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odditycollector) wrote2004-05-23 12:22 am
odditycollector) wrote2004-05-23 12:22 am
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gehayi. And I haven't forgotten.
Wensleydale picks up a stone. He studies it for a moment, and then tosses it towards the frog pond with a flick of his wrist. The stone hits the water at an angle of fifteen degrees from the horizontal and bounces, tracing a shallow parabola through the air and bouncing off the pond’s surface again. Wensleydale counts four skips before the stone reaches the other side of the pond, and it would have gone farther.
Wensleydale chooses another stone, this one the white of bleached bone. He throws it with less force this time, so that the first angle is twenty-five degrees. The stone skips seven times before hitting the muddy bank. Better.
Skipping stones is just a game, of course, and can be done just as well anywhere outside Tadfield. But Wensleydale has other reasons to come home.
A week ago, Brian had shown up at his apartment at three in the morning, left shaking and terrified in the aftermath of a dream. Brian told Wensleydale he had dreamed he was standing on a high stretch of land, looking over the Earth. And as far as he could see, the land was green and healthy, and he looked East, and he looked West, and he looked South, but when he looked North there was a shadow at the edge of things. Then the darkness moved closer, and Brian could see that it wasn’t a shadow, but a wave made of poison and garbage and of all things putrid. It passed over the world until the whole planet was covered in filth and oil and everything on it was dead, and Brian had woken up feeling truly content for the first time in his life.
Brian had looked at Wensleydale, after he had stopped shivering, and said, “Should I… do you think I should tell Anyone?” His voice had broken on the capital A.
And Wensleydale had said, “I wouldn’t,” and nothing else at all.
It had taken two hours and five beers before Brian had calmed down enough to leave, and if Wensleydale had to dig the empty bottles from the trash and place them himself in the carefully labelled recycle bin, well, that’s hardly an inconsideration unique to Brian.
Brian has always been untidy, just as Wensleydale has always lived in a harshly outlined world: of definitions and definites, of angles and shadows. In Uni, Wensleydale takes logic and maths, because he finds it natural to understand that the universe is only meant to be understood from infinity, and because he likes studying the fat curves and forcing them to zero. The lovers he chooses are thin to the point of emaciation, and he runs his hands over the hollows between their ribs as he comes.
Everyone has their idiosyncrasies. And nightmares don’t have to mean anything, even if they’re not.
And maybe Wensley doesn’t have reason to be in Tadfield after all.
Wensleydale picks up another stone and feels its weight in his hand. He moves to toss it, but he’s startled by a sound from behind him. The second skip is too steep by five degrees and the stone lands sideways several inches from the opposite bank and sinks. Someone says, “Hi.”
Wensleydale turns around, and there is a girl smiling lopsidedly at him. She’s just old enough to have lost the last trace of babyfat, and she’s wearing one sock and one shoe and an oversized t-shirt with one sleeve torn off. For a moment Wensleydale feels the weight of an awful sort of familiarity, but she waves at him and it passes.
“I was sitting over there,” says the girl, turning the wave into a wide gesture toward nothing in particular, “and watching you throw rocks and I thought that I didn’t know who you are except maybe kind of. But then I thought that maybe you know who you are and I can go and ask you, so I did, but not yet.”
She moves a step closer to Wensleydale and looks up at him with large, mismatched eyes. They seem to shimmer with reflected lights, although the sun is hidden behind clouds, and it makes Wensleydale feel queasy. “Do you?” the girl asks. “Know who you are?”
“Of course I do,” says Wensleydale, sharply.
“oh,” says the girl. She sounds almost disappointed.
Wensleydale grabs a stone at random and tosses it at the pond. It skips six times and every single angle of incidence is nineteen point seven degrees.
The girl claps a few times, impressed. “Can I try?” she says.
Wensleydale shrugs. He watches as she chooses a rock heavy enough that she uses both hands to hold it. She swings it between her legs a couple times before letting go.
And it isn’t going to bounce – of course it isn’t going to bounce – and Wensleydale braces himself for the splash. But then, as the rock reaches the top of its arc, it becomes a tiny butterfly which flaps for half a yard before getting eaten by an elderly frog. (Or maybe the elderly frog. Time moves awkwardly in Lower Tadfield, passing in jolts and patches. There are trees that never grow any taller, and businesses that haven’t raised their prices in fifteen years, and a spot between two orchard trees where it’s always two o’clock on Saturday afternoon. And no other gang of kids has moved into the quarry since the Them outgrew it.)
The girl stomps a foot and complains, “That always happens.”
Wensleydale doesn’t manage to gather enough of his voice to say that in his experience, no, in fact, it doesn’t. He isn’t even sure it would be the truth.
Instead he reaches down and takes a flattened stone. The best one he can find is black, with a few strains of something blue running though it; Wensleydale shivers, but he doesn’t know why.
“Here,” he says to the girl. “Like this.” He mimes twisting his wrist and making the toss a few times, and she watches his arm with an almost predatory level of absorption. “Okay?” he says. She doesn’t make any sign of acknowledgment, but he passes her the stone anyway.
Their fingers touch for a second as she takes it from him, and Wensleydale is hit with the impression that the girl is stretched thin over something larger: like a skin, holding that something together, and if he could but peel away the soft outer layers, he would find a thing sharp and hard and broken on the inside where structure should be.
The girl throws the stone. It skips off the water once, turns into a frog, and jumps from a floating piece of wood before landing with a splash.
She claps again, delighted. “Did you see me?” she says. “I got two.” She laughs for a few seconds, and then her expression falls suddenly. “Does that count as two?” She looks up at Wensleydale, and her gaze is almost steady.
“Yes,” says Wensleydale, turning away. “Everything's counted.”
The girl is happy again, and Wensleydale can hear her victory dance behind him. He wonders if she’ll still be there if he turns around.
Above, a cloud moves; sunlight catches on a few taller reeds, and their shadows grab at the pond like skeletal fingers. The new frog croaks once and dives.
gehayi. And I haven't forgotten.Wensleydale picks up a stone. He studies it for a moment, and then tosses it towards the frog pond with a flick of his wrist. The stone hits the water at an angle of fifteen degrees from the horizontal and bounces, tracing a shallow parabola through the air and bouncing off the pond’s surface again. Wensleydale counts four skips before the stone reaches the other side of the pond, and it would have gone farther.
Wensleydale chooses another stone, this one the white of bleached bone. He throws it with less force this time, so that the first angle is twenty-five degrees. The stone skips seven times before hitting the muddy bank. Better.
Skipping stones is just a game, of course, and can be done just as well anywhere outside Tadfield. But Wensleydale has other reasons to come home.
A week ago, Brian had shown up at his apartment at three in the morning, left shaking and terrified in the aftermath of a dream. Brian told Wensleydale he had dreamed he was standing on a high stretch of land, looking over the Earth. And as far as he could see, the land was green and healthy, and he looked East, and he looked West, and he looked South, but when he looked North there was a shadow at the edge of things. Then the darkness moved closer, and Brian could see that it wasn’t a shadow, but a wave made of poison and garbage and of all things putrid. It passed over the world until the whole planet was covered in filth and oil and everything on it was dead, and Brian had woken up feeling truly content for the first time in his life.
Brian had looked at Wensleydale, after he had stopped shivering, and said, “Should I… do you think I should tell Anyone?” His voice had broken on the capital A.
And Wensleydale had said, “I wouldn’t,” and nothing else at all.
It had taken two hours and five beers before Brian had calmed down enough to leave, and if Wensleydale had to dig the empty bottles from the trash and place them himself in the carefully labelled recycle bin, well, that’s hardly an inconsideration unique to Brian.
Brian has always been untidy, just as Wensleydale has always lived in a harshly outlined world: of definitions and definites, of angles and shadows. In Uni, Wensleydale takes logic and maths, because he finds it natural to understand that the universe is only meant to be understood from infinity, and because he likes studying the fat curves and forcing them to zero. The lovers he chooses are thin to the point of emaciation, and he runs his hands over the hollows between their ribs as he comes.
Everyone has their idiosyncrasies. And nightmares don’t have to mean anything, even if they’re not.
And maybe Wensley doesn’t have reason to be in Tadfield after all.
Wensleydale picks up another stone and feels its weight in his hand. He moves to toss it, but he’s startled by a sound from behind him. The second skip is too steep by five degrees and the stone lands sideways several inches from the opposite bank and sinks. Someone says, “Hi.”
Wensleydale turns around, and there is a girl smiling lopsidedly at him. She’s just old enough to have lost the last trace of babyfat, and she’s wearing one sock and one shoe and an oversized t-shirt with one sleeve torn off. For a moment Wensleydale feels the weight of an awful sort of familiarity, but she waves at him and it passes.
“I was sitting over there,” says the girl, turning the wave into a wide gesture toward nothing in particular, “and watching you throw rocks and I thought that I didn’t know who you are except maybe kind of. But then I thought that maybe you know who you are and I can go and ask you, so I did, but not yet.”
She moves a step closer to Wensleydale and looks up at him with large, mismatched eyes. They seem to shimmer with reflected lights, although the sun is hidden behind clouds, and it makes Wensleydale feel queasy. “Do you?” the girl asks. “Know who you are?”
“Of course I do,” says Wensleydale, sharply.
“oh,” says the girl. She sounds almost disappointed.
Wensleydale grabs a stone at random and tosses it at the pond. It skips six times and every single angle of incidence is nineteen point seven degrees.
The girl claps a few times, impressed. “Can I try?” she says.
Wensleydale shrugs. He watches as she chooses a rock heavy enough that she uses both hands to hold it. She swings it between her legs a couple times before letting go.
And it isn’t going to bounce – of course it isn’t going to bounce – and Wensleydale braces himself for the splash. But then, as the rock reaches the top of its arc, it becomes a tiny butterfly which flaps for half a yard before getting eaten by an elderly frog. (Or maybe the elderly frog. Time moves awkwardly in Lower Tadfield, passing in jolts and patches. There are trees that never grow any taller, and businesses that haven’t raised their prices in fifteen years, and a spot between two orchard trees where it’s always two o’clock on Saturday afternoon. And no other gang of kids has moved into the quarry since the Them outgrew it.)
The girl stomps a foot and complains, “That always happens.”
Wensleydale doesn’t manage to gather enough of his voice to say that in his experience, no, in fact, it doesn’t. He isn’t even sure it would be the truth.
Instead he reaches down and takes a flattened stone. The best one he can find is black, with a few strains of something blue running though it; Wensleydale shivers, but he doesn’t know why.
“Here,” he says to the girl. “Like this.” He mimes twisting his wrist and making the toss a few times, and she watches his arm with an almost predatory level of absorption. “Okay?” he says. She doesn’t make any sign of acknowledgment, but he passes her the stone anyway.
Their fingers touch for a second as she takes it from him, and Wensleydale is hit with the impression that the girl is stretched thin over something larger: like a skin, holding that something together, and if he could but peel away the soft outer layers, he would find a thing sharp and hard and broken on the inside where structure should be.
The girl throws the stone. It skips off the water once, turns into a frog, and jumps from a floating piece of wood before landing with a splash.
She claps again, delighted. “Did you see me?” she says. “I got two.” She laughs for a few seconds, and then her expression falls suddenly. “Does that count as two?” She looks up at Wensleydale, and her gaze is almost steady.
“Yes,” says Wensleydale, turning away. “Everything's counted.”
The girl is happy again, and Wensleydale can hear her victory dance behind him. He wonders if she’ll still be there if he turns around.
Above, a cloud moves; sunlight catches on a few taller reeds, and their shadows grab at the pond like skeletal fingers. The new frog croaks once and dives.
no subject
Ping.
no subject
Yeah, it's a fic. Wensleydale is from Good Omens (which you ought to really read, you know) and the girl is really Delirium from the Sandman comics. It's part of these seven short crossovers I'm doing 'cause I was asked for something similar.
I'm awfully curious what if any sort of sense you made of it, if you didn't know them already...
no subject
It helped that it actually reminded me of the introduction to a story I've heard before I suppose (though I can't remember exactly where from, just a bit'a deja vu).
Ping.
no subject
Thanks!