ysabetwordsmith: (Karavai)
ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote in [community profile] rainbowfic2013-08-28 05:00 pm

Poem: "Installing the Unicorn"

Name: [personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Story: Torn World
Colors: Moonlight #4 "Seashore"
Styles/Supplies: None
Word Count: 239
Rating/Warnings: PG; no standard warnings apply.
Summary: Taryo watches the delivery of a new display at the Museum of Mortality.
Note: Torn World is a science fantasy shared world setting. The Southern Empire is a science-heavy society with some temporal technology ... which they depend on but do not understand fully, and which is causing problems they also do not really recognize yet.


"Installing the Unicorn"

[1520.07.30]

The twins were amazing,
Taryo decided as she watched them work.
She directed her two sturdy schoolboys
to carry her back and forth in her sling-chair,
angling for the best view as the twins worked.

The woman, Efrel, was a saltwater biologist like herself;
the man, Elerf, was an engineer.
Together they installed the new attraction
in the Hall of Monsters, a vast contraption
of glass and gaskets, pipes and steam and seawater.

An aquarium the size of a carriage
held a unicorn jelly as long as a man's arm,
translucent as fluid, beautiful and dangerous as a dream.
A huge huffing engine surrounded the aquarium
on three sides, maintaining the deepwater pressure
and the temperature and the chemistry.

It was a tremendous accomplishment
to bring up a living creature from deep water
and keep it alive for display and study.
The Museum of Mortality rightfully boasted
about the acquisition which would draw
more tourists and scientists from the mainland.

If they could do this,
then they could learn how
to capture and examine sea monsters,
such as the jellyriggers, larger and more dire
cousins of the unicorn jelly.

Taryo's fingers traced wide river-delta of scars
along her ravaged legs, the marks of a trapjaw's teeth.
She watched the unicorn jelly drift back and forth,
at peace in its crystal prison. In time, the sea's creatures
would give up their secrets to those who watched.

[personal profile] greenling 2013-08-30 12:29 am (UTC)(link)
Interesting. Is this free verse or something I don't recognize?

Nice imagery.
bookblather: A picture of Yomiko Readman looking at books with the text "bookgasm." (Default)

[personal profile] bookblather 2013-08-30 06:00 am (UTC)(link)
Somehow I don't think the sea will give up its answers that easily.