From 'Hello Stranger'
This is an excerpt from a future chapter of my story Hello Stranger. It is rated G and has been pestering me for a while, so I figured I'd get it out where it could pester you. :D
He called her ‘Desdemona’ because she loved him for his stories. They were lying on a blanket on a hill with their feet pointed at the shallow valley below. His hands were behind his head and his shoes were next to the blanket. The leaves of the lone oak tree above them cast dappled shadows on his closed eyes. He had been telling her a story, about Donna and the first time she dragged him to her mum’s house for Christmas. Apparently she thought that no one should spend the holidays alone.
Rose was quiet for a while, her the corners of her mouth turned down just a touch and the hint of a frown in the crease between her brows. “I’m not,” she said softly.
He opened his eyes and brought his head up to look at her. “What?”
“I’m not,” she repeated, “Desdemona.”
“Oh.” He let his head fall back down onto his cushioning hands and he examined the branches of the tree above them carefully. “Why not? I thought the metaphor was apt.”
“Because she didn’t really love him.” Rose propped herself up on her forearms and stared out at the vast expanse of corn below them. There was so much open space here, so much emptiness-except that it wasn’t really empty. The wind blew and the corn rippled like the open ocean; the dry rustle of leaves rolled around them. Birds sang above them and cumulous clouds, like giant puffs of candy floss drifted lazily through the deep blue sky. “She loved the idea of him,” Rose continued, “the adventure and the excitement, and maybe the way running off with him would piss off her dad, but she didn’t love him. She didn’t hardly know him, not at all.” Rose flopped down next to him and mirrored his pose: hands behind her head, legs crossed. “An’ Othello didn’t know her either, ‘cause if he did he never would have believed that Iago bloke. But he did-and then he killed her.”
John rolled onto his side to face her. “All right, then. Who would you be?”
She worried her bottom lip with her teeth. “I wouldn’t be anyone. ‘Cause it ends one of three ways, right? Marriage,” she counted off, “death, or marriage with a price. An’ I’m done with that, I am. I already did the whole ‘leave school for a bloke thing’ and let me tell you that wasn’t worth it, not at all. An’ I’m not ready to die, not yet.” She hesitated for a moment. “I don’t want to be anyone-I just want to travel. I don’t want to wake up forty like my mum and realize I’ve never been outside of Britain, never even been outside of London. There’s a whole world out there, an’ I want to see it.”
When she did glance over at him there was something like wonder in his eyes and it took his breath away. “Rose Tyler,” he said, and it never failed to make her shiver the way he wrapped his lips around her name. “You are extraordinary.”