new fics: Three Wiki Stories (SG1/ SGA/ SGU)
Title: Three Wiki Stories: Symphony No. 75 (SG1)/ Summer Rains (SGA)/ Turtle (SGU)
Author: Shenandoah Risu
Rating: PG-13
Content Flags: the f-word in Turtle
Spoilers: vague ones that won't ruin anything
Characters: Dr. Brightman (SG1), Ancient Female/ Ancient Male (SGA), Vanessa James (SGU)
Author's Notes: Created for a challenge at stargatecountry. The task was to get five random Wikipedia pages by clicking on the "Random Article" link and then using one of those pages as a prompt for a story. For maximum points all three shows had to be covered.
Disclaimer: I don't own SGU or any other Stargate shows. I wouldn't know what to do with them. Now, Young... Young I'd know what to do with. ;-)
Thanks for reading! Feedback = Love. ;-)
Please leave comments here at my LJ if it's not too much trouble.
oOo
Title: Symphony No. 75 (SG1)
Author: Shenandoah Risu
Rating: G
Character/Pairings: Dr. Brightman
Words: 546
Warnings: none
Four Wikipedia Links Not used:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umedpur
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Campbell_Smith
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas_Highway_115
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Undying_Darkness
Wikipedia Link Used:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._75_(Haydn)
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Symphony No. 75
Alison Brightman has truly eclectic taste when it comes to music.
She has music for everything she does, a tune that’s appropriate, that matches what she’s doing or provides a counterpoint to balance her.
When she’s driving - especially long distances - she loves to listen to techno. But it’s only good for the open road; in heavy inner-city traffic it just gets her too excited and impatient. Out there, on the interstate, techno is perfect, and she cranks up her car stereo, the steady thumping of the bass feels like a heartbeat to her - as if her car, the road, the land around her was alive.
She likes heavy metal and similar music that just has to be loud to be any good, but she especially likes heavy metal with good melodies, a headbanger that gets her through disagreeable tasks, like house cleaning or yardwork. She appreciates a good guitar riff or drum solo, and more than once she got caught by her neighbors, playing air instruments in the back yard. They just shook their head, realizing she can’t hear them with her earbuds in, and went about their own business.
New Age is perfect for her yoga routine, or when she works in the lab or on the computer. Something soothing and inoffensive in the background that’s easy to tune out without having to turn it off is just what she needs there. She has quite a collection and she’s particularly fond of what she calls “Planetarium Music” - heavy on the synthesizers, mostly instrumental, with sweeping, often repetitive harmonies and melodies.
Ethnic drumming is great for cooking, although she hardly ever has time for that. Drums are great for laundry, too, and more often than not the washer or dryer becomes an impromptu skin. Indian tablas are great, but her favorite is Japanese Taiko drumming. She’s been to a number of concerts - and sometimes she secretly wishes she could run away with the band and hit the big drums forever.
She has a good stash of classical tapes in the SGC infirmary, because no matter how much people profess to hating classical music, she notices that sick people respond favorably to it. She thinks it might have to do with the many layers of melodies, the fact that you can’t easily sing along, and there are no lyrics. She likes the big symphonies for people who are well on their way to good health - a nicely thundering Beethoven orchestral piece, some Tchaikovsky (anything but The Nutcracker), or the more subtle storytelling of Mahler’s work, the tense drama of Brahms.
But for those patients who are not well, she goes for Haydn.
His smaller ensembles sound simpler and more manageable, especially for the listener who is in pain, since it is easier to latch on to a particular instrument and follow it along. There is little to interpret, she finds, it’s not like movie music, illustrating something else; this is music in its purest form, yet minus the mathematical chill she often finds in Bach. There are certainly moods in his Symphony No. 75, but when she asks her patients to describe what they feel, they all have their own interpretation.
And for Alison Brightman it’s all about finding your own way in the chaos of everyday life.
oOo
Title: Summer Rains (SGA)
Author: Shenandoah Risu
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairings: ancient female/ ancient male from "Rising"
Words: 520
Warnings: mention of intimacy
Four Wikipedia Links Not used:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Beagle_(1872)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pisonia_grandis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantites
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Banks_(died_1676)
Wikipedia Link Used:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_Rains
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Summer Rains
When she thinks of him she can still feel the summer rains on her bare skin.
She met him, far to the South and away from all the snow and the big city-spaceship. It was a hot and dry summer, belying the severe ice age that had gripped a large portion of the planet. She worked on the Stardrive, the engine that would propel the city-spaceship far beyond the galaxy. He was a scientist, chosen to travel to the distant place.
Most of her colleagues stayed inside all the time, far removed from the hot, dry dust of the area. But she loved to go outside whenever she could, to feel the hot sun burn on her fair skin, see the sweat bead up on her limbs and evaporate while she watched. She loved watching the sunset and witnessing the sudden plunge in temperature, the remainder of the day’s heat radiating off the ground and warming her feet while she shivered in the rapidly cooling air.
It was then that he would approach her and hand her his jacket, and she marveled at how his dark skin blended in with the night. She spread her hands over his chest and smiled at the spaces in between - a mirror image of her fingers interlaced on his body.
They would walk a long distance, hand in hand, until the light of the assembly facility no longer blocked the view of the night sky. Then they would lie down and look up at the stars and talk about faraway places and what he might see.
One night they made love among the stars, and neither of them noticed the approaching clouds, until they were surprised by the most delicious warm and gentle rain shower, and she tasted the water on his skin, and she wept for a future that would never be.
She wanted him to stay, and she knew that if she had asked him, he would have remained with her, but that’s why she never did. She knew how much his mission meant to him, that it was a sacrifice she simply could not ask of him.
She travelled to the cold northern spaceport with him, helping with the engine testing, and she didn’t see him as often then, but when she did their precious time together was like a beacon in the dark to her.
The day of his departure she met up with him, the giant city-starship thrumming with barely restrained energy. She looked at him, drinking in his sight, wishing with all her heart for him to stay. He searched her eyes, willing her to say the word.
But she said nothing.
He turned and walked away, and moments later the ground trembled as Atlantis slowly rose up into the cold air. The Stardrive ignited with a flash, and then the craft was gone.
She wonders where he is now, whether he’s still alive, whether he thinks of her, misses her. And when the summer rains come she walks outside, alone, leaving her clothes behind, feeling the warm spray on her naked skin and his lips on hers.
oOo
Title: Turtle (SGU)
Author: Shenandoah Risu
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairings: Vanessa James
Words: 525
Warnings: the f-word
Four Wikipedia Links Not used:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_snakes_of_New_Jersey
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krzysztof_Szyd%C5%82owiecki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirens_(1999_film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crunch_(exercise)
Wikipedia Link Used:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_Creek_News
,
Turtle
Figures.
Vanessa finally gets to be on an Away Team again, and promptly twists her ankle.
“Come on, I’ll get you back to the Gate,” Scott says and starts to pull her up off the ground when they both spot the berry patch right next to them.
“You go catch up with the others, I’ll just stay here and pick berries,” Vanessa says.
“You sure?”
She lifts her gun.
“Yeah. Go on. I’ll radio if I need help.”
Scott gallops off to catch up with the rest of the team, gathering large fragrant fruit in a grove of trees on the other side of the meadow. Vanessa wraps her ankle with a bandage, pulls up her basket and starts picking berries, popping one into her mouth every once in a while. They’ve had several shifts on this planet and know what food stuffs to look for.
Suddenly her heart seems to stop. “Oh, shit…”
The rock next to her leg has moved and she sits motionless, barely daring to breathe.
The rock moves again and she bends over to take a closer look.
An ancient little face stares back at her.
“Fuck me,” she mutters. “A turtle!”
Backing away just a little she watches as the creature sticks out its neck further from its carapace, skin dry and wrinkled. It reaches for a berry and chomps down with gusto.
Vanessa smiles, her painful injury all but forgotten. She picks a large ripe berry and holds it up to the animal. It hisses, and she backs off again but keeps holding out the berry. The turtle takes a few lumbering steps and then gorges itself on the berry presented.
Holding the berry with one hand Vanessa picks more with her other hand, tossing them into her basket.
“Hey Vanessa, you ok?” It’s Barnes, over the radio.
“Yeah. I made a friend.”
“You found an alien?”
“It’s a turtle. Well, it looks like one. And it likes berries.”
Barnes chuckles. “Bring it along for some soup, eh? Over.”
Vanessa holds out another berry.
“I’ve had turtle soup before,” she tells the creature. “It wasn’t all that good. I know you guys can get pretty old, so maybe they had a really old one in that pot. That’s just wrong on so many levels, don’t you think?”
And she feeds it another berry.
The turtle is about the size of her helmet, its carapace brownish-grey, with little lumps and a grainy texture - perfect camouflage in a berry patch - she would have never noticed it had it not moved.
“I wonder how old you are,” she muses. “Well, rest assured, nobody will come by and bother you again. But that means you have to pick your own berries. Here. Have another one.”
Eventually the turtle goes one way and Vanessa crawls in another direction. Her basket is full so she starts filling up the straw bag she’s brought along. A short while later the team returns and Scott and Volker help her back to the Gate.
She twists around but she can’t make out the turtle anymore.
And she feels strangely sad, knowing she will never see it again.
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