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rainbowfic2016-08-08 11:38 pm
left_turns) wrote in rainbowfic2016-08-08 11:38 pm
Entry tags:
Off-white #5; Mountain Meadow #15
Name: Emily
Story: Not related to any of my current stories
Colors: Off-white 5 (duck); Mountain meadow 15 (glade)
Supplies and Styles: Graffiti (Sprinting)
Word Count: 549
Rating: G
Warnings: Vague reference to space war and/or disaster
Summary: On a summer night on a backwoods planet, two sisters find a relic of older times far away.
Things like this fell, sometimes. From the chewed bones of the old station that hung in the night sky like a ragged grin, from the ghost ships floating forever in the dark beyond.
Not often, not in country this far from the gleaming bright cities and the fiery-hot desert where there had once been a place where men could fly past the stars in the stories their grandmama told them.
But sometimes.
They found it as the purple gloom settled over the hollow, and the glow-slugs began to kindle orange in the murk below the undergrowth where any beast might lie waiting to snatch an incautious young girl. As they ran home from tens-eve services through the vale behind the houses, still in their good fancy-clothes dresses and with their hair bound up, the velvet grass and the earthy, wet smell of the woods beyond called too loud. Shoes kicked off, were forgotten as the grass all but squished between their toes, chilling their toes and splashing their ankles with the wet of a summer evening, and the night-flits flickered brighter shades of their purple and blue gingham dresses.
And there, on the skirt of the clearing where it edged into the woods, sat a star-man. Might have been dead; might not have ever been a man at all. It didn't pay them any mind, anyhow. All it did was sit with its legs out in front of it and its deadly weapon arm in its lap. It must have been there a long time, by the ruddy brown and green that glossed its metal hide. The grey wood slugs had crawled out of the wood and lay between its great rusted thighs, oozed over its shoulder and around the wire cage that bound its many-eyed head. Even the glow-slugs had start to scoot themselves toward it, hunching their strange legs along like a row of moving embers.
Nesthelie, younger by a year and bolder by ten, would have run straight up to it if Magritta hadn't caught her back a grab or so out of reach of its tree trunk arms. They stood and watched it a long, quiet moment.
It continued to sit, unmoving.
"We ought to tell Maw," Magritta said.
In answer, Nesthelie ducked her grab and jogged up to hulking thing. "It ain't bothering anyone." She picked a slug off the shoulder. "Thing's just lonely. Just wants to go back to the stars."
She stood for a moment with her hand on its arm, looking for all the world like she was reassuring it all was well. A funny look crossed her face. "Here, help me," she said. She picked up a glow-slug the size of her hand, its jiggly legs dangling between her fingers, and set it on the on greening metal. The slug must have liked it; it spread out all five points as far as they could reach and latched on, gleaming like an ember.
Magritta watched Nesthelie as she captured a few more and placed them about on it. Then Magritta smiled a little cautiously and joined her.
Sure they must just be eating the plants or whatever it was. Something they liked, as bright as they shone.
But whatever it was, they'd found the star-man the company of his stars.
Story: Not related to any of my current stories
Colors: Off-white 5 (duck); Mountain meadow 15 (glade)
Supplies and Styles: Graffiti (Sprinting)
Word Count: 549
Rating: G
Warnings: Vague reference to space war and/or disaster
Summary: On a summer night on a backwoods planet, two sisters find a relic of older times far away.
Things like this fell, sometimes. From the chewed bones of the old station that hung in the night sky like a ragged grin, from the ghost ships floating forever in the dark beyond.
Not often, not in country this far from the gleaming bright cities and the fiery-hot desert where there had once been a place where men could fly past the stars in the stories their grandmama told them.
But sometimes.
They found it as the purple gloom settled over the hollow, and the glow-slugs began to kindle orange in the murk below the undergrowth where any beast might lie waiting to snatch an incautious young girl. As they ran home from tens-eve services through the vale behind the houses, still in their good fancy-clothes dresses and with their hair bound up, the velvet grass and the earthy, wet smell of the woods beyond called too loud. Shoes kicked off, were forgotten as the grass all but squished between their toes, chilling their toes and splashing their ankles with the wet of a summer evening, and the night-flits flickered brighter shades of their purple and blue gingham dresses.
And there, on the skirt of the clearing where it edged into the woods, sat a star-man. Might have been dead; might not have ever been a man at all. It didn't pay them any mind, anyhow. All it did was sit with its legs out in front of it and its deadly weapon arm in its lap. It must have been there a long time, by the ruddy brown and green that glossed its metal hide. The grey wood slugs had crawled out of the wood and lay between its great rusted thighs, oozed over its shoulder and around the wire cage that bound its many-eyed head. Even the glow-slugs had start to scoot themselves toward it, hunching their strange legs along like a row of moving embers.
Nesthelie, younger by a year and bolder by ten, would have run straight up to it if Magritta hadn't caught her back a grab or so out of reach of its tree trunk arms. They stood and watched it a long, quiet moment.
It continued to sit, unmoving.
"We ought to tell Maw," Magritta said.
In answer, Nesthelie ducked her grab and jogged up to hulking thing. "It ain't bothering anyone." She picked a slug off the shoulder. "Thing's just lonely. Just wants to go back to the stars."
She stood for a moment with her hand on its arm, looking for all the world like she was reassuring it all was well. A funny look crossed her face. "Here, help me," she said. She picked up a glow-slug the size of her hand, its jiggly legs dangling between her fingers, and set it on the on greening metal. The slug must have liked it; it spread out all five points as far as they could reach and latched on, gleaming like an ember.
Magritta watched Nesthelie as she captured a few more and placed them about on it. Then Magritta smiled a little cautiously and joined her.
Sure they must just be eating the plants or whatever it was. Something they liked, as bright as they shone.
But whatever it was, they'd found the star-man the company of his stars.
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