[Witches' Horses] Witches' Horses
Title: torn posters
'Verse/characters: Witches' Horses; Ilya, Katya, etc
Prompt: 95D "advertisement"
Word Count: 474
Notes: Katya was introduced in mice and messages. I haven't written out what brings this crew here, yet, I'm sorry. If it helps any, it links to the long-ago sketch here.
The terem's stable doors only made it halfway open--big enough to admit the horse, and he quietly blessed the captain for having a delicate touch with the reins--and closed again a little too quickly for anyone's comfort after the horse was inside.
What remained of their outside eyes claimed there was breathable air in the stable, after the doors closed, and that there were no obvious leaks. It took a while to notice that, because everyone aboard the horse was crowded into the head, staring at the mirrors that showed the space around them.
There were posters, both the ones that cycled through display on a big, gently warped mirror, and cheap painted ones tacked onto the metal walls. They advertised everything from replacement parts, solvents, and scrubbing brushes to imported food, the kinds everyone craved after a long time on a horse's supplies.
All of the posters were old, paint faded, display fogged by the mirror's degradation, the images the kind that hadn't been used in years, long sticklike figures of people and trees, old horse designs swooping through a panel to show their repaired sides, small black swallows at the corners to give contact information.
Katya was the first to back away, muttering that one of the diners in a food poster was looking at her. It wasn't until she made the sign of the Thunderer and the cross that everyone else shook themselves out of the fascinated staring, went back to work.
It wasn't until he spotted Katya going from her quarters towards the belly of the horse that Ilya realised what was probably going to happen shortly. She'd been almost completely bundled up for a trip into the black, her hair covered with an insulating cloth roughly the same colour she'd dyed her hair, back in Vladimir.
He found the captain in the belly; Katya took one look at him and then beat a hasty retreat.
The captain just looked at him mildly, bundled up to her neck in her own gear. "Why aren't you dressed?" she asked.
"I'm not going anywhere," he told her flatly. "I'll do what I can to make repairs, and give you a list of things that would help with that, but I am not setting foot out of this horse."
"Ilya--"
"No." He pointed at the broken mirror in the belly, indicating what he meant. "Did you miss the fact that none of the advertisements out there are newer than eighty years ago? Nobody's used Gennadi's Solvents in fifty, because they found out what else they did!"
The captain gave him a long, level look. "Ilya," she said eventually, "go bang on something with a wrench until you feel better. Keep an ear out for us--we're going to go exploring."
'God help us all', he didn't reply aloud, but he thought it very loudly.
'Verse/characters: Witches' Horses; Ilya, Katya, etc
Prompt: 95D "advertisement"
Word Count: 474
Notes: Katya was introduced in mice and messages. I haven't written out what brings this crew here, yet, I'm sorry. If it helps any, it links to the long-ago sketch here.
The terem's stable doors only made it halfway open--big enough to admit the horse, and he quietly blessed the captain for having a delicate touch with the reins--and closed again a little too quickly for anyone's comfort after the horse was inside.
What remained of their outside eyes claimed there was breathable air in the stable, after the doors closed, and that there were no obvious leaks. It took a while to notice that, because everyone aboard the horse was crowded into the head, staring at the mirrors that showed the space around them.
There were posters, both the ones that cycled through display on a big, gently warped mirror, and cheap painted ones tacked onto the metal walls. They advertised everything from replacement parts, solvents, and scrubbing brushes to imported food, the kinds everyone craved after a long time on a horse's supplies.
All of the posters were old, paint faded, display fogged by the mirror's degradation, the images the kind that hadn't been used in years, long sticklike figures of people and trees, old horse designs swooping through a panel to show their repaired sides, small black swallows at the corners to give contact information.
Katya was the first to back away, muttering that one of the diners in a food poster was looking at her. It wasn't until she made the sign of the Thunderer and the cross that everyone else shook themselves out of the fascinated staring, went back to work.
It wasn't until he spotted Katya going from her quarters towards the belly of the horse that Ilya realised what was probably going to happen shortly. She'd been almost completely bundled up for a trip into the black, her hair covered with an insulating cloth roughly the same colour she'd dyed her hair, back in Vladimir.
He found the captain in the belly; Katya took one look at him and then beat a hasty retreat.
The captain just looked at him mildly, bundled up to her neck in her own gear. "Why aren't you dressed?" she asked.
"I'm not going anywhere," he told her flatly. "I'll do what I can to make repairs, and give you a list of things that would help with that, but I am not setting foot out of this horse."
"Ilya--"
"No." He pointed at the broken mirror in the belly, indicating what he meant. "Did you miss the fact that none of the advertisements out there are newer than eighty years ago? Nobody's used Gennadi's Solvents in fifty, because they found out what else they did!"
The captain gave him a long, level look. "Ilya," she said eventually, "go bang on something with a wrench until you feel better. Keep an ear out for us--we're going to go exploring."
'God help us all', he didn't reply aloud, but he thought it very loudly.