storypaint (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
storypaint) wrote2009-10-06 10:42 am
storypaint) wrote2009-10-06 10:42 am
Span (Tobias/Rachel)
Title: Span
Fandom: Animorphs
Length: 463 words
Prompt:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
31_days: 4 Oct 09 // So many breezes, but never enough
Pairing: Tobias/Rachel; Tobias gen
Other: PG, on-screen character death
Excerpt: The red-tailed hawk lives, on average, for twenty years in the wild. Tobias doesn't expect to see thirty.
The red-tailed hawk lives, on average, for twenty years in the wild. Tobias doesn't expect to see thirty.
If he spent more time as boy than hawk, then maybe it would bother him more. But he has the thermals, he has prey, and each day passes more or less the same. A hawk doesn't count the years like a human does. There is simply one moment after another, one hunt, one rest, one flight, until it all stops.
Cassie worries about him still. As the morphing technology is acclimated into their world, even as well-regulated as it is, more nothlits appear. They form a support group. She wants him to go.
He's not a nothlit, he protests to her, even bothering to shift into his (now unfamiliar) human form for the conversation. He sits on a log, uncomfortable in spandex. Cassie says nothing about how strange it is to see him still thirteen when the rest of them are in their twenties. But he's so small, she thinks to herself. He's so small.
The bird is smaller. Tobias feels huge and out of place in his own territory. He squirms and twists his hands as he speaks to her. When she leaves, Tobias tears up the flyer she brought him with his beak and uses it to attract smaller birds.
It had been Rachel's fear, when she was alive, that one day he would slip into the bird and never come out again. She would have dealt with the fact that his natural form was hawk, now, but she was scared that he would be a bird, not the boy she knew. Tobias isn't there yet, but the key word there is "yet."
But he is not a nothlit. Sometimes he thinks he was destined to be a bird.
There are so many breezes, there is air tracing his wings, and if he is only going to live another ten years then he'll see Rachel sooner, at least, if that's how death works. He isn't sure, but he'd like to think so.
So he doesn't mark down days or years, and he's always surprised to see the way that Cassie has changed when she visits.
He's twenty-eight when he dies, when he takes flight and dives and doesn't pull out of it. He's dreamed of this happening before (and hawks don't dream, so he still must be Tobias, even after spending more than half his life as a bird). His wings are stiff, some mornings, and his head, and he has trouble waking up sometimes.
He can still feel the air rushing past his wings, but maybe that's the blood pooling in his head. It's a nice sound, anyway, to sleep to.
Fandom: Animorphs
Length: 463 words
Prompt:
31_days: 4 Oct 09 // So many breezes, but never enoughPairing: Tobias/Rachel; Tobias gen
Other: PG, on-screen character death
Excerpt: The red-tailed hawk lives, on average, for twenty years in the wild. Tobias doesn't expect to see thirty.
The red-tailed hawk lives, on average, for twenty years in the wild. Tobias doesn't expect to see thirty.
If he spent more time as boy than hawk, then maybe it would bother him more. But he has the thermals, he has prey, and each day passes more or less the same. A hawk doesn't count the years like a human does. There is simply one moment after another, one hunt, one rest, one flight, until it all stops.
Cassie worries about him still. As the morphing technology is acclimated into their world, even as well-regulated as it is, more nothlits appear. They form a support group. She wants him to go.
He's not a nothlit, he protests to her, even bothering to shift into his (now unfamiliar) human form for the conversation. He sits on a log, uncomfortable in spandex. Cassie says nothing about how strange it is to see him still thirteen when the rest of them are in their twenties. But he's so small, she thinks to herself. He's so small.
The bird is smaller. Tobias feels huge and out of place in his own territory. He squirms and twists his hands as he speaks to her. When she leaves, Tobias tears up the flyer she brought him with his beak and uses it to attract smaller birds.
It had been Rachel's fear, when she was alive, that one day he would slip into the bird and never come out again. She would have dealt with the fact that his natural form was hawk, now, but she was scared that he would be a bird, not the boy she knew. Tobias isn't there yet, but the key word there is "yet."
But he is not a nothlit. Sometimes he thinks he was destined to be a bird.
There are so many breezes, there is air tracing his wings, and if he is only going to live another ten years then he'll see Rachel sooner, at least, if that's how death works. He isn't sure, but he'd like to think so.
So he doesn't mark down days or years, and he's always surprised to see the way that Cassie has changed when she visits.
He's twenty-eight when he dies, when he takes flight and dives and doesn't pull out of it. He's dreamed of this happening before (and hawks don't dream, so he still must be Tobias, even after spending more than half his life as a bird). His wings are stiff, some mornings, and his head, and he has trouble waking up sometimes.
He can still feel the air rushing past his wings, but maybe that's the blood pooling in his head. It's a nice sound, anyway, to sleep to.