This one's a quickie~
And yet another shoutout for prompts!
I know I ought to have a lot more than this posted up given the fact that it's been a while, but RL and random LJ fussing have kept me from sitting down and doing stuff. >_> Anyway, I hope that short will be enough to satisfy you guys for the moment.
This is another piece for Blood Sings, which I scribbled out right after I finished reading Banana Yoshimoto's N.P.. The title is taken from 31_days, which is my god of prompts and random inspiration.
November 11 [2005]: Endtimes: Blood Sings. Life in the subjunctive case.
Subjunctive: a grammatical mood that expresses doubts, wishes, and possibilities. Set pre-story.
Alistair Mordechai did not have to be around for Satsuki to know that he was still mourning. It was, in fact, in his particular kind of absence - the abandonment of Japan, and the impersonal feel of a room he had spent close to twenty years living in - that gave him away. When he was around he carried himself much the way he always had (straight-backed and sharp-eyed with the dogged tenacity of a man who had stayed too long on the streets and had ended up leaving his soul there), but when he looked at people he no longer seemed to see them. He smiled sparingly, more than he had right after his rebirth but less than he had after her husband (his lover) had left ahead of them both, but it was always with that tenderness, that bastard child of incurable grief and the blind stubbornness to suck it up and go on living.
Sometimes, it would occur to her to tell Alistair that he walked away in the same fashion that Hikaru Shinta had his whole life: that blithe, easy stride that made the observer wonder if he was going to disappear right there and never return. But Alistair must’ve known what she was thinking, because he’d always pause right on the brink of leaving, and mumble something about the day, or week, or month of his return. So, robbed of her chance by a lie that wasn’t a lie, Satsuki would be left with a smile, a murmured “take care,” and then silence.
I'll be flooding this LJ with more posts soon, if I'm lucky.
I know I ought to have a lot more than this posted up given the fact that it's been a while, but RL and random LJ fussing have kept me from sitting down and doing stuff. >_> Anyway, I hope that short will be enough to satisfy you guys for the moment.
This is another piece for Blood Sings, which I scribbled out right after I finished reading Banana Yoshimoto's N.P.. The title is taken from 31_days, which is my god of prompts and random inspiration.
November 11 [2005]: Endtimes: Blood Sings. Life in the subjunctive case.
Subjunctive: a grammatical mood that expresses doubts, wishes, and possibilities. Set pre-story.
Alistair Mordechai did not have to be around for Satsuki to know that he was still mourning. It was, in fact, in his particular kind of absence - the abandonment of Japan, and the impersonal feel of a room he had spent close to twenty years living in - that gave him away. When he was around he carried himself much the way he always had (straight-backed and sharp-eyed with the dogged tenacity of a man who had stayed too long on the streets and had ended up leaving his soul there), but when he looked at people he no longer seemed to see them. He smiled sparingly, more than he had right after his rebirth but less than he had after her husband (his lover) had left ahead of them both, but it was always with that tenderness, that bastard child of incurable grief and the blind stubbornness to suck it up and go on living.
Sometimes, it would occur to her to tell Alistair that he walked away in the same fashion that Hikaru Shinta had his whole life: that blithe, easy stride that made the observer wonder if he was going to disappear right there and never return. But Alistair must’ve known what she was thinking, because he’d always pause right on the brink of leaving, and mumble something about the day, or week, or month of his return. So, robbed of her chance by a lie that wasn’t a lie, Satsuki would be left with a smile, a murmured “take care,” and then silence.
I'll be flooding this LJ with more posts soon, if I'm lucky.