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31_days2009-08-28 09:44 pm
cofmanynames.livejournal.com) wrote in 31_days2009-08-28 09:44 pm
[August 28] [Original] People With Hats and the Sideways Path
Title: People With Hats and the Sideways Path
Day / Theme: August 28 -- "it's the breathing, it's the breathing in and out and in and out and in and..."
Rating: PG / mild PG13
Series: Original (Truth)
Characters: Julian, Ciara Jane, vague-as-ever Hali.
Summary: Ciara Jane does not expect the Path; certain people on the Path expected Ciara Jane.
Notes: This was rather fun once I got past the first bit. Then again, Ciara Jane is a fun character and Julian is a fun character (and Hali is just weird). So it should not be a surprise too much. Also, I suck at titles so here, have something very descriptive.
There was a trick to it, J had said, a sort of twist to it, so that if you’d done it once it would be easy ever after, but it was the first time that was a pain.
Ciara Jane had made the mistake of asking was it a Zen sort of thing, then? The answer was no, not at all, the opposite in fact—if you emptied your mind, what was left? what would there be to work with?
What exactly it actually was, he didn’t seem particularly able to say. He said he couldn’t tell her, which she thought was a kind of wouldn’t but maybe he really was telling the truth.
So she sprawled over her bed and thought about this, one leg hanging over the side to avoid the small piles of books. And she forgot what she was supposed to be thinking about.
She thought about the fact that she didn’t know what a fandango was when it wasn’t related to hemp and of dry bread and bonfires and people with hats and crows and rifles. She thought about her homework and Anabel’s shoes and of drawing drowned women’s hair; she considered names and Emelian’s crooked teeth and revolutions and something, anything, very many things indeed.
And without her noticing, her eyes slid shut and the room crept off somewhere, leaving Ciara Jane to drift.
- - -
Ciara Jane opened her eyes and quickly closed them again. Colors flashed and wavered on the insides of her eyelids. She took a breath—the first in quite a while, she thought—and opened them again to find the mad view unchanged but for the addition of a person in a hat.
“None of that here,” he said, and nodded in her direction. Ciara Jane’s throat seemed to seize up; she opened her mouth to gasp, try to get air somehow, but that proved impossible.
So as not to look like an idiot, instead of breathing, she spoke. “Why?”
“Because it consumes time and resources and is generally inconvenient and distracting.” He had an accent, she noticed, and a huge, manic grin.
This was not what she had expected, although she didn’t know she’d expected anything at all. Trying to ignore the madness-tasting colors pulling at the edge of her vision, Ciara Jane looked directly at him (ten years older than her, maybe? Dark hair and dressed like he’d shown up from a century or so back), which wasn’t something she was particularly comfortable with doing, and asked, “Who are you?”
“Myself, at least half the time, I should hope.” He sounded affronted. “You might recognize the name J.”
“Wait, really?”
“Yes, really. It’s a decently common letter. Whether it’s mine or not is debatable.”
“...Huh.” Ciara Jane cocked her head, wondered if he could do that without losing the hat. “That mean you know where I’m going?”
His eyes flicked upward for a moment, as if he was reading the ceiling. “Yes. That way, if you want to be specific about it.”
She followed his hand and blanched. Not looking around had made the colors fade out a bit, so that she could almost be standing in a badly-whitewashed room, albeit one whose walls seemed to move and whose floor squelched like glass under her boots. Looking, on the other hand, made her realize that she was standing in an infinity of colored splotches, on a narrow blue sort of transparency upon which she would have to walk.
“Th-thank you,” she managed. “I guess I should do that?”
He shrugged. “If you like.”
- - -
Julian watched her go, wary and wobbling, watched her as she wandered off on a tangle of blue lines that were pulled from the walls. It made his surroundings look a bit less like a page torn out of someone’s notebook; he approved.
“Acrophobes,” he muttered, when she was only a perspective-breaking silhouette. He had never seen what she must have, and would not like to. Once she’d disappeared he looked to his left and asked, “Where are you?”
There was a glint of sorts, as if from a disembodied pair of glasses. “Over here.” The impression of an apologetic sort of smile: “I’m sorry about that, and I thank you.”
He shrugged again. “Not a problem. It was nothing.”
“Gods, I’d certainly hope not,” she said. “I still want to get a story out of this, you know.”
Day / Theme: August 28 -- "it's the breathing, it's the breathing in and out and in and out and in and..."
Rating: PG / mild PG13
Series: Original (Truth)
Characters: Julian, Ciara Jane, vague-as-ever Hali.
Summary: Ciara Jane does not expect the Path; certain people on the Path expected Ciara Jane.
Notes: This was rather fun once I got past the first bit. Then again, Ciara Jane is a fun character and Julian is a fun character (and Hali is just weird). So it should not be a surprise too much. Also, I suck at titles so here, have something very descriptive.
There was a trick to it, J had said, a sort of twist to it, so that if you’d done it once it would be easy ever after, but it was the first time that was a pain.
Ciara Jane had made the mistake of asking was it a Zen sort of thing, then? The answer was no, not at all, the opposite in fact—if you emptied your mind, what was left? what would there be to work with?
What exactly it actually was, he didn’t seem particularly able to say. He said he couldn’t tell her, which she thought was a kind of wouldn’t but maybe he really was telling the truth.
So she sprawled over her bed and thought about this, one leg hanging over the side to avoid the small piles of books. And she forgot what she was supposed to be thinking about.
She thought about the fact that she didn’t know what a fandango was when it wasn’t related to hemp and of dry bread and bonfires and people with hats and crows and rifles. She thought about her homework and Anabel’s shoes and of drawing drowned women’s hair; she considered names and Emelian’s crooked teeth and revolutions and something, anything, very many things indeed.
And without her noticing, her eyes slid shut and the room crept off somewhere, leaving Ciara Jane to drift.
- - -
Ciara Jane opened her eyes and quickly closed them again. Colors flashed and wavered on the insides of her eyelids. She took a breath—the first in quite a while, she thought—and opened them again to find the mad view unchanged but for the addition of a person in a hat.
“None of that here,” he said, and nodded in her direction. Ciara Jane’s throat seemed to seize up; she opened her mouth to gasp, try to get air somehow, but that proved impossible.
So as not to look like an idiot, instead of breathing, she spoke. “Why?”
“Because it consumes time and resources and is generally inconvenient and distracting.” He had an accent, she noticed, and a huge, manic grin.
This was not what she had expected, although she didn’t know she’d expected anything at all. Trying to ignore the madness-tasting colors pulling at the edge of her vision, Ciara Jane looked directly at him (ten years older than her, maybe? Dark hair and dressed like he’d shown up from a century or so back), which wasn’t something she was particularly comfortable with doing, and asked, “Who are you?”
“Myself, at least half the time, I should hope.” He sounded affronted. “You might recognize the name J.”
“Wait, really?”
“Yes, really. It’s a decently common letter. Whether it’s mine or not is debatable.”
“...Huh.” Ciara Jane cocked her head, wondered if he could do that without losing the hat. “That mean you know where I’m going?”
His eyes flicked upward for a moment, as if he was reading the ceiling. “Yes. That way, if you want to be specific about it.”
She followed his hand and blanched. Not looking around had made the colors fade out a bit, so that she could almost be standing in a badly-whitewashed room, albeit one whose walls seemed to move and whose floor squelched like glass under her boots. Looking, on the other hand, made her realize that she was standing in an infinity of colored splotches, on a narrow blue sort of transparency upon which she would have to walk.
“Th-thank you,” she managed. “I guess I should do that?”
He shrugged. “If you like.”
- - -
Julian watched her go, wary and wobbling, watched her as she wandered off on a tangle of blue lines that were pulled from the walls. It made his surroundings look a bit less like a page torn out of someone’s notebook; he approved.
“Acrophobes,” he muttered, when she was only a perspective-breaking silhouette. He had never seen what she must have, and would not like to. Once she’d disappeared he looked to his left and asked, “Where are you?”
There was a glint of sorts, as if from a disembodied pair of glasses. “Over here.” The impression of an apologetic sort of smile: “I’m sorry about that, and I thank you.”
He shrugged again. “Not a problem. It was nothing.”
“Gods, I’d certainly hope not,” she said. “I still want to get a story out of this, you know.”