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31_days2009-08-29 12:49 am
cofmanynames.livejournal.com) wrote in 31_days2009-08-29 12:49 am
[August 29] [Sandman, Original] The Second-Last Funeral
Title: The Second-Last Funeral
Day / Theme: August 29 -- all my innocence is wasted on the dead and dreaming
Rating: PG13 for impact
Series: Sandman, Original (Fire and Water)
Characters: (Sandman) post-Wake Dream; (original) Samantha Royden, Aiken, Aiken's mother, Samantha's parents
Summary: Samantha gets to ask a question and is forewarned. It does not help.
Notes: I wanted to show how screwed up certain things are, and certain things get. She's in the battle. She has no idea what she's doing. But she will avenge them, she says.
I came across a young man walking in a wasteland of gray dust. He wore improbably spotless white, like his skin and hair, and an expression of being always at least slightly somewhere else. His bones were too close to the surface and the green glow off the stone on his necklace made him look strange, almost sickly.
All in all he was rather more normal than the sort of person I usually come across.
I asked him the first and only question I could think of: I asked him why all my friends were dying, or possibly being disappeared.
He gave me an answer, certainly. Even then I barely understood, although I was pleased at the fact that I did not laugh and did not cry. Those were the two main risks at the time.
The explanation may have had something to do with stories, I believe. Or it may have been a story in itself.
He may have warned me.
- - -
I woke up, technically speaking, rolled over and took up pen and notebook before realizing I didn’t know, not any more, what I had dreamed. Then I did really wake up.
The phone rang; the number that came up was surprising, intensely disquieting even. International phone calls are expensive; Aiken would not have called were it not terribly important.
I said something that could be mistaken for a greeting and listened. The breathy female voice was nothing like his. It should not have happened like this, I remember thinking, this woman has no right to tell me that he is dead.
Already I could feel the laughter pushing at my throat, choking off any hope of speech, rising fast...
I hung up.
- - -
This is me. I am trying to convince my parents to cover me for the plane tickets. Despite the fact that there is not anything to bury, no one and nothing could keep me away. I have missed enough of my friends’ funerals.
Day / Theme: August 29 -- all my innocence is wasted on the dead and dreaming
Rating: PG13 for impact
Series: Sandman, Original (Fire and Water)
Characters: (Sandman) post-Wake Dream; (original) Samantha Royden, Aiken, Aiken's mother, Samantha's parents
Summary: Samantha gets to ask a question and is forewarned. It does not help.
Notes: I wanted to show how screwed up certain things are, and certain things get. She's in the battle. She has no idea what she's doing. But she will avenge them, she says.
I came across a young man walking in a wasteland of gray dust. He wore improbably spotless white, like his skin and hair, and an expression of being always at least slightly somewhere else. His bones were too close to the surface and the green glow off the stone on his necklace made him look strange, almost sickly.
All in all he was rather more normal than the sort of person I usually come across.
I asked him the first and only question I could think of: I asked him why all my friends were dying, or possibly being disappeared.
He gave me an answer, certainly. Even then I barely understood, although I was pleased at the fact that I did not laugh and did not cry. Those were the two main risks at the time.
The explanation may have had something to do with stories, I believe. Or it may have been a story in itself.
He may have warned me.
- - -
I woke up, technically speaking, rolled over and took up pen and notebook before realizing I didn’t know, not any more, what I had dreamed. Then I did really wake up.
The phone rang; the number that came up was surprising, intensely disquieting even. International phone calls are expensive; Aiken would not have called were it not terribly important.
I said something that could be mistaken for a greeting and listened. The breathy female voice was nothing like his. It should not have happened like this, I remember thinking, this woman has no right to tell me that he is dead.
Already I could feel the laughter pushing at my throat, choking off any hope of speech, rising fast...
I hung up.
- - -
This is me. I am trying to convince my parents to cover me for the plane tickets. Despite the fact that there is not anything to bury, no one and nothing could keep me away. I have missed enough of my friends’ funerals.