[Witches' Horses] Witches' Horses
Title: oh, my god . . .
'Verse/characters: Witches' Horses; Ilya, Katya, etc
Prompt: 98D "puzzle"
Word Count: 475
Notes: when I put my head between her and her laptop, billradish suggested 'pewter' as a way of making me go away. Yes, I am breaking pattern.
This follows from the previous.
An Image For You.
He did end up banging on something with a wrench, but it didn't make him feel better. Being back at the beginning of this job, safely in Vladimir with nothing broken and hardly anything badly worn? That would make him feel better. Failing that, being off the terem and limping home.
But no. Instead he had to deal with the occasional ominous thump as they found something else they thought might be useful, or valuable as an antique, and brought it back, put it inside the horse's belly and wandered out again.
It was when he heard a thud, followed by a couple of bangs and gasp that he started to worry. When no one spoke, he worried more, and eventually flipped the audio switch to broadcast to them. "Please tell me that was one of you."
There was a long silence, and his gut clenched tighter, and he wished he knew more about fighting, in any sense of the word. "Please. I won't even salt your vodka for the awful joke."
"Ilya," Katya said softly, and he nearly had a heart attack at the familiar voice, "you need to come see this."
"Not if it means setting foot outside," he replied instantly, but he could hear her hair shift as she shook her head slowly.
"Ilya--" she started, then swallowed, continued, "I've never seen anything like this before. It's big, and I think it would glow if it were turned on."
Katya had never been on a university campus in her life. But she had spent most of it out interacting with the real-life applications of university ideas.
"Katya, I won't come there alone," he admitted, "we shouldn't leave the horse abandoned. Not here, not now."
"Dima, come with me," the captain whispered, as awestruck as Katya, and then Ilya knew whatever they'd found, it was big.
Dima was the one who stayed behind with the horse, when he and the captain came back, the captain walking with him deep into the heart of the terem, past tangles of pewter-colored wires spewed from walls, half-finished cobbled together repairs abandoned halfway through, and there was something terribly sad about that, made him wonder what had actually happened, not just want to get out of there, away from the silence and the echoes and the ancient posters advertising poisons with smiling faces.
The spine of the terem was something far different that it should have been, given the age of the gear they'd found within it, long banks of man-sized capacitors and cables. It looked like some--he paused, stared, as they had stared, then whispered a curse.
" . . Find me anything that looks like it might be related to this," he said, eventually, and Katya and the captain moved, nearly running.
This was far past any university's wildest ideas, and it was here, in a long-dead terem. Dear god he wanted to take it apart, bring it back to New Kiev and run tests for the rest of time.
'Verse/characters: Witches' Horses; Ilya, Katya, etc
Prompt: 98D "puzzle"
Word Count: 475
Notes: when I put my head between her and her laptop, billradish suggested 'pewter' as a way of making me go away. Yes, I am breaking pattern.
This follows from the previous.
An Image For You.
He did end up banging on something with a wrench, but it didn't make him feel better. Being back at the beginning of this job, safely in Vladimir with nothing broken and hardly anything badly worn? That would make him feel better. Failing that, being off the terem and limping home.
But no. Instead he had to deal with the occasional ominous thump as they found something else they thought might be useful, or valuable as an antique, and brought it back, put it inside the horse's belly and wandered out again.
It was when he heard a thud, followed by a couple of bangs and gasp that he started to worry. When no one spoke, he worried more, and eventually flipped the audio switch to broadcast to them. "Please tell me that was one of you."
There was a long silence, and his gut clenched tighter, and he wished he knew more about fighting, in any sense of the word. "Please. I won't even salt your vodka for the awful joke."
"Ilya," Katya said softly, and he nearly had a heart attack at the familiar voice, "you need to come see this."
"Not if it means setting foot outside," he replied instantly, but he could hear her hair shift as she shook her head slowly.
"Ilya--" she started, then swallowed, continued, "I've never seen anything like this before. It's big, and I think it would glow if it were turned on."
Katya had never been on a university campus in her life. But she had spent most of it out interacting with the real-life applications of university ideas.
"Katya, I won't come there alone," he admitted, "we shouldn't leave the horse abandoned. Not here, not now."
"Dima, come with me," the captain whispered, as awestruck as Katya, and then Ilya knew whatever they'd found, it was big.
Dima was the one who stayed behind with the horse, when he and the captain came back, the captain walking with him deep into the heart of the terem, past tangles of pewter-colored wires spewed from walls, half-finished cobbled together repairs abandoned halfway through, and there was something terribly sad about that, made him wonder what had actually happened, not just want to get out of there, away from the silence and the echoes and the ancient posters advertising poisons with smiling faces.
The spine of the terem was something far different that it should have been, given the age of the gear they'd found within it, long banks of man-sized capacitors and cables. It looked like some--he paused, stared, as they had stared, then whispered a curse.
" . . Find me anything that looks like it might be related to this," he said, eventually, and Katya and the captain moved, nearly running.
This was far past any university's wildest ideas, and it was here, in a long-dead terem. Dear god he wanted to take it apart, bring it back to New Kiev and run tests for the rest of time.