone who loved it.