evangeline, for kyra
Dec. 28th, 2006 04:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ontologyEr. I really haven't got a good explanation for this. Here are two storybits from the Evangeline thingummy (I'm still looking for a surname, by the by, and the furthest I've got is the realisation that it needs to be monosyllabic and probably ought to mean something interesting). I wrote the first one and sort of forgot about it, and then I tried to write it again and came out with something mostly different, which is why they repeat each other in bits, and certainly in general theme, although they are also talking about different times, I think, and I need to marry them together into a continuous narrative of some sort, except that I still have very little idea of what this story-thing I am writing is about.
Er. Also, this is mainly forlady_moriel , because she did nag me about writing some Evangeline, and I know she wants to read it, and also because nearly anything having to do with vampires is her fault by default, really. :D And because her birthdayfic is still a bit of mind-mist at the moment. ♥ (Okay, so is everyone else's. For some reason, I have had immense difficulty writing anything over the past few months. My mind freezes up and something vaguely akin to panic starts up. I have no idea what I'm afraid of: that I can't write all of a sudden? That doesn't make sense.)
Well. Anyway.
...This is completely barmy. Aaack. *trepidation*
Er. Also, this is mainly for
lady_moriel , because she did nag me about writing some Evangeline, and I know she wants to read it, and also because nearly anything having to do with vampires is her fault by default, really. :D And because her birthdayfic is still a bit of mind-mist at the moment. ♥ (Okay, so is everyone else's. For some reason, I have had immense difficulty writing anything over the past few months. My mind freezes up and something vaguely akin to panic starts up. I have no idea what I'm afraid of: that I can't write all of a sudden? That doesn't make sense.) Well. Anyway.
I.
There are things they don’t tell you, when you join, perhaps because they can’t, perhaps because they think you won’t be able to bear it in the end: perhaps because they can’t bear it, in the end. I didn’t think he would be human, but he was, or he looked it, and had been, and here was I, trembling in my mud-spattered boots, with a splintering wooden stake made ready to plunge into his heart.
I don’t know what I’d thought before. Like killing snakes, maybe, or wolves. They are coming for you, they can’t help it; you’ve got to go for them first.
I wanted him to be human so I would have an excuse for mercy.
II.
There are things they never tell you.
They never tell you, for example, about killing something that was human and still, slipping off your sharpened stake, looks it: the mouth closes over the barbed fangs, the eyes slip backwards, and the body crumples, and you’ve got blood on your hands, your arms, maybe on your face, and it stinks, and you want to bathe and bathe and bathe, or you want to throw up all over and forever, or you want to sink backwards and shut your eyes and your mind and your thoughts and the world. (Common knowledge has it that vampire blood is black: it isn’t. It’s dark, a little darker than the blood of the living, and you wonder what it’s there for, anyway, if they’re dead or something like dead. Vampire blood is just dark enough to seem un-right, and it looks black in the dark like any other blood does, and when does one get the chance to kill a vampire in the daytime?)
Books don’t tell you what you need to know, either; they don’t have any remedy for the questions trying to escape your head. Are vampires still human? What is the worth of a soul?
I blew out all of the candles (the flickering lights hurt something in me; I didn’t know what) and lay in the dark, lay very still and listened to the night flow past me like a ghostly train, and I wondered if I, too, was no longer human.
There are things they don’t tell you, when you join, perhaps because they can’t, perhaps because they think you won’t be able to bear it in the end: perhaps because they can’t bear it, in the end. I didn’t think he would be human, but he was, or he looked it, and had been, and here was I, trembling in my mud-spattered boots, with a splintering wooden stake made ready to plunge into his heart.
I don’t know what I’d thought before. Like killing snakes, maybe, or wolves. They are coming for you, they can’t help it; you’ve got to go for them first.
I wanted him to be human so I would have an excuse for mercy.
II.
There are things they never tell you.
They never tell you, for example, about killing something that was human and still, slipping off your sharpened stake, looks it: the mouth closes over the barbed fangs, the eyes slip backwards, and the body crumples, and you’ve got blood on your hands, your arms, maybe on your face, and it stinks, and you want to bathe and bathe and bathe, or you want to throw up all over and forever, or you want to sink backwards and shut your eyes and your mind and your thoughts and the world. (Common knowledge has it that vampire blood is black: it isn’t. It’s dark, a little darker than the blood of the living, and you wonder what it’s there for, anyway, if they’re dead or something like dead. Vampire blood is just dark enough to seem un-right, and it looks black in the dark like any other blood does, and when does one get the chance to kill a vampire in the daytime?)
Books don’t tell you what you need to know, either; they don’t have any remedy for the questions trying to escape your head. Are vampires still human? What is the worth of a soul?
I blew out all of the candles (the flickering lights hurt something in me; I didn’t know what) and lay in the dark, lay very still and listened to the night flow past me like a ghostly train, and I wondered if I, too, was no longer human.
...This is completely barmy. Aaack. *trepidation*
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-12-28 10:03 pm (UTC)Very lovely--dark and beautiful. I can't wait to see it grow!
no subject
Date: 2006-12-28 11:10 pm (UTC)Truly, darling. Everything of yours that I read is so beautifully said and often has such a way of... being the wind that flutters the veil, if you will (I hope you understand that reference). [I was going to put everything you write, but then I realised that couldn't be quite true, but as a dear professor has told me several times: Good writers are not good because they write only good things. They are good writers because they write.]
Anyway, I love this. And you. ♥
no subject
Date: 2006-12-29 12:07 am (UTC)Anywho, very pretty. If you wrote a whole book in your flowy style it'd be sure to get published. :D
no subject
Date: 2006-12-30 08:06 am (UTC)Are you trying to torment me? Why is it that your writing that I like best is always stuff that ISN'T FINISHED, and then you leave it around being not finished for ages and I'm over here in my little corner suffering, or something.
Also, you are getting to be a much better writer than I am. I sort of think this isn't fair, and it's especially not fair that you're writing original fiction way better than I am; about the only thing I seem to be able to write decently anymore is fanfic. Possibly this is because 1) fanfics are easier to plot out and make short, so they're less threatening, and 2) for some reason, fanfic is the only place I generally let myself play. I'm not sure why.
Um. Anyway. The actual point of this comment is, I LOVE IT WRITE MORE NOW OR ELSE, or something like that. Because it's lyrical and beautifully written, as usual, and you've got some lines here that really hit right between the eyes, like "I wanted him to be human so I would have an excuse for mercy." This wasn't at all what I'd expected with the Evangeline thing--I'm not sure what I was expecting, to be honest--but dang it, it's good.