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Jul. 4th, 2003 08:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kohakuOriginal fiction alert. I don't know how many of you have already read this (Llanowar? Silme?), but here it is anyway. It started as RPS, but Silme said it was too sad, so I rewrote it, changed bits and pieces and handed it in as homework for my Creative Writing Class. I think it works pretty well as an original story. I wasn't so sure about the RPS one. Anyway I promised Silme and myself some kind of sequel, which adds a happy ending to the story. Without further ado, on with the story.
On one of his lonely trips around California Zeke had found a small piece of dead wood. First he had thought it was a broken bone, splintered, maybe from an unfortunate animal. Traffic was pretty rough out here. Almost no one stopped if he didn´t necessarily had to. Outside the towns California was something you watch passing by your windows, from within the cooling interieur of your car. There wasn't anything interesting out there anyway. No buildings, no air condition, no pool, no nothing. And that was why Zeke liked to stop in the middle of nowhere. Out here in this deserted place he found solitude whenever he seeked it.
He took comfort in the odd deafning silence that rose from the heated sands after he had turned the engine off. He climbed out of the car, squinting his eyes even on cloudy days. The light was so much brighter once you left the City. The sun bit into his skin, aggressively, tearing at it with small jagged teeth. Angry at a paleness which mirrored his resistance, the rays would redden his skin, but never succeed in tanning it. He stared up into the sky, imagining seeing it like this from the City, without the dust and fumes and their colours. His gaze still fixed on infinity, he almost stumbled over the strangely shaped wood. It took him a while to realise what it was. Wood from the desert normally became grey with age, not white. Zeke turned it in his hands, over and over. Smoothed by the hot sand, bleached by the sun it had turned light grey, so light it seemed white. But the smoothness was deceiving, the velvetness just pretended. Zeke almost dropped the piece when he caught the splinter. The tiny bit stood out dark against his all too pale skin, and he tried to pull it out with his teeth. It broke, a tiny piece remaining. The wood grew soft under the sun, snapping without a sound, like everything else out here. Yet there remained some of its old fighting spririt, enough to tear his skin and embed itself deeply. Zeke closed his fist around his attacker, lifting his arm in a pitchers move. He looked out into the desert, trying to find a target. Sand. More sand. Some stones aching under the heat. Everything eroded, whithered, faded away. Even the air became stale out here, old and unused, with no one to breathe it, no one that needed it. Everything bent in time. What did not bend broke. He pocketed the piece although he felt a bit cheated by it. But he knew that was the way things were. Things seemed smooth, easy and pleasant, lucid somehow. When time passed, they lost their glow. Sometimes it started to hurt.
He left the desert without haste, taking a small piece with him. Somehow, it reminded him of home.
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Desert
On one of his lonely trips around California Zeke had found a small piece of dead wood. First he had thought it was a broken bone, splintered, maybe from an unfortunate animal. Traffic was pretty rough out here. Almost no one stopped if he didn´t necessarily had to. Outside the towns California was something you watch passing by your windows, from within the cooling interieur of your car. There wasn't anything interesting out there anyway. No buildings, no air condition, no pool, no nothing. And that was why Zeke liked to stop in the middle of nowhere. Out here in this deserted place he found solitude whenever he seeked it.
He took comfort in the odd deafning silence that rose from the heated sands after he had turned the engine off. He climbed out of the car, squinting his eyes even on cloudy days. The light was so much brighter once you left the City. The sun bit into his skin, aggressively, tearing at it with small jagged teeth. Angry at a paleness which mirrored his resistance, the rays would redden his skin, but never succeed in tanning it. He stared up into the sky, imagining seeing it like this from the City, without the dust and fumes and their colours. His gaze still fixed on infinity, he almost stumbled over the strangely shaped wood. It took him a while to realise what it was. Wood from the desert normally became grey with age, not white. Zeke turned it in his hands, over and over. Smoothed by the hot sand, bleached by the sun it had turned light grey, so light it seemed white. But the smoothness was deceiving, the velvetness just pretended. Zeke almost dropped the piece when he caught the splinter. The tiny bit stood out dark against his all too pale skin, and he tried to pull it out with his teeth. It broke, a tiny piece remaining. The wood grew soft under the sun, snapping without a sound, like everything else out here. Yet there remained some of its old fighting spririt, enough to tear his skin and embed itself deeply. Zeke closed his fist around his attacker, lifting his arm in a pitchers move. He looked out into the desert, trying to find a target. Sand. More sand. Some stones aching under the heat. Everything eroded, whithered, faded away. Even the air became stale out here, old and unused, with no one to breathe it, no one that needed it. Everything bent in time. What did not bend broke. He pocketed the piece although he felt a bit cheated by it. But he knew that was the way things were. Things seemed smooth, easy and pleasant, lucid somehow. When time passed, they lost their glow. Sometimes it started to hurt.
He left the desert without haste, taking a small piece with him. Somehow, it reminded him of home.
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