Post by Frankenpetey on Jun 24, 2007 3:54:14 GMT -5
I had a neat scene pop into my head a few days ago, and since I can't draw it (my tablet pen has croaked), I wrote it instead. God, I haven't written anything besides term papers in years. It shows, too. What was supposed to be a drabble mushroomed into a weird, rambling, stream-of-consciousness, three page long mess. The idea itself is pretty creepy, but I think I've managed to tone it down enough to fit Legends' universe a little better.
Also, beware my quaint obsession with the distinction between preterite and imperfect tense, as well as my shotgun o' punctuation.
edit: Bleh! I forgot the italics! I'll fim 'em up but good!
Title: Memento
Wordcount: 1646
Characters: 28, Teisel, the usual Bonne suspects
Rating: PG
........................................................................................................
Twenty-Eight studied the moonlight reflecting off of the shears he'd "borrowed" from the galley while he waited for the nightmare to pass. Three kept the shears sharpened; it would be best if the sleeping figure were still. After all, I'm shaking enough for the both of us. I can't believe I'm going through with this.
That thought simultaneously upset him and gave him a little thrill at his courage in coming this far. He knew it wasn't normal to obsess over things like this. Of course, Forty obsessed over the color of the walls, and this was far more important than color coordination.
The idea had first come to him when he'd been perusing a book in this very room. It had been an old novel, a very old novel, the kind where the characters spoke with ponderous, barely understandable grammar and rode horses and wore wool clothing in the middle of summer. Not much of the story had been terribly memorable (something to do with vampires and volcanoes...and a place called...what was it? Angleland?), but one part had stuck with him. In one particular scene, the hero asked the heroine for a lock of her hair.
This had puzzled him greatly. The human hero doubtless had plenty of hair of his own, why ask for some of hers? It couldn't have been a metaphor--the book went on to describe the woman taking a pair of scissors, cutting off a lock of her hair and then presenting it to a very grateful hero. He'd had to ask Master Teisel to explain it that night after dinner.
"Oh, it's not done much anymore," the man had said, as a few nearby servbots listened in. "Back before airships, it took months to travel between islands on sea-going ships. If you had to be separated from someone, you might not see them again for years. Or you might never see them again. Things happen." He'd twirled some of his own ponytail between his fingers as he spoke. "Hair is pretty durable. As long as it was kept in a safe place, a piece of it could easily last for decades; it could even outlast the person who grew it. So even if you could never see that person again, at least you'd have that little part of them." At that point, the intercom had crackled to life, and Master Teisel was called to the bridge by a worried-sounding servbot, cutting short the explanation.
Forty had thought the whole thing sounded very romantic, and Twenty had been a little grossed out at the thought of people lugging around scraps of their loved ones, but Twenty-Eight had understood. He'd decided, there and then, that he wanted a lock of hair.
A few days after that conversation, almost prophetically, things...happened. The two-month entanglement with the Loathe syndicate had been a sobering illustration of Things Happening. When it was finally over and the whole family was back on the Gesselschaft safe and sound, the want for that hair became an urgent need.
So there he sat, shears in hand, with a small hair elastic. He couldn't bring himself to ask. He would seem so weak.
When the man's breathing had evened out, Twenty-Eight judged it was safe to go on. He peeked cautiously over the edge of the bed. Master Teisel was curled up on his side, looking uncharacteristically frail. Well, it's pretty hard to be intimidating when you're asleep. The eldest brother had also had an even harder two months than the rest of the clan. He'd been exhausted and weak when they'd finally found him and Master Bon. Though he greeted them cheerfully, Twenty-Eight remembered him looking distressingly pale even under all the grime and dust of the ruins. His armor still didn't fit quite right from all the weight he'd lost.
A sigh snapped Twenty-Eight back to the present and the task at hand. It would be so much easier if he were facing the other way... Staring into that face, it didn't take much imagination to picture the faint glow of those eyes opening and the inevitable, uncomfortable questions that would follow. Well, once the screaming stopped, that is. Twenty-Eight almost turned around and crept back to his bunk. He felt suddenly ashamed, and he wasn't quite sure whether it was from the thought of slinking away like a coward or the quiet knowledge that what he was doing now was just a different sort of cowardice.
But Teisel's hair had fanned out over the course of the nightmare, and a lot of it was easily within arm's reach. Twenty-Eight could be done and back to his own bed in five minutes if he could just remember how to move. It's now or never. I've gone too far to leave empty-handed now. Steeling himself, and valiantly steadying his shaking hands, he reached out and gently grasped a nearby length of hair. So far, so good.
Still, even this small act seemed somehow violating. He'd have to work quickly, before his nerve failed him. Very carefully, he started to twist the elastic around the chosen hair. For obvious reasons, he'd never tied hair before. His hands weren't really designed for such an intricate maneuver, and the elastic seemed supernaturally uncooperative. He grew increasingly frustrated as he fumbled with it; every agonizing second he struggled with the miserable thing was a second in which Teisel might wake up, and what then? An uncomfortable tightness settled in his inner workings, as though some cog somewhere was grinding against its counterpart a little too hard.
Just when he thought the grinding of his gears would wake the entire ship, the final twist in the elastic was done. All that remained was the cut. If he'd had any breath to hold, he'd have let it out with relief.
Slowly, he eased the lower blade of the shears under the hair, resting their weight on the bed to lessen the chance of dropping them. It was awkward for his outstretched arms, but he also managed to angle the blades in the hope that it might make the cut less obvious.
He lost his grip. Much too quickly, the shears fell closed with an abrupt snick. Teisel flinched in his sleep, and a horrified Twenty-Eight squeezed his eyes shut, fearing the worst. Nothing. Reluctantly, the little robot cracked one eye open. Teisel had shifted slightly, but the noise hadn't been enough to wake him. And there was the lock of hair, laying beside the scissors not nine inches away.
Twenty-Eight was almost disappointed as he took his prize and the shears. The weight of the moment had been somewhat spoiled by his clumsiness; it could have ruined everything. But it hadn't, and either way he had what he came for. He left the room as silently as he'd entered it, and a smile lit his face as he softly latched the door behind him. It was with a great feeling of triumph that he replaced the shears in their drawer in the galley, and the feeling only grew as he entered the servbots' quarters to find all of his brothers asleep and unaware of his absence.
Climbing into bed, he reached up to the slats supporting Twenty-Nine's bunk and removed a small pencil box he kept hidden there. Opening it, he looked over the things inside. A few photographs, a crayon drawing of a horse, an interesting pebble, two shards of red glass, and a formerly crumpled note (he'd never quite managed to get all the creases out) written in strong, somewhat erratic handwriting that shifted between print and flowing script seemingly at random. That last one was his favorite, even though it was only an old note to the bridge crew (From now on, if anyone finds a button or switch with which they are not familiar, they are to assume they're not allowed to touch it. Especially if it's shiny. P.S: This means you, Five!)
I suppose that's my second favorite now. Tenderly, he set his new favorite in the box: a neat lock of dove-grey hair, tied at one end with an elastic. One small part of a loved one that could be kept in a safe place, even if the rest of him wasn't. Admiring it, a thought occurred to Twenty-Eight. Hmmm. It ended up a little larger than I thought. Closing the box, he replaced it above the bunk slat and settled down to sleep. I hope he doesn't notice.
The following morning, Teisel's usually neat ponytail wasn't passing muster. His sister was the second person in the mess hall to notice. The first person in the mess hall to notice stared into his breakfast, praying that he hadn't been found out.
"Big brother, did you do something....different with your hair today?" She peered curiously at where her sibling's eyes would be if they hadn't been obscured by a sizable fringe of thick, grey hair.
"I don't know, it keeps slipping out of the tail," Teisel grumbled, blowing the offending hair out of his eyes. "It must be from one of the tangles I had to cut out. The layers are all screwed up," he added as the curtain of hair flopped back down.
"You could borrow some of my hair clips," Tron offered, dumping a little extra sugar into her oatmeal. Forty perked up, looking between Tron and Teisel expectantly.
"Babuu..." Bon chipped in, before turning his attention back to the design he was making on the table with his apple juice.
Teisel sighed, making the fringe rustle slightly. "No thanks, sis. I'll get used to it."
Tron shrugged, Bon blew a raspberry, and Forty sagged in disappointment, muttering something about accenting Master Teisel's eyes. Teisel reached for his coffee cup and ended up with the salt shaker instead.
Twenty-Eight excused himself and left to check on his pencil box.
Also, beware my quaint obsession with the distinction between preterite and imperfect tense, as well as my shotgun o' punctuation.
edit: Bleh! I forgot the italics! I'll fim 'em up but good!
Title: Memento
Wordcount: 1646
Characters: 28, Teisel, the usual Bonne suspects
Rating: PG
........................................................................................................
Twenty-Eight studied the moonlight reflecting off of the shears he'd "borrowed" from the galley while he waited for the nightmare to pass. Three kept the shears sharpened; it would be best if the sleeping figure were still. After all, I'm shaking enough for the both of us. I can't believe I'm going through with this.
That thought simultaneously upset him and gave him a little thrill at his courage in coming this far. He knew it wasn't normal to obsess over things like this. Of course, Forty obsessed over the color of the walls, and this was far more important than color coordination.
The idea had first come to him when he'd been perusing a book in this very room. It had been an old novel, a very old novel, the kind where the characters spoke with ponderous, barely understandable grammar and rode horses and wore wool clothing in the middle of summer. Not much of the story had been terribly memorable (something to do with vampires and volcanoes...and a place called...what was it? Angleland?), but one part had stuck with him. In one particular scene, the hero asked the heroine for a lock of her hair.
This had puzzled him greatly. The human hero doubtless had plenty of hair of his own, why ask for some of hers? It couldn't have been a metaphor--the book went on to describe the woman taking a pair of scissors, cutting off a lock of her hair and then presenting it to a very grateful hero. He'd had to ask Master Teisel to explain it that night after dinner.
"Oh, it's not done much anymore," the man had said, as a few nearby servbots listened in. "Back before airships, it took months to travel between islands on sea-going ships. If you had to be separated from someone, you might not see them again for years. Or you might never see them again. Things happen." He'd twirled some of his own ponytail between his fingers as he spoke. "Hair is pretty durable. As long as it was kept in a safe place, a piece of it could easily last for decades; it could even outlast the person who grew it. So even if you could never see that person again, at least you'd have that little part of them." At that point, the intercom had crackled to life, and Master Teisel was called to the bridge by a worried-sounding servbot, cutting short the explanation.
Forty had thought the whole thing sounded very romantic, and Twenty had been a little grossed out at the thought of people lugging around scraps of their loved ones, but Twenty-Eight had understood. He'd decided, there and then, that he wanted a lock of hair.
A few days after that conversation, almost prophetically, things...happened. The two-month entanglement with the Loathe syndicate had been a sobering illustration of Things Happening. When it was finally over and the whole family was back on the Gesselschaft safe and sound, the want for that hair became an urgent need.
So there he sat, shears in hand, with a small hair elastic. He couldn't bring himself to ask. He would seem so weak.
When the man's breathing had evened out, Twenty-Eight judged it was safe to go on. He peeked cautiously over the edge of the bed. Master Teisel was curled up on his side, looking uncharacteristically frail. Well, it's pretty hard to be intimidating when you're asleep. The eldest brother had also had an even harder two months than the rest of the clan. He'd been exhausted and weak when they'd finally found him and Master Bon. Though he greeted them cheerfully, Twenty-Eight remembered him looking distressingly pale even under all the grime and dust of the ruins. His armor still didn't fit quite right from all the weight he'd lost.
A sigh snapped Twenty-Eight back to the present and the task at hand. It would be so much easier if he were facing the other way... Staring into that face, it didn't take much imagination to picture the faint glow of those eyes opening and the inevitable, uncomfortable questions that would follow. Well, once the screaming stopped, that is. Twenty-Eight almost turned around and crept back to his bunk. He felt suddenly ashamed, and he wasn't quite sure whether it was from the thought of slinking away like a coward or the quiet knowledge that what he was doing now was just a different sort of cowardice.
But Teisel's hair had fanned out over the course of the nightmare, and a lot of it was easily within arm's reach. Twenty-Eight could be done and back to his own bed in five minutes if he could just remember how to move. It's now or never. I've gone too far to leave empty-handed now. Steeling himself, and valiantly steadying his shaking hands, he reached out and gently grasped a nearby length of hair. So far, so good.
Still, even this small act seemed somehow violating. He'd have to work quickly, before his nerve failed him. Very carefully, he started to twist the elastic around the chosen hair. For obvious reasons, he'd never tied hair before. His hands weren't really designed for such an intricate maneuver, and the elastic seemed supernaturally uncooperative. He grew increasingly frustrated as he fumbled with it; every agonizing second he struggled with the miserable thing was a second in which Teisel might wake up, and what then? An uncomfortable tightness settled in his inner workings, as though some cog somewhere was grinding against its counterpart a little too hard.
Just when he thought the grinding of his gears would wake the entire ship, the final twist in the elastic was done. All that remained was the cut. If he'd had any breath to hold, he'd have let it out with relief.
Slowly, he eased the lower blade of the shears under the hair, resting their weight on the bed to lessen the chance of dropping them. It was awkward for his outstretched arms, but he also managed to angle the blades in the hope that it might make the cut less obvious.
He lost his grip. Much too quickly, the shears fell closed with an abrupt snick. Teisel flinched in his sleep, and a horrified Twenty-Eight squeezed his eyes shut, fearing the worst. Nothing. Reluctantly, the little robot cracked one eye open. Teisel had shifted slightly, but the noise hadn't been enough to wake him. And there was the lock of hair, laying beside the scissors not nine inches away.
Twenty-Eight was almost disappointed as he took his prize and the shears. The weight of the moment had been somewhat spoiled by his clumsiness; it could have ruined everything. But it hadn't, and either way he had what he came for. He left the room as silently as he'd entered it, and a smile lit his face as he softly latched the door behind him. It was with a great feeling of triumph that he replaced the shears in their drawer in the galley, and the feeling only grew as he entered the servbots' quarters to find all of his brothers asleep and unaware of his absence.
Climbing into bed, he reached up to the slats supporting Twenty-Nine's bunk and removed a small pencil box he kept hidden there. Opening it, he looked over the things inside. A few photographs, a crayon drawing of a horse, an interesting pebble, two shards of red glass, and a formerly crumpled note (he'd never quite managed to get all the creases out) written in strong, somewhat erratic handwriting that shifted between print and flowing script seemingly at random. That last one was his favorite, even though it was only an old note to the bridge crew (From now on, if anyone finds a button or switch with which they are not familiar, they are to assume they're not allowed to touch it. Especially if it's shiny. P.S: This means you, Five!)
I suppose that's my second favorite now. Tenderly, he set his new favorite in the box: a neat lock of dove-grey hair, tied at one end with an elastic. One small part of a loved one that could be kept in a safe place, even if the rest of him wasn't. Admiring it, a thought occurred to Twenty-Eight. Hmmm. It ended up a little larger than I thought. Closing the box, he replaced it above the bunk slat and settled down to sleep. I hope he doesn't notice.
The following morning, Teisel's usually neat ponytail wasn't passing muster. His sister was the second person in the mess hall to notice. The first person in the mess hall to notice stared into his breakfast, praying that he hadn't been found out.
"Big brother, did you do something....different with your hair today?" She peered curiously at where her sibling's eyes would be if they hadn't been obscured by a sizable fringe of thick, grey hair.
"I don't know, it keeps slipping out of the tail," Teisel grumbled, blowing the offending hair out of his eyes. "It must be from one of the tangles I had to cut out. The layers are all screwed up," he added as the curtain of hair flopped back down.
"You could borrow some of my hair clips," Tron offered, dumping a little extra sugar into her oatmeal. Forty perked up, looking between Tron and Teisel expectantly.
"Babuu..." Bon chipped in, before turning his attention back to the design he was making on the table with his apple juice.
Teisel sighed, making the fringe rustle slightly. "No thanks, sis. I'll get used to it."
Tron shrugged, Bon blew a raspberry, and Forty sagged in disappointment, muttering something about accenting Master Teisel's eyes. Teisel reached for his coffee cup and ended up with the salt shaker instead.
Twenty-Eight excused himself and left to check on his pencil box.
Now I'm kind of wondering about that pebble...though it probably would've been a little funnier if the servbot had accidentally slipped and chopped his whole ponytail off. Nonetheless, that was genius. Keep it up! 
28 is such a wacky little stalker, ain't he? I just figured that Teisel slept with his hair loose; I used to have waist-length hair, and keeping it tied back at night is very uncomfortable and lumpy. 