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rainbowfic2016-06-20 11:48 pm
greenling) wrote in rainbowfic2016-06-20 11:48 pm
Entry tags:
Sherry #5, Aurora #18
Name: Greenling
Story: Other
Colors: Sherry #5 (Beyond which summer hesitates, / Almost too heavenly near.), Aurora #18 (Obscurity)
Supplies and Styles: None
Word Count: 1,539
Rating: G
Warnings: None.
Summary: So I seem to be continuing the weird portal-fic thing with Lin. This is basically the rest of the scene from a month ago. Comments, criticism, and questions are all appreciated.
Lin sat on the divan, for the first time in a while feeling utterly alone. His brain was fuzzy, and his attention tried to focus on his surroundings. The divan was soft. Nice. Color was even weirder inside: rectangular skylights shone from far above- he realized as he looked up that the room stretched between two floors- but they were small and only so much light got in. Glass panes, beakers, and strange Euclidean shapes in the middle of the room shone in the skylight like prisms. The rainbows, his head hurt to note, seemed to have different ranges of colors, some a lot more than seven. Some things seemed to be deliberately set up to create prisms, splitting up the light or focusing it into new colors and tossing it at things hanging from the ceiling or suspended over other beakers. Some of it looked like leather; other bits looked like fabric or reptilian hide.
Eventually the girl came in again. With her was an old black man with a long curly beard. His clothes were like robes, in a natural, hemp-looking shade of beige that made Lin's eyes relax, very different from what everyone else seemed to be wearing. Even the guards had had camouflage-like designs painted on their armor.
The man spoke a few words to him. Lin sat and squirmed, feeling embarrassed, and the man said something else in words that sounded like river rapids.
"I guess you don't speak English," Lin said awkwardly. What he knew of other languages went through his head, but he doubted either Chinese or French would be useful here either.
The man tilted his head to the side and handed him a little lozenge-shaped piece of what looked like baklava and mimed eating it. Not knowing what else to do, Lin popped it into his mouth. Nausea rolled over him immediately as the thing dissolved like pure sugar on his tongue, and he doubled over, leaning on one arm and trying not to fall out of his seat.
"That's an interesting reaction..." The breathy language resolved itself into words somewhere between his ears and his brain. Grammar, syntax, and inflection twisted their way into his neurons, and he felt like he was going to start dry heaving. "Are you all right, child?"
Lin closed his eyes and focused on breathing.
"Callista, please get them some water."
The world was blessedly quiet for a moment. Then someone cleared their throat, and he glanced to the side. Looked like a clay cup, probably the water. He took it and drank it slowly. It tasted like regular, clean water. He was grateful.
The man spoke again, his tone gentle. "I am the chemist Clebioren. You are at the beginning of the Long Pass through the foothills of the Silver Mountains. Are you all right? Yes, or no?"
Lin had to think about that for a second. He could hear the actual words underneath their meanings, but he wasn't sure how the effect worked. "No?" he tried first in English. When there was no response, he tried to pronounce the word he'd heard in their language. It started with a hiss, then a long open vowel like "au", then another breath that wasn't exactly a "ff".
The man's expression immediately softened. "Are you injured or sick?" He gestured with an open palm to Lin's missing leg. "Is this an injury?"
Lin tried the other word, which sounded like a cartoon sound effect.
"Callista, please fetch a biologist." He gave Lin a glance in the middle of the sentence that Lin didn't immediately understand.
Callista looked pained. "Is he going to be okay?"
"I would suggest that doing what is needed will help them more than anything."
Callista ran off, and the chemist moved to fiddle around in desk drawers and so on. Lin still felt deeply ill; after a minute, he decided it was bad enough to try laying down on the divan with his eyes closed. The thing he was wearing tensed more at the seams, and he thought he felt something rip. Today was not his day.
Time began to blur a little; someone came, a person in complicated black and white clothes and feathers in their hair who he couldn't peg a gender or race for. Yes, the missing leg was recent. Yes, it hurt. He wasn't sure how to explain how he lost it, and whatever magic (if it was magic?) the "biologist" was doing apparently wasn't fine-tuned to pick up "had entire body ripped off by Gigeresque chain monster, then most of it came back somehow" so he had to settle for words approximating that someone or something had done it deliberately. He was given another glass of water that smelled but didn't taste like lemonade, and the pain faded.
The biologist eventually stopped poking his lower body with a stylus and bobbed their head side to side in an odd motion. "This will take time to fix. Much of your body believes you have never had a second leg, but there is still part of a femur there. Not surprising that it hurts..." Lin squirmed. "Where do you live?"
"Uhm." He had no idea how to answer that in a way they would understand. "New York?"
There was a round of questions. No, not in the foothills. No, not over the mountains. Yes, very far- very, very, very far, in fact. Lin got a confused look at that, and after a couple of questions he realized their grammar for superlatives was weird. Unfortunately his own words in their language didn't autotranslate. He attempted to sit up and find a way to keep his legs together when there was only one of them; the chemist stopped the biologist in the middle of a sentence, making Lin wince.
"Perhaps we should allow them to rest and wash up in one of the unused dormitory rooms? It is getting late."
The other one looked bored. "Do you require any other urgent attention?" they asked Lin. He replied "no" again. He couldn't think of anything he could communicate. "I will get a walking aid for you, and Clebioren can show you your way. I have other duties."
They left and Lin went with Clebioran and Callista on a floating chairup halls. The halls rapidly changed from dirt floors to fitted stone, and the lights into lanterns. Callista kept talking, and Lin tried to read her. She seemed excited, and he supposed that figured, having found a strange person. Callista told him what kind of place he was in, somewhat.
After he learned how to move- it was kind of like a Segway, it went the way he leaned- they got to the dorms pretty quick. They passed a lot of things Lin didn't pay much attention to, between feeling nasty and overwhelmed, and how much Callista kept talking. She kept saying she couldn't tell him much, but this was a school, and she went here, and they were all building it, and there were a lot of smart people there, and other things that might have been interesting if he understood the references she was making. The dorm looked more like a fancy bedroom, with a big soft bed, a desk, a metal-looking thing he didn't understand and a lot of cabinets. There was also, blessedly, a door cracked open that led to what might have been a bathroom. They opened the door for him, and he slid in with a deep sigh.
Clebioran handed him a piece of thick paper with a scrawl of something on it. "If you need anything during the night, there's a monitor at the end of the hall. If you need something else for the pain, give her that."
He nodded, and decided "thanks" was appropriate even if it had to be in English.
The door closed and he immediately headed for the bathroom. The bedroom was just big enough for the chair, but when he got to the door he decided it would be better to get out and try to hobble. Cool white stone covered the bathroom floor and walls, sloping downwards in steps. What was recognizably a squat toilet (Yay, he thought sarcastically) sat in one partitioned corner, while the opposite wall had a slightly indented area with a small metal grate beneath overhangs of some kind of metal things, maybe half a foot above his head. A wire rack nearby held what looked and smelled like hunks of soap of different colors. Something had to be a sink and/or shower, probably, but there was no obvious way to turn anything on.
"Screw it," he mumbled to himself. He could figure it out, and if he couldn't, maybe he could talk to the metal things. As soon as he thought that, he noticed the mumbling that had been going on the whole time, and grimaced.
Stripping off the robe-thing basically ruined it. His hair bands weren't much better off; he set them on the desk in the bedroom. After some fiddling a spray of water came on, cool but not freezing, and he allowed himself to slide down the wall and sit under it. After a minute, he allowed himself to cry.
Story: Other
Colors: Sherry #5 (Beyond which summer hesitates, / Almost too heavenly near.), Aurora #18 (Obscurity)
Supplies and Styles: None
Word Count: 1,539
Rating: G
Warnings: None.
Summary: So I seem to be continuing the weird portal-fic thing with Lin. This is basically the rest of the scene from a month ago. Comments, criticism, and questions are all appreciated.
Lin sat on the divan, for the first time in a while feeling utterly alone. His brain was fuzzy, and his attention tried to focus on his surroundings. The divan was soft. Nice. Color was even weirder inside: rectangular skylights shone from far above- he realized as he looked up that the room stretched between two floors- but they were small and only so much light got in. Glass panes, beakers, and strange Euclidean shapes in the middle of the room shone in the skylight like prisms. The rainbows, his head hurt to note, seemed to have different ranges of colors, some a lot more than seven. Some things seemed to be deliberately set up to create prisms, splitting up the light or focusing it into new colors and tossing it at things hanging from the ceiling or suspended over other beakers. Some of it looked like leather; other bits looked like fabric or reptilian hide.
Eventually the girl came in again. With her was an old black man with a long curly beard. His clothes were like robes, in a natural, hemp-looking shade of beige that made Lin's eyes relax, very different from what everyone else seemed to be wearing. Even the guards had had camouflage-like designs painted on their armor.
The man spoke a few words to him. Lin sat and squirmed, feeling embarrassed, and the man said something else in words that sounded like river rapids.
"I guess you don't speak English," Lin said awkwardly. What he knew of other languages went through his head, but he doubted either Chinese or French would be useful here either.
The man tilted his head to the side and handed him a little lozenge-shaped piece of what looked like baklava and mimed eating it. Not knowing what else to do, Lin popped it into his mouth. Nausea rolled over him immediately as the thing dissolved like pure sugar on his tongue, and he doubled over, leaning on one arm and trying not to fall out of his seat.
"That's an interesting reaction..." The breathy language resolved itself into words somewhere between his ears and his brain. Grammar, syntax, and inflection twisted their way into his neurons, and he felt like he was going to start dry heaving. "Are you all right, child?"
Lin closed his eyes and focused on breathing.
"Callista, please get them some water."
The world was blessedly quiet for a moment. Then someone cleared their throat, and he glanced to the side. Looked like a clay cup, probably the water. He took it and drank it slowly. It tasted like regular, clean water. He was grateful.
The man spoke again, his tone gentle. "I am the chemist Clebioren. You are at the beginning of the Long Pass through the foothills of the Silver Mountains. Are you all right? Yes, or no?"
Lin had to think about that for a second. He could hear the actual words underneath their meanings, but he wasn't sure how the effect worked. "No?" he tried first in English. When there was no response, he tried to pronounce the word he'd heard in their language. It started with a hiss, then a long open vowel like "au", then another breath that wasn't exactly a "ff".
The man's expression immediately softened. "Are you injured or sick?" He gestured with an open palm to Lin's missing leg. "Is this an injury?"
Lin tried the other word, which sounded like a cartoon sound effect.
"Callista, please fetch a biologist." He gave Lin a glance in the middle of the sentence that Lin didn't immediately understand.
Callista looked pained. "Is he going to be okay?"
"I would suggest that doing what is needed will help them more than anything."
Callista ran off, and the chemist moved to fiddle around in desk drawers and so on. Lin still felt deeply ill; after a minute, he decided it was bad enough to try laying down on the divan with his eyes closed. The thing he was wearing tensed more at the seams, and he thought he felt something rip. Today was not his day.
Time began to blur a little; someone came, a person in complicated black and white clothes and feathers in their hair who he couldn't peg a gender or race for. Yes, the missing leg was recent. Yes, it hurt. He wasn't sure how to explain how he lost it, and whatever magic (if it was magic?) the "biologist" was doing apparently wasn't fine-tuned to pick up "had entire body ripped off by Gigeresque chain monster, then most of it came back somehow" so he had to settle for words approximating that someone or something had done it deliberately. He was given another glass of water that smelled but didn't taste like lemonade, and the pain faded.
The biologist eventually stopped poking his lower body with a stylus and bobbed their head side to side in an odd motion. "This will take time to fix. Much of your body believes you have never had a second leg, but there is still part of a femur there. Not surprising that it hurts..." Lin squirmed. "Where do you live?"
"Uhm." He had no idea how to answer that in a way they would understand. "New York?"
There was a round of questions. No, not in the foothills. No, not over the mountains. Yes, very far- very, very, very far, in fact. Lin got a confused look at that, and after a couple of questions he realized their grammar for superlatives was weird. Unfortunately his own words in their language didn't autotranslate. He attempted to sit up and find a way to keep his legs together when there was only one of them; the chemist stopped the biologist in the middle of a sentence, making Lin wince.
"Perhaps we should allow them to rest and wash up in one of the unused dormitory rooms? It is getting late."
The other one looked bored. "Do you require any other urgent attention?" they asked Lin. He replied "no" again. He couldn't think of anything he could communicate. "I will get a walking aid for you, and Clebioren can show you your way. I have other duties."
They left and Lin went with Clebioran and Callista on a floating chairup halls. The halls rapidly changed from dirt floors to fitted stone, and the lights into lanterns. Callista kept talking, and Lin tried to read her. She seemed excited, and he supposed that figured, having found a strange person. Callista told him what kind of place he was in, somewhat.
After he learned how to move- it was kind of like a Segway, it went the way he leaned- they got to the dorms pretty quick. They passed a lot of things Lin didn't pay much attention to, between feeling nasty and overwhelmed, and how much Callista kept talking. She kept saying she couldn't tell him much, but this was a school, and she went here, and they were all building it, and there were a lot of smart people there, and other things that might have been interesting if he understood the references she was making. The dorm looked more like a fancy bedroom, with a big soft bed, a desk, a metal-looking thing he didn't understand and a lot of cabinets. There was also, blessedly, a door cracked open that led to what might have been a bathroom. They opened the door for him, and he slid in with a deep sigh.
Clebioran handed him a piece of thick paper with a scrawl of something on it. "If you need anything during the night, there's a monitor at the end of the hall. If you need something else for the pain, give her that."
He nodded, and decided "thanks" was appropriate even if it had to be in English.
The door closed and he immediately headed for the bathroom. The bedroom was just big enough for the chair, but when he got to the door he decided it would be better to get out and try to hobble. Cool white stone covered the bathroom floor and walls, sloping downwards in steps. What was recognizably a squat toilet (Yay, he thought sarcastically) sat in one partitioned corner, while the opposite wall had a slightly indented area with a small metal grate beneath overhangs of some kind of metal things, maybe half a foot above his head. A wire rack nearby held what looked and smelled like hunks of soap of different colors. Something had to be a sink and/or shower, probably, but there was no obvious way to turn anything on.
"Screw it," he mumbled to himself. He could figure it out, and if he couldn't, maybe he could talk to the metal things. As soon as he thought that, he noticed the mumbling that had been going on the whole time, and grimaced.
Stripping off the robe-thing basically ruined it. His hair bands weren't much better off; he set them on the desk in the bedroom. After some fiddling a spray of water came on, cool but not freezing, and he allowed himself to slide down the wall and sit under it. After a minute, he allowed himself to cry.
no subject
no subject
Yeah, he does. I think he'll take the shower, but he needs a hug.