ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote in [community profile] rainbowfic2013-08-28 02:13 pm

Poem: "Becoming the Library"

Name: [personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Story: Aether Dancer
Colors: Vellum #20 "Authority"
Styles/Supplies: None
Word Count: 293
Rating/Warnings: PG; no standard warnings apply.
Summary: Sesha Fulbright prepares for her first adventure.
Note: Aether Dancer is a steampunk shared world, set in a post-apocalyptic future. My character Sesha Fulbright is a traveling scholar.

This is the final fill for the Vellum list!  I need a story tag for Aether Dancer.


"Becoming the Library"


Antón Fulbright looked at the small mountain of books
piled on his daughter's bed and began to laugh.
"Sesha," he said gently, "we're going on an expedition.
You can't take your entire library with you."
He cast a pointed glance at the half-empty bookcase.

"But what if I need to look something up on the trail?"
Sesha said, waving a guide to wild plants.
"Then you can make sketches and look them up
after we get home," Antón said firmly.

"I can't live without my books!"
Her voice rose to an aggrieved teenage wail.
"Sesha, light of my mind, you've been begging me
to take you on an expedition ever since you could talk,"
Antón said. "Don't tell me you're getting cold feet now."

"No, just empty hands," she grumbled,
tossing the book onto the bed.
It fell open as it landed, exposing the index.

Sesha looked at the book.
She looked at the half-empty bookcase.
She looked at her overflowing luggage.

"If I can't take the library with me,"
she said on a note of dawning enlightenment,
"then I'll just have to become the library."

"Sesha, darling, what are you talking about?"
her father asked as she scrambled off the bed.

She dumped out the extraneous material
and sealed up her luggage.
"There, I'm packed," she declared.

Then she began shoveling books
back into the bookcase, carefully sorting out
a smaller stack of references.

"I'm going to start memorizing what I can't carry,"
she explained to her father. "I won't need
to pack a library if I can be one. Then people
can ask me things and I'll have all the answers.
Now go away. I need to study."

Antón Fulbright was still laughing when he closed the door.
bookblather: Gentleman in a turquoise sombrero staring at camera. (mighty mod chapeau)

[personal profile] bookblather 2013-08-30 05:58 am (UTC)(link)
Beeeeeeen there, Sesha.

Your story tag has been added.