British Circle: Stone Days (Months: 009)
Title: Stone Days
’Verse/characters: British Circle
Prompt: Months (009)
Word Count: 725
Rating: PG for very faint sexual motifs
Notes: Separation. Set approximately a year after the novel.
Three months
Thorn Castleford lay on his back in the exact centre of a bed that felt far too big. Stretching his arms out until they touched the very edges of the mattress, he stared at the smooth blank snowfield of the ceiling until his eyes began to water from the strain. The quiet heaviness of the cold, unused air felt suffocating as he tried to relax, but she had left too much empty space for him to be able to breathe. It crowded him, as if he had stood on a cliff-top and shouted so that the wind had sucked his air, his voice, his movements away.
Two months
Lian is waiting for the clock to miraculously accelerate and take her with it. The steady ticking makes her ache to pick it up, turn it over so she can see the little controlling dials that must be turned with a fingernail, and viciously wind the hands on and on. She wants to torture the timepiece until it will submit and finally let her go home.
Lian is living now, feeling now. The past yawns behind her, open, almost inviting- but she cannot turn back. That’s not her power. The future is ahead, aching like a recent hurt that will take months to heal: a knowledge of the aching to come.
Lian stands at the floor length window of an anonymous hotel, in an anonymous hotel on an anonymous street in an anonymous town. She has lost count now, of uncomfortable beds and empty rooms, of dull wallpapers and sea-views. She has lost count of emails sent and letters written. She has fifteen letters in her case, folded carefully as if to preserve him within them. She cannot telephone, in case the future moves further away with the sound of his voice.
She stares at the lights that flicker on, feeling the Earth (seven floors below) greeting her enthusiastically. Flowers are sprouting in beds that have not bloomed for years. The clouds overhead feel her as they scud across like constantly shifting tears in the endless blue sky. She feels the rush of her lungs, the shift of her muscles, the expulsion of air changed yet not different; feels her body, heart steadily beating out the months in tiny double thuds.
This is now, and she has never felt more alone. Or more awake. Or more alive.
One month
Thorn sat on the edge of the clean, empty bed and stared at his fingernails. They were clean- Thorn was always clean- and bitten down to the quick. Thorn remembered holding a smaller, browner hand between his. She had said that she didn’t bite her nails, when they had placed their hands palm to palm. She spent too much time in the garden, she told him softly, too much time up to her elbows in soil to be able to put her hands near her mouth.
Thorn couldn’t help it.
He had vomited in the morning, a terrifying result of reading her letter, her scrawled signature. He felt the emptiness with every word and every scribbled sketch in every margin. Her letters were snapshots, carrying an image of her presence from continent to her continent like a corked bottle carrying notes on vanished waves.
Kingfisher had waited at the door of the bathroom until he emerged, then handed him a glass of water with a grim smile as he sat on the end of his mattress. She knew what to say, had recognised the postmark, the envelope, the careless scrawl that had brought it home.
“She’ll come home soon.”
Thorn knew it wasn’t just her. This wasn’t only about her. It was about geese overhead, travelling on instinct, and about the way that the clouds vanished and vanished and vanished over the curved horizons. Her letters were a catalyst, and the emptiness of echoing floorboards in his ears was hers alone.
But- oh, but…
He nodded to Kingfisher in thanks, then walked down to the edge of the lake. If he stood here long enough, days and nights would surely blur like timelapse nature films and all would be well.
Instead, he dropped another stone into the shallow water by the quay, as he did every day when he stood and watched the sky change from colour to colour.
Two months gone.
Sixty stones.
Sixty days.
’Verse/characters: British Circle
Prompt: Months (009)
Word Count: 725
Rating: PG for very faint sexual motifs
Notes: Separation. Set approximately a year after the novel.
Three months
Thorn Castleford lay on his back in the exact centre of a bed that felt far too big. Stretching his arms out until they touched the very edges of the mattress, he stared at the smooth blank snowfield of the ceiling until his eyes began to water from the strain. The quiet heaviness of the cold, unused air felt suffocating as he tried to relax, but she had left too much empty space for him to be able to breathe. It crowded him, as if he had stood on a cliff-top and shouted so that the wind had sucked his air, his voice, his movements away.
Two months
Lian is waiting for the clock to miraculously accelerate and take her with it. The steady ticking makes her ache to pick it up, turn it over so she can see the little controlling dials that must be turned with a fingernail, and viciously wind the hands on and on. She wants to torture the timepiece until it will submit and finally let her go home.
Lian is living now, feeling now. The past yawns behind her, open, almost inviting- but she cannot turn back. That’s not her power. The future is ahead, aching like a recent hurt that will take months to heal: a knowledge of the aching to come.
Lian stands at the floor length window of an anonymous hotel, in an anonymous hotel on an anonymous street in an anonymous town. She has lost count now, of uncomfortable beds and empty rooms, of dull wallpapers and sea-views. She has lost count of emails sent and letters written. She has fifteen letters in her case, folded carefully as if to preserve him within them. She cannot telephone, in case the future moves further away with the sound of his voice.
She stares at the lights that flicker on, feeling the Earth (seven floors below) greeting her enthusiastically. Flowers are sprouting in beds that have not bloomed for years. The clouds overhead feel her as they scud across like constantly shifting tears in the endless blue sky. She feels the rush of her lungs, the shift of her muscles, the expulsion of air changed yet not different; feels her body, heart steadily beating out the months in tiny double thuds.
This is now, and she has never felt more alone. Or more awake. Or more alive.
One month
Thorn sat on the edge of the clean, empty bed and stared at his fingernails. They were clean- Thorn was always clean- and bitten down to the quick. Thorn remembered holding a smaller, browner hand between his. She had said that she didn’t bite her nails, when they had placed their hands palm to palm. She spent too much time in the garden, she told him softly, too much time up to her elbows in soil to be able to put her hands near her mouth.
Thorn couldn’t help it.
He had vomited in the morning, a terrifying result of reading her letter, her scrawled signature. He felt the emptiness with every word and every scribbled sketch in every margin. Her letters were snapshots, carrying an image of her presence from continent to her continent like a corked bottle carrying notes on vanished waves.
Kingfisher had waited at the door of the bathroom until he emerged, then handed him a glass of water with a grim smile as he sat on the end of his mattress. She knew what to say, had recognised the postmark, the envelope, the careless scrawl that had brought it home.
“She’ll come home soon.”
Thorn knew it wasn’t just her. This wasn’t only about her. It was about geese overhead, travelling on instinct, and about the way that the clouds vanished and vanished and vanished over the curved horizons. Her letters were a catalyst, and the emptiness of echoing floorboards in his ears was hers alone.
But- oh, but…
He nodded to Kingfisher in thanks, then walked down to the edge of the lake. If he stood here long enough, days and nights would surely blur like timelapse nature films and all would be well.
Instead, he dropped another stone into the shallow water by the quay, as he did every day when he stood and watched the sky change from colour to colour.
Two months gone.
Sixty stones.
Sixty days.