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These are getting long, so there will be one more part.
Finding Serenity
“Why?” he asked her, looking down at the vest in its nest of tissue paper. It was embroidered, the twisty kind of work a person might get to doing when the snow was high outside – or outside was the deep black of space.
“If you don’t want anything supplied by my – profession,” she said tightly, “be assured the fabric and thread were gifts from an old friend at the House Madrassa.”
“That ain’t it,” he said, even though he was not rightly sure that was true. He had a thought that she might appreciate the effort. “I didn’t – I looked, but you have your shuttle the way you like it, and –”
Her eyes widened as she understood. “Mal, you don’t need to give me anything.”
She looked down. He looked away.
“Welcome back,” he said.
The Princess Bride
Fezzik doesn’t ask why Inigo takes them south, always south. Inigo takes them south until chill mornings are rare, so that he doesn’t have to see how blue Fezzik’s fingers and toes get in the cold, no matter how many blankets Inigo piles on them.
Fezzik’s heart is as capacious as the rest of him.
Only that is the truth of story, not the truth of the body. When Inigo presses his ear to Fezzik’s chest, he hears it, laboring steadily and always a bit slowly.
Men asked to work harder than they can bear will do it, if they must. But they do not grow old.
Inigo listens to Fezzik’s heart and prays that hearts are not like men.
Buried Sweetly
The idiot died right next to the razors.
Anthony had not wanted to tell her the full story. And indeed she doubted that the tales told were much like the events that had in fact transpired. But Anthony was a sailor, and men said crude things to sailors that they would not say to gentlewomen (at least, to gentlewomen outside the tender embrace of an asylum), so it was on Anthony that she relied for further details.
It was Anthony whom she sent to retrieve the razors, using papers she had written. She had grown up reading the submissions of fawning lawyers. She knew the words. And she moved quickly; more than a few days, and the razors would have disappeared into some clever copper’s pocket.
That was something she had not learned in Judge Turpin’s house.
The razors themselves were as clean as birdsong and as blind as songbirds. Shaving beards and shaving lives, they had been indifferent. They were light in her hands.
Anthony did not like to see her hold them.
She was his wife now. In the confusion and terror of the fire, the escape, the murders, marriage had seemed so simple, and it had meant so much to him. She did not feel towards him as a wife ought to feel for her husband. At times she burned for his touch. At times he might as well have been married to the girl she saw in the reflection of the silver blades.
A sailor must have his sea. Anthony was not long for her bed, and perhaps that was for the best. A sailor’s wife needs must have an occupation for the long months without his presence and his purse.
Johanna was considering midwifery.
SPN
Mary had never been a good girl. She’d spent her life defying her family’s strictures, all the rules that had seemed outdated and reasonless. She’d worn short skirts and lipstick; she’d gone skinny-dipping in mixed company; she’d gone to a college in a state she’d never visited – the one that, of all that had accepted her, was the farthest away from where she’d started. She’d kept diaries, writing down all the family myths that weren’t supposed to be told to outsiders.
She’d married, and she’d had a son.
Babies were so soft: soft skin, soft bones, soft spot on the head where the skull hadn’t yet closed up. No calluses on their hands, no walking-toughened skin on their feet. Every hurt was a surprise and a wrong worth protesting.
The wild heart in her still beat, but her soft son made her look both ways before crossing the street now.
When the dark man came and told her that her crimes against her family required penance, she’d stood in front of Dean’s crib without hesitation. When the man had explained that only a second son could redeem the first, she’d seized on the chance just to give herself more time to shake free of him.
She’d die before she’d let her past harm her children.
Balances (SV)
Clark had flown back in to catch the tail end of the tree-lighting ceremony. LED lights would never look quite right to him, but then again the tree was forty feet tall and surrounded by Secret Service agents, so it wasn’t ever going to feel like Christmas on the farm.
Lex hadn’t spoken to him during the ceremony. Sometimes, Clark swore, Lex thought he made these crises happen. (If asked, Lex would say that he did think Superman’s existence encouraged supervillainy and complacence on the part of the authorities, but he’d agree that it wasn’t the same as making a crisis happen, particularly on the exact day and time that Superman was supposed to appear with the President.)
There was no snow yet, but the weather had finally changed, the air cold and dry, the trees bare as iron lattices.
“Let me make it up to you,” he said, coming up behind Lex, who was standing at the window and looking into the cloud-dark sky.
Clark could see his reflection in the glass, smiling a little sadly. “Clark,” he said. “You don’t have an account with me. And you don’t want to.”
Finding Serenity
“Why?” he asked her, looking down at the vest in its nest of tissue paper. It was embroidered, the twisty kind of work a person might get to doing when the snow was high outside – or outside was the deep black of space.
“If you don’t want anything supplied by my – profession,” she said tightly, “be assured the fabric and thread were gifts from an old friend at the House Madrassa.”
“That ain’t it,” he said, even though he was not rightly sure that was true. He had a thought that she might appreciate the effort. “I didn’t – I looked, but you have your shuttle the way you like it, and –”
Her eyes widened as she understood. “Mal, you don’t need to give me anything.”
She looked down. He looked away.
“Welcome back,” he said.
The Princess Bride
Fezzik doesn’t ask why Inigo takes them south, always south. Inigo takes them south until chill mornings are rare, so that he doesn’t have to see how blue Fezzik’s fingers and toes get in the cold, no matter how many blankets Inigo piles on them.
Fezzik’s heart is as capacious as the rest of him.
Only that is the truth of story, not the truth of the body. When Inigo presses his ear to Fezzik’s chest, he hears it, laboring steadily and always a bit slowly.
Men asked to work harder than they can bear will do it, if they must. But they do not grow old.
Inigo listens to Fezzik’s heart and prays that hearts are not like men.
Buried Sweetly
The idiot died right next to the razors.
Anthony had not wanted to tell her the full story. And indeed she doubted that the tales told were much like the events that had in fact transpired. But Anthony was a sailor, and men said crude things to sailors that they would not say to gentlewomen (at least, to gentlewomen outside the tender embrace of an asylum), so it was on Anthony that she relied for further details.
It was Anthony whom she sent to retrieve the razors, using papers she had written. She had grown up reading the submissions of fawning lawyers. She knew the words. And she moved quickly; more than a few days, and the razors would have disappeared into some clever copper’s pocket.
That was something she had not learned in Judge Turpin’s house.
The razors themselves were as clean as birdsong and as blind as songbirds. Shaving beards and shaving lives, they had been indifferent. They were light in her hands.
Anthony did not like to see her hold them.
She was his wife now. In the confusion and terror of the fire, the escape, the murders, marriage had seemed so simple, and it had meant so much to him. She did not feel towards him as a wife ought to feel for her husband. At times she burned for his touch. At times he might as well have been married to the girl she saw in the reflection of the silver blades.
A sailor must have his sea. Anthony was not long for her bed, and perhaps that was for the best. A sailor’s wife needs must have an occupation for the long months without his presence and his purse.
Johanna was considering midwifery.
SPN
Mary had never been a good girl. She’d spent her life defying her family’s strictures, all the rules that had seemed outdated and reasonless. She’d worn short skirts and lipstick; she’d gone skinny-dipping in mixed company; she’d gone to a college in a state she’d never visited – the one that, of all that had accepted her, was the farthest away from where she’d started. She’d kept diaries, writing down all the family myths that weren’t supposed to be told to outsiders.
She’d married, and she’d had a son.
Babies were so soft: soft skin, soft bones, soft spot on the head where the skull hadn’t yet closed up. No calluses on their hands, no walking-toughened skin on their feet. Every hurt was a surprise and a wrong worth protesting.
The wild heart in her still beat, but her soft son made her look both ways before crossing the street now.
When the dark man came and told her that her crimes against her family required penance, she’d stood in front of Dean’s crib without hesitation. When the man had explained that only a second son could redeem the first, she’d seized on the chance just to give herself more time to shake free of him.
She’d die before she’d let her past harm her children.
Balances (SV)
Clark had flown back in to catch the tail end of the tree-lighting ceremony. LED lights would never look quite right to him, but then again the tree was forty feet tall and surrounded by Secret Service agents, so it wasn’t ever going to feel like Christmas on the farm.
Lex hadn’t spoken to him during the ceremony. Sometimes, Clark swore, Lex thought he made these crises happen. (If asked, Lex would say that he did think Superman’s existence encouraged supervillainy and complacence on the part of the authorities, but he’d agree that it wasn’t the same as making a crisis happen, particularly on the exact day and time that Superman was supposed to appear with the President.)
There was no snow yet, but the weather had finally changed, the air cold and dry, the trees bare as iron lattices.
“Let me make it up to you,” he said, coming up behind Lex, who was standing at the window and looking into the cloud-dark sky.
Clark could see his reflection in the glass, smiling a little sadly. “Clark,” he said. “You don’t have an account with me. And you don’t want to.”
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