A Couple of Short Pieces
I wrote a couple of short ficlets at the tail end of last year and then forgot to post them over here.
Title: Town Called Wall
Author: Glinda
Rating & Warnings: PG & None
Characters/Pairings: Dunstan Thorne & Tristan Thorne
Summary: It’s a moment bound for nowhere - it just goes round and round
There are many good things about living in a small town. It’s a safe, secure place to raise a child, the work is steady and everyone knows everyone else. There are however just as may bad things about living in a small town, especially when you’re seventeen. Top of the list is something that future teenagers in Wall will come to call ‘small town mentality’. Dunstan has no word for it, but he recognises the frustrations he’s felt since he was that age in Tristan’s words as he stumps around muttering to himself.
He wonders sometimes if people growing up in big cities like Manchester and London feel that was about their hometowns too. If people are just people in all their frustrating parochialism wherever you grow up. He allows himself to think about Una and her rapt fascination for his stories of Wall despite the fabulous circumstances she had grown up in and suspects they probably do.
Dunstan doesn’t know exactly what Tristan’s exclamations of “Ipswich!” relate to but he winces in sympathy none the less. Small minds and even smaller ambitions are something he’s mostly grown accustomed to over the years, but sometimes when he overhears people talking he wants to shake Tristan by the shoulders and order him to get out while he still can. It’s only the thought of the world beyond the Wall and the letter his mother left him that stays his hand and his tongue. There is a whole other world out there waiting for his boy, it will call him when he’s ready.
Title: Leave This World Alive
Author: Glinda
Rating & Warnings: PG & None
Characters/Pairings: Yvaine & The Sky Pirates
Summary: Wherever I am you’ll always be, more than just a memory.
For a bunch of blood-thirsty sky pirates, Yvaine thinks, they’re quite a mellow lot right now. Tonight they’ve got a fiddle and a squeeze box out, there’s food and drink and dancing. For all their lewd comments she doesn’t feel unsafe here. She’s not sure if its because the Captain has marked her clearly as Tristan’s or that the men are actually considerably more honourable than their Captain thinks them, but now that she’s settled in there’s a good deal more hands coming her way to catch her when she looses her footing than there are seeking to pinch her bottom. She wonders how much their behaviour is every bit as much a performance as their captain’s.
As much as she’s looking forward to getting to Wall so that she can get the terribly dull part of being a birthday present for Tristan’s precious Victoria out of the way and get the Babylon Candle he promised her in return. (And go home, oh how she longs to be home, especially here, so near and yet so far from her fellow stars.) Yvaine thinks she will miss her time on the Caspartine a little, even remember the time fondly. Certainly she will fondly remember Captain Shakespeare with his secrets, his wardrobe and his dreams of England. Tonight she even begins to feel a little fond of young Tristan and his silly quest. He seems different somehow here, as though he were coming into his own. She will be endlessly amused if he ends up having learned to be something approximating an honourable gentleman on a pirate ship.
Yvaine misses home terribly and nothing could make her stay down here forever, but here on the ship with the company and safety its brought, she almost wishes she could have a little longer here.
Title: Town Called Wall
Author: Glinda
Rating & Warnings: PG & None
Characters/Pairings: Dunstan Thorne & Tristan Thorne
Summary: It’s a moment bound for nowhere - it just goes round and round
There are many good things about living in a small town. It’s a safe, secure place to raise a child, the work is steady and everyone knows everyone else. There are however just as may bad things about living in a small town, especially when you’re seventeen. Top of the list is something that future teenagers in Wall will come to call ‘small town mentality’. Dunstan has no word for it, but he recognises the frustrations he’s felt since he was that age in Tristan’s words as he stumps around muttering to himself.
He wonders sometimes if people growing up in big cities like Manchester and London feel that was about their hometowns too. If people are just people in all their frustrating parochialism wherever you grow up. He allows himself to think about Una and her rapt fascination for his stories of Wall despite the fabulous circumstances she had grown up in and suspects they probably do.
Dunstan doesn’t know exactly what Tristan’s exclamations of “Ipswich!” relate to but he winces in sympathy none the less. Small minds and even smaller ambitions are something he’s mostly grown accustomed to over the years, but sometimes when he overhears people talking he wants to shake Tristan by the shoulders and order him to get out while he still can. It’s only the thought of the world beyond the Wall and the letter his mother left him that stays his hand and his tongue. There is a whole other world out there waiting for his boy, it will call him when he’s ready.
Title: Leave This World Alive
Author: Glinda
Rating & Warnings: PG & None
Characters/Pairings: Yvaine & The Sky Pirates
Summary: Wherever I am you’ll always be, more than just a memory.
For a bunch of blood-thirsty sky pirates, Yvaine thinks, they’re quite a mellow lot right now. Tonight they’ve got a fiddle and a squeeze box out, there’s food and drink and dancing. For all their lewd comments she doesn’t feel unsafe here. She’s not sure if its because the Captain has marked her clearly as Tristan’s or that the men are actually considerably more honourable than their Captain thinks them, but now that she’s settled in there’s a good deal more hands coming her way to catch her when she looses her footing than there are seeking to pinch her bottom. She wonders how much their behaviour is every bit as much a performance as their captain’s.
As much as she’s looking forward to getting to Wall so that she can get the terribly dull part of being a birthday present for Tristan’s precious Victoria out of the way and get the Babylon Candle he promised her in return. (And go home, oh how she longs to be home, especially here, so near and yet so far from her fellow stars.) Yvaine thinks she will miss her time on the Caspartine a little, even remember the time fondly. Certainly she will fondly remember Captain Shakespeare with his secrets, his wardrobe and his dreams of England. Tonight she even begins to feel a little fond of young Tristan and his silly quest. He seems different somehow here, as though he were coming into his own. She will be endlessly amused if he ends up having learned to be something approximating an honourable gentleman on a pirate ship.
Yvaine misses home terribly and nothing could make her stay down here forever, but here on the ship with the company and safety its brought, she almost wishes she could have a little longer here.