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rainbowfic2016-06-20 11:54 pm
greenling) wrote in rainbowfic2016-06-20 11:54 pm
Entry tags:
Sherry #20, Rose #11, Bowie Side A #6
Name: Greenling
Story: Lordsverse (pre-Lords of Earth and Sky)
Colors: Sherry #20 (The earth has many keys. / Where melody is not), Rose #11 (The fragrance always remains in the hand that gives the rose.), Bowie Side A #6 (Their jealousy's spilling down The stars must stick together → The Stars Are Out Tonight (The Next Day))
Supplies and Styles: Birthday Prompt (the Umberto Eco one)
Word Count: 895
Rating: PG-13-ish
Warnings: An offscreen disaster.
Summary: Scenes from the beginning of a new world.
Comments, criticism, and questions are all appreciated.
Allebrun was three when the ship came down from the sky, burning bright blue. The first thing she heard was screaming, far away over the tall tops of the garden flowers- then all around her. Her uncle came up from behind then and snatched her up in his strong arms, held her close enough to squeeze and began to run. Other people ran, too. Some stared, shading their eyes from the bright sky. Over his shoulder she saw it, thought it looked like some kind of bird, but hard-edged and shiny. It didn't register as the source of all the screaming. Nothing did. She clung to her uncle and tried not to be afraid.
The roads were all dirt back then, and the houses mostly woven grass, dried mud, furs in the cool season, and bamboo. They had flat roofs and mud walls built in patterns to help break the winds of storms coming in from the sea. Wood was scarce and the tools to use rock were scarcer. People lived in small bunches, ate and farmed and built as a community. It was survival.
When they made it all the way back home, Momma Sam was standing outside the door. Uncle sat her down and someone else snatched her back up and took her inside. There was a lot of shouting and questions outside, Momma and Uncle lending their coices to the cacophony. They yelled about ships and fire and the hole in the sky. Then there was a sound off in the distance, low and long, and for a moment after, silence.
Then the screaming started up again outside. Momma Gerda, sitting in the corner by the warming stone, set her sewing down on the low table and stood up. Allebrun remembered that everyone seemed to be looking at her.
"Hit the water. They'll need help at the shore," she said.
She and Uncle left. They were gone the rest of the day.
*
The garden needed a lot more weeding after that, but Uncle wasn't around much and they wouldn't let Allebrun out of the tent without someone to watch her. That meant she mostly stayed in the mess tent during the day and helped salt the fish. More fish than she'd ever seen in her life, or ever would again in one place. It was only a tent by convention, really. Big open rock fire pits sat nearish to mud counters topped with scraped bamboo, cooking food with warming stones and sometimes real fire. Momma Sam was there with her, at least; she sang and played with toys as much as she helped, but people seemed to appreciate her. They definitely appreciated Momma Sam.
Momma Sam was a spacer all the way, in her own words. She was short, dark, with heavy-lidded eyes and a voice like a flock of birds. She made people happy when she sang. Always working, always singing, always doing something, even for those who didn't appreciate it.
That week the whole settlement was busy, an on-edge busy that made Allebrun quiet and fussy. She didn't understand what was wrong; new people showed up all the time, and people got hurt sometimes too. Wasn't this the same? She'd never seen someone hurt bad, though. They kept Allebrun away from the brunt of it, but they didn't live too far from the doctors', one of the few wood and mud-brick buildings. She noticed lot of the screaming and talking was people coming back and forth from around there.
It also wasn't long before it rained again. The doctors' needed more dry room, so they had to move in with another family for a while.
*
By the time Allebrun was ten, there were a dozen other kids in the settlement. She was ringleader and tutor for most of them. Two were survivors of the crash, one nearly an adult, making Allebrun the second oldest. She wouldn't have resented being second if the kid wasn't also loudly from a commerce world, whatever that meant. All the born ones wound up looking like her, with hair or eyes or skin in bright tinted colors.
The settlement had begun expanding a long ways down the coast by then, as the food stocks increased, as new discoveries were made, as people felt safer living nearer the docks or the salvage area. Homes were bigger and sturdier, and fewer and fewer people died each year when the cold came, followed by the sea-storms. Arguments had followed. Some people, Uncle had said when he thought she wasn't listening, were even talking about setting out to found a new settlement.
He didn't say it in a voice like he approved. Neither did Allebrun. She considered herself a spacer too, even though a lot of people had stopped talking of going back. (There hadn't been a single new arrival since the crash, which didn't help.) Still, she was one, two of her parents were, all her brood of followers were too as far as she was concerned. Being a spacer meant you stuck together and didn't make a mess of things, because no other way worked. If some other folks didn't feel the same way, then... well, she didn't know, but she guessed she would have to do something about it.
By the time she was ten, she was already trying to think of what that would be.
Story: Lordsverse (pre-Lords of Earth and Sky)
Colors: Sherry #20 (The earth has many keys. / Where melody is not), Rose #11 (The fragrance always remains in the hand that gives the rose.), Bowie Side A #6 (Their jealousy's spilling down The stars must stick together → The Stars Are Out Tonight (The Next Day))
Supplies and Styles: Birthday Prompt (the Umberto Eco one)
Word Count: 895
Rating: PG-13-ish
Warnings: An offscreen disaster.
Summary: Scenes from the beginning of a new world.
Comments, criticism, and questions are all appreciated.
Allebrun was three when the ship came down from the sky, burning bright blue. The first thing she heard was screaming, far away over the tall tops of the garden flowers- then all around her. Her uncle came up from behind then and snatched her up in his strong arms, held her close enough to squeeze and began to run. Other people ran, too. Some stared, shading their eyes from the bright sky. Over his shoulder she saw it, thought it looked like some kind of bird, but hard-edged and shiny. It didn't register as the source of all the screaming. Nothing did. She clung to her uncle and tried not to be afraid.
The roads were all dirt back then, and the houses mostly woven grass, dried mud, furs in the cool season, and bamboo. They had flat roofs and mud walls built in patterns to help break the winds of storms coming in from the sea. Wood was scarce and the tools to use rock were scarcer. People lived in small bunches, ate and farmed and built as a community. It was survival.
When they made it all the way back home, Momma Sam was standing outside the door. Uncle sat her down and someone else snatched her back up and took her inside. There was a lot of shouting and questions outside, Momma and Uncle lending their coices to the cacophony. They yelled about ships and fire and the hole in the sky. Then there was a sound off in the distance, low and long, and for a moment after, silence.
Then the screaming started up again outside. Momma Gerda, sitting in the corner by the warming stone, set her sewing down on the low table and stood up. Allebrun remembered that everyone seemed to be looking at her.
"Hit the water. They'll need help at the shore," she said.
She and Uncle left. They were gone the rest of the day.
*
The garden needed a lot more weeding after that, but Uncle wasn't around much and they wouldn't let Allebrun out of the tent without someone to watch her. That meant she mostly stayed in the mess tent during the day and helped salt the fish. More fish than she'd ever seen in her life, or ever would again in one place. It was only a tent by convention, really. Big open rock fire pits sat nearish to mud counters topped with scraped bamboo, cooking food with warming stones and sometimes real fire. Momma Sam was there with her, at least; she sang and played with toys as much as she helped, but people seemed to appreciate her. They definitely appreciated Momma Sam.
Momma Sam was a spacer all the way, in her own words. She was short, dark, with heavy-lidded eyes and a voice like a flock of birds. She made people happy when she sang. Always working, always singing, always doing something, even for those who didn't appreciate it.
That week the whole settlement was busy, an on-edge busy that made Allebrun quiet and fussy. She didn't understand what was wrong; new people showed up all the time, and people got hurt sometimes too. Wasn't this the same? She'd never seen someone hurt bad, though. They kept Allebrun away from the brunt of it, but they didn't live too far from the doctors', one of the few wood and mud-brick buildings. She noticed lot of the screaming and talking was people coming back and forth from around there.
It also wasn't long before it rained again. The doctors' needed more dry room, so they had to move in with another family for a while.
*
By the time Allebrun was ten, there were a dozen other kids in the settlement. She was ringleader and tutor for most of them. Two were survivors of the crash, one nearly an adult, making Allebrun the second oldest. She wouldn't have resented being second if the kid wasn't also loudly from a commerce world, whatever that meant. All the born ones wound up looking like her, with hair or eyes or skin in bright tinted colors.
The settlement had begun expanding a long ways down the coast by then, as the food stocks increased, as new discoveries were made, as people felt safer living nearer the docks or the salvage area. Homes were bigger and sturdier, and fewer and fewer people died each year when the cold came, followed by the sea-storms. Arguments had followed. Some people, Uncle had said when he thought she wasn't listening, were even talking about setting out to found a new settlement.
He didn't say it in a voice like he approved. Neither did Allebrun. She considered herself a spacer too, even though a lot of people had stopped talking of going back. (There hadn't been a single new arrival since the crash, which didn't help.) Still, she was one, two of her parents were, all her brood of followers were too as far as she was concerned. Being a spacer meant you stuck together and didn't make a mess of things, because no other way worked. If some other folks didn't feel the same way, then... well, she didn't know, but she guessed she would have to do something about it.
By the time she was ten, she was already trying to think of what that would be.
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