He remembers his father as tall, and strong, and wise. Distinguished in his suits, but with his eyepatch giving him a note of the sly rake.
They'd argued about it as brothers, he and Michael. Each with their pet theory. Michael said Dad had lost the eye fighting pirates. Lewis had favored a bear as the likely culprit.
The truth, as usual, had been anticlimactic: a schoolyard scuffle. A sharp branch on a low bush.
Michael is dead, and his father-- to Lewis's surprise-- is shorter than he himself, a balding middle-aged man with thin shoulders, and a rumpled shirt.
53 - Gasoline (Melancholy)dienJuly 20 2013, 05:20:57 UTC
The ancestral homeland smells of petrol.
Melancholy Pryce shoulders her luggage and slides on sunglasses against Khartoum's savage sun. The streets before the airport are clogged with jeeps, bicycles. dusty buses. There are unfriendly eyes on her: disapproval for an unveiled foreign woman. The heat is unreal.
It had been raining when she left London.
Her blood is in this country, seven generations back.
When she leaves Sudan two months later, she takes with her no sense of identity. The homeland's parting gift to her is only the smell of petrol: in her hair, in her clothes, in her skin.
Ongtupqa opens before him, a wonder of the world. Lewis stands on a red rock to catch his breath. The wind in his face smells of pine and dust.
Half a world away, Uluru rises: a geological opposite. But the feeling is the same: the awe, the awareness of yourself as small before the earth.
He has been to many such places. Everest, Kilimanjaro. In the presence of the wild, civilization falls away, his worries, his fears, the land of responsibility. And always there is another place to see.
Gone walkabout.
Gone walkabout his whole life, leaving the world behind.
51 - Shorts (Melancholy and Woo)dienJuly 25 2013, 05:23:33 UTC
David Woo is dignified in a doctor's coat, and a fit and respectable fifty-something in his favored jeans and polo shirt. Sitting here wearing only his shorts, he is skinny and pale and self-conscious.
Melancholy wonders if his embarrassment is for his near-nudity, or because of why he's undressed to begin with. She supposes she should say something reassuring.
She looks to the clock instead. In this white-walled office, they cannot see the moonrise.
“Ten minutes, Dr. Woo,” she says, and David Woo takes off his glasses, takes a deep breath, and holds out his hands for the cuffs.
22 - Fireflies (Jason)dienJuly 25 2013, 06:46:04 UTC
In summer the years drop away.
He is thirteen and Myrddin is older, but in June, it doesn't matter: they are both children again, spending all day in the forest. At dusk they head home, following the stream.
The first little light catches his breath-- and then he exhales. A trick of Myrddin's. Iason punches his arm: there's been no mention of stupid magic all day, and now this?
But Myrddin stares like the boy he no longer is. “It isn't me,” he whispers, and they both stand still, stand and watch as the night comes alive with fairy lights.
Comments 7
They'd argued about it as brothers, he and Michael. Each with their pet theory. Michael said Dad had lost the eye fighting pirates. Lewis had favored a bear as the likely culprit.
The truth, as usual, had been anticlimactic: a schoolyard scuffle. A sharp branch on a low bush.
Michael is dead, and his father-- to Lewis's surprise-- is shorter than he himself, a balding middle-aged man with thin shoulders, and a rumpled shirt.
Reply
Melancholy Pryce shoulders her luggage and slides on sunglasses against Khartoum's savage sun. The streets before the airport are clogged with jeeps, bicycles. dusty buses. There are unfriendly eyes on her: disapproval for an unveiled foreign woman. The heat is unreal.
It had been raining when she left London.
Her blood is in this country, seven generations back.
When she leaves Sudan two months later, she takes with her no sense of identity. The homeland's parting gift to her is only the smell of petrol: in her hair, in her clothes, in her skin.
Reply
Half a world away, Uluru rises: a geological opposite. But the feeling is the same: the awe, the awareness of yourself as small before the earth.
He has been to many such places. Everest, Kilimanjaro. In the presence of the wild, civilization falls away, his worries, his fears, the land of responsibility. And always there is another place to see.
Gone walkabout.
Gone walkabout his whole life, leaving the world behind.
Reply
Melancholy wonders if his embarrassment is for his near-nudity, or because of why he's undressed to begin with. She supposes she should say something reassuring.
She looks to the clock instead. In this white-walled office, they cannot see the moonrise.
“Ten minutes, Dr. Woo,” she says, and David Woo takes off his glasses, takes a deep breath, and holds out his hands for the cuffs.
Reply
He is thirteen and Myrddin is older, but in June, it doesn't matter: they are both children again, spending all day in the forest. At dusk they head home, following the stream.
The first little light catches his breath-- and then he exhales. A trick of Myrddin's. Iason punches his arm: there's been no mention of stupid magic all day, and now this?
But Myrddin stares like the boy he no longer is. “It isn't me,” he whispers, and they both stand still, stand and watch as the night comes alive with fairy lights.
Reply
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