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who_contest2015-09-17 07:33 am
templeremus.livejournal.com) wrote in who_contest2015-09-17 07:33 am
Entry tags:
There Will Come Soft Rains ('Blur' entry)
Title: There Will Come Soft Rains
Rating: PG
Author: templeremus
Genre: General/Angst
Word Count: 500
Characters: River, The Doctor
Warnings: Implied death and violence, dark themes
Spoilers: For a passing reference in The Time of Angels
Summary: When the Doctor’s battles are done, River counts the cost.
The people of the Bone Meadows had wings up to six feet across. Every second or third day River would uncover a skeleton almost intact, delicate phalanges outstretched as if for flight. The eye sockets had refilled with soil and the broad, flat jaws lay in pieces, their connecting tendons long since decayed.
There were more clues besides; armour casing and spent fuel cells and shards of metal too warped to identify. But archaeology is a story recalled backwards and in fragments. She could dig down a hundred thousand years and still only glimpse the enormity of what was lost. The inhabitants of the Bone Meadows had left no written account of themselves, their language consigned to another era. For a complete image- no matter how indistinct, or how embroidered- local myth had to fill the gap.
Wherever one looked, accounts of him would vary. He had as many forms in legend as he had faces, some kindly and many terrible. On different worlds he was a goblin or a wizard or a storm, but here he had come silently. In the story the neighbouring peoples told, a great cloud had fallen over the Meadows. Its darkness covered the valley for a full day, and when it cleared the earth was sown with corpses.
To this, River added her own footnotes. The university did not expect her back until her thesis was due in the autumn, and the time was entirely hers in a way that she had never known before. Each new discovery was like starting the work all over again, the shock of it undiminished even after fifty bodies. Sometimes she hated him, with the old loathing of her childhood. On other occasions she thought only of the skeletons and their secrets, putting their end aside. After sundown, in the moment before physical exhaustion gave way to sleep, she thought she could hear wings beating around her tent.
One morning she woke to a dark blur on the mountainside, hazy through the dawn light. Its colour resolved from grey to blue as she gathered her tools. Her back ached already from stooping too long the day before, and right then she made the decision not to walk up. Let him watch, if that pleased him. There was too much else to do.
The afternoon was drawing in when something (hope, perhaps, or fear) made her look once more. The blue remained, but now someone was making their way over from it, arms outstretched for balance. The sun beat down upon him and threw his shadow far across the valley.
A little nearer and she could glimpse his expression, which was enough to tell her what she had already guessed. This was not his battlefield, not for him, not yet. He had it all to come- and here she was, exhuming his guilt ahead of time.
There was nothing she could do except wait. He came towards her, smiling, and as he moved the bones cracked under his feet.
Rating: PG
Author: templeremus
Genre: General/Angst
Word Count: 500
Characters: River, The Doctor
Warnings: Implied death and violence, dark themes
Spoilers: For a passing reference in The Time of Angels
Summary: When the Doctor’s battles are done, River counts the cost.
The people of the Bone Meadows had wings up to six feet across. Every second or third day River would uncover a skeleton almost intact, delicate phalanges outstretched as if for flight. The eye sockets had refilled with soil and the broad, flat jaws lay in pieces, their connecting tendons long since decayed.
There were more clues besides; armour casing and spent fuel cells and shards of metal too warped to identify. But archaeology is a story recalled backwards and in fragments. She could dig down a hundred thousand years and still only glimpse the enormity of what was lost. The inhabitants of the Bone Meadows had left no written account of themselves, their language consigned to another era. For a complete image- no matter how indistinct, or how embroidered- local myth had to fill the gap.
Wherever one looked, accounts of him would vary. He had as many forms in legend as he had faces, some kindly and many terrible. On different worlds he was a goblin or a wizard or a storm, but here he had come silently. In the story the neighbouring peoples told, a great cloud had fallen over the Meadows. Its darkness covered the valley for a full day, and when it cleared the earth was sown with corpses.
To this, River added her own footnotes. The university did not expect her back until her thesis was due in the autumn, and the time was entirely hers in a way that she had never known before. Each new discovery was like starting the work all over again, the shock of it undiminished even after fifty bodies. Sometimes she hated him, with the old loathing of her childhood. On other occasions she thought only of the skeletons and their secrets, putting their end aside. After sundown, in the moment before physical exhaustion gave way to sleep, she thought she could hear wings beating around her tent.
One morning she woke to a dark blur on the mountainside, hazy through the dawn light. Its colour resolved from grey to blue as she gathered her tools. Her back ached already from stooping too long the day before, and right then she made the decision not to walk up. Let him watch, if that pleased him. There was too much else to do.
The afternoon was drawing in when something (hope, perhaps, or fear) made her look once more. The blue remained, but now someone was making their way over from it, arms outstretched for balance. The sun beat down upon him and threw his shadow far across the valley.
A little nearer and she could glimpse his expression, which was enough to tell her what she had already guessed. This was not his battlefield, not for him, not yet. He had it all to come- and here she was, exhuming his guilt ahead of time.
There was nothing she could do except wait. He came towards her, smiling, and as he moved the bones cracked under his feet.