FIC: Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage -- an ANTIDOTE TO SORROW story.

[w_a_i_d]

 Author's Notes

I really can't overstate my incredulity at how long this has taken (or just how long it IS , I thought it might be a FICLET, HA. ) but here I am back at last and this... this technically isn't the next part of Antidote to Sorrow. (3rd person POV and present tense ZOMG!) But! Although this is a freestander, and can be read without any

Comments

[enname]

I have been merrily lurking around in this fandom, reading to my heart's content while trying to decide how to go about leaving comments. Do I do it on older fic, or barge in on something new? It would appear that I have decided that right here and now will do, rather than waste another second without giving some sort of feedback.

Surprisingly long you may say, but it seemed so short and intense whilst reading. I just love how he is so tired and has been to so many places and yet still cannot out run himself, his enemies let alone rest. For over two years at that intensity - it makes me simply exhausted to think of it. To truly vanish is such a hard thing to do, let alone when you just cannot repress something entirely unique (flaws and all). Yet he is all the time, hiding things and holding everything back - I've had that moment of being unable to remember a word in English without some very complex moves to regain it, it is oddly distressing. By the end, where he can let John give him his own name in the delirium of pain as compared to the myriad identities he struggles to keep up with... tragic.

The imagery is just stunning, of travel and of the sheer danger involved in going through Tibet, India and how reliant you become on just what you carry with you. The final scenes of him staggering, ill, through the countryside and his meditations on addiction are rather breathtaking. So much so that I think I am going to post this and go read it again. Just wonderful, thank you.

[w_a_i_d]

Thank you so much. I was once a lurker wondering whether and when to jump in and I'm so flattered you decided to take the plunge here. Your comment is just gorgeous -- it's so lovely to see one's hopes and intentions for a story reflected back so intelligently, (especially when one wasn't all that sure one had even got close to realising them.)

I've had that moment of being unable to remember a word in English without some very complex moves to regain it

I have too -- I was in Italy and the word was subsidise. Although it was even more complicated than I've indicated here -- it was suddenly as if all the Romance words of English had been chopped out leaving me with just the Anglo-Saxon to think in, while the bit of my brain that normally stored my Romance vocabulary was off processing Italian. I had this weird knowledge that the word I wanted meant "under--[something]" and I had to go through Latin before I could get hold of it. It is indeed odd, although it must be a million times worse when one can't go home.

Thanks again.

[enname]

I try to make a point of delurking eventually, because I know that feedback is something of a commodity that should be shared around. Even if it is merely the ability to summarise the piece of work in question. I seem to have lost my ability over the years to articulate how a piece of work makes me feel, although usually there are a lot of frantic flailing gestures and further alliteration.

For example, days after my initial read of this piece the one scene that remains lodged in my mind (Ok, one of many) is where Holmes is setting up to give himself morphine, searching on his legs for a vein. The utter loss of dignity that addiction causes, but the parallel loss of covering identities. When pared back, he is a pile of remarkable talent, loneliness and drugs. So sharply brought out. It reminds me of an image I came across in a 1898 medical handbook on hygiene. A male nurse, a few hours before his death, lying there and covered with thousands of scars from infected subcutaneous heroin injection sites - except for his face, neck and hands. The tragedy was that no one noticed until he collapsed the day before.

Hmm. See, tangential is my middle name.

The word I was looking for was 'to meet', except I didn't remember it in the end for another four days and had to settle for the French 'rendezvous' in the vague remembrance that it carried some similar connotation, even the person responded in a bemused manner. Apparently I had forgotten the connotation of 'illicit meeting.' I had to go through Japanese in the end (what I learned at school) to trigger the word. My problem was switching a lot of countries where I didn't speak any of the language and just trying to absorb patterns left me with.... nothing in the gap.

Terrifying.