Lostfic - The Gift: for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
a_lost_art's St. Patrick's Day Challeng
Mar. 19th, 2010 11:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alliecat8Title: The Gift
Characters: The Island and Her Family
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Through 6.04
Disclaimer: Only mine in my dreams
Based on the prompt: leanan sidhe
We were brothers, twins. Our father was the sky and our mother was the earth. Her heart was an island of the most magnificent beauty, of healing powers beyond imagination. Our father was a stern taskmaster who adored her.
When we were born she gave us each a gift. To me she gave the gift of song, and because I did not please her eye she sent me underwater to live amidst the eternal, driving rhythms of my father’s gravity. I was expected to bring forth the most magnificent music without being seen. To my brother, younger than me by minutes but far more handsome, she gave the gift of art. Jacob, my brother, spent his days weaving tapestries as odes to her beauty, while I tried to give her the music she craved as her eyes were dazzled by my brother and her ears were deafened by my father’s roars.
She was happy as long as she got what she wanted. Jacob’s tapestries were lovely, no two ever the same. My songs were magnificent, and she continued to imbue upon me the need to sing them even though no one but she could hear. It couldn’t last – the younger brother receiving all the glory while I the older was, for all I knew, being laughed at by the others.
So I rebelled. My form did not contain merely a voice but also ears, and I had heard the sounds my father made when the wind howled loudly and with such force it knocked down anything in its path. I practiced quietly to myself until I could imitate him, and then one night when the rest of the family was sleeping I burst forth with a great roar, hoping to prove that even though I was not beautiful, I could be powerful.
I had thought that my mother might be impressed; might even allow me to live in her heartland rather than leaving me under the sea. I couldn’t have been more wrong. For the sounds that issued from my father – the wind and the surf and the lightning and thunder – seemed abominable coming from her own child. My mother found pleasure in giving gifts, but she was also quick and vengeful when she took them away.
“How dare he imitate you!” she cried to my father.
“How pathetic that he try,” my father added soothingly, bathing her with gentle waves and drying her with the softest breeze.
My brother only laughed, secure in their good graces.
She called me before her, and I wanted to cry at the dismissive look she gave me. “I gave my gifts as I saw fit,” she said, “and you chose to rebel. You, who are young and have no knowledge of their meaning. For all you know your sounds kept me anchored. No, you were determined to steal the power that belongs to your father, and for that you will be punished.”
“Jacob, come to me!” she cried. “By disrespecting his gift, your brother has chosen to relinquish the best part of it. That being the case, I have an extra gift for you. This island is in need of more beauty, in the form of children. I will give you the power to travel effortlessly to great distances and arrange passage for some. With your touch, these children will become as gods and may, with our blessing, live forever as we do. You will also bring back adults to produce young, but some will die. They will become your brother’s destiny.
Since he disrespected his own voice, from this day forward, the only godlike sound he shall make is the sound he took from your father. Since he was not pleased with the sea-form I gave him, he shall take on the characteristics of mortal man, but only those who have died. He may never produce both the godly sound and the mortal image at the same time, for to do so would give him more power than I believe he deserves. Now go do my bidding, Chosen One.”
I was dismissed without another look, and even in my frequent rages she never took notice of me again. I came to hate her with all that was left of my heart.
My father, who had long been jealous of my mother’s adoration of her younger son, looked on her with displeasure for the first time in all of eternity and said to me, “It is too cruel to give you sound without form, and though I won’t go against your mother it is she who has brought mortality – and therefore death – to our island. Therefore, if a spark that originated from my lightning mingles with an object of death, you may harness the smoke it produces and use your voice along with the energy it produces to achieve substance in that way. Further, if you can turn your brother to smoke – and it will have to be done by the hand of man, for if you do it she will kill you and he feels too blessed to ever relinquish his own life – you will inherit his gift of being allowed to leave the island, although you will only be able to leave by mortal means.”
There came a time when my mother regretted her actions, when the unpredictable men that Jacob brought to the island and their ever-shifting hearts of good and evil drove her mad. For she believed that her own heart was entirely good and that every heart was pure – purely good, like Jacob’s, or purely evil, like mine – and her increasingly erratic ways drove her family to distraction. My father threw her to the winds of chance, retreating so far into the skies that one of the humans put it best, “Not even God can see this island.” My brother, so beloved by her for so long, became cavalier and laughed that the best way to hurt her was for him to die. Little did he know that my father had given me the means to bring about exactly that, and with Jacob dead, I was free to leave her, myself.
Perhaps, as I leave, she will lose her anchor and sink beneath the depths of the sea, in the cold waters that were once, but are no longer, my home.
The End
Characters: The Island and Her Family
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Through 6.04
Disclaimer: Only mine in my dreams
Based on the prompt: leanan sidhe
We were brothers, twins. Our father was the sky and our mother was the earth. Her heart was an island of the most magnificent beauty, of healing powers beyond imagination. Our father was a stern taskmaster who adored her.
When we were born she gave us each a gift. To me she gave the gift of song, and because I did not please her eye she sent me underwater to live amidst the eternal, driving rhythms of my father’s gravity. I was expected to bring forth the most magnificent music without being seen. To my brother, younger than me by minutes but far more handsome, she gave the gift of art. Jacob, my brother, spent his days weaving tapestries as odes to her beauty, while I tried to give her the music she craved as her eyes were dazzled by my brother and her ears were deafened by my father’s roars.
She was happy as long as she got what she wanted. Jacob’s tapestries were lovely, no two ever the same. My songs were magnificent, and she continued to imbue upon me the need to sing them even though no one but she could hear. It couldn’t last – the younger brother receiving all the glory while I the older was, for all I knew, being laughed at by the others.
So I rebelled. My form did not contain merely a voice but also ears, and I had heard the sounds my father made when the wind howled loudly and with such force it knocked down anything in its path. I practiced quietly to myself until I could imitate him, and then one night when the rest of the family was sleeping I burst forth with a great roar, hoping to prove that even though I was not beautiful, I could be powerful.
I had thought that my mother might be impressed; might even allow me to live in her heartland rather than leaving me under the sea. I couldn’t have been more wrong. For the sounds that issued from my father – the wind and the surf and the lightning and thunder – seemed abominable coming from her own child. My mother found pleasure in giving gifts, but she was also quick and vengeful when she took them away.
“How dare he imitate you!” she cried to my father.
“How pathetic that he try,” my father added soothingly, bathing her with gentle waves and drying her with the softest breeze.
My brother only laughed, secure in their good graces.
She called me before her, and I wanted to cry at the dismissive look she gave me. “I gave my gifts as I saw fit,” she said, “and you chose to rebel. You, who are young and have no knowledge of their meaning. For all you know your sounds kept me anchored. No, you were determined to steal the power that belongs to your father, and for that you will be punished.”
“Jacob, come to me!” she cried. “By disrespecting his gift, your brother has chosen to relinquish the best part of it. That being the case, I have an extra gift for you. This island is in need of more beauty, in the form of children. I will give you the power to travel effortlessly to great distances and arrange passage for some. With your touch, these children will become as gods and may, with our blessing, live forever as we do. You will also bring back adults to produce young, but some will die. They will become your brother’s destiny.
Since he disrespected his own voice, from this day forward, the only godlike sound he shall make is the sound he took from your father. Since he was not pleased with the sea-form I gave him, he shall take on the characteristics of mortal man, but only those who have died. He may never produce both the godly sound and the mortal image at the same time, for to do so would give him more power than I believe he deserves. Now go do my bidding, Chosen One.”
I was dismissed without another look, and even in my frequent rages she never took notice of me again. I came to hate her with all that was left of my heart.
My father, who had long been jealous of my mother’s adoration of her younger son, looked on her with displeasure for the first time in all of eternity and said to me, “It is too cruel to give you sound without form, and though I won’t go against your mother it is she who has brought mortality – and therefore death – to our island. Therefore, if a spark that originated from my lightning mingles with an object of death, you may harness the smoke it produces and use your voice along with the energy it produces to achieve substance in that way. Further, if you can turn your brother to smoke – and it will have to be done by the hand of man, for if you do it she will kill you and he feels too blessed to ever relinquish his own life – you will inherit his gift of being allowed to leave the island, although you will only be able to leave by mortal means.”
There came a time when my mother regretted her actions, when the unpredictable men that Jacob brought to the island and their ever-shifting hearts of good and evil drove her mad. For she believed that her own heart was entirely good and that every heart was pure – purely good, like Jacob’s, or purely evil, like mine – and her increasingly erratic ways drove her family to distraction. My father threw her to the winds of chance, retreating so far into the skies that one of the humans put it best, “Not even God can see this island.” My brother, so beloved by her for so long, became cavalier and laughed that the best way to hurt her was for him to die. Little did he know that my father had given me the means to bring about exactly that, and with Jacob dead, I was free to leave her, myself.
Perhaps, as I leave, she will lose her anchor and sink beneath the depths of the sea, in the cold waters that were once, but are no longer, my home.
The End
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Date: 2010-03-19 07:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-21 09:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-19 08:37 pm (UTC)Wow. I like this concept a lot. You've blown my hatch :)
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Date: 2010-03-21 09:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-19 09:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-21 09:36 pm (UTC)