words in progress
Dec. 9th, 2008 11:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lotesseHokay, everything that has to be mailed is mailed. The only stuff I have left on applications is material that I'll submit online, which means that everything left is completely under my control. I'm starting to feel a little better.
As seen around the flist, the works-in-progress meme: post a few lines from the fic you're working on.
Of course, everything is backburnered right now because of yuletide, but before that, I was writing
“They drink starlight,” Poly says, and it’s not just a pretty fancy. She knows that it’s true.
“That’s very pretty, dear,” her teacher tells her. “But don’t unicorns come in other colors? All the colors in your lovely drawing is so pale. What about pink, or yellow? Are any of the unicorns yellow?”
“No,” she says, certain and sure. “They speak to the wind, and their names are best represented in Latin.”
Dean let Sam’s silence sit until they reached the motel. Didn’t have much to say, not after everything that had happened over the past few days. Once he’d settled the Impala into her parking space, allowed the purr of her engine to quiet down into soundlessness, he looked over at his brother.
Sam was curled up in the passenger seat, face pressed against the undoubtedly cold glass of the window, long legs bent into impossible angles against the wheelwell. Dean had assumed he’d been thinking; turns out he’d actually fallen asleep.
Reaching across to him, Dean tapped Sam’s face gently, trying not to startle him out of sleep. Sam jumped anyway, but not very much, and he pretty quickly settled back down into dreamy bemusement, blinking slowly into the darkness “Dean? S’that you? Wher’ are we?”
“Motel, Sammy. Think you could go for a proper sized bed, or do you want to keep going with the pretzel imitation?”
Taran found Eilonwy up in to solar where the pale winter light was dappled by the minute shadows of the falling snow. The room, by dint of it long expanses of single-paned, thin-blown glass, was cold. Taran could see his breath rising before him in the air.
She was sitting with her back against the glass, and her nimble fingers were busy tying great bundles of bitter-smelling plants up with red twine.
He trod quietly as he entered the room. Still she looked up instantly, her pale blue eyes locked to him like iron shavings in a compass, always pulling north. She didn’t speak, and for a moment he stood there in the doorway, in silence. It was strange, he thought. By all rights the moment should have been awkward, the silence strained. But instead, even though he had no idea what Eilonwy was about, even though he mistrusted the coolness of her blue eyes, he still felt more at rest, more simply himself, than he had done all day.
He tried to be in love with Cinderella, for a while. She was so good and sweet and pretty, and Jack was so happy with Red that he thought maybe, just maybe, being in love was what he needed. And she was his baby’s mother, and it would be the right thing to do. It would be the happy ending that they all needed.
But he quickly found that she was too sweet, too good, and if made him miss his wife’s tangy apple-cider nature even more. Cinderella never chided him when he was foolish or clouted him over the head with the bread when he forgot to add the yeast or burnt it with dreaming. And she was pretty, and that was all wrong. Not to say his wife hadn’t been pretty, but it was a different sort from Cinderella’s fairytale-princess looks.
She had kissed him, once upon a time. It had been soon after the woods, and everything had been shaky and uncertain like the earth under the Giantess’ feet. She had kissed him, and her mouth tasted of flowers and babies. He fancied that it would have been different before…everything, that her mouth would have been overlaid with candy and lace and gold, but she’s not the Princess any more. The Prince is dead, and she’s the mother of his son. Not his wife, either. And so she tastes of baby’s small smells and nothing more. Maybe her mouth always tasted like that, and he only imagines otherwise because he sometimes thinks that everything must be different now than it was before the woods.
“No,” he said, cutting her off, “not like that. At least,” he said, blushing, “not if you don’t want it to be. I didn’t expect you to actually want to marry me. You won’t even date me. But I like you, and you maybe don’t hate me, and it might be easier for us to just get married to one another than it would be to find totally strangers who’d agree to a loveless relationship of convenience.”
His hand drifted out to rest on her forearm, and she found herself actually thinking about it. He maybe had a point. “You maybe have a point,” she said. “Okay, give me a week to see if I can find anyone else and then you’re on.”
She walked away jauntily enough, but she didn’t hear his footsteps behind her, and when she peeked back over her shoulder Leela found that he was just standing there, looking at her. She felt unaccountably guilty, but brushed the emotion off as just plain silly. Fry was fine. Weird, but fine.
The week went by, slowly and annoyingly. The new marriage laws had turned the already-unchartable dating scene into a mélange of absolute lunacy, and all the good men had been snapped up, and that only left the losers, the pervs, and the mentally deficient. She’d never been on so many terrible dates in her life. Top it off with Amy’s blissful wedding to Kif, and you had a recipe for misery and frustration. “Okay, Fry,” Leela said with perhaps more volume than was strictly necessary, “I’ll marry you. But don’t think it means anything. No funny business. And I don’t want a big ceremony. And I’m not sharing a bathroom. And no—“
“It’s okay, Leela,” he said, smiling. “We can do this however you want. Don’t worry about it.”
As seen around the flist, the works-in-progress meme: post a few lines from the fic you're working on.
Of course, everything is backburnered right now because of yuletide, but before that, I was writing
“They drink starlight,” Poly says, and it’s not just a pretty fancy. She knows that it’s true.
“That’s very pretty, dear,” her teacher tells her. “But don’t unicorns come in other colors? All the colors in your lovely drawing is so pale. What about pink, or yellow? Are any of the unicorns yellow?”
“No,” she says, certain and sure. “They speak to the wind, and their names are best represented in Latin.”
Dean let Sam’s silence sit until they reached the motel. Didn’t have much to say, not after everything that had happened over the past few days. Once he’d settled the Impala into her parking space, allowed the purr of her engine to quiet down into soundlessness, he looked over at his brother.
Sam was curled up in the passenger seat, face pressed against the undoubtedly cold glass of the window, long legs bent into impossible angles against the wheelwell. Dean had assumed he’d been thinking; turns out he’d actually fallen asleep.
Reaching across to him, Dean tapped Sam’s face gently, trying not to startle him out of sleep. Sam jumped anyway, but not very much, and he pretty quickly settled back down into dreamy bemusement, blinking slowly into the darkness “Dean? S’that you? Wher’ are we?”
“Motel, Sammy. Think you could go for a proper sized bed, or do you want to keep going with the pretzel imitation?”
Taran found Eilonwy up in to solar where the pale winter light was dappled by the minute shadows of the falling snow. The room, by dint of it long expanses of single-paned, thin-blown glass, was cold. Taran could see his breath rising before him in the air.
She was sitting with her back against the glass, and her nimble fingers were busy tying great bundles of bitter-smelling plants up with red twine.
He trod quietly as he entered the room. Still she looked up instantly, her pale blue eyes locked to him like iron shavings in a compass, always pulling north. She didn’t speak, and for a moment he stood there in the doorway, in silence. It was strange, he thought. By all rights the moment should have been awkward, the silence strained. But instead, even though he had no idea what Eilonwy was about, even though he mistrusted the coolness of her blue eyes, he still felt more at rest, more simply himself, than he had done all day.
He tried to be in love with Cinderella, for a while. She was so good and sweet and pretty, and Jack was so happy with Red that he thought maybe, just maybe, being in love was what he needed. And she was his baby’s mother, and it would be the right thing to do. It would be the happy ending that they all needed.
But he quickly found that she was too sweet, too good, and if made him miss his wife’s tangy apple-cider nature even more. Cinderella never chided him when he was foolish or clouted him over the head with the bread when he forgot to add the yeast or burnt it with dreaming. And she was pretty, and that was all wrong. Not to say his wife hadn’t been pretty, but it was a different sort from Cinderella’s fairytale-princess looks.
She had kissed him, once upon a time. It had been soon after the woods, and everything had been shaky and uncertain like the earth under the Giantess’ feet. She had kissed him, and her mouth tasted of flowers and babies. He fancied that it would have been different before…everything, that her mouth would have been overlaid with candy and lace and gold, but she’s not the Princess any more. The Prince is dead, and she’s the mother of his son. Not his wife, either. And so she tastes of baby’s small smells and nothing more. Maybe her mouth always tasted like that, and he only imagines otherwise because he sometimes thinks that everything must be different now than it was before the woods.
“No,” he said, cutting her off, “not like that. At least,” he said, blushing, “not if you don’t want it to be. I didn’t expect you to actually want to marry me. You won’t even date me. But I like you, and you maybe don’t hate me, and it might be easier for us to just get married to one another than it would be to find totally strangers who’d agree to a loveless relationship of convenience.”
His hand drifted out to rest on her forearm, and she found herself actually thinking about it. He maybe had a point. “You maybe have a point,” she said. “Okay, give me a week to see if I can find anyone else and then you’re on.”
She walked away jauntily enough, but she didn’t hear his footsteps behind her, and when she peeked back over her shoulder Leela found that he was just standing there, looking at her. She felt unaccountably guilty, but brushed the emotion off as just plain silly. Fry was fine. Weird, but fine.
The week went by, slowly and annoyingly. The new marriage laws had turned the already-unchartable dating scene into a mélange of absolute lunacy, and all the good men had been snapped up, and that only left the losers, the pervs, and the mentally deficient. She’d never been on so many terrible dates in her life. Top it off with Amy’s blissful wedding to Kif, and you had a recipe for misery and frustration. “Okay, Fry,” Leela said with perhaps more volume than was strictly necessary, “I’ll marry you. But don’t think it means anything. No funny business. And I don’t want a big ceremony. And I’m not sharing a bathroom. And no—“
“It’s okay, Leela,” he said, smiling. “We can do this however you want. Don’t worry about it.”