celestial objects
Jan. 4th, 2022 09:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sidewaysTitle: Celestial Objects
AO3: Link
Rating: G
Series: The Riders Series (Danny Fisher, Carlo Goss)
Wordcount: 915
Summary: A warm spring evening, a lonely road, and Danny and Carlo, star-gazing.
Remarks: Three times makes a tradition, right? Something about the end of year break seems to get me in the nighthorse mood, and this time I did manage something short and sweet! Plus everyone has to have at least one fic with this title, surely.
◘◘◘
Drowsy horses painted spring about them, heedless of the barrier posed by closed eyelids: a glory of [thick tasslegrass on wide plain, full-scented], walls of vegetation gently swaying around and above in the <warm breeze>. Easy weather and open sky carrying a <bright, full moon>.
It was the humans, though, who added <stars>.
"Ever think on 'em?" Danny murmured, and it'd been a good month, a learning month, because he didn't have to say anything more on who he meant by <them>.
<Red coat> was in the ambient briefly; a flash of colour between thick evergreens. Carlo just punched the bag under his head, the only way of arguing with lumps, and said, "Not much."
"There's a square in town. Landing Square, in Shamesey." Danny shifted the stem of tasslegrass in his mouth, spiked the sensitive tip of his tongue against it, a habit halfway formed of late - skimmed, he could maybe admit, from one of Guil's stray thoughts on an afternoon. There was a notion there about it keeping fur off the teeth. Maybe it was true, maybe it wasn't, but the musky flavour wasn't displeasing, and unlike some of the other grasses it held no threat to good digestion. "They keep it clear. Fenced. No cattle or anything. Tried to turn it over for housing once but there was just about a riot."
"Yeah?"
"Folk still hanging on for the Return."
"Huh."
<Stars> went a little slippy, Carlo's memory in the mix - Carlo remembering a different sky, the only sky to be seen townbound in the high peaks. Danny chased the low point on the Tail, the brightest ember in the dark, fixing the image the way the east star could fix a rider lost in the wilds.
Pushy. Older habits. But Carlo didn't fuss, just rolled over to obligingly look above and take stock of reality for himself.
<Convoy,> was the uncertain, sceptical thought then. <Convoy of trucks descending, along a road peeled off the ground like heat-cracked paint, stretching impossibly into the sky, reaching down from those far pinpricks of light.>
Impossible image. The kind to make a man laugh, except for how they were lying here in the light of a moon the earth's oldest insisted wasn't the one humans had taken their first steps under.
"Preacher Wales wasn't for it," Carlo said. Quiet, the way he always was when raising old names into a world that had already forgotten most of them. "Reckoned it didn't account for God. People waiting on starfolk when they should've been waiting on God."
No doubt a sermon that came with a healthy side serving on what path meant straying permanently from that righteous forbearance, that promise for a brighter future beyond what could be promised in this hard and hostile land. Hell waited, they said, for those who walked with the beasts, and some of them thought that hell opened its arms and welcomed you right there, that anything beyond the gates was a lost and lonely place devoid of God. Hanging hopes on people who walked among the stars was probably a gentle transgression next to walking with the beasts.
Two years into walking, Danny had found himself a kind of tolerance, if not peace, on the God issue. Carlo wasn't altogether there yet.
Blame it on the sleepy lassitude of the night. Danny imaged <God(preacher) arriving in the star convoy, a haughty driver in the main cab,> insolent cheek crossing over into outright blasphemy and that was very bad habits now, except that he wasn't aiming to make a pack of street toughs shout raucous approval of another young fool in their midst. Just sometimes it got a wide-eyed, half-disbelieving look from Carlo, the face he made when he was fighting a smile and failing.
Or it got a hard, blind swat to the ribs like the one that landed on him now. Fine. Maybe the younger Goss would have appreciated it more.
<Randy> reflected back at him immediately, a presence easily summoned. Melancholy tonight, on Carlo's side. Not a rare thing. "Used to scare the kid," Carlo said, flopping his arm back over his chest. "God would come, or starfolk would come, take the good and deserving. Leave everyone else."
"He ain't been left, Carlo."
"Yeah. I know." Carlo didn't, not really. And there wasn't any denying that Carlo had been taken; because the horses didn't give you back once they had you. Randy Goss still had a brother - a brother who'd signalled all intention to trek up that mountain every damn blighted day if that was what it took to reassure him on that point. But the brother was a rider. You didn't separate those two things.
The stalk of tasslegrass was growing stale. Danny flicked it into the dark, settled his shoulders further back against his own pack. "Not starfolk. Not God." Lord. Blasphemy again just speaking on the idea. God shouldn't have such a penchant for biting fingers. All the same, though - Danny rolled his head to the side, ventured, "But not the devil."
<Spring> still smothered everything. Nighthorse skin twitched sometimes, itching under the attention of some <small and crawling> irritation, but they were warm and comfortable, they were <grouped, safe,> they were sliding towards sleep despite the efforts of noisy humans insisting on flapping lips. All around them the plains whispered and sighed and swayed, a language older than anything brought down from the stars.
"No," Carlo said. "Not the devil."
AO3: Link
Rating: G
Series: The Riders Series (Danny Fisher, Carlo Goss)
Wordcount: 915
Summary: A warm spring evening, a lonely road, and Danny and Carlo, star-gazing.
Remarks: Three times makes a tradition, right? Something about the end of year break seems to get me in the nighthorse mood, and this time I did manage something short and sweet! Plus everyone has to have at least one fic with this title, surely.
◘◘◘
Drowsy horses painted spring about them, heedless of the barrier posed by closed eyelids: a glory of [thick tasslegrass on wide plain, full-scented], walls of vegetation gently swaying around and above in the <warm breeze>. Easy weather and open sky carrying a <bright, full moon>.
It was the humans, though, who added <stars>.
"Ever think on 'em?" Danny murmured, and it'd been a good month, a learning month, because he didn't have to say anything more on who he meant by <them>.
<Red coat> was in the ambient briefly; a flash of colour between thick evergreens. Carlo just punched the bag under his head, the only way of arguing with lumps, and said, "Not much."
"There's a square in town. Landing Square, in Shamesey." Danny shifted the stem of tasslegrass in his mouth, spiked the sensitive tip of his tongue against it, a habit halfway formed of late - skimmed, he could maybe admit, from one of Guil's stray thoughts on an afternoon. There was a notion there about it keeping fur off the teeth. Maybe it was true, maybe it wasn't, but the musky flavour wasn't displeasing, and unlike some of the other grasses it held no threat to good digestion. "They keep it clear. Fenced. No cattle or anything. Tried to turn it over for housing once but there was just about a riot."
"Yeah?"
"Folk still hanging on for the Return."
"Huh."
<Stars> went a little slippy, Carlo's memory in the mix - Carlo remembering a different sky, the only sky to be seen townbound in the high peaks. Danny chased the low point on the Tail, the brightest ember in the dark, fixing the image the way the east star could fix a rider lost in the wilds.
Pushy. Older habits. But Carlo didn't fuss, just rolled over to obligingly look above and take stock of reality for himself.
<Convoy,> was the uncertain, sceptical thought then. <Convoy of trucks descending, along a road peeled off the ground like heat-cracked paint, stretching impossibly into the sky, reaching down from those far pinpricks of light.>
Impossible image. The kind to make a man laugh, except for how they were lying here in the light of a moon the earth's oldest insisted wasn't the one humans had taken their first steps under.
"Preacher Wales wasn't for it," Carlo said. Quiet, the way he always was when raising old names into a world that had already forgotten most of them. "Reckoned it didn't account for God. People waiting on starfolk when they should've been waiting on God."
No doubt a sermon that came with a healthy side serving on what path meant straying permanently from that righteous forbearance, that promise for a brighter future beyond what could be promised in this hard and hostile land. Hell waited, they said, for those who walked with the beasts, and some of them thought that hell opened its arms and welcomed you right there, that anything beyond the gates was a lost and lonely place devoid of God. Hanging hopes on people who walked among the stars was probably a gentle transgression next to walking with the beasts.
Two years into walking, Danny had found himself a kind of tolerance, if not peace, on the God issue. Carlo wasn't altogether there yet.
Blame it on the sleepy lassitude of the night. Danny imaged <God(preacher) arriving in the star convoy, a haughty driver in the main cab,> insolent cheek crossing over into outright blasphemy and that was very bad habits now, except that he wasn't aiming to make a pack of street toughs shout raucous approval of another young fool in their midst. Just sometimes it got a wide-eyed, half-disbelieving look from Carlo, the face he made when he was fighting a smile and failing.
Or it got a hard, blind swat to the ribs like the one that landed on him now. Fine. Maybe the younger Goss would have appreciated it more.
<Randy> reflected back at him immediately, a presence easily summoned. Melancholy tonight, on Carlo's side. Not a rare thing. "Used to scare the kid," Carlo said, flopping his arm back over his chest. "God would come, or starfolk would come, take the good and deserving. Leave everyone else."
"He ain't been left, Carlo."
"Yeah. I know." Carlo didn't, not really. And there wasn't any denying that Carlo had been taken; because the horses didn't give you back once they had you. Randy Goss still had a brother - a brother who'd signalled all intention to trek up that mountain every damn blighted day if that was what it took to reassure him on that point. But the brother was a rider. You didn't separate those two things.
The stalk of tasslegrass was growing stale. Danny flicked it into the dark, settled his shoulders further back against his own pack. "Not starfolk. Not God." Lord. Blasphemy again just speaking on the idea. God shouldn't have such a penchant for biting fingers. All the same, though - Danny rolled his head to the side, ventured, "But not the devil."
<Spring> still smothered everything. Nighthorse skin twitched sometimes, itching under the attention of some <small and crawling> irritation, but they were warm and comfortable, they were <grouped, safe,> they were sliding towards sleep despite the efforts of noisy humans insisting on flapping lips. All around them the plains whispered and sighed and swayed, a language older than anything brought down from the stars.
"No," Carlo said. "Not the devil."
