Prologue: London
Fandom: None really, this is just madness. Shows up in my Sherlock (BBC 2010) and my meta-fic fiction.
Rating: Gen
Characters: London, mention of Glasgow
Triggers/Warnings: None, that I'm aware of.
A/N: This came into my head when I was trying to write a different piece of original fiction. London has crept into all of my works, and so I figured it was time for the Prologue, the explanation, if you will.
The City knew it was capricious, knew it was jealous and willful and lonely and even, in its oddest parts, insane, but it had an excuse. It was the City. From the earliest days, when it was Londinium and the people moved upon it and beat streets into its mud and all its thoughts were of hunger and thirst and fear and work and then of blood (as blood is as much a part of every City as is the dead) and then bones were buried, and houses built, and mud became stone became streets with Names and names and ideas thought and bred and the Globe rose up and created for itself a playwright whose Name would span millennia and kings and queens and traitors died and the Hill became bloodthirsty and London controlled all its separate parts into itself. It became a bit mad, some said, and those who touched it, touched It, became even so as it was.
Copyright Madly-Write, 2011.
It was capable of thoughts, and dreams, and yet, as sure as the Thames moved like the artery through the bed, it knew it was bound by Legend, bound by Lore. There were things that must happen, whispered the streets, Things that must occur, Names that must be spoken, deeds that must be done and finished and held. Fleet Street whispered for a barber, the cobbles whispered for Ripper and blood, and Baker whined and pouted and sulked for its pair, and in the future/past the workhouses cried for their Twist, their golden locket.
London grew and spawned and sprawled and became what it needed to be. Bridges were built and bridges fell and once there was a great pain, a great anger and fire raged amongst the building, raged for days. But the streets were not tarnished, the underlayers of itself were not scourged. London savoured up the taste of fire in itself, saved it as a warning, put that flavour in the minds of those it needed to save it, those who defended it.
It called to itself Centres, the folk (and the not-Folk) it needed to govern its more intemperate parts. They rarely ran in line with the politics (or politicks) of the day, for the City had no use for the petty means of tangled thought when it had its own much more ancient breed. The kings rose and the kings fell and Cromwell (the damned interloper, though he was himself a Name) rose and began the new age of people. The Centres changed and moved and stayed hidden (though some didn’t) and all throughout the ages the City remained itself.
Those who were its Lost were its ears and eyes and those who were its dead were buried in its bones. The Lost came and went and touched the mind of the City and it (for Cities can neither be kind nor cruel, but both) being fickle sent some to be irregular and some to be free and some died to tell the tales that haunted its inner mind. Their shapes were seen by some with sight, in the mist and fogs that haunted the stories, and haunted the minds of those more watchful.
Unlike its younger sister Glasgow, London felt no need to proclaim its freedom. It was free, and not free, and the center of the times, for without London what would there be.
And so it was, as the ages passed, Londinium to London, the City grew and changed and became its ever deep-built self.
Rating: Gen
Characters: London, mention of Glasgow
Triggers/Warnings: None, that I'm aware of.
A/N: This came into my head when I was trying to write a different piece of original fiction. London has crept into all of my works, and so I figured it was time for the Prologue, the explanation, if you will.
The City knew it was capricious, knew it was jealous and willful and lonely and even, in its oddest parts, insane, but it had an excuse. It was the City. From the earliest days, when it was Londinium and the people moved upon it and beat streets into its mud and all its thoughts were of hunger and thirst and fear and work and then of blood (as blood is as much a part of every City as is the dead) and then bones were buried, and houses built, and mud became stone became streets with Names and names and ideas thought and bred and the Globe rose up and created for itself a playwright whose Name would span millennia and kings and queens and traitors died and the Hill became bloodthirsty and London controlled all its separate parts into itself. It became a bit mad, some said, and those who touched it, touched It, became even so as it was.
Copyright Madly-Write, 2011.
It was capable of thoughts, and dreams, and yet, as sure as the Thames moved like the artery through the bed, it knew it was bound by Legend, bound by Lore. There were things that must happen, whispered the streets, Things that must occur, Names that must be spoken, deeds that must be done and finished and held. Fleet Street whispered for a barber, the cobbles whispered for Ripper and blood, and Baker whined and pouted and sulked for its pair, and in the future/past the workhouses cried for their Twist, their golden locket.
London grew and spawned and sprawled and became what it needed to be. Bridges were built and bridges fell and once there was a great pain, a great anger and fire raged amongst the building, raged for days. But the streets were not tarnished, the underlayers of itself were not scourged. London savoured up the taste of fire in itself, saved it as a warning, put that flavour in the minds of those it needed to save it, those who defended it.
It called to itself Centres, the folk (and the not-Folk) it needed to govern its more intemperate parts. They rarely ran in line with the politics (or politicks) of the day, for the City had no use for the petty means of tangled thought when it had its own much more ancient breed. The kings rose and the kings fell and Cromwell (the damned interloper, though he was himself a Name) rose and began the new age of people. The Centres changed and moved and stayed hidden (though some didn’t) and all throughout the ages the City remained itself.
Those who were its Lost were its ears and eyes and those who were its dead were buried in its bones. The Lost came and went and touched the mind of the City and it (for Cities can neither be kind nor cruel, but both) being fickle sent some to be irregular and some to be free and some died to tell the tales that haunted its inner mind. Their shapes were seen by some with sight, in the mist and fogs that haunted the stories, and haunted the minds of those more watchful.
Unlike its younger sister Glasgow, London felt no need to proclaim its freedom. It was free, and not free, and the center of the times, for without London what would there be.
And so it was, as the ages passed, Londinium to London, the City grew and changed and became its ever deep-built self.