Stray
Stray - For What Can Change
“Oh, no.” Teeth bared in the yellow of jaundiced bone. “I'm afraid you've got the wrong idea. We're going back together.”
“Oh, no.” Teeth bared in the yellow of jaundiced bone. “I'm afraid you've got the wrong idea. We're going back together.”
"Grey Fox? He died in Zanzibar."
"Yes. But they revived him."
And the conversation just goes blithely on. Er, okay, lady, whatever you say.
To tell the truth, the bit of AU touristry might have been inspired by my favorite part of one of the old Wheel of Time books, back when Robert Jordan's creepy preoccupation with "oh my god humanity has two genders and they act different" was balanced with more actual stuff happening. There's a part where, through some magical mishap, a character gets a series of brief glimpses into what might have happened, had his life taken a different path. It's stayed with me, long after the names of all the eight billion other characters have faded. It's me indulging an enduring fascination with "What if?" games; the effect events and environment have on a person's heart and behavior, and moreover, what that person himself might feel on confronting that, yeah, it didn't have to be this way.
Which may just be another way of saying that I'm a sucker for AUs ^_^ I'm not sure how much of it is just self-indulgence, but that chapter is one of my personal favorite bits of the story so far.
I tend to think more in words, emotions, and sensations than in actual images. Whenever something is set very strongly in my head, like the Ocelot versus Ocelot standoff, what's clearest to me is the feel of it. Part of my, er, process I suppose they call it, is just to try to find a way to impart that 'feel'. Obssessive attention to structure quirks, use (and deliberate misuse, heh) of punctuation and such is how I try to do that, especially in cases like this, when saying "He felt panicked, as though he were backed into a corner" doesn't seem to cover it.
(In retrospect, I wish I'd taken some more time to polish that chapter. Lots of things cry out for tweaking, though it was sitting around a long time before the midnight, "Dammit, I will get this finished up and posted" scramble, heh.)
Anyway, thanks for taking the time to review. I always look forward to your input.
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