The little AU: Winter Hopes: Stretch
The little AU: Winter Hopes: Stretch
slashfairy
~~
They take the weekend and go up coast to the house at the end of the Bluff road; everyone's grateful for the increase in space, the relative quiet, the return home more poignant because it's the home they've chosen, the one they've made, so it's the one that accommodates them the best.
Even though it's not really so cold here, Karl keeps a fire in the fireplace, and Orli keeps the heat on in the studio. But the windows are open to catch the air, what zephyrs blow through laced with hints of the tropics or the desert instead of Alaska and Nunavit.
There's barbecue- grilled eggplant, roasted corn, beans slow-cooked since last night, with fresh corn tortillas made in town by someone from Chiapas, and apples and onions stewed together in a South African Potjie with carrots and potatoes, and green peas tossed in at the last minute for colour and sweetness. There're nuts: cashews, almonds, macadamia, which he eats one at a time, not by the handful, savouring the richness of them.
In the mid-afternoon, when the sand's its warmest, they take the dogs and walk down the beach, Orli and Hunter and Karl taking turns hanging back with Viggo while he, more serious [though not heavy, not weighed-down, just attentive, just appreciative] walks along living everything anew: colours, scents, sounds, the freshness of the salt air, their faces as they run up and hand him treasures: beach glass, rocks, feathers, odds and ends of small driftwood already shaped like boats, like birds.
Later he spends some time in the bookshelves, pulling down poetry, putting up verses at Perceval and grabbing a few more phrases from thin air for his own, careful, always, to mark next to the ones he's afraid he's borrowed without permission from someone he admires so much their words are like his blood, his breath. Tomorrow or the next day he'll check some phrases; maybe in between some drawing, or some sleep.
Around them the house breathes in and out, happy to have her men home, happy to be there for them to stretch into, happy to stretch around them.
previously: Translations
next: Bounce
Fragile/Jesse Cook
slashfairy
~~
They take the weekend and go up coast to the house at the end of the Bluff road; everyone's grateful for the increase in space, the relative quiet, the return home more poignant because it's the home they've chosen, the one they've made, so it's the one that accommodates them the best.
Even though it's not really so cold here, Karl keeps a fire in the fireplace, and Orli keeps the heat on in the studio. But the windows are open to catch the air, what zephyrs blow through laced with hints of the tropics or the desert instead of Alaska and Nunavit.
There's barbecue- grilled eggplant, roasted corn, beans slow-cooked since last night, with fresh corn tortillas made in town by someone from Chiapas, and apples and onions stewed together in a South African Potjie with carrots and potatoes, and green peas tossed in at the last minute for colour and sweetness. There're nuts: cashews, almonds, macadamia, which he eats one at a time, not by the handful, savouring the richness of them.
In the mid-afternoon, when the sand's its warmest, they take the dogs and walk down the beach, Orli and Hunter and Karl taking turns hanging back with Viggo while he, more serious [though not heavy, not weighed-down, just attentive, just appreciative] walks along living everything anew: colours, scents, sounds, the freshness of the salt air, their faces as they run up and hand him treasures: beach glass, rocks, feathers, odds and ends of small driftwood already shaped like boats, like birds.
Later he spends some time in the bookshelves, pulling down poetry, putting up verses at Perceval and grabbing a few more phrases from thin air for his own, careful, always, to mark next to the ones he's afraid he's borrowed without permission from someone he admires so much their words are like his blood, his breath. Tomorrow or the next day he'll check some phrases; maybe in between some drawing, or some sleep.
Around them the house breathes in and out, happy to have her men home, happy to be there for them to stretch into, happy to stretch around them.
previously: Translations
next: Bounce
Fragile/Jesse Cook