"Where Will I Take My Daydreams...?"
Sep. 16th, 2005 11:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psalm_onethirtyoneAlso, will be gone for a week, starting to-morrow morning at early. Will attempt to write letters and get some of them cleared away...
Dear Miss Kali, whose birthday I shall miss: I love you madly. I have a shiny birthday card here for you, which I am going to send to-morrow, but apart from all the sentiments I shall spill over into said card, I love you. And you are wonderful, and talented, and clever, and brilliant, and make my head spin with joy.
Here are your gifts, early because I shall have no other time to give them:
Laertes/Mickle as a fic, and five photofics from your list.
Happy Birthday, you most excellent creature. <3 Many happy returns.
In Somno
Laertes meets the most beautiful girl in the world in France. She combs her hair upside down with her fingers so that it sticks out all over the place, and she smiles more than she grins and laughs more than she smiles. Her face is always alight, and she doesn't talk properly. He supposes perhaps it is because she is from France, but she tells him she is not from France at all. She is from another country he's never even heard of.
Laertes, who has always been easily angered, lets her tease him--she likes to tease, but she always stops just short of the place where it would hurt or begin to make him lose his temper. When she stops, she smiles, lowering her head and keeping her eyes on his face, and her eyes make him feel as though she is hundreds of years older than he is, and has seen a hundred terrible things he will never see. This is impossible. She is younger by four years and seven months (she counts the difference herself, on her fingers).
She does not dress as a woman should, and he always waits for someone to point out the scandal of it, for her to get dirty looks in the street, for someone to reprimand her or some priest to accost her and lecture her, but it never happens. She wears long dirty trousers and a shirt tied 'round the waist with cord. She turns somersaults and when he watches, not able to bring himself to admire them aloud, she takes his hands and guides his feet and his body with little, quick fingers, and teaches him to copy her. It is outrageous and no woman should ever do any such thing. Laertes likes it.
He likes it, although he has to take off most of his clothes to be limber enough: the doublets and sleeves and coats and cloaks of a Danish courtier are too heavy to wear when throwing yourself into the air upside-down by running forward and kicking off the ground forward.
Sometimes they sit together in a Cathedral or a garden, and Laertes has to look around a few times to feel sure, because it seems as though from the Cathedral window the city is much bigger, or much wider, or there are strange animals painted in shiny colours like silver and red and black and blue wandering around on the roads. Sometimes outside the garden it looks as though people are walking by in the oddest kind of clothing, shouting to one another in a language he doesn't understand, or riding on flat shiny animals with giant wheels instead of legs. She laughs and says that what goes on around them doesn't matter, what matters is them.
When they sit like this, they sit cross-legged on the ground or on the floor. In the Cathedral, they sometimes sit before the altar and sometimes to the side, under the candles. Here Laertes tells her about his sister, how she is the fairest, sweetest maiden anyone ever saw, how she is more like a nymph than a girl.
The most beautiful girl in the world has bright eyes, and fixes them on him intently, biting her dirty fingernails.
Laertes tells how he and his sister used to chase one another in the Castle in Denmark. There were a thousand staircases and a thousand halls and back then no one minded them, because the Prince was a boy himself, so all the children were excused their noise. He and his sister climbed the stairs, and he held her up to the windows so she could see across the grounds; and she told him what everyone was doing, where the gardeners were, whether the King and Queen were out walking, if their father was speaking among a crowd of courtiers. They built mud houses in the gardens and he picked flowers and fixed them in her hair, and the gardeners lectured them but they were too young to care and just laughed and ran away, and back then they were allowed. His sister and the Prince were sweethearts (she still loves him) and the Queen would forgive her anything because she loved the girl she expected would be her daughter. They never did anything that really called for forgiveness, in any case. They only played with one another.
The most beautiful girl in the world has never had a sister or a brother. She asks him to put flowers in her hair, and the next time they are in a garden, he makes a chain of columbine and violets for her before he remembers that columbine and violets don't have the proper sort of stem for making chains. She laughs and says that he can do anything with his hands if he wants to, it looks like, so it doesn't matter what things are supposed to be like.
She hasn't ever asked his name, and he forgets to ask her hers. He tucks a columbine behind her ear and she pounces him, laughing so hard her face doesn't quite look like her face any more, because her eyes are closed and her mouth is stretched, and suddenly she falls away to the side and lies on her back, her chain of flowers half fallen off, still laughing, her arms flung out to the side before she throws them in her air and stretches them as far as they'll go, stretches out her fingers, stretches herself up. Then she drops her arms and covers her eyes with them, her mouth still laughing. Laertes watches her for a moment and then cannot stay still; he kisses her and kisses her, kisses the most beautiful girl in the world, and slips his fingers into her wild combed upside-down hair.
She hasn't ever said anything important about herself before, except things like the difference between their ages and her favourite kind of star and how she loves the feeling of hot fresh bread in her hands, but later she tells him that she was married once (he can't believe it, because she is four years and seven months younger than he is) but her husband died a very long time ago. A very long time ago to Laertes means years. He thinks France must be a barbarous country if they marry girls as young as she must have married, before he remembers that she isn't from France. She laughs and says that France is still a barbarous country, anyway.
He wants her to tell him everything about herself, but she says that everything would take a long time, and they have better things to do. He says that she listened to him talk about his sister, and she ought to trade him even just one thing for that. She knows something secret and special that's his. He ought to know--
She stops him by turning a somersault and walking on her hands.
She tells him that she used to be a queen, that she fell down a well when she was a tiny child and was washed out to a thief's house and that he raised her, that she commanded troops and fought and won a war, that she knows how to smoke a pipe. He knows that only the last thing is true, so he buys her tobacco. She blows smoke rings for him, and walks in circles on her hands smiling at him until Laertes tickles the bottoms of her hard-skinned bare feet and she falls down, laughing and holding her arms out. He helps her up.
The most beautiful girl in the world, even if she won't tell him the truth, is his.
When he receives the letter from home that makes him suddenly sick for Denmark, he begs her to come home with him. It is his sister's letter, and she only writes that the Prince has gone mad and that she misses Laertes and wishes he were back, but for some reason it is enough to shake him, and he decides to return home. He begs the most beautiful girl in the world to come with him. She refuses. For once, she is the only one sitting: he is pacing, anxiously, and speaking of his sister and how he must return home, and then, suddenly, swearing curses against her for refusing to come with him. He has lost his temper for the first time since he met her. He asks her why, why?
She smiles, and once again he thinks that her eyes are the eyes of someone much older, someone who has seen more than he will ever see. Because I want to go home, she says. If I go with you, I'll stay in Denmark, and I don't want to. I like to move. Someday I want to go back home, and I can't do that if I go with you.
He tells her he would take her back to her home, but she shakes her head. He says she'll never see him again. She says she knows. Laertes shouts and swears, but she says softly that his sister wants him back, it's a frightening thing to see someone you love go mad, Laertes can't leave her alone. Go put flowers in her hair and take care of her, she tells him.
Finally Laertes leaves. He is sure he will come back, sure that she is only hesitating and that if he sends her letters she will be satisfied enough with his love to agree to be his wife, certain that he is not leaving her behind. As he stands on the deck of the ship and watches her, standing on the quay to wave him good-bye, it seems as though behind her the street is more than a worn dirt road, that it is paved with something dark and hard and hot, that there are a thousand new noises, that the ships around them have pipes instead of sails, the boats roaring boxes instead of oars, and somewhere in the sky a giant rumbling bird is flashing green and red light from its wings--but there is only her, down among a crowd of shabby people, smiling up at him and waving hard. Laertes waves, too, more slowly. He is still angry; he is going away from her and he loves her.
The ship starts out of the harbour, and she shouts something, but there are too many noises to hear. She shouts it more than once, as though it were something important, something he must be sure to know--but he doesn't. He loses sight of her in a sudden surge of people. Suddenly she appears for a moment, and cups her quick small hands around her mouth, and shouts it, so loud that all the noises in the harbour can't swallow it up.
Mickle! My name's Mickle! I love you, and don't you dare forget my name after all this trouble I'm going to to make you hear me! I love you! Good-bye!
She is laughing so hard he can see it from the ship.
It is the last time he sees the most beautiful girl in the world.
~~~
i: Guildenstern/Musichetta.
"It isn't logical," he protests. "Death is supposed to be death, not Paris. I expected blackness, or infinite sleep, or heaven, if heavens exists, and angels. Possibly even hell. Not Paris."
Musichetta laughs and kisses him. "You silly thing! Some people think Paris is hell, and heaven, although it depends upon who you ask!"
~
ii: Ophelia/Alice.
"I do rather like the leaves. When they fall, it means autumn is coming."
"Ay, autumn is coming! The flowers will die. I care not for autumn." She pulled the embroidery on her pansy-laced bodice distractedly.
"Well," said Alice, "I shall draw you pictures of them. Will that help a little?"
"Thou'rt a good child, a pretty maid. Who is thy father? Is he an owl?" Ophelia reached into her hair for flowers, and tucked rosemary into Alice's pockets.
~
iii: Jasper/Rosa.
She is afraid of him, afraid of his eyes, afraid of his smile, afraid of his hands, afraid of his name. She pretends to be ill in order not to sing, although she is not much good at shamming and the other girls can see well enough. What's wrong? they ask her, but Rosa shakes her head and whispers that her voice is quite gone.
Meanwhile, another missed lesson, another now-empty afternoon, John Jasper plays his organ and tries to write a song for her on the black keys, write her name in music on the white ones. He tries to make her eyes, her smile, her hands, her name.
~
iv: Enjolras/Aziraphale.
The lovely young man Aziraphale asks out for tea gives him a suspicious look, brushing his golden hair out of his face.
"Well?" he suddenly says. "What do you want? Are you an undercover policeman? I am a citizen like any man, and I can defend myself."
"Oh, goodness," Aziraphale says.
"What?"
"I merely wanted to know what you thought of Rousseau. I noticed you perusing his Social Contract so diligently in the library to-day."
The young man's expression softens at once. Aziraphale smiles and offers him a cup of Earl Gray.
~
v: Luther/Montmollin.
The others know that Luther is one of Florian's children because he knew Florian long before any of them did. They do not know that he knows Florian because he used to work at La Jolie. Florian does not know that his work at La Jolie was more than keeping the gardens. Only Luther knows that the Baron sometimes wanted someone to talk to, and there was no one he trusted more than the old man who could always be found up to his elbows in the dirt, and looked as though he belonged there.
Dear Miss Kali, whose birthday I shall miss: I love you madly. I have a shiny birthday card here for you, which I am going to send to-morrow, but apart from all the sentiments I shall spill over into said card, I love you. And you are wonderful, and talented, and clever, and brilliant, and make my head spin with joy.
Here are your gifts, early because I shall have no other time to give them:
Laertes/Mickle as a fic, and five photofics from your list.
Happy Birthday, you most excellent creature. <3 Many happy returns.
In Somno
Laertes meets the most beautiful girl in the world in France. She combs her hair upside down with her fingers so that it sticks out all over the place, and she smiles more than she grins and laughs more than she smiles. Her face is always alight, and she doesn't talk properly. He supposes perhaps it is because she is from France, but she tells him she is not from France at all. She is from another country he's never even heard of.
Laertes, who has always been easily angered, lets her tease him--she likes to tease, but she always stops just short of the place where it would hurt or begin to make him lose his temper. When she stops, she smiles, lowering her head and keeping her eyes on his face, and her eyes make him feel as though she is hundreds of years older than he is, and has seen a hundred terrible things he will never see. This is impossible. She is younger by four years and seven months (she counts the difference herself, on her fingers).
She does not dress as a woman should, and he always waits for someone to point out the scandal of it, for her to get dirty looks in the street, for someone to reprimand her or some priest to accost her and lecture her, but it never happens. She wears long dirty trousers and a shirt tied 'round the waist with cord. She turns somersaults and when he watches, not able to bring himself to admire them aloud, she takes his hands and guides his feet and his body with little, quick fingers, and teaches him to copy her. It is outrageous and no woman should ever do any such thing. Laertes likes it.
He likes it, although he has to take off most of his clothes to be limber enough: the doublets and sleeves and coats and cloaks of a Danish courtier are too heavy to wear when throwing yourself into the air upside-down by running forward and kicking off the ground forward.
Sometimes they sit together in a Cathedral or a garden, and Laertes has to look around a few times to feel sure, because it seems as though from the Cathedral window the city is much bigger, or much wider, or there are strange animals painted in shiny colours like silver and red and black and blue wandering around on the roads. Sometimes outside the garden it looks as though people are walking by in the oddest kind of clothing, shouting to one another in a language he doesn't understand, or riding on flat shiny animals with giant wheels instead of legs. She laughs and says that what goes on around them doesn't matter, what matters is them.
When they sit like this, they sit cross-legged on the ground or on the floor. In the Cathedral, they sometimes sit before the altar and sometimes to the side, under the candles. Here Laertes tells her about his sister, how she is the fairest, sweetest maiden anyone ever saw, how she is more like a nymph than a girl.
The most beautiful girl in the world has bright eyes, and fixes them on him intently, biting her dirty fingernails.
Laertes tells how he and his sister used to chase one another in the Castle in Denmark. There were a thousand staircases and a thousand halls and back then no one minded them, because the Prince was a boy himself, so all the children were excused their noise. He and his sister climbed the stairs, and he held her up to the windows so she could see across the grounds; and she told him what everyone was doing, where the gardeners were, whether the King and Queen were out walking, if their father was speaking among a crowd of courtiers. They built mud houses in the gardens and he picked flowers and fixed them in her hair, and the gardeners lectured them but they were too young to care and just laughed and ran away, and back then they were allowed. His sister and the Prince were sweethearts (she still loves him) and the Queen would forgive her anything because she loved the girl she expected would be her daughter. They never did anything that really called for forgiveness, in any case. They only played with one another.
The most beautiful girl in the world has never had a sister or a brother. She asks him to put flowers in her hair, and the next time they are in a garden, he makes a chain of columbine and violets for her before he remembers that columbine and violets don't have the proper sort of stem for making chains. She laughs and says that he can do anything with his hands if he wants to, it looks like, so it doesn't matter what things are supposed to be like.
She hasn't ever asked his name, and he forgets to ask her hers. He tucks a columbine behind her ear and she pounces him, laughing so hard her face doesn't quite look like her face any more, because her eyes are closed and her mouth is stretched, and suddenly she falls away to the side and lies on her back, her chain of flowers half fallen off, still laughing, her arms flung out to the side before she throws them in her air and stretches them as far as they'll go, stretches out her fingers, stretches herself up. Then she drops her arms and covers her eyes with them, her mouth still laughing. Laertes watches her for a moment and then cannot stay still; he kisses her and kisses her, kisses the most beautiful girl in the world, and slips his fingers into her wild combed upside-down hair.
She hasn't ever said anything important about herself before, except things like the difference between their ages and her favourite kind of star and how she loves the feeling of hot fresh bread in her hands, but later she tells him that she was married once (he can't believe it, because she is four years and seven months younger than he is) but her husband died a very long time ago. A very long time ago to Laertes means years. He thinks France must be a barbarous country if they marry girls as young as she must have married, before he remembers that she isn't from France. She laughs and says that France is still a barbarous country, anyway.
He wants her to tell him everything about herself, but she says that everything would take a long time, and they have better things to do. He says that she listened to him talk about his sister, and she ought to trade him even just one thing for that. She knows something secret and special that's his. He ought to know--
She stops him by turning a somersault and walking on her hands.
She tells him that she used to be a queen, that she fell down a well when she was a tiny child and was washed out to a thief's house and that he raised her, that she commanded troops and fought and won a war, that she knows how to smoke a pipe. He knows that only the last thing is true, so he buys her tobacco. She blows smoke rings for him, and walks in circles on her hands smiling at him until Laertes tickles the bottoms of her hard-skinned bare feet and she falls down, laughing and holding her arms out. He helps her up.
The most beautiful girl in the world, even if she won't tell him the truth, is his.
When he receives the letter from home that makes him suddenly sick for Denmark, he begs her to come home with him. It is his sister's letter, and she only writes that the Prince has gone mad and that she misses Laertes and wishes he were back, but for some reason it is enough to shake him, and he decides to return home. He begs the most beautiful girl in the world to come with him. She refuses. For once, she is the only one sitting: he is pacing, anxiously, and speaking of his sister and how he must return home, and then, suddenly, swearing curses against her for refusing to come with him. He has lost his temper for the first time since he met her. He asks her why, why?
She smiles, and once again he thinks that her eyes are the eyes of someone much older, someone who has seen more than he will ever see. Because I want to go home, she says. If I go with you, I'll stay in Denmark, and I don't want to. I like to move. Someday I want to go back home, and I can't do that if I go with you.
He tells her he would take her back to her home, but she shakes her head. He says she'll never see him again. She says she knows. Laertes shouts and swears, but she says softly that his sister wants him back, it's a frightening thing to see someone you love go mad, Laertes can't leave her alone. Go put flowers in her hair and take care of her, she tells him.
Finally Laertes leaves. He is sure he will come back, sure that she is only hesitating and that if he sends her letters she will be satisfied enough with his love to agree to be his wife, certain that he is not leaving her behind. As he stands on the deck of the ship and watches her, standing on the quay to wave him good-bye, it seems as though behind her the street is more than a worn dirt road, that it is paved with something dark and hard and hot, that there are a thousand new noises, that the ships around them have pipes instead of sails, the boats roaring boxes instead of oars, and somewhere in the sky a giant rumbling bird is flashing green and red light from its wings--but there is only her, down among a crowd of shabby people, smiling up at him and waving hard. Laertes waves, too, more slowly. He is still angry; he is going away from her and he loves her.
The ship starts out of the harbour, and she shouts something, but there are too many noises to hear. She shouts it more than once, as though it were something important, something he must be sure to know--but he doesn't. He loses sight of her in a sudden surge of people. Suddenly she appears for a moment, and cups her quick small hands around her mouth, and shouts it, so loud that all the noises in the harbour can't swallow it up.
Mickle! My name's Mickle! I love you, and don't you dare forget my name after all this trouble I'm going to to make you hear me! I love you! Good-bye!
She is laughing so hard he can see it from the ship.
It is the last time he sees the most beautiful girl in the world.
~~~
i: Guildenstern/Musichetta.
"It isn't logical," he protests. "Death is supposed to be death, not Paris. I expected blackness, or infinite sleep, or heaven, if heavens exists, and angels. Possibly even hell. Not Paris."
Musichetta laughs and kisses him. "You silly thing! Some people think Paris is hell, and heaven, although it depends upon who you ask!"
~
ii: Ophelia/Alice.
"I do rather like the leaves. When they fall, it means autumn is coming."
"Ay, autumn is coming! The flowers will die. I care not for autumn." She pulled the embroidery on her pansy-laced bodice distractedly.
"Well," said Alice, "I shall draw you pictures of them. Will that help a little?"
"Thou'rt a good child, a pretty maid. Who is thy father? Is he an owl?" Ophelia reached into her hair for flowers, and tucked rosemary into Alice's pockets.
~
iii: Jasper/Rosa.
She is afraid of him, afraid of his eyes, afraid of his smile, afraid of his hands, afraid of his name. She pretends to be ill in order not to sing, although she is not much good at shamming and the other girls can see well enough. What's wrong? they ask her, but Rosa shakes her head and whispers that her voice is quite gone.
Meanwhile, another missed lesson, another now-empty afternoon, John Jasper plays his organ and tries to write a song for her on the black keys, write her name in music on the white ones. He tries to make her eyes, her smile, her hands, her name.
~
iv: Enjolras/Aziraphale.
The lovely young man Aziraphale asks out for tea gives him a suspicious look, brushing his golden hair out of his face.
"Well?" he suddenly says. "What do you want? Are you an undercover policeman? I am a citizen like any man, and I can defend myself."
"Oh, goodness," Aziraphale says.
"What?"
"I merely wanted to know what you thought of Rousseau. I noticed you perusing his Social Contract so diligently in the library to-day."
The young man's expression softens at once. Aziraphale smiles and offers him a cup of Earl Gray.
~
v: Luther/Montmollin.
The others know that Luther is one of Florian's children because he knew Florian long before any of them did. They do not know that he knows Florian because he used to work at La Jolie. Florian does not know that his work at La Jolie was more than keeping the gardens. Only Luther knows that the Baron sometimes wanted someone to talk to, and there was no one he trusted more than the old man who could always be found up to his elbows in the dirt, and looked as though he belonged there.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-18 12:39 am (UTC)And as my little sister keeps pointing out, it isn't even my birthday yet, ACTUALLY! XDD
Your writing of Laertes makes me wish you played him, or would at least write him more often, because you've totally grasped what wisp of a thing I was vaguely attracted to about him the last time I saw the play, and without my telling you about it, pinned it down perfectly, and let it grow. He's cute and sweet and innocent while thinking he's not, and the way you write from behind his eyes emphasizes the naivete more than actually calling him so ever could. He's so teenaged it almost hurts, the poor, oblivious, sensitive, loving boy.
I needn't even comment on your writing of Mickle, because a) of course you do her right and beyond, you RP her, and I've told her how much I like her in your hands before, and b) it isn't her story, it's Laertes'. But I do like the way she looks through his eyes as written by you.
Then there's the photos, frosting on top of this glorious cake I'm eating, too. XD
i. What an unlikelily plausible pair, and what a charmingly flighty catch!
ii. Soft muted girlhood, the up-side and the down-side, the half-empty, the half-full, the light and the dark of maidenhood.
iii. See, THAT'S why I like Jasper/Rosa. Or, Jasper>Rosa, rather. Everyone else seems to not get it, but when I read Drood... I love Eddy, but they're not a match made in heaven - just a match made on Earth, which is healthy and cute and it's a pity about the betrothal and the murder and all, but Jasper is more intense than Eddy could ever ever ever be, and who wouldn't want to be loved and adored and worshipped and revered and stalked and... Okay, don't answer that.
iv. So unlikely, so likely, so cute. XD From impossile to absolutely probable, and it's rare that Enjolras gets to be the young or the innocent and still be an Enjolras.
v. You do this so well, finding out their secrets and divulging them with dignity and care and a muted distance that is the thing I love so about Russian literature, but with more colour, more warmth, and more love.
Thank you, so so much.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-27 07:12 pm (UTC)...IS NOW!
Oh, good. That's how I wanted it to--oh, good. ^____^ I was trying to do right by him, and give him his proper feeling (and that's what I think his proper feeling is)--there's so much he says that shows--oh, good. ^__^ I'm glad.
It's the way she laughs. It has to be.
i. ^____^ 'Chettalove.
ii. It's so sad, the twistiness between them--I mean to go all the way from Alice to Ophelia.
iii. *laughs* No, no, no. Jasper is awful and scary and it should never be and that is why I wrote it for you, probably.
iv. ^____^ I want to write an expanded version of that. Zira is now telling me all about E!, and he doesn't even belong in my head.
v. You make it sound wonderful. Oh, goodness.
You're welcome, you're more than welcome. *hugs so tight...!* You're welcome. ^__^