Infinite Grasp -- A Gundam Wing Drabble
Title: Infinite Grasp
Fandom: Gundam Wing
Word Count: 477
Rating: PG, I guess.
Summary: No one ever just looks at the moon anymore, y'know?
A/N: Duo's POV. Musing on simpler times and missing the cosmic mystery. Several references to moon mythology, and the location of L2 (on the dark side of the moon).
I'm definitely shaking
the silence isn't breaking
backwashed and stranded memories
of something I thought could be
|| Pictures in an Exhibition ~~ Death Cab for Cutie ||
People on Earth never appreciate the moon. From L2, the moon is just some sort of threatening, barren wasteland that blocks the light from the sun. It’s like a desert without the heat, a polluted ocean without the water. A graveyard.
Getting sent to the Moon is punishment, like being posted to Antarctica or tossed on L2. We’re forgotten, back there. Victims of plagues, sabotage, communist crud, shortages, overpopulation, you name it. It’s hard for me to see the Moon in any other light than the harsh, close-up one of unfiltered sunlight.
But here, on Earth… it’s so beautiful.
It’s so easy to forget that I’ve ever walked there on that pearl, or that I was born and lived my life on that glitter in the sky. I think this is what pre-colony people felt like, looking up at the sky: this wonder at the untouchable. I can reach out for the moon, and almost see the glare of the first spacecraft fighting its tenuous way out into the great beyond and into the collective subconscious.
I wonder if kids ever want to be astronauts anymore. I mean, way back when, before the AC era, before the moronic Alliance, before guerilla attacks and injured civilians, astronauts were like celebrities. Every kid wanted to be one. They’d want to be President, and control the known world with an iron fist and laissez-faire economics. Or they’d want to reel in the women and kill themselves shooting up as rock legends. Then snot-nosed little brats everywhere decided it’d be better if they got the chance to rope cows, shoot Indians, and ride off into the sunset.
I’ve always played the role of Indian, the barbaric aggressor whose piddling arrows are no match for the military might and moral fortitude of the cavalry.
Yet, there’s only one world leader, and a handful of rock legends, and only slightly more cowboys. Astronauts, though… those are a dime a dozen, nowadays. Hell, all of the colonists are technically astronauts. And what kind of modern kid lies on his back, looking up at the stars that we populate and dissect, the moon that we’ve tamed and ignored… and craves being that space adventurer?
Space is no longer the unknown, the unbounded. Sure, it’s the unexperienced, but only on the same level that your normal kid never experiences Europe. There’s no mystique about it, anymore. The world is jaded, older, sadder. It produces kids like me, who are only awed in fleeting moments by glimpses of ancient myths. Kids who kill and pillage for a cause, who are stymied by pointlessness at every turn… who don’t take time to dance with Luna.
There are no more adventures to be had in the great beyond, past the cold diamond moon. Only poverty, death, and the commonplace.
Good night, myth and wonder. Good morning, reality and devastation.
Fandom: Gundam Wing
Word Count: 477
Rating: PG, I guess.
Summary: No one ever just looks at the moon anymore, y'know?
A/N: Duo's POV. Musing on simpler times and missing the cosmic mystery. Several references to moon mythology, and the location of L2 (on the dark side of the moon).
I'm definitely shaking
the silence isn't breaking
backwashed and stranded memories
of something I thought could be
|| Pictures in an Exhibition ~~ Death Cab for Cutie ||
People on Earth never appreciate the moon. From L2, the moon is just some sort of threatening, barren wasteland that blocks the light from the sun. It’s like a desert without the heat, a polluted ocean without the water. A graveyard.
Getting sent to the Moon is punishment, like being posted to Antarctica or tossed on L2. We’re forgotten, back there. Victims of plagues, sabotage, communist crud, shortages, overpopulation, you name it. It’s hard for me to see the Moon in any other light than the harsh, close-up one of unfiltered sunlight.
But here, on Earth… it’s so beautiful.
It’s so easy to forget that I’ve ever walked there on that pearl, or that I was born and lived my life on that glitter in the sky. I think this is what pre-colony people felt like, looking up at the sky: this wonder at the untouchable. I can reach out for the moon, and almost see the glare of the first spacecraft fighting its tenuous way out into the great beyond and into the collective subconscious.
I wonder if kids ever want to be astronauts anymore. I mean, way back when, before the AC era, before the moronic Alliance, before guerilla attacks and injured civilians, astronauts were like celebrities. Every kid wanted to be one. They’d want to be President, and control the known world with an iron fist and laissez-faire economics. Or they’d want to reel in the women and kill themselves shooting up as rock legends. Then snot-nosed little brats everywhere decided it’d be better if they got the chance to rope cows, shoot Indians, and ride off into the sunset.
I’ve always played the role of Indian, the barbaric aggressor whose piddling arrows are no match for the military might and moral fortitude of the cavalry.
Yet, there’s only one world leader, and a handful of rock legends, and only slightly more cowboys. Astronauts, though… those are a dime a dozen, nowadays. Hell, all of the colonists are technically astronauts. And what kind of modern kid lies on his back, looking up at the stars that we populate and dissect, the moon that we’ve tamed and ignored… and craves being that space adventurer?
Space is no longer the unknown, the unbounded. Sure, it’s the unexperienced, but only on the same level that your normal kid never experiences Europe. There’s no mystique about it, anymore. The world is jaded, older, sadder. It produces kids like me, who are only awed in fleeting moments by glimpses of ancient myths. Kids who kill and pillage for a cause, who are stymied by pointlessness at every turn… who don’t take time to dance with Luna.
There are no more adventures to be had in the great beyond, past the cold diamond moon. Only poverty, death, and the commonplace.
Good night, myth and wonder. Good morning, reality and devastation.