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rainbowfic2015-06-30 07:47 pm
starphotographs) wrote in rainbowfic2015-06-30 07:47 pm
Milk Bottle 1, Skyblue Pink with Striped Polka Dots 7
Name: starphotographs
Story: Corwin and Friends
Supplies and Styles: Graffiti (Milk Bottle, Summer Carnival) Novelty Beads (http://i538.photobucket.com/albums/ff348/subluxate/Rainbow%20Modding/greyskies.jpg), Glitter (http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/prayer-sunrise)
Characters: Spenser
Colors: Milk Bottle 1 (Fireworks), Skyblue Pink with Striped Polka Dots 7 (“You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”)
Word Count: 1,266
Rating: PG
Warnings: Choose not to warn.
Summary: Some people find religion. Spenser found electromagnetism.
Note: Nothing much to say on this one, actually!
Touched
It was the barely sunset, and I already felt like going to bed. Night comes at surprising times; when you spend all day on your feet, when your days can last half a week. But, then the clouds rolled in, blotting out the sky, destroying shadows, pushing against each other with enough force to fall from the sky and power the city.
I knew I had to stay awake.
Stay awake, and drive. Stay awake, and find the tallest hill around. This is a pilgrimage. This is everything to me. This is worth leaving the road for. My tires skid on dust and crunch on gravel. The engine, old despite everything I’d ever tried to do for it, struggles to haul itself up the slope. I say, fuck it. If the car breaks down, I’ll walk. If my legs break down, I’ll crawl. If I can’t even crawl, I’ll lie down and let the storm take me. It has the right, if anything does. These clouds are made of the same stuff as the first clouds. They’ve been raining down and drifting up for billions of years. The static inside them is a perfect imitation of the static that made the bolt that reached out and touched the pond. That sent the molecules into lockstep so they could organize and recreate themselves. And recreate themselves, and recreate themselves, over and over again, until I could get born and grow up and sit in this funny machine, gripping the wheel, flooring the gas, charging the hill, rushing to bear witness to this great force. The force to which I owe everything I am.
By the time I’m halfway up, the clouds are so thick that the sky is blue again, the droplets colliding and merging until they’re heavy enough to fall. One hits the windshield, and then another. If it starts in full, I might not make it the rest of the way up. I might have to get out of the car and get down on my knees, gripping at rocks. Sliding in the mud. And I almost hope the sky opens up, just so I could. But, the drops are quiet on the windshield. The tires are steady on the ground. I crest the hill. I’ve made it. My heart racing, my hands almost starting to shake, I turn the keys and quiet the old engine. The door slams behind me, and I smell the dust in the air. I sit down on the hood, and I smell the ozone. This is the smell of the world when it all started. Before the strikes hit the mud and planted the trees that would grow billions of years later and throw down the petrichor. I remember that I’m not as lost as I seem. That everything that made me is still here, if I look closely enough. That what made all of us is still here, moving us around and holding us together. And that, on days like this, it’ll rain down from the sky and show itself. Water falls in my hair. The sky darkens. I wait.
The first bolts leap from cloud to cloud, and little bolts leap in the muscles of my heart. It’s a world of friction and contraction, and I’m part of it all. I can’t always understand myself, but I can always understand this. The working of energy on the inert that keeps us all moving. I don’t know why I’m always moving as much as I am, but when I think about the static quivering in the sodium in my blood, I know how, and I know it’s something that needs to be expressed, something too ancient and vital to be held back by the likes of me. This is why I figure it’s okay if I can’t stop myself. If I could, I’d be stopping something that was never meant to be stopped. It was meant to shower down from the sky, to shine from the stars, to hold air around planets and form matter into shapes. To roll through my brain, to carry my thoughts, so fast and so beautiful that they feel divinely inspired. But this is more than divinity. This isn’t a gift from some god, some god that we built out of nothing and gave to ourselves. This thinks for us and fixes us in our structure, because we, and every known and unknown object you can think of, grew up around it and folded it into ourselves.
“You can’t catch lightning in a bottle,” the saying goes. I refuse to be a bottle.
At first, I can still see patches of sun glinting in the dry valley, then the patches fill in and the sun starts slipping behind the horizon. The hills look cool; asleep. I could lay my hot face against them and finally rest. Or I could sit and watch them darken and smudge into a wavy blur of blue and grey. I could watch them become a mirror to the sky, dark and damp. Everything more than a few miles away, I’m looking at through a wall of water. The clouds are saturated and dripping, the water is vapor no more. The air smells wet. I already know this is the kind of storm where the sun might go down, but the night won’t come until the clouds finally part. The bolts are throwing themselves the ground, and the thunder is finally close enough to hear it. I wait, holding my breath, until it’s finally close enough to feel. It shakes my ribs, and then I’m surrounded. The heavy clouds roll in and fall down all around me. The rain soaks my clothes and scatters the world behind my glasses into a thousand fuzzy pieces. I wipe my wet glasses on my wet shirt. This is the part I can’t miss. When the lightning gets close enough, you can finally see that none of it is the same. None of the bolts are the same size, or the same color. All burn hotter and brighter than the sun.
I’ve never reached out and touched the sun.
But the lightning reached out and touched me.
It reached down from the rod on that roof I sat on nearly half my lifetime ago, camera clenched in my shaking hands, glasses blurry, mesmerized. It only just barely brushed against me, just a tap on the shoulder, but that was all it took for it to carve a canyon down my back. A long, winding afterimage of itself, where, on a good day, the nerves still buzz, themselves throwing out little lightning bolts at nothing. Every time my shirt scrapes harshly against the frayed fibers, I remember that it’s inside me. That it always was. That it powers my body and holds trillions of atoms in place and shapes them into all the ever-changing molecules of myself. That, if it comes down from the sky and destroys me right now, I’m just being unmade by my maker. There isn’t anything to be afraid of here. There’s just terrible beauty, and unimaginable power, and an incredible force as old as the world. How can you fear something that underlines everything you are? How can you have time to fear, when you can already feel it flagging, knowing your connection is about to be lost; not knowing when you’ll finally get it back? I close my eyes. I hold fast. It wavers under me.
The clouds empty out and wear through. The holes are big enough to frame the first stars.
My maker says: not yet.
starphotographsStory: Corwin and Friends
Supplies and Styles: Graffiti (Milk Bottle, Summer Carnival) Novelty Beads (http://i538.photobucket.com/albums/ff348/subluxate/Rainbow%20Modding/greyskies.jpg), Glitter (http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/prayer-sunrise)
Characters: Spenser
Colors: Milk Bottle 1 (Fireworks), Skyblue Pink with Striped Polka Dots 7 (“You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”)
Word Count: 1,266
Rating: PG
Warnings: Choose not to warn.
Summary: Some people find religion. Spenser found electromagnetism.
Note: Nothing much to say on this one, actually!
It was the barely sunset, and I already felt like going to bed. Night comes at surprising times; when you spend all day on your feet, when your days can last half a week. But, then the clouds rolled in, blotting out the sky, destroying shadows, pushing against each other with enough force to fall from the sky and power the city.
I knew I had to stay awake.
Stay awake, and drive. Stay awake, and find the tallest hill around. This is a pilgrimage. This is everything to me. This is worth leaving the road for. My tires skid on dust and crunch on gravel. The engine, old despite everything I’d ever tried to do for it, struggles to haul itself up the slope. I say, fuck it. If the car breaks down, I’ll walk. If my legs break down, I’ll crawl. If I can’t even crawl, I’ll lie down and let the storm take me. It has the right, if anything does. These clouds are made of the same stuff as the first clouds. They’ve been raining down and drifting up for billions of years. The static inside them is a perfect imitation of the static that made the bolt that reached out and touched the pond. That sent the molecules into lockstep so they could organize and recreate themselves. And recreate themselves, and recreate themselves, over and over again, until I could get born and grow up and sit in this funny machine, gripping the wheel, flooring the gas, charging the hill, rushing to bear witness to this great force. The force to which I owe everything I am.
By the time I’m halfway up, the clouds are so thick that the sky is blue again, the droplets colliding and merging until they’re heavy enough to fall. One hits the windshield, and then another. If it starts in full, I might not make it the rest of the way up. I might have to get out of the car and get down on my knees, gripping at rocks. Sliding in the mud. And I almost hope the sky opens up, just so I could. But, the drops are quiet on the windshield. The tires are steady on the ground. I crest the hill. I’ve made it. My heart racing, my hands almost starting to shake, I turn the keys and quiet the old engine. The door slams behind me, and I smell the dust in the air. I sit down on the hood, and I smell the ozone. This is the smell of the world when it all started. Before the strikes hit the mud and planted the trees that would grow billions of years later and throw down the petrichor. I remember that I’m not as lost as I seem. That everything that made me is still here, if I look closely enough. That what made all of us is still here, moving us around and holding us together. And that, on days like this, it’ll rain down from the sky and show itself. Water falls in my hair. The sky darkens. I wait.
The first bolts leap from cloud to cloud, and little bolts leap in the muscles of my heart. It’s a world of friction and contraction, and I’m part of it all. I can’t always understand myself, but I can always understand this. The working of energy on the inert that keeps us all moving. I don’t know why I’m always moving as much as I am, but when I think about the static quivering in the sodium in my blood, I know how, and I know it’s something that needs to be expressed, something too ancient and vital to be held back by the likes of me. This is why I figure it’s okay if I can’t stop myself. If I could, I’d be stopping something that was never meant to be stopped. It was meant to shower down from the sky, to shine from the stars, to hold air around planets and form matter into shapes. To roll through my brain, to carry my thoughts, so fast and so beautiful that they feel divinely inspired. But this is more than divinity. This isn’t a gift from some god, some god that we built out of nothing and gave to ourselves. This thinks for us and fixes us in our structure, because we, and every known and unknown object you can think of, grew up around it and folded it into ourselves.
“You can’t catch lightning in a bottle,” the saying goes. I refuse to be a bottle.
At first, I can still see patches of sun glinting in the dry valley, then the patches fill in and the sun starts slipping behind the horizon. The hills look cool; asleep. I could lay my hot face against them and finally rest. Or I could sit and watch them darken and smudge into a wavy blur of blue and grey. I could watch them become a mirror to the sky, dark and damp. Everything more than a few miles away, I’m looking at through a wall of water. The clouds are saturated and dripping, the water is vapor no more. The air smells wet. I already know this is the kind of storm where the sun might go down, but the night won’t come until the clouds finally part. The bolts are throwing themselves the ground, and the thunder is finally close enough to hear it. I wait, holding my breath, until it’s finally close enough to feel. It shakes my ribs, and then I’m surrounded. The heavy clouds roll in and fall down all around me. The rain soaks my clothes and scatters the world behind my glasses into a thousand fuzzy pieces. I wipe my wet glasses on my wet shirt. This is the part I can’t miss. When the lightning gets close enough, you can finally see that none of it is the same. None of the bolts are the same size, or the same color. All burn hotter and brighter than the sun.
I’ve never reached out and touched the sun.
But the lightning reached out and touched me.
It reached down from the rod on that roof I sat on nearly half my lifetime ago, camera clenched in my shaking hands, glasses blurry, mesmerized. It only just barely brushed against me, just a tap on the shoulder, but that was all it took for it to carve a canyon down my back. A long, winding afterimage of itself, where, on a good day, the nerves still buzz, themselves throwing out little lightning bolts at nothing. Every time my shirt scrapes harshly against the frayed fibers, I remember that it’s inside me. That it always was. That it powers my body and holds trillions of atoms in place and shapes them into all the ever-changing molecules of myself. That, if it comes down from the sky and destroys me right now, I’m just being unmade by my maker. There isn’t anything to be afraid of here. There’s just terrible beauty, and unimaginable power, and an incredible force as old as the world. How can you fear something that underlines everything you are? How can you have time to fear, when you can already feel it flagging, knowing your connection is about to be lost; not knowing when you’ll finally get it back? I close my eyes. I hold fast. It wavers under me.
The clouds empty out and wear through. The holes are big enough to frame the first stars.
My maker says: not yet.