birds singing in the sycamore tree

[baedalites]

As night falls on Baedal, the city is almost quiet. The streets have a few last minute workers returning home, but by now, most citizens have already gone by the temples and picked up their vurt, ready to lay down and dream.

After placing a not-feather in one's mouth, there's a moment where it fizzes against the tongue before sliding coolly down the back of the throat and pulling the user down into sleep. A series of impressions, more sensation than anything concrete, appears before the user and this is how one chooses which Dreamer to enter.

Comments

[captaincocksure]

After a moment's careful consideration, Jim responds with the most mature and eloquent of gestures.

He sticks his tongue out at McCoy.

And then he laughs. "It feels both like the best thing ever, and like I'm gonna regret this so much tomorrow when my legs are wet noodles and my everything aches."

[aviophobia]

"You're telling me," McCoy calls back, straightening up, letting his pace slow down a little as the ground evens out beneath them. "Hope Savannah knows how to operate a can opener by now, 'cause I don't know if I'll be able to get out of bed. She's a smart pup, right?"

[captaincocksure]

"She could probably order pizza for the three of us, by now." Jim is so grateful for the slowly dwindling pace, but he's not about to say that out loud. "She saw me do it enough times."

[aviophobia]

"You can't let the dog order pizza," Leonard says scornfully, dark eyebrows drawing together as he flashes a quick glance over at Jim. "She'll get extra extra extra sausage."

[captaincocksure]

Jim has... no idea if Bones is being serious or not. "I guess we can't have that, huh?" he calls back. "It'd give her terrible breath. Not to mention, terrible gas."

[alan_shore]

“It's going on the back of your card,” Alan murmurs, in the thick of those eyelashes—eyelashes whose color you'd find upon peeling back the bark of a tree, or in a last mouthful of scotch, a brown poised to either evaporate or ignite. He holds his amusement protectively close. It's a glib answer he's given; yet it takes to the air with fledgling tenderness.

The number, whether arrived at, anticipated, or recollected, is tucked away for safekeeping, leaving Alan to make a study, cautiously treading the line between interest and intrusion, of each change undergone by Mycroft, every shift in hue, texture, definition.

“You,” he says, sighing as he lies back (and it's quite particular, that “you”—even more so, perhaps, than a name), “need to find a new question to ask me.”

[diogenesis]

Mycroft watches Alan recline, blades of grass bending under his weight, sunlight sliding across the fabric of his jacket and the planes of his face. Though the distance between them has barely increased, Mycroft feels the space stretch taught, and the desire to reach across and close the gap pulls at him like gravity.

As one does daily with gravity, he resists it, though it gradually erodes his immaculate posture into something willow-like. With curved neck and shoulders, he eases the pull by centimeters, millimeters, and the scent around them shifts to petrichor.

“In that case,” he says, “tell me why a raven is like a writing desk.”

[selfmadman]

His shirt pocket sags with the pack. There are the land's creases, hard enough to shred light; then there's the gap his hand dips into. The unsteady line of the cloth vulnerable as a child's jutting lower lip.

He offers a box stamped with the name—ringed like a target—Lucky Strike. The words draw the eye. The world narrows around them, crowds out wind and shadow.

“It's toasted,” Don says. It has a nursery-rhyme lilt, like the words were waiting for him. His whole face changes with his smile. His features are less muddled, his expression relieved.

The pack's down to its last cigarette; he's feeling for his lighter.

[obscuredvision]

"I'll get you more," she says, because this is the last one and she can't take his last without knowing she'll replenish them. The logo holds her attention as she slips a finger into the packet, until she's rewarded with the drag of paper under her fingertip. The cellophane rustles and she thinks of the wind, the wind catches the ends of her hair and she looks up, watching it move through his like a doting mother's fingers.

"Do you like it here?" She holds the cigarette vaguely like a pencil, isn't that how you do it, couldn't she draw with the smoke once it's lit? "You're different. You're you, but different."