A Writing Morning
Jun. 29th, 2008 10:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mmerriamI was planning to work on Dark Water Blues first thing this morning. Instead I wrote a short SF poem and then slapped down this:
He was the quintessential soldier of The One Hundred.
This is truth.
Were you to buy any of his mates a drink, they might tell you the story of his charging into a laser-rifle nest, his last grenade in hand: One of his many heroic deeds on Demeter's Field, where tens of thousands fought and only dozens returned.
They might whisper in awe of the night he stood in the middle of the burning Pass of Ranth in far off Slepnior, his battlesuit ravaged, his personal skimmer cut down by pulse cannon. They might tell you how he planted his feet in the narrowest part of the pass and held it against a company of Luddin rebels.
Those tales are all quite true.
But those stories are not the ones you came for. No, you came for The Story, you came to hear how he lost his right arm and leg, how the blast from a Luddin explosive tore his limbs from his body, how The Soldier fought on, holding the door to the damaged transport until relief came.
You came for the story of how The Soldier saved the lives of The One Hundred themselves.
This is also true, and truth as well.
#
If you described her as a muse, a goddess, a destroyer, a vision of elegance trapped in a mortal shell, a dancer on the great wave of heaven sent down to enlighten the mortal realm with beauty and grace, this would be truth.
And if you called her unbalanced, a victim, an unfortunate caught in that terrible twilight, trapped in the noisy bright between of sanity and something else, it would be true as well.
If you thought The Dancer an angel stripped of her wings and fed the finest medication to forget her existence before, this also would be truth, but the truth is not always what we perceive to be true.
#
The truth, the real truth, lies in what happens after the story ends. It is important to remember this.
#
His hand stroked along her hip, molded itself to her shape, warmed her naked skin, remembered her. He reached to run his fingers through her long red hair, escaped from the braid she typically restrained it with when creating.
She laughed and pushed him onto his back, her need and hunger overcoming his greater weight and strength. She enveloped him, incased him, pushed until his desire matched her own, and pulled him along as she took flight, gasped, cried out, and collapsed onto him, trembling with the joy that comes after.
She rested her head on his chest, sighing as he touched her sweat-soaked hair with gentle fingers. She lifted up--straddling his body--and smiled down at him.
He touched her cheek with thick, stubby fingers. She was the only one beyond his doctors and technicians allowed to see him this way, vulnerable, naked, no longer whole. His right arm and right leg lay on the floor near the bed, forgotten and ignored. They were the best cybernetic prosthetics the military could provide a revered hero, indistinguishable from real limbs in all things; their temperature, texture, visual appeal and dexterity matched exactly to that of his natural limbs.
She had known without him telling her, had told him after their first night together that she could not bear the feel of the fingers, the skin of the calf. Who was he to deny her such a simple thing? It was, he discovered after their second night, deliciously freeing to love with someone who did not care, nor seem to notice that he was a tattered shell of his former self.
"Would you still love me if I were a real girl?" she asked.
"Of course. Though I would be remiss if I failed to point out that you are a real girl," he said, running his hand over her one of her breasts.
"No," she said, her pale, freckled face solemn. "I was a real girl once, but then I got lost in the wires and transmitted up and down. Now I'm all signal and noise and download, never to walk in the sunlight again. It's all shadows now, but I remember being a real girl, oh, I do."
He reached up and wiped the tear on her cheek. She leaned into his hand, her smile returning.
"You are real to me," he said.
She blinked and burst into tears, rolling off of him to curl into a tight ball on her side. He turned and spooned up against her.
Her illness was worsening, he realized. Her moods--always erratic--were swaying more dramatically than at any time he had known her. He hoped it was just the pressure of trying to complete her latest piece of choreography, a composition commissioned by some company on Feyr or Gyr or some damned place.
In the morning he would take her to the medical center. Maybe something as simple as an adjustment in her meds would be all it would take to return her to as close to normal and stable as she could ever be. He hoped so.
She turned in his embrace, rained little kisses onto his face, pressed herself tighter to him. He commanded the lights--already dimmed--to extinguish, and ordered the room to decrease the temperature slightly. She sniffled into his chest, making small crying noises for several minutes as he stroked her hair and back in as soothing a manner as possible for someone not accustomed to tenderness. Finally, her breathing evened out and she relaxed, sleeping in his embrace.
He lay awake all through the night, holding her, wishing to hold her demons at bay, but this was not the type of battle he was trained to fight, no matter how much he might wish to be a storybook hero and slay the monsters pursuing her. No, this battle was beyond him, but her held her compact body to his own and prayed to Gods he knew long dead and dissolved that she would draw some comfort from him. He kept his solitary vigil over her sleeping form as she snored softly and murmured unintelligible words.
There I go, writing about broken people again. *grin* And Dear Gods and Little Fishies, it looks like I'm about to actually write science fiction romance.
And then I wrote three pages on the novel as well. It's nice to have a little creative outburst! I followed it up by sending out a couple of submissions.
Now I am off to the Twin Cities Speculative Fiction Network meeting in Uptown. Lois McMaster Bujold is come to talk with us and answer questions over lunch and coffee.
He was the quintessential soldier of The One Hundred.
This is truth.
Were you to buy any of his mates a drink, they might tell you the story of his charging into a laser-rifle nest, his last grenade in hand: One of his many heroic deeds on Demeter's Field, where tens of thousands fought and only dozens returned.
They might whisper in awe of the night he stood in the middle of the burning Pass of Ranth in far off Slepnior, his battlesuit ravaged, his personal skimmer cut down by pulse cannon. They might tell you how he planted his feet in the narrowest part of the pass and held it against a company of Luddin rebels.
Those tales are all quite true.
But those stories are not the ones you came for. No, you came for The Story, you came to hear how he lost his right arm and leg, how the blast from a Luddin explosive tore his limbs from his body, how The Soldier fought on, holding the door to the damaged transport until relief came.
You came for the story of how The Soldier saved the lives of The One Hundred themselves.
This is also true, and truth as well.
#
If you described her as a muse, a goddess, a destroyer, a vision of elegance trapped in a mortal shell, a dancer on the great wave of heaven sent down to enlighten the mortal realm with beauty and grace, this would be truth.
And if you called her unbalanced, a victim, an unfortunate caught in that terrible twilight, trapped in the noisy bright between of sanity and something else, it would be true as well.
If you thought The Dancer an angel stripped of her wings and fed the finest medication to forget her existence before, this also would be truth, but the truth is not always what we perceive to be true.
#
The truth, the real truth, lies in what happens after the story ends. It is important to remember this.
#
His hand stroked along her hip, molded itself to her shape, warmed her naked skin, remembered her. He reached to run his fingers through her long red hair, escaped from the braid she typically restrained it with when creating.
She laughed and pushed him onto his back, her need and hunger overcoming his greater weight and strength. She enveloped him, incased him, pushed until his desire matched her own, and pulled him along as she took flight, gasped, cried out, and collapsed onto him, trembling with the joy that comes after.
She rested her head on his chest, sighing as he touched her sweat-soaked hair with gentle fingers. She lifted up--straddling his body--and smiled down at him.
He touched her cheek with thick, stubby fingers. She was the only one beyond his doctors and technicians allowed to see him this way, vulnerable, naked, no longer whole. His right arm and right leg lay on the floor near the bed, forgotten and ignored. They were the best cybernetic prosthetics the military could provide a revered hero, indistinguishable from real limbs in all things; their temperature, texture, visual appeal and dexterity matched exactly to that of his natural limbs.
She had known without him telling her, had told him after their first night together that she could not bear the feel of the fingers, the skin of the calf. Who was he to deny her such a simple thing? It was, he discovered after their second night, deliciously freeing to love with someone who did not care, nor seem to notice that he was a tattered shell of his former self.
"Would you still love me if I were a real girl?" she asked.
"Of course. Though I would be remiss if I failed to point out that you are a real girl," he said, running his hand over her one of her breasts.
"No," she said, her pale, freckled face solemn. "I was a real girl once, but then I got lost in the wires and transmitted up and down. Now I'm all signal and noise and download, never to walk in the sunlight again. It's all shadows now, but I remember being a real girl, oh, I do."
He reached up and wiped the tear on her cheek. She leaned into his hand, her smile returning.
"You are real to me," he said.
She blinked and burst into tears, rolling off of him to curl into a tight ball on her side. He turned and spooned up against her.
Her illness was worsening, he realized. Her moods--always erratic--were swaying more dramatically than at any time he had known her. He hoped it was just the pressure of trying to complete her latest piece of choreography, a composition commissioned by some company on Feyr or Gyr or some damned place.
In the morning he would take her to the medical center. Maybe something as simple as an adjustment in her meds would be all it would take to return her to as close to normal and stable as she could ever be. He hoped so.
She turned in his embrace, rained little kisses onto his face, pressed herself tighter to him. He commanded the lights--already dimmed--to extinguish, and ordered the room to decrease the temperature slightly. She sniffled into his chest, making small crying noises for several minutes as he stroked her hair and back in as soothing a manner as possible for someone not accustomed to tenderness. Finally, her breathing evened out and she relaxed, sleeping in his embrace.
He lay awake all through the night, holding her, wishing to hold her demons at bay, but this was not the type of battle he was trained to fight, no matter how much he might wish to be a storybook hero and slay the monsters pursuing her. No, this battle was beyond him, but her held her compact body to his own and prayed to Gods he knew long dead and dissolved that she would draw some comfort from him. He kept his solitary vigil over her sleeping form as she snored softly and murmured unintelligible words.
There I go, writing about broken people again. *grin* And Dear Gods and Little Fishies, it looks like I'm about to actually write science fiction romance.
And then I wrote three pages on the novel as well. It's nice to have a little creative outburst! I followed it up by sending out a couple of submissions.
Now I am off to the Twin Cities Speculative Fiction Network meeting in Uptown. Lois McMaster Bujold is come to talk with us and answer questions over lunch and coffee.
