Fic: Shimmering Through the Dusk
Hm... I just realized I didn't actually post my latest fic to this blog. It was written for then_theres_us and I completely forgot to post here too.
So, here it is!
Title: Shimmering Through the Dusk
Rating: Probably PG13 or a soft R
Characters/pairings: Rose/Ten
Warnings/spoilers: Doomsday. And subtly for Journey's End.
Author's Notes: Written for the Open Challenge-- I used Challenge 62 ("Beginnings") and photos 20 and 22 as prompts.
When she was a child, she-- as many children do-- loved fairy tales. Her young mind was filled with fantastic images, ancient tales told, retold, and woven throughout history. 807 words
She would often drive away from the city so she could lose herself in the thin stretches of forest that still clung to existence along the surface of the land. There, she would move amongst the trees, meandering, no path to adhere to, no rules or guidelines or plans of action. She would pause sometimes, close her eyes, breathe in the air that whirled in gusts around her, and let herself drift as though on the current of the wind. Sometimes, she thought she could feel the life pulsing around her, the gravity pulling at her, the photosynthesis in the vegetation, the rippling force of the brook at her feet, the first stumbling steps of a fawn, the photons dancing in a sunbeam. The turn of the earth. In those moments, she put away her doubts and her pain and her breathless need, and just let herself fall into the cycle of the spinning planets and dying stars and tender, green shoots pushing their way up through the soil for the first time.
In those moments, she felt closer to him.
When she was a child, she-- as many children do-- loved fairy tales. Her young mind was filled with fantastic images, ancient tales told, retold, and woven throughout history. Knights on horseback rescuing fair damsels (though sometimes the damsel rescued the knight, because nothing took a dragon by surprise like a damsel suddenly wielding a sword, or swinging at him on a chain.). Glittering, living castles that only appeared once every thousand years, only to vanish like mist, or a dream. Wizards and sorceresses both good and evil who swept their arms before themselves and transformed everything around them, the power of transmutation and alchemy and creation coiled within the palm of a hand. Wolves with eyes that burned of gold and voices that sang haunting songs of destruction and healing. And, most of all, enduring love that reached beyond sight and memory, time and space and impossibility, to reunite. She believed these stories, held them near her heart, knowing that some things are more true than they appear.
And, how true, how incredibly, fantastically true they were. But then, in an instant, they were not. Such things didn't exist in this world, not in this one. It felt like waking from a dream, the splendor of her night's visions drowned within the harsh light of day, that glaring, unforgiving light that muted color and blinded and made the world look flat, and her heart shattered.
But, this world had need of a defender. And so, the damsel took up her sword, and became the champion of her adopted world. Tirelessly she fought, staring Death in the eye time and time again-- and, once, grappling with it, pale fists clenched around its smoky wrists as her lips curled back in a feral, snarling grin. Always, she was there to meet a threat. And if those around her began to whisper of her exploits as if she was some mythic goddess of old, she did not notice.
She still sought him in her dreams. Every night, she would touch his face, tangle her fingers in his hair, pull him down to her, and he would ghost his hands over her body, pressing cool lips to her throat as she writhed against him. And he would say the words that he had been unable to finish, would say them again and again, breathed between open-mouthed kisses crushed desperately to her hips, her stomach, her breasts and mouth. And she believed him.
There was one particular day, a day that was gray and drizzly and a little bit cold, that she moved amongst swaying trees, mindless of the moisture clinging to her clothing and weighing sodden in her hair. She paused, pressing her palms to the coarse skin of a beech, breathing in the scent of a rain-washed wood as she let dusk slowly, seductively settle around her. She let her head fall straight back to watch the first star of the night fade into view between parting clouds, as she so often had done with him, hand in hand. In a rush, she remembered all those fairy tales that she had long ago set aside, remembered them all at once, and as she had when she was a child, she saw herself in them. She remembered how she had pretended to be the sword-wielding damsel that dove through layers of could-be's and might-be's and will-be's, through the pages of storybooks and the lilting songs of legend, through eternity and nothing, to reach her Other.
I create the words. I scatter them....
In that instant, a breathless stretch of time that wrapped itself around her, flaring through her senses and screaming in her mind until she thought she would combust, she knew that her quest had begun.
So, here it is!
Title: Shimmering Through the Dusk
Rating: Probably PG13 or a soft R
Characters/pairings: Rose/Ten
Warnings/spoilers: Doomsday. And subtly for Journey's End.
Author's Notes: Written for the Open Challenge-- I used Challenge 62 ("Beginnings") and photos 20 and 22 as prompts.
When she was a child, she-- as many children do-- loved fairy tales. Her young mind was filled with fantastic images, ancient tales told, retold, and woven throughout history. 807 words
She would often drive away from the city so she could lose herself in the thin stretches of forest that still clung to existence along the surface of the land. There, she would move amongst the trees, meandering, no path to adhere to, no rules or guidelines or plans of action. She would pause sometimes, close her eyes, breathe in the air that whirled in gusts around her, and let herself drift as though on the current of the wind. Sometimes, she thought she could feel the life pulsing around her, the gravity pulling at her, the photosynthesis in the vegetation, the rippling force of the brook at her feet, the first stumbling steps of a fawn, the photons dancing in a sunbeam. The turn of the earth. In those moments, she put away her doubts and her pain and her breathless need, and just let herself fall into the cycle of the spinning planets and dying stars and tender, green shoots pushing their way up through the soil for the first time.
In those moments, she felt closer to him.
When she was a child, she-- as many children do-- loved fairy tales. Her young mind was filled with fantastic images, ancient tales told, retold, and woven throughout history. Knights on horseback rescuing fair damsels (though sometimes the damsel rescued the knight, because nothing took a dragon by surprise like a damsel suddenly wielding a sword, or swinging at him on a chain.). Glittering, living castles that only appeared once every thousand years, only to vanish like mist, or a dream. Wizards and sorceresses both good and evil who swept their arms before themselves and transformed everything around them, the power of transmutation and alchemy and creation coiled within the palm of a hand. Wolves with eyes that burned of gold and voices that sang haunting songs of destruction and healing. And, most of all, enduring love that reached beyond sight and memory, time and space and impossibility, to reunite. She believed these stories, held them near her heart, knowing that some things are more true than they appear.
And, how true, how incredibly, fantastically true they were. But then, in an instant, they were not. Such things didn't exist in this world, not in this one. It felt like waking from a dream, the splendor of her night's visions drowned within the harsh light of day, that glaring, unforgiving light that muted color and blinded and made the world look flat, and her heart shattered.
But, this world had need of a defender. And so, the damsel took up her sword, and became the champion of her adopted world. Tirelessly she fought, staring Death in the eye time and time again-- and, once, grappling with it, pale fists clenched around its smoky wrists as her lips curled back in a feral, snarling grin. Always, she was there to meet a threat. And if those around her began to whisper of her exploits as if she was some mythic goddess of old, she did not notice.
She still sought him in her dreams. Every night, she would touch his face, tangle her fingers in his hair, pull him down to her, and he would ghost his hands over her body, pressing cool lips to her throat as she writhed against him. And he would say the words that he had been unable to finish, would say them again and again, breathed between open-mouthed kisses crushed desperately to her hips, her stomach, her breasts and mouth. And she believed him.
There was one particular day, a day that was gray and drizzly and a little bit cold, that she moved amongst swaying trees, mindless of the moisture clinging to her clothing and weighing sodden in her hair. She paused, pressing her palms to the coarse skin of a beech, breathing in the scent of a rain-washed wood as she let dusk slowly, seductively settle around her. She let her head fall straight back to watch the first star of the night fade into view between parting clouds, as she so often had done with him, hand in hand. In a rush, she remembered all those fairy tales that she had long ago set aside, remembered them all at once, and as she had when she was a child, she saw herself in them. She remembered how she had pretended to be the sword-wielding damsel that dove through layers of could-be's and might-be's and will-be's, through the pages of storybooks and the lilting songs of legend, through eternity and nothing, to reach her Other.
I create the words. I scatter them....
In that instant, a breathless stretch of time that wrapped itself around her, flaring through her senses and screaming in her mind until she thought she would combust, she knew that her quest had begun.