well finally!
Apr. 8th, 2005 01:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chanter1944and it took a meme to get me to do this...
Help it spread! The power of the haiku compels you!
If you see this, post some poetry in your journal!
*posts* as directed. Beware, unusual imagery and phrasing ahead. and don't expect it to rhyme, I can't.
To clarify a couple things. This is taken from the timeline of the Voyager episode set fifteen years from their present day, the one where three of Voyager's crew had returned to Federation space but Voyager itself had crashed on an unlivable world and all hands had been lost. In that episode there's an encounter with the USS Challenger, commanded by Geordi La forge. This is written from Geordi's point of view, or mainly his point of view anyway, as though the timeline hadn't been altered when Kim changed events of past history and restored Voyager's crew. He still has command of challenger, and his own chief engineer has just had a *bad* shuttle accident. Any references to blindness... well Kitala Berelle is a character. But read it as you will.
He laid the hand he'd gently taken palm up across his own, his opposite held an inch above, concealing, protecting. That hand, so small within his, that visibly calloused hand, that blunt-fingered hand with it's nails chewed to the quick and raw red against dark sandstone, that tiny, elegant hand with its faintly outlined scars and crooked little finger, so square, so wide compared to other women. That ring, the wide of band and white silver, that chipped sapphire stone and symbols which to him meant little, fragments of history past, fragments etched and carved of Katie Berelle. Blue, sapphire blue, blue so unlike one in two, in her opposing, mismatched eyes, dark and unreadable besides their warring colors--misty indigo, hazel brown, concealed under a cloudy veil he himself knew intimately well for the wearing.
She was not pretty, not carved with broad strokes as she had been, light cinnamon and golden wood, every inch rounded and untempered. Not pretty, not with that crooked nose, those eternally bushy eyebrows, that forehead marked by its own lacework of faint but visible scars. Not pretty, with pearl-white teeth chipped and uneven, bright set against dark, perpetually chapped lips that even now had not lost their ethereal, wistful half smile. Did she know? Could she know he was holding her hand?
Light, and dark, and light, light for the ivory linen against the backdrop of that wild mare's mane, long hair grown beyond regulation and unchecked by authority, dark for the coarse strands of sand-churned silk running with traces of honey amber and sunset amid an endless sea of deep-shadowed walnut just this side of unruly, just this side of wind-blown. Wild, like her; wild for the translator in her, for Portuguese and Urdu and French for Mali and her own Touareg language, for the actress in her who had half a dozen names with half a dozen circles attached to each one, who insisted she remembered nothing when spirits and socialization turned her Connecticut voice to a Scottish brogue thick enough to confuse less attuned ears, for the creature who reveled at playing Beatrice and Miranda. Miranda, for the innocent one, for the child broken in her face when she gazed through unfairly thick lashes at him, up through torturous lights and the infinite desolate ice of slate grey steel and implored him "Please, don't hurt us." The child it had taken him weeks, months and countless softly spoken questions to convince that he, unlike all the others, wouldn't. For the child broken in his arms, for the patchwork of calico pieces reassembling ever so slowly behind the unwilling mask she'd worn as he carried her from the ruins of what had been Karyn Station, promising "You'll be safe on the Enterprise, I swear." And for his meaning every word, then and beyond and later, over and over as a reassurance in the night, that long night's journey into day and transfer orders and sanctuary when they let him prove it.
For the child nurtured in her, shown faith so like he himself had seen, youth cherished and encouraged, "You're doing fine Berelle. You're doing just fine. Good work, lieutenant." For the child revived in her, candles burning bright beneath blonde wood and gold when he'd asked her to be chief engineer of his own, his Challenger. Challenger, for her now, for that ruined shuttle and the limp hand laid across his own, light for dark for light again, and even when she was light she was darker than expected. He understood her, understood him, two lives intertwined by languages and humor and society's labeled defects that neither noticed.
She understood him, understood her as best she could, a myriad of sky crystal pieces, vivid technicolor memories, endless memories he'd catch random fragments of but quietly refrained from pressing. Memories, silver and absent and grey--no telepathy, no gentle connection, not between them, not human and human, Terran and colonial Terran. Flaccid silver and red, that hand within his own, cold and damp and needing shelter, like the rest of her needed shelter.
"Katie..." trailing off, refined auburn and enchanted hearthlight, an old voice, a young voice, known from childhood and respected that much more for the double existence. "Kitala," half a whisper breathed toward her ear, not enough to stir those tangled tresses, dark honey and sienna remaining exactly as they were against a shell with no earring. Double, tripple, four times an existence, channeled into one but does she hear? Can she hear?
"Commander?" wavering, alien, "... Geordi?" a whisper back, burnt orange, new wine and dark lavender, lips barely moving, eyes half-lidded under their useless shields. That whisper was a song, every word was a song, half trained choir girl meeting desert girl meeting converted Muslim chanter and each sung like they were savored mentally, sweet claret, sherry and sunstream champagne. "Geordi. I didn't know..." in-drawn breath came softly across the silence, blissful inky velvet between them; she was alive, she was conscious, she was breathing, she was whole, she was his engineer.
Help it spread! The power of the haiku compels you!
If you see this, post some poetry in your journal!
*posts* as directed. Beware, unusual imagery and phrasing ahead. and don't expect it to rhyme, I can't.
To clarify a couple things. This is taken from the timeline of the Voyager episode set fifteen years from their present day, the one where three of Voyager's crew had returned to Federation space but Voyager itself had crashed on an unlivable world and all hands had been lost. In that episode there's an encounter with the USS Challenger, commanded by Geordi La forge. This is written from Geordi's point of view, or mainly his point of view anyway, as though the timeline hadn't been altered when Kim changed events of past history and restored Voyager's crew. He still has command of challenger, and his own chief engineer has just had a *bad* shuttle accident. Any references to blindness... well Kitala Berelle is a character. But read it as you will.
He laid the hand he'd gently taken palm up across his own, his opposite held an inch above, concealing, protecting. That hand, so small within his, that visibly calloused hand, that blunt-fingered hand with it's nails chewed to the quick and raw red against dark sandstone, that tiny, elegant hand with its faintly outlined scars and crooked little finger, so square, so wide compared to other women. That ring, the wide of band and white silver, that chipped sapphire stone and symbols which to him meant little, fragments of history past, fragments etched and carved of Katie Berelle. Blue, sapphire blue, blue so unlike one in two, in her opposing, mismatched eyes, dark and unreadable besides their warring colors--misty indigo, hazel brown, concealed under a cloudy veil he himself knew intimately well for the wearing.
She was not pretty, not carved with broad strokes as she had been, light cinnamon and golden wood, every inch rounded and untempered. Not pretty, not with that crooked nose, those eternally bushy eyebrows, that forehead marked by its own lacework of faint but visible scars. Not pretty, with pearl-white teeth chipped and uneven, bright set against dark, perpetually chapped lips that even now had not lost their ethereal, wistful half smile. Did she know? Could she know he was holding her hand?
Light, and dark, and light, light for the ivory linen against the backdrop of that wild mare's mane, long hair grown beyond regulation and unchecked by authority, dark for the coarse strands of sand-churned silk running with traces of honey amber and sunset amid an endless sea of deep-shadowed walnut just this side of unruly, just this side of wind-blown. Wild, like her; wild for the translator in her, for Portuguese and Urdu and French for Mali and her own Touareg language, for the actress in her who had half a dozen names with half a dozen circles attached to each one, who insisted she remembered nothing when spirits and socialization turned her Connecticut voice to a Scottish brogue thick enough to confuse less attuned ears, for the creature who reveled at playing Beatrice and Miranda. Miranda, for the innocent one, for the child broken in her face when she gazed through unfairly thick lashes at him, up through torturous lights and the infinite desolate ice of slate grey steel and implored him "Please, don't hurt us." The child it had taken him weeks, months and countless softly spoken questions to convince that he, unlike all the others, wouldn't. For the child broken in his arms, for the patchwork of calico pieces reassembling ever so slowly behind the unwilling mask she'd worn as he carried her from the ruins of what had been Karyn Station, promising "You'll be safe on the Enterprise, I swear." And for his meaning every word, then and beyond and later, over and over as a reassurance in the night, that long night's journey into day and transfer orders and sanctuary when they let him prove it.
For the child nurtured in her, shown faith so like he himself had seen, youth cherished and encouraged, "You're doing fine Berelle. You're doing just fine. Good work, lieutenant." For the child revived in her, candles burning bright beneath blonde wood and gold when he'd asked her to be chief engineer of his own, his Challenger. Challenger, for her now, for that ruined shuttle and the limp hand laid across his own, light for dark for light again, and even when she was light she was darker than expected. He understood her, understood him, two lives intertwined by languages and humor and society's labeled defects that neither noticed.
She understood him, understood her as best she could, a myriad of sky crystal pieces, vivid technicolor memories, endless memories he'd catch random fragments of but quietly refrained from pressing. Memories, silver and absent and grey--no telepathy, no gentle connection, not between them, not human and human, Terran and colonial Terran. Flaccid silver and red, that hand within his own, cold and damp and needing shelter, like the rest of her needed shelter.
"Katie..." trailing off, refined auburn and enchanted hearthlight, an old voice, a young voice, known from childhood and respected that much more for the double existence. "Kitala," half a whisper breathed toward her ear, not enough to stir those tangled tresses, dark honey and sienna remaining exactly as they were against a shell with no earring. Double, tripple, four times an existence, channeled into one but does she hear? Can she hear?
"Commander?" wavering, alien, "... Geordi?" a whisper back, burnt orange, new wine and dark lavender, lips barely moving, eyes half-lidded under their useless shields. That whisper was a song, every word was a song, half trained choir girl meeting desert girl meeting converted Muslim chanter and each sung like they were savored mentally, sweet claret, sherry and sunstream champagne. "Geordi. I didn't know..." in-drawn breath came softly across the silence, blissful inky velvet between them; she was alive, she was conscious, she was breathing, she was whole, she was his engineer.
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no subject
Date: 2005-04-08 01:05 pm (UTC)But you know? What you wrote is really neat, so I don't care. And he probably won't either. ;)
no subject
Date: 2005-04-08 02:24 pm (UTC)I have such a time conforming to anything... oh well.