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Jan. 31st, 2014 12:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snarpI mean, look, THIS is what happens when I am left to my own stylistic devices and not writing fanfiction for a series consisting of 90% script-style dialog, with the non-script stuff being deliberately over-ornamented, hyper-symbolic-and-ironic, and commonly redundant to the dialog blocks so as to encourage casual readers to skim it and miss stuff, implying non-canonical or at best parenthetical status:
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Very long ago, in the last days of the old kind of men, there had been a city, and a rainy autumn day full of wet brown leaves that clapped onto shoes and lights like children's hands. On that day, Sang had dressed himself carefully in pants and a shirt and even shoes, and walked out into the rain to pay a call.
But no matter how hard old Sang worked to be human, no matter how careful he thought he was, there was always something he did wrong, something he forgot. On that day, he had forgotten his umbrella.
Soaked to his bones and disgusted by the wasted effort, he had given up and stripped naked in the middle of the sidewalk. A man passing him in the street had turned his face away and hidden an incredulous smile in a wet glove.
Sang had turned into a tiger and bitten his hand off.
The children of the House of Sang, blessed with their forefather's memories, dreams, and bad habits, often mislaid their souls. One day, when the wind was too cold or the sunlight too harsh, or only when they heard a song that bothered them, they would find that they simply had to stop being human.
So they would become beasts, and hide away in the dim vastness of the Greenwood, where there was no sun or wind or music to trouble them anymore. Their sleep was peaceful there, and if they dreamed, they dreamed of simple animal comforts, like food and warmth and touch. To be inhuman for a time was a gift, given to them long ago in another world.
Most would find their souls again one day, and come trudging bashfully out of the wood and into the cities of men, where the men would look at them strangely, and the Sangs simply welcome them home. A Sang never pursued his brothers and sisters into the wood. Old Sang had been dangerous even to those he loved; and they were all his children.
True men did not entirely understand that. Truthfully, neither did Summer.
Summer was a nineteen-year-old Mouse-Sang who had never once felt the need to shed her brown human skin; had never understood how anyone could ever get tired of their own soul. Hers was a light burden. She was rarely afraid, rarely angry, rarely wanted anything very badly. She could count on her small fingers and toes the number of times she'd cried.
Her father had died last winter. Her memory of the event was of the pink plastic walls of the small room she'd sat in at the police house. His death was a small space which could be paced in three steps. She had sat in it with her hands in her lap catching her tears until her mother had come and wiped them away for her, because Summer hadn't known what to do.
Her mother had shaken her by her shoulders, confused and betrayed, because even when she cried, Summer's round face did not take expression well, like clay too dry to accept a new shape. "Will you miss him? Summer, will you even miss him?" Summer had looked at her wide-eyed. Her mother had choked on an obscene word and wrapped her arms around her, fierce and protective and bewildered.
That was who Mama was. But to Summer, the heart was a foreign city, and she did not know the language.
Since her father had died and she'd been forced to leave her mother, indenture herself to Heligea Tower, and travel to the frozen northern city of Hive, she'd found that she did feel certain things. Something had gone missing in the world, something larger than her father or herself. At night, when the yellow lights of Hive filtered through her thin curtains onto her face, the thing's ghost slid in on the light and settled into her heart, cold. And she couldn't say what it was. There seemed to be nothing she could do.
-
Very long ago, in the last days of the old kind of men, there had been a city, and a rainy autumn day full of wet brown leaves that clapped onto shoes and lights like children's hands. On that day, Sang had dressed himself carefully in pants and a shirt and even shoes, and walked out into the rain to pay a call.
But no matter how hard old Sang worked to be human, no matter how careful he thought he was, there was always something he did wrong, something he forgot. On that day, he had forgotten his umbrella.
Soaked to his bones and disgusted by the wasted effort, he had given up and stripped naked in the middle of the sidewalk. A man passing him in the street had turned his face away and hidden an incredulous smile in a wet glove.
Sang had turned into a tiger and bitten his hand off.
The children of the House of Sang, blessed with their forefather's memories, dreams, and bad habits, often mislaid their souls. One day, when the wind was too cold or the sunlight too harsh, or only when they heard a song that bothered them, they would find that they simply had to stop being human.
So they would become beasts, and hide away in the dim vastness of the Greenwood, where there was no sun or wind or music to trouble them anymore. Their sleep was peaceful there, and if they dreamed, they dreamed of simple animal comforts, like food and warmth and touch. To be inhuman for a time was a gift, given to them long ago in another world.
Most would find their souls again one day, and come trudging bashfully out of the wood and into the cities of men, where the men would look at them strangely, and the Sangs simply welcome them home. A Sang never pursued his brothers and sisters into the wood. Old Sang had been dangerous even to those he loved; and they were all his children.
True men did not entirely understand that. Truthfully, neither did Summer.
Summer was a nineteen-year-old Mouse-Sang who had never once felt the need to shed her brown human skin; had never understood how anyone could ever get tired of their own soul. Hers was a light burden. She was rarely afraid, rarely angry, rarely wanted anything very badly. She could count on her small fingers and toes the number of times she'd cried.
Her father had died last winter. Her memory of the event was of the pink plastic walls of the small room she'd sat in at the police house. His death was a small space which could be paced in three steps. She had sat in it with her hands in her lap catching her tears until her mother had come and wiped them away for her, because Summer hadn't known what to do.
Her mother had shaken her by her shoulders, confused and betrayed, because even when she cried, Summer's round face did not take expression well, like clay too dry to accept a new shape. "Will you miss him? Summer, will you even miss him?" Summer had looked at her wide-eyed. Her mother had choked on an obscene word and wrapped her arms around her, fierce and protective and bewildered.
That was who Mama was. But to Summer, the heart was a foreign city, and she did not know the language.
Since her father had died and she'd been forced to leave her mother, indenture herself to Heligea Tower, and travel to the frozen northern city of Hive, she'd found that she did feel certain things. Something had gone missing in the world, something larger than her father or herself. At night, when the yellow lights of Hive filtered through her thin curtains onto her face, the thing's ghost slid in on the light and settled into her heart, cold. And she couldn't say what it was. There seemed to be nothing she could do.
