Post by Imogen on May 8, 2009 14:22:03 GMT 10
Title: 'Drift,' 'Lost'
Summary: Two drabbles, madness over mind.
Rating: PG
Series: SoTL
Author's Notes: These are story ideas that I didn't turn into fic for one reason or another. I tried writing them as drabbles instead. Concrit would be very helpful-- I'm trying to get comfortable with the drabble.
Drift (126 words)
It’s a rare disease of the mind, the Healers say, likely made worse by the desert magic, the Jewel and his own Gift combining in unforeseeable ways. The Bazhir say: the Voice of the Tribes was never meant for a foreigner.
It’s small things at first. He calls his children by the names of centuries-dead Bazhir. Day to day details start to elude him, though he can recall every stride of the race for the Chieftaincy (a rite long abandoned) with crystalline clarity. He stops recognizing familiar faces. The words of his language are replaced with the tribal tongue. Eventually his mind is wholly claimed by the past; remembered lives like specks of sand--thousands, millions, an infinite desert--sweep over him until he is gone.
***
Lost (257 words)
He can’t remember his name.
He can’t remember anything. Where is he? Is he even ‘he?’
A gray wolf lopes up, bright amber eyes.
You’re not supposed to be here.
She’s right. Certainty hits hard, icy water down his spine (he doesn’t have a spine, a body). This is all wrong.
What happened? Do you know?
He’s desperate, but she’s already gone.
Another time, the wolf returns, but now she’s a silent man, black, thin-boned, shadowed eyes.
Who am I?
-then,
What did I do?
Anxiety tangles him up, a thorny thicket. The shadow-man is difficult to read: detachment, compassion?
You’re lost, is all he’ll say before becoming one with the shadows, melting, gone.
Time is a wistful dream, but he can’t sleep. His now is one moment drawn out into forever. He waits for something to happen, anything, feels like something, if it comes, might be far worse (how?).
He tries to remember his name.
It catches him unprepared. A tug, inexorable, pulling him apart into a pattern, geometry, lines and symbols, a fiery gate. Pain drowns the fire, all that he is is pain, wiped clean--
--blinking tears from his eyes, cold stone slab under his back, chill and ache deep in his flesh, his bones. His vision swims. He focuses. Torches in the dark, violet-red flames dancing and swirling on the edges, it hurts his eyes, a sour man and a beautiful woman stand over him, hungry, terrified, exultant.
He remembers his name, he remembers everything, and Roger laughs, and laughs and laughs.
Summary: Two drabbles, madness over mind.
Rating: PG
Series: SoTL
Author's Notes: These are story ideas that I didn't turn into fic for one reason or another. I tried writing them as drabbles instead. Concrit would be very helpful-- I'm trying to get comfortable with the drabble.
Drift (126 words)
It’s a rare disease of the mind, the Healers say, likely made worse by the desert magic, the Jewel and his own Gift combining in unforeseeable ways. The Bazhir say: the Voice of the Tribes was never meant for a foreigner.
It’s small things at first. He calls his children by the names of centuries-dead Bazhir. Day to day details start to elude him, though he can recall every stride of the race for the Chieftaincy (a rite long abandoned) with crystalline clarity. He stops recognizing familiar faces. The words of his language are replaced with the tribal tongue. Eventually his mind is wholly claimed by the past; remembered lives like specks of sand--thousands, millions, an infinite desert--sweep over him until he is gone.
***
Lost (257 words)
He can’t remember his name.
He can’t remember anything. Where is he? Is he even ‘he?’
A gray wolf lopes up, bright amber eyes.
You’re not supposed to be here.
She’s right. Certainty hits hard, icy water down his spine (he doesn’t have a spine, a body). This is all wrong.
What happened? Do you know?
He’s desperate, but she’s already gone.
Another time, the wolf returns, but now she’s a silent man, black, thin-boned, shadowed eyes.
Who am I?
-then,
What did I do?
Anxiety tangles him up, a thorny thicket. The shadow-man is difficult to read: detachment, compassion?
You’re lost, is all he’ll say before becoming one with the shadows, melting, gone.
Time is a wistful dream, but he can’t sleep. His now is one moment drawn out into forever. He waits for something to happen, anything, feels like something, if it comes, might be far worse (how?).
He tries to remember his name.
It catches him unprepared. A tug, inexorable, pulling him apart into a pattern, geometry, lines and symbols, a fiery gate. Pain drowns the fire, all that he is is pain, wiped clean--
--blinking tears from his eyes, cold stone slab under his back, chill and ache deep in his flesh, his bones. His vision swims. He focuses. Torches in the dark, violet-red flames dancing and swirling on the edges, it hurts his eyes, a sour man and a beautiful woman stand over him, hungry, terrified, exultant.
He remembers his name, he remembers everything, and Roger laughs, and laughs and laughs.