the androgynous keeper of plushfrogs (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
crossfortune) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
rainbowfic2013-07-05 05:16 pm
crossfortune) wrote in rainbowfic2013-07-05 05:16 pm
eyes i dare not meet in dreams;
Name: Mischa
Story: fragments of stars falling
Colors: atomic tangerine, "earth that was": dove gray, "gone where i cannot follow, until i have finished all my days", white opal "vision"
Supplies and Styles: canvas, seed beads
Word Count: 616
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: grief of a mother: a daughter's (apparent) death
Summary: I had a bad dream about you. Alexia's mother and visions of her eldest daughter, before the end of the world.
I had a bad dream about you.
Zoe worries endlessly about all her children, but her oldest has always worried her the most. Even when Alexia had still been nestled safely inside her, she had not been quiet, tossing and turning and kicking inside her womb, as if already fighting to leave, even when Zoe had pressed a hand to her stomach and crooned stay, stay.
In the end, Alexia had come a month and a half early, and when they had laid her daughter in her arms, she’d known with the same feeling of clarity that she’d always had, an intuition she could not explain to anyone, that someday, someday, something terrible would happen (to/would/because of), and Zoe swore by the Blessed Virgin that she would do her best to keep that shadow from her daughter.
She dreams a lot about Alexia, these days: her dreams have sharpened and narrowed, from visions of hazy calamity, of fire and water and falling stars, distant visions she neither understood nor paid much attention to, when she had a family to take care of and a life to lead and a garden to tend while the news grew bleaker and austerity measures sparked riots.
Now she dreams of Alexia wreathed in flames, and wakes weeping for the daughter that she could not ever hold safely in the circle of her arms. Her brilliant daughter, so much more than the rest of them: Zoe couldn’t ever keep up with her, no matter how much she’d tried, always chasing just a step behind, even when she’d been small and learning to walk. Wait, she wants to plead and never does, even the last time she talks to her on the phone, don’t go, come back, can’t find the words for begging that she knows is ultimately futile, because mixed into Alexia’s sharpness, her lazy grumpiness (brilliance shattered into thousands of shards-) is a distance impossible to place her finger on, but there nonetheless, a separation, that her daughter’s already gone somewhere that she can’t follow, slipping through her fingers until she’s gone.
Come back come back come back stay- she throws the phone against the wall when the connection’s cut, sinks to her knees weeping, because she knows she won’t ever speak to Alexia again, - yeah, mom echoing in her ears-and that night, awakens from another nightmare, of Alexia walking away from her, dressed in some kind of blue and white uniform that she’s never seen anywhere before nor would her jeans-and-Tshirt daughter ever have been caught dead wearing, dark hair hanging to her hips, tangled and wild, large red and white sword on her back, hidden by the white cloak.
(she reaches for her, runs after her, calls her name but Alexia just keeps walking, until at last she grabs her by the shoulder, and Alexia dissolves into fire in her arms, and she screams and screams and screams-)
The phone rings, and Zoe knows before she answers it that it’s about Alexia, hand shaking and words blurring together, but she knows even before the woman on the other end of the line - one of Alexia’s coworkers, on that project she couldn’t tell them about - says that her daughter is dead, lab accident, the lab burned down in a fire and she was the only person not accounted for- (her daughter is dead, and there isn't even a body to bury)
“I just worry about you. I had a bad dream about you.” her own words mock her, and in her dreams, Alexia turns away and is gone, and she wakes only to remember that her eldest daughter is dead (but somehow not quite gone).
Story: fragments of stars falling
Colors: atomic tangerine, "earth that was": dove gray, "gone where i cannot follow, until i have finished all my days", white opal "vision"
Supplies and Styles: canvas, seed beads
Word Count: 616
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: grief of a mother: a daughter's (apparent) death
Summary: I had a bad dream about you. Alexia's mother and visions of her eldest daughter, before the end of the world.
I had a bad dream about you.
Zoe worries endlessly about all her children, but her oldest has always worried her the most. Even when Alexia had still been nestled safely inside her, she had not been quiet, tossing and turning and kicking inside her womb, as if already fighting to leave, even when Zoe had pressed a hand to her stomach and crooned stay, stay.
In the end, Alexia had come a month and a half early, and when they had laid her daughter in her arms, she’d known with the same feeling of clarity that she’d always had, an intuition she could not explain to anyone, that someday, someday, something terrible would happen (to/would/because of), and Zoe swore by the Blessed Virgin that she would do her best to keep that shadow from her daughter.
She dreams a lot about Alexia, these days: her dreams have sharpened and narrowed, from visions of hazy calamity, of fire and water and falling stars, distant visions she neither understood nor paid much attention to, when she had a family to take care of and a life to lead and a garden to tend while the news grew bleaker and austerity measures sparked riots.
Now she dreams of Alexia wreathed in flames, and wakes weeping for the daughter that she could not ever hold safely in the circle of her arms. Her brilliant daughter, so much more than the rest of them: Zoe couldn’t ever keep up with her, no matter how much she’d tried, always chasing just a step behind, even when she’d been small and learning to walk. Wait, she wants to plead and never does, even the last time she talks to her on the phone, don’t go, come back, can’t find the words for begging that she knows is ultimately futile, because mixed into Alexia’s sharpness, her lazy grumpiness (brilliance shattered into thousands of shards-) is a distance impossible to place her finger on, but there nonetheless, a separation, that her daughter’s already gone somewhere that she can’t follow, slipping through her fingers until she’s gone.
Come back come back come back stay- she throws the phone against the wall when the connection’s cut, sinks to her knees weeping, because she knows she won’t ever speak to Alexia again, - yeah, mom echoing in her ears-and that night, awakens from another nightmare, of Alexia walking away from her, dressed in some kind of blue and white uniform that she’s never seen anywhere before nor would her jeans-and-Tshirt daughter ever have been caught dead wearing, dark hair hanging to her hips, tangled and wild, large red and white sword on her back, hidden by the white cloak.
(she reaches for her, runs after her, calls her name but Alexia just keeps walking, until at last she grabs her by the shoulder, and Alexia dissolves into fire in her arms, and she screams and screams and screams-)
The phone rings, and Zoe knows before she answers it that it’s about Alexia, hand shaking and words blurring together, but she knows even before the woman on the other end of the line - one of Alexia’s coworkers, on that project she couldn’t tell them about - says that her daughter is dead, lab accident, the lab burned down in a fire and she was the only person not accounted for- (her daughter is dead, and there isn't even a body to bury)
“I just worry about you. I had a bad dream about you.” her own words mock her, and in her dreams, Alexia turns away and is gone, and she wakes only to remember that her eldest daughter is dead (but somehow not quite gone).
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Very nice! Thank you for posting!
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Pretty poignant moment. I like that there are a lot of those cropping up in everyone's writing here, lately.
I'm curious about Alexia's story, now -- if she isn't dead, what happened? Is she part fire elemental or something of some equivalent? What's the end of the world about? What's with the drastic costume change that I assume happens when Alexia is older?
Lots of questions. Good stuff!
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I think the next story I need to write is the transition - what happened. even in the other work I've posted in this universe, it only hints at what happened. (of those, I think in this last of meeting places and to those left behind probably hint at it the most).
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yeah, I'd already started atomic tangerine, well before the summer challenge, but this is further impetus to finish it.
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If it weren't for the fact that my time is so limited I would go off on a tangent for all of them... they sound fantastic and the idea of spawning crazy action-adventure-explosions is pretty much the best thing. At least there are still a couple of months left. >:3
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There's always room for at least one explosion. Always.
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And yeah, Zoe knows things - it's going to be touched on more in later stories, but she's a precog who doesn't know she's one.
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