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Words Rise by fresne (PG-13)
Hey again! This is your friendly neighborhood Lyr here, and I'm back driving the van for Firefly this January. As always, I'm going to attempt to bring y'all a wide range of shinies, from gen to het to slash to femslash. All aboard!
Fandom: FIREFLY
Pairing: Gen
Length: 3275 words
Author on LJ:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fresne
Author Website: Life Am Good
Why this must be read: This story is about a group of original characters holed up during a Reaver attack, and using the last of the air to tell a story. The premise alone is intriguing, but Fresne does wonderful things with it. Even in such a short word count, the characters feel beautifully realized. The language is exquisite, vivid, and lush. The story-within-a-story structue works excellently to create layers of tension and meaning and texture. Fresne's writing is at once strikingly original and perfectly true to the 'verse. I simply can't come to the end of this story and not really want to know more about these characters, and that is perhaps the finest thing I can say about any story.
"There once was a man named Abu Saber, who lived along the Barbary Coast." Mara loved the way One-Eyed Mu pitched the word Barbary from her mouth. Like something spiney covered in honey. Mara wasn't sure what a Barbary Coast was. Some place far away she guessed.
She flinched at the scream that punched down through the dense metal around them. Breathed in air. Breathed out. Glanced at the air meter inching through Yella toward the gorram Red.
One-Eyed Mu hardly did more than take a short breath at the scream. She looked around the vault at the town-folk all huddled together. Said in that firm soft way a hers, "He was a wealthy man with many fields full a grain and orchards full a fruit. He had herds of fine brindled cattle that always threw healthy calves." She got Lefty Guang's attention with that. It'd been a hard winter and he'd lost dozen or so calves to a flash flood. Probably lost the herd now. He rubbed the leg that he'd twisted up when he was a boy jumping over a combine on a bet and seemed to be thinking about cows and not bun tyen-shung duh ee-dway-ro Reavers coming down through the vault door and ripping, raping and eating every last gorram one of them.
One-Eyed Mu had a way of telling a story like that. She smiled with her lips and eye and said, "But he was generosity itself. No man came to his door looking for charity, but that he didn't leave with twice as much." One-Eyed Mu held up one hand and then the other. She bit some imaginary piece a fruit and it seemed juicy, whatever it was. "He would always say, 'Is not everything I have from Allah. How can I fail to share with another man what has been so graciously given to me.'"
Something loud boomed high above. Something heavy dropped. Nothing she could do about it. Mara realized that she'd stopped noodling with her needles. Went back to making the lumpy thing that would never make a sweater, while somewhere above the steel doors, Reavers hunted for their meat. She shouldn't think about that. Think about Abu Saber with all his fields on the barbed honey coast.
Words Rise
Fandom: FIREFLY
Pairing: Gen
Length: 3275 words
Author on LJ:
fresneAuthor Website: Life Am Good
Why this must be read: This story is about a group of original characters holed up during a Reaver attack, and using the last of the air to tell a story. The premise alone is intriguing, but Fresne does wonderful things with it. Even in such a short word count, the characters feel beautifully realized. The language is exquisite, vivid, and lush. The story-within-a-story structue works excellently to create layers of tension and meaning and texture. Fresne's writing is at once strikingly original and perfectly true to the 'verse. I simply can't come to the end of this story and not really want to know more about these characters, and that is perhaps the finest thing I can say about any story.
"There once was a man named Abu Saber, who lived along the Barbary Coast." Mara loved the way One-Eyed Mu pitched the word Barbary from her mouth. Like something spiney covered in honey. Mara wasn't sure what a Barbary Coast was. Some place far away she guessed.
She flinched at the scream that punched down through the dense metal around them. Breathed in air. Breathed out. Glanced at the air meter inching through Yella toward the gorram Red.
One-Eyed Mu hardly did more than take a short breath at the scream. She looked around the vault at the town-folk all huddled together. Said in that firm soft way a hers, "He was a wealthy man with many fields full a grain and orchards full a fruit. He had herds of fine brindled cattle that always threw healthy calves." She got Lefty Guang's attention with that. It'd been a hard winter and he'd lost dozen or so calves to a flash flood. Probably lost the herd now. He rubbed the leg that he'd twisted up when he was a boy jumping over a combine on a bet and seemed to be thinking about cows and not bun tyen-shung duh ee-dway-ro Reavers coming down through the vault door and ripping, raping and eating every last gorram one of them.
One-Eyed Mu had a way of telling a story like that. She smiled with her lips and eye and said, "But he was generosity itself. No man came to his door looking for charity, but that he didn't leave with twice as much." One-Eyed Mu held up one hand and then the other. She bit some imaginary piece a fruit and it seemed juicy, whatever it was. "He would always say, 'Is not everything I have from Allah. How can I fail to share with another man what has been so graciously given to me.'"
Something loud boomed high above. Something heavy dropped. Nothing she could do about it. Mara realized that she'd stopped noodling with her needles. Went back to making the lumpy thing that would never make a sweater, while somewhere above the steel doors, Reavers hunted for their meat. She shouldn't think about that. Think about Abu Saber with all his fields on the barbed honey coast.
Words Rise