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kittydesade) wrote2007-10-01 09:23 am
kittydesade) wrote2007-10-01 09:23 am
[tm] Lost Worlds
Prompt: The true magic of this broken world lay in the ability of things it contained to vanish, to become so thoroughly lost that they might never have existed in the first place. -- Michael Chabon
Community:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
theatrical_muse
Character: The Sorcerer
Word Count: 1,240 words
Rating: PG
Author's Note: I blame Carolyn for this. Not entirely in a finger pointing Javert-esque j'accuse! way, but more in that she reminded me I've been posting a lot of fanfic to this journal lately. I've also been writing some original stuff, but very little of it gets posted here, and half of you don't know I write it. It's all topic responses in three journals for communities, all three characters are original. I don't know how I wind up writing more original characters for fandom prompt-writing communities, but I do.
So, in an effort to provide a more well-rounded view of what I'm writing... and also just because I can. I give you, prompts! And possibly will give you a lot more of them in the future.
He watched the pilot episode in a stubborn attempt to convince himself that it was any good, but the next week he tuned into a movie on Cinemax instead, and the reruns of an old but still-vaguely-amusing comedy. At some point during the day he ventured out to the library, but was turned away by the trio of children attempting to share a single stool and giggling over the latest MySpace exploits of some rock band. The musicians looked barely old enough to shave.
He tried going to the bookstore, but it was full of mothers dragging around their children, armed with reading lists and expressions of you will give me what I want whether or not it is physically possible or I will feast upon your soul. It terrified even him.
He wound up stretched across a park bench with his head in a young woman's lap. She played her fingers absently through his hair while scribbling notes on a notepad.
"You don't want to do that," he said once, turning to rest his cheek on her thigh and reaching around to point at a line she'd just written. "Subvert the ending. The hero and the girl always run off together. Maybe this time they just want to stay friends."
She frowned a little, fingers stilling over his cheek, then crossed it out and wrote something else beneath it. He smiled a little.
It was enough to tide him over until suppertime.
Pseudo-sultry croonings oozed out from the radio of the open-top convertible next to him. Magazines in the grocery store portrayed the lives others as full of excitement and intrigue, sops to the drooling masses who were bored or unsatisfied with what they had. The same five stories, dressed up in this season's colors. He thought about dousing them in alcohol and setting them on fire, but didn't.
The five or so girls clustered at the entrance swarmed over him en masse, chattering about the exact same thing in the exact same high-pitched voice, with the same vocabulary of roughly two thousand words and spattered liberally with 'like' and 'fuck.' He had to close his eyes for a moment against the tide and sighed with deep and annoyed relief once they were past.
He complained to her about it over dinner, over chopping vegetables and maneuvering around the small kitchen, over hot oil and tortillas.
"They do no thinking for themselves. They want to have all the thinking done for them, gliding through life on a cloud of endless euphoria and adequacy. They don't strive for anything."
"Mm-hmm."
"You're not listening to me at all, are you.'
"I heard you. Clouds of adequacy, delusions of sparkle. Pale imitations, blah blah blah. Why do you let it bother you so much?"
He shook his head, bringing the blade down upon the hapless green pepper with a sharp, loud sound. Tok-tok-tok-tok-tok. Fast enough to create the illusion of danger.
"The world of human potential is stagnating because no one wants to put forth the effort to think for themselves. No one wants to imagine, to create, to think that perhaps things could be other than they are, even if only for themselves."
"They want things," she pointed out, sliding the cutting board out from under his knife and almost losing her fingers in the process. "Mind that. They want things, isn't that a start?"
"No." He snorted. "They only want what they are told to want. They long for what they are told is valuable, they reach for what is dangled before them and labeled 'shiny.' And if they have to reach too far, they don't bother. One foot in front of the other, they keep going. And when they get to the end of what they are told to achieve, they stop there for the rest of their lives."
"Ambition." Sprinkle sprinkle spatula flip. "You think the world is going to hell in a handbasket because people these days lack ambition?"
"Imagination," he corrected. "It's not the same thing."
They sat down and said their quiet prayer, ate for a moment in silence, enough to ease their hunger.
"All right, then. What are they losing by this loss of imagination?" she asked, and his fork clattered to his plate.
"You. How can you of all people ask that? Could you imagine living without your dreams?"
"No. But we've already established that I'm a freak of nature, so, go on. What are we losing?"
He was silent for a moment, not looking for the answer but attempting to explain it in words instead of their usual method of communication. "Potential. Hope. I may be out of my tiny tree, as you are so fond of saying, but even I know the truth of that old adage that nothing happens unless, first, a dream."
"And you claim we're losing that?" Her voice had softened, and she had set down her fork a good deal more gently.
"I think..." he leaned back in his chair, slumping backwards, sighing. "I think the time between when an idea fades and when it is brought back again is shortening, and the way it changes is not differing so much from turn to turn. I think that when a girl or a boy looks towards their life now they do not think of being something outrageous or fantastic, they think about how to survive in comfort and ease and laziness, and how they can achieve that with a minimum of fuss. I think work has become something that is distasteful, failure has become unthinkable and not something to be overcome later, and ..." And by now he was flailing, both hands in the air and in danger of knocking the poor hanging plant behind him.
"And," she took his hand, one of them anyway, returning it to the table. "The world is growing soft, and moldering, and you fear you will be lost with it."
His mouth twisted into a bitter little squiggle. "If there are no thinking people left in this world, who will there be to carry me on?"
She finished her dinner, or at least as much of it as she was going to eat at that point. Stood, went over and moved his plate a little out of the way, and put her arms around him. Hugged him tight, feeling his hands curling around her arms and clinging, brushing a kiss over the top of his head.
"You will not vanish. You will not disappear. You will not fade away, I won't let you."
It was reassuring, a little. But he watched as she cleaned her dish and turned off the lights in the kitche, went to stretch on the couch and most likely fall asleep reading her book or scribbling in her notepad again. He sank to the back of her mind, brooding. What would happen when she was gone, would he pass on to the next? Would he still remain? Mortal folk never realized how fragile ideas were, only how strong. Ideas are bulletproof, indeed; clearly a mortal had written that. If one person had a thought, a dream, an imaginary friend, when they died and if they had not passed it on, that was it. One tiny miracle, snuffed out forever. As far as the rest of the world it had never existed in the first place.
She did, finally, go to bed after he gently reminded her five or six times, and he curled up with her. But he cried himself to sleep, and that night her dreams were nightmares because of it.
Community:
theatrical_museCharacter: The Sorcerer
Word Count: 1,240 words
Rating: PG
Author's Note: I blame Carolyn for this. Not entirely in a finger pointing Javert-esque j'accuse! way, but more in that she reminded me I've been posting a lot of fanfic to this journal lately. I've also been writing some original stuff, but very little of it gets posted here, and half of you don't know I write it. It's all topic responses in three journals for communities, all three characters are original. I don't know how I wind up writing more original characters for fandom prompt-writing communities, but I do.
So, in an effort to provide a more well-rounded view of what I'm writing... and also just because I can. I give you, prompts! And possibly will give you a lot more of them in the future.
He watched the pilot episode in a stubborn attempt to convince himself that it was any good, but the next week he tuned into a movie on Cinemax instead, and the reruns of an old but still-vaguely-amusing comedy. At some point during the day he ventured out to the library, but was turned away by the trio of children attempting to share a single stool and giggling over the latest MySpace exploits of some rock band. The musicians looked barely old enough to shave.
He tried going to the bookstore, but it was full of mothers dragging around their children, armed with reading lists and expressions of you will give me what I want whether or not it is physically possible or I will feast upon your soul. It terrified even him.
He wound up stretched across a park bench with his head in a young woman's lap. She played her fingers absently through his hair while scribbling notes on a notepad.
"You don't want to do that," he said once, turning to rest his cheek on her thigh and reaching around to point at a line she'd just written. "Subvert the ending. The hero and the girl always run off together. Maybe this time they just want to stay friends."
She frowned a little, fingers stilling over his cheek, then crossed it out and wrote something else beneath it. He smiled a little.
It was enough to tide him over until suppertime.
Pseudo-sultry croonings oozed out from the radio of the open-top convertible next to him. Magazines in the grocery store portrayed the lives others as full of excitement and intrigue, sops to the drooling masses who were bored or unsatisfied with what they had. The same five stories, dressed up in this season's colors. He thought about dousing them in alcohol and setting them on fire, but didn't.
The five or so girls clustered at the entrance swarmed over him en masse, chattering about the exact same thing in the exact same high-pitched voice, with the same vocabulary of roughly two thousand words and spattered liberally with 'like' and 'fuck.' He had to close his eyes for a moment against the tide and sighed with deep and annoyed relief once they were past.
He complained to her about it over dinner, over chopping vegetables and maneuvering around the small kitchen, over hot oil and tortillas.
"They do no thinking for themselves. They want to have all the thinking done for them, gliding through life on a cloud of endless euphoria and adequacy. They don't strive for anything."
"Mm-hmm."
"You're not listening to me at all, are you.'
"I heard you. Clouds of adequacy, delusions of sparkle. Pale imitations, blah blah blah. Why do you let it bother you so much?"
He shook his head, bringing the blade down upon the hapless green pepper with a sharp, loud sound. Tok-tok-tok-tok-tok. Fast enough to create the illusion of danger.
"The world of human potential is stagnating because no one wants to put forth the effort to think for themselves. No one wants to imagine, to create, to think that perhaps things could be other than they are, even if only for themselves."
"They want things," she pointed out, sliding the cutting board out from under his knife and almost losing her fingers in the process. "Mind that. They want things, isn't that a start?"
"No." He snorted. "They only want what they are told to want. They long for what they are told is valuable, they reach for what is dangled before them and labeled 'shiny.' And if they have to reach too far, they don't bother. One foot in front of the other, they keep going. And when they get to the end of what they are told to achieve, they stop there for the rest of their lives."
"Ambition." Sprinkle sprinkle spatula flip. "You think the world is going to hell in a handbasket because people these days lack ambition?"
"Imagination," he corrected. "It's not the same thing."
They sat down and said their quiet prayer, ate for a moment in silence, enough to ease their hunger.
"All right, then. What are they losing by this loss of imagination?" she asked, and his fork clattered to his plate.
"You. How can you of all people ask that? Could you imagine living without your dreams?"
"No. But we've already established that I'm a freak of nature, so, go on. What are we losing?"
He was silent for a moment, not looking for the answer but attempting to explain it in words instead of their usual method of communication. "Potential. Hope. I may be out of my tiny tree, as you are so fond of saying, but even I know the truth of that old adage that nothing happens unless, first, a dream."
"And you claim we're losing that?" Her voice had softened, and she had set down her fork a good deal more gently.
"I think..." he leaned back in his chair, slumping backwards, sighing. "I think the time between when an idea fades and when it is brought back again is shortening, and the way it changes is not differing so much from turn to turn. I think that when a girl or a boy looks towards their life now they do not think of being something outrageous or fantastic, they think about how to survive in comfort and ease and laziness, and how they can achieve that with a minimum of fuss. I think work has become something that is distasteful, failure has become unthinkable and not something to be overcome later, and ..." And by now he was flailing, both hands in the air and in danger of knocking the poor hanging plant behind him.
"And," she took his hand, one of them anyway, returning it to the table. "The world is growing soft, and moldering, and you fear you will be lost with it."
His mouth twisted into a bitter little squiggle. "If there are no thinking people left in this world, who will there be to carry me on?"
She finished her dinner, or at least as much of it as she was going to eat at that point. Stood, went over and moved his plate a little out of the way, and put her arms around him. Hugged him tight, feeling his hands curling around her arms and clinging, brushing a kiss over the top of his head.
"You will not vanish. You will not disappear. You will not fade away, I won't let you."
It was reassuring, a little. But he watched as she cleaned her dish and turned off the lights in the kitche, went to stretch on the couch and most likely fall asleep reading her book or scribbling in her notepad again. He sank to the back of her mind, brooding. What would happen when she was gone, would he pass on to the next? Would he still remain? Mortal folk never realized how fragile ideas were, only how strong. Ideas are bulletproof, indeed; clearly a mortal had written that. If one person had a thought, a dream, an imaginary friend, when they died and if they had not passed it on, that was it. One tiny miracle, snuffed out forever. As far as the rest of the world it had never existed in the first place.
She did, finally, go to bed after he gently reminded her five or six times, and he curled up with her. But he cried himself to sleep, and that night her dreams were nightmares because of it.