Fanfic: Same Song, Different Key (2/?)
Thursday, August 18th, 2016 11:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silvercheers posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
mindcracklovePart 1
*_*_*
Did you think the sea forgot?
The teeth come first. They always do—rows upon rows of them, little shards of obsidian that slice his cheeks and lips to ribbons as they grow too big for his mouth.
It runs through you, your arteries and veins.
He sucks in a desperate breath, ignoring the scrape of teeth, as his lungs lurch and his throat gains flaps of skin. For a moment he can’t breathe at all, caught between air and water before he closes his mouth (but, geh, not totally, fuck those teeth) and dunks himself. For the barest moment he expects pain, the rasp of saline over open wounds, but-
It is in your blood, your saliva, your tears.
-the ocean is as gentle as it is wild these nights, and instead it washes over, washes in, mixing with blood and spit to bind into healed skin. The eel-slide of the full moon schools through him, every cell drinking in the bite of the spring tide.
Once it was your essence, before you grew.
Hair shrinks back, is replaced with fine little spines as skin goes rubbery and solid with fat. The transformation goes quicker now, as though aware he’s discomfitted by the process.
It brought you iron, from the cores of stars long dead, oxygen, from your photosynthetic siblings, and salts, from the wearing of water and time over stone.
Fins and a tail take the place of his usual limbs, and his eyelids snap open with the changes in his eyes. He twitches his tail a little as his face elongates into the proper shape for a shark, resisting the now-foreign urge to sneeze.
The sea loves all its children.
The tide surges in on a sudden, driving wind. The waves whisper to him come along, come along. There’s an unexpected splashing in the water near him—you’re too close to the shore, beware the rocks, beware the land, my dear—and a garbled, but familiar, whoop of delight.
Can you blame it for wanting to see them again?
“Oh man, dude, you look awesome!”
A more subdued shifting of feet, a hand brushing over his snout in a tingly wave of sensation. “Very cool.”
Coe wiggles happily, both at the praise and the petting, because yes he is the best wereshark, but it’s always nice to hear humans say it. He couldn’t have shown them this during the last spring tide, the new moon transformation is reserved for a different celebration, one less kind to humans.
Come, come, deeper, be safe in the depths, little ones. Let me know how you’ve grown.
Time to go. He lets Pause and Avidya give him a shove, he splays his fins wide, letting cool water rush over his gils. He glides for a stretch, waiting for the water to tell him that his friends have followed; they still need to put on the remnants of their gear.
Ah, there they are.
Follow me! The spring tide is here, all are welcome!
Notes: Coe’s a night shark. They have fabulously pretty green eyes.
*_*_*
“How’s our favorite maybe-spook doing? Has he found the tracker yet?” BTC asks as he wanders by the back of Etho’s chair on his way to the couch. He sets down his water and sits, letting Cata jump immediately into his lap while Cati settles onto the cushion beside him.
“Yep. He says ‘hi’.” Etho tilts the screen of his laptop towards BTC, zooming in with a few flicks of his fingers. On the screen, somewhere over northern Canada according to the map, Nebris’ minute course deviations do, in fact, spell out ‘hi’ in binary.
“That’s polite of him.”
“Last time he flushed our tracker down the toilet along with the NSA one. I think this is progress,” Etho muses.
BTC pauses in his petting of Cata’s smooth, tabby fur. “Do you think we’re maybe being a little overbearing? He’s a customer at our flower shop.”
Silently, Etho pulls a small, black chip out of his pocket, waggling it at BTC with a raised eyebrow.
BTC scowls. “Seriously? I thought you destroyed the last ones you found.” He starts patting himself down, feeling a pang of regret when he upsets Cata off his lap.
“No need,” Etho says, pulling out a second chip from his pockets. “I’ve got yours. A tracker for a tracker seems fair, I don’t mind if he knows where I am.” There’s a subtle emphasis on the final pronoun, and his eye is apologetic for startling him.
By mutual, tacit agreement, his and Etho’s pasts are off limits. By mutual, tacit agreement, they pretend no ignorance of what they do know.
“The next time he buys flowers, charge him for everything he’s got,” he mutters, mollified by Etho’s amenable nod.
Notes: Another AU that is terminally in progress. Was originally a simple flower shop AU, then ribbons got involved (though there are sadly none in this snippet) and then SPIES got involved and everything got complicated. Maybe one day I’ll finish the version without the spies, that one’s far less likely to spiral into something unmanageable.
*_*_*
“One of these days I’m going to visit and you’ll be doing something other than work.”
Guude looks up, surprised at the sudden presence. Standing over him, with a tablet under one arm and wearing an amused smile, is Bdubs.
“Unless I miss my mark, you’re bringing me work,” Guude says, eyeing the tablet. “So, my enabling friend, what can I do for you?” He doesn’t let the distraction interrupt his task, and continues to pat down soil in a pot, carefully avoiding crushing still-tender leaves.
“If you had official consulting hours I would use them,” he gripes. “Got a customer who wants an interesting solar panel setup. I’ve never seen anything like what they’re asking for and wanted to get a second opinion.”
Guude hmms, transplanting another sprout with practiced movements. “Sure. I’ll take a break after I get all these little guys in their new homes."
He works diligently for a few minutes more, letting the heat of the greenhouse sink into his bones. It soothes the mild ache in his feet from standing around all day on the concrete floor of one of the old factories he repurposed into solar panel assembly lines. If he had his way he’d drop the managerial position at those factories and grow things in his greenhouse all day, but there is always something to do there and he can hardly abandon a process he himself created. Not yet, not until this age is a little more settled into its skin.
“Did you ever think this was going to be your life, thirty years ago?” Bdubs asks, and when Guude glances up at his face his eyes are as curious as his tone is pensive.
Guude raises an eyebrow. “What brought this on?”
Shrugging, Bdubs says, “It just hit me, that this is normal for us now. I’m a contractor who builds energy-efficient housing, consulting the man who singlehandedly reduced the price of solar panels tenfold while he’s wrist-deep in dirt at seven in the evening.”
Unashamed, Guude continues being wrist-deep in dirt, doing his best to coax the runt of the litter into verticality. “To answer your question, I think thirty years ago was the tail end of my fireman phase. But then, what plans do make it all the way from childhood to adulthood, right? Twenty years ago this was the future just out of reach. Aren’t you glad we’re the generation that took the leap and grabbed it?”
Bdubs smiles. “So our kids didn’t have to. No regrets here, these are not bad lives we lead. Just… idle curiosity, I guess.”
“I’m sure we could have taken different paths and been no worse off for them. On this one we were two small sparks in a world revolution that’s still in progress. That’s pretty cool,” Guude says, sharing a grin. “Help me up, I’ll go wash my hands and take a look at those plans of yours.”
Bdubs clasps his arm with one strong, calloused hand, hauling him upright with little effort. “Before we go in, could you do the thing? Please?” he begs, turning on the puppy eyes.
“Things haven’t changed that much since you were last here,” Guude says, but he pulls the remote from his pocket nevertheless. He presses the leftmost button and watches as the glass panels black out, darkening the room.
But not completely, because as the dark creeps in, his plants come to life in a jumble of glowing colors. Bdubs lets out a delighted, awed whistle. To their right is mostly blue-white, characteristic of jellyfish, to their left, the green-yellow of fireflies. Mixed in is the bright blues and greens emitting from algae, and the new sprouts Guude just moved are a soft red. One day the last ones will be nightlights.
“It never gets old,” Bdubs says. He claps Guude on the shoulder as Guude tells the panels to clear, watching as the luminescence fades into the summer evening sunlight.
“Unfortunately, we do. C’mon, plans time.”
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Date: Thursday, August 18th, 2016 09:02 pm (UTC)flowers and ribbons and spies; <3, that is all
Solarpunk; I enjoyed, and an sad it will only ever be a snippet of this world
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Date: Saturday, August 20th, 2016 04:53 am (UTC)Ehehe, they are so precious in their own mildly screwed up way. I like to think of it as Person of Interest but minus the computer and rich benefactor, and plus cats and flowers.
Me too. D: I hope maybe I will one day find a plot, but that day is not yet.
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Date: Friday, August 19th, 2016 02:27 pm (UTC)Love the wereshark au, it's a very unique idea and of course anything with sharks is dear to me <3 Very poetic, too.
The spies au makes me want to know more; I wonder about their pasts and the bigger picture. It's also very interesting!
And I've always wanted to write in a solarpunk world, it's definitely an au that doesn't get utilised as much as it should; it's nice to imagine that sort of world, and is a nice change from a lot of the gritty, pessimistic dystopian aus that are often used. I love the little snippet here, OOG are always a lovely pair to read about <3
Great work!!
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Date: Saturday, August 20th, 2016 04:57 am (UTC)They are a mystery, those two. They run a great flower shop, tho.
I love solarpunk so much?? It is one of my FAVORITE things, and I wish it were a more prominant setting. All of the optimism and glowy stuff and fabulous clothing and diversity is just the best.
Thank you~
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Date: Friday, August 19th, 2016 05:02 pm (UTC)I'm...not sure what to make of them. All are interesting, all are confusing, all seem like there is an idea behind it that I am unaware of as of now.
And they all remind me of those previews of other stories that you sometimes find at the end of a book; where instead of a summary they'll print one page from that book from somewhere in the middle for you to get curious.
If it were that...I'd probably try to get the last one at the libary. =)
And in any case, it's great to see you sharing so many little snipets for A.U.G.U.S.T. =D
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Date: Saturday, August 20th, 2016 05:00 am (UTC)I wish solarpunk was something I could find at the library. ;-; It's so new that virtually nothing on paper has been published in the setting.
I'm happy you're enjoying them, despite the confusion. ^^
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Date: Saturday, August 20th, 2016 01:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Sunday, August 21st, 2016 03:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Sunday, August 21st, 2016 04:12 am (UTC)-Observing Anon
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Date: Sunday, August 21st, 2016 03:15 pm (UTC)