the good doctor says have some fic
May. 29th, 2011 11:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lunabee34I forgot to repost the untitled original ficlet I wrote for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
friendshipper's Three Weeks for DW Original Commentfest. Lots of brilliant things in this fest, y'all, that are not to be missed.
This isn't a novella by Ursula K. Le Guin. Nobody leaves her baby face up in the sun to die of heat stroke. All the children have shoes. There is no Earth That Was in this story, only Earth That Is and Earth That Sends and everybody's read those old tales anyway. They are wise and to be heeded and as true as the prince who turns beastly and must wed a maiden fair who loves him despite his horns and his tail.
Emma forgets what true gravity feels like. She forgets what the sunset does to water, gilding it gold and blooding it red as the stars wink in overhead. Her childhood is recycled air and cold starshine refracted through portholes. It is plastic. It is small. It is safe.
When they touch dirt, Emma cannot bear the smell of growing things--all the wild fertility of this new world disagrees with her. It is green and virulent and her nose runs and runs. Many people are sick, coughing and wheezing, eyes watering. Some of the babies die. Some of the old people die. Emma does not die.
She hears the grownups talking in her mother's tent late at night. This world is not what was expected. This world is not what Marni signed up for, nor Mirri nor Jertu nor Timothy nor Ben.
This world is green and loud and overwhelming, and they have no place else to go--just time to bide, years to wait.
Emma snuggles down into her bedding and clutches her stuffed almost-bear tightly. She coughs into her pillow and coughs into her pillow, and when finally the ships come, Emma is so old that she cannot remember a time when this world was not in her lungs, when she did not cough at the green and hack away at the air's thickness.
friendshipper's Three Weeks for DW Original Commentfest. Lots of brilliant things in this fest, y'all, that are not to be missed.This isn't a novella by Ursula K. Le Guin. Nobody leaves her baby face up in the sun to die of heat stroke. All the children have shoes. There is no Earth That Was in this story, only Earth That Is and Earth That Sends and everybody's read those old tales anyway. They are wise and to be heeded and as true as the prince who turns beastly and must wed a maiden fair who loves him despite his horns and his tail.
Emma forgets what true gravity feels like. She forgets what the sunset does to water, gilding it gold and blooding it red as the stars wink in overhead. Her childhood is recycled air and cold starshine refracted through portholes. It is plastic. It is small. It is safe.
When they touch dirt, Emma cannot bear the smell of growing things--all the wild fertility of this new world disagrees with her. It is green and virulent and her nose runs and runs. Many people are sick, coughing and wheezing, eyes watering. Some of the babies die. Some of the old people die. Emma does not die.
She hears the grownups talking in her mother's tent late at night. This world is not what was expected. This world is not what Marni signed up for, nor Mirri nor Jertu nor Timothy nor Ben.
This world is green and loud and overwhelming, and they have no place else to go--just time to bide, years to wait.
Emma snuggles down into her bedding and clutches her stuffed almost-bear tightly. She coughs into her pillow and coughs into her pillow, and when finally the ships come, Emma is so old that she cannot remember a time when this world was not in her lungs, when she did not cough at the green and hack away at the air's thickness.
