Fic: The Floating Bridge of Dreams (1/1)
"The what?" she asked dutifully.
"Novomorphic somnigressial parasite. A stealer of dreams. It feeds off the delta waves produced by dream states. And Lady Mursaki is a dreamer," he said wistfully, looking with great admiration towards the woman hanging limply in the air before them. "Four hundred characters, all living and loving and dying, in her head. Such beautiful dreams.... That parasite could live off of the energy for centuries." He turned abruptly and faced the serving girl, who now seemed to be making her way towards the door. "Couldn't you?" he said sternly.
"Me?" The girl pointed to her own chest.
"Her?" Rose asked.
"Not just a dream-eater, are you? A shape-shifter as well." He aimed his sonic screwdriver at the doors and they slid silently shut. "Isn't that right, you clever creature?"
The girl dropped her innocent, frightened mien like a discarded mask and now wore a very perturbed look indeed.
"I'm afraid I'm going to have to escort you off the premises, cosmically speaking," the Doctor said, shutting the curtains as Lady Murasaki, without waking, landed gently again on the futon, her masses of hair spread out around her like dark water.
Rose snuck another look in at the sleeping woman, as the Doctor forced the parasite to revert to its original form (not so worm-like, but still kind of gross). A lap desk sat nearby on the floor, but the pages laid across it were all blank.
***
"It feels nice to be in a chair again." Rose settled in to an overstuffed sofa in the TARDIS library and pulled her favourite afghan around her shoulders. "Sitting on the floor makes my feet fall asleep."
The Doctor just gave a little snort from over top of the large volume he was leafing through.
"Is that her book?"
He nodded. "The Tale of Genji. You'd like it. Not only was it the first novel, but it's a romance, to boot. You like those, right?"
"Well, I wouldn't say like. It's just a habit I got into from Mum." She went quiet and hugged the blanket closer to her, turning the question she'd wanted to ask him so many times over in her head. "Doctor, why me?"
"Why you what?" He looked up again, his glasses sliding down his nose and making him look more annoyed than he probably actually was.
She hated that she had to explain herself, as if clarifying her question made her failings all the more apparent.
"When I first met you I guess I didn't really think about why you'd invite someone like me along, but now... I'll never write a novel. I'll never be a poet or a brilliant scientist or anything like that. I'm not like Lady Murasaki."
He gave her a sad look, which was not the response she was expecting at all. "If I tell you that you're more alike than you think, would you believe me?"
"You can, but the fact is, you're sitting there sighing over her book. I’ll never do anything like that."
"But the same thing that led Lady Murasaki to write this book, it's what you've got, too. In spades, if I may say so."
Rose blinked and pursed her lips. It was what she had wanted to hear from him, on the surface, but she still didn't understand what he meant. Maybe she didn't want to understand, and it was easier with his feelings being a mystery.
"What's that?" she said finally, her voice cracking a little.
"The courage to escape." He set the book down on a table and moved over to join her on the sofa. She scooted down to make room, but he sat on her feet anyway.
"Running away isn't courage. In fact, I think that's pretty much the definition of 'not courage.'"
"Rose Tyler, I am surprised at you!" he said, laughing. "With all the running we do, I'd have thought you'd know by now that a well-timed escape is often the better part of valour. Is that how the saying goes? It doesn't sound right. Never mind, though, because it's true."
"Yeah... I actually have no idea what you're talking about." This was not going at all as she had planned, and she chided herself for not knowing better that he'd find some way to talk deftly around the issues. "It's not important anyway."
"Now, there you are correct." He leaned over to unlace his shoes, flinging them off so they landed in opposite corners of the room. "It's not important. What is important is that your toes are freezing and they're making my bum cold. So, I’ll light a fire, and then I'm going to recite some poetry, which will make me seem very deep and sensitive."
Rose looked at her sleeves, which were of the normal t-shirt variety, but she arranged the afghan so that just the hem of one was showing.
Fun facts to know and share: Murasaki Shikibu (not her real name, which is unknown, but a nickname derived from one of her character's names) lived around the turn of the 11th century, in Japan (in what was known as the Heian period). Her family were minor courtiers, and her mother died when she was quite young, leaving her to be brought up by her father. Unlike what would be more typical for the time, her father raised her with what was then considered a "boy's education" (the fact that her father cared for it at all is notable, as husbands and wives at the time did not typically live together and it was the mother and her family that cared for any children).
Lady Murasaki wrote The Tale of Genji while she was employed at court. It is a remarkably modern-feeling work, given that it's one thousand years old. It's got romance (lots, of some rather questionable varieties as well) and drama and, yes, demonic possession, as well as musings on the nature of life itself, how things change and finally come to an end. And also how men in a highly stratified, patriarchal society sort of suck pretty frequently.
As a fanfic author, I also find it very interesting that this was a novel written serially, each chapter written and then distributed at court, primarily for the entertainment of the women living there. Though Lady Murasaki knew classical Chinese-and had she been a male author she would have written in the classical Chinese style using Chinese characters-she wrote The Tale of Genji in Japanese, which was considered a "women's" written form or expression. She wrote it to entertain her friends and acquaintances, and as a means of self-expression, even within the confines of the very restrictive society that she lived in.
The title of this fic comes from the title of the 54th and final chapter of The Tale of Genji.
