almost_knightly (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
almost_knightly) wrote2011-07-13 02:42 am
almost_knightly) wrote2011-07-13 02:42 am
Entry tags:
Photo album spread out on my bedroom floor...
There was nothing remarkable about the day when Break got up this morning. There was nothing remarkable lying in wait in his bathroom, and nothing remarkable between himself and the kitchen, and nothing remarkable between the kitchen and the library.
The library, however, held something new today. It was lurking on the bottom shelf, easily missed but for Break's habit of crawling around on the floor -- a large binder, sedate red leather and several inches wide.
Break knows that binder.
Fingers shaking, he snatches it up out of the shelf. He fumbles it, and it falls open, and the first thing he sees is Faneuil Hall at Christmas, covered in snow. Below that is a photograph of Shelly, his own Shelly, dressed in winter clothes and laughing with Sharon when she was still small, and there's his ponytail in the photograph next to it because no one could ever get him to look at the camera that first year and he's seen these pictures a thousand times --
He slams the book shut, suddenly unable to look. A cruel gift, in a way; there are days that he wonders if he'll ever see this place and these people again. But on the other hand, now -- now he can show people, he can let them see things he's only described. It's as precious as it is mean.
Gathering the photo album up close to his chest and clutching it as though he's afraid it'll vanish, Break leaves the library, in search of some of the people he trusts most.
[ooc: Locked to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hadengineered, retraced, of_murder, standstilltime, smallkindnesses, info_barma]
The library, however, held something new today. It was lurking on the bottom shelf, easily missed but for Break's habit of crawling around on the floor -- a large binder, sedate red leather and several inches wide.
Break knows that binder.
Fingers shaking, he snatches it up out of the shelf. He fumbles it, and it falls open, and the first thing he sees is Faneuil Hall at Christmas, covered in snow. Below that is a photograph of Shelly, his own Shelly, dressed in winter clothes and laughing with Sharon when she was still small, and there's his ponytail in the photograph next to it because no one could ever get him to look at the camera that first year and he's seen these pictures a thousand times --
He slams the book shut, suddenly unable to look. A cruel gift, in a way; there are days that he wonders if he'll ever see this place and these people again. But on the other hand, now -- now he can show people, he can let them see things he's only described. It's as precious as it is mean.
Gathering the photo album up close to his chest and clutching it as though he's afraid it'll vanish, Break leaves the library, in search of some of the people he trusts most.
[ooc: Locked to
hadengineered, retraced, of_murder, standstilltime, smallkindnesses, info_barma]
Keywords relevant?
[This admittedly sad fact of his past is forgotten immediately when the page is turned.]
Ah! That's the Boston Public Library. [There are photos of the interior in addition to the main building, and Break points to one room in particular, obviously excited now.] This room -- the paintings up at the top here illustrate a story about one of King Arthur's knights. The King Arthur stories are my favorites, always have been.
That's Sir Galahad. [He points now to a red-robed figure in one of the paintings.] He was the purest of all the knights, and so he went on a quest to find the Holy Grail. I named my kitten after him.
delightfully so! X-D
It's beautiful! It sounds rather like one of our own stories...
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Really? What story's that?
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My husband was rather fond of his tales...
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[The whole mansion might explode of his geeking if he manages it. Analyzing certain bits of folklore is about the closest Break ever gets to anything resembling academia, and he exults in it.
The next page, in keeping with the library theme, has one photograph each of everyone reading. Sharon indulges in a picture book called "The Twelve Dancing Princesses"; the front is graced with an image of several beautiful girls in ornate ballgowns and there are childish sketches of similar dresses scattered around her. Break is curled up on the couch, hiding behind a copy of The Black Cauldron. Shelly reads a murder mystery by Agatha Christie, one of the Miss Marple books, and Sheryl beams unapologetically at the camera over a romance novel with some Fabio-looking character and a random beautiful woman with her bosoms about to pop out of her bodice on the cover.
Liam, at the dining room table, appears to be engrossed in an earth science textbook. Behind his back and quite some ways off, Break is giving him a faintly disgusted look.]
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Such a face, Mr. Break! Whatever did he do to earn that?
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[He's making more or less the exact same face now. He never did get over this stuff.]
So precocious; whenever we watched a historical movie he would go and fact-check everyfing to point out what the writers and director got wrong. One time -- oh God. One time we were watching The Three Musketeers, and that one uses a historical figger called Cardinal Richelieu, right?
In the middle of the movie Liam starts going on about the real Cardinal Richelieu and the political and social state of France at the time. He was eleven, and he knows all this already! I almost strangled him.
PFF, I love that movie X-D
Well, now, I hardly think there's anything wrong with a bit of healthy curiosity...
It is one of my favorites. XD
There is a special Hell for people who talk in the theater, Shelly. He knows this, now.
...well, it was a movie at home, not the theater. But the point still stands.
Re: It is one of my favorites. XD
Then, it's like a play...
How is it that you can watch it at home?
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[He flips several pages, glancing here and there, until he runs across a photo of Sharon from behind, stretched out on her stomach on the floor in front of a thick square box. On the screen within the box is a blurred image of what looks like a little girl holding a doll; she's watching A Little Princess.]
That's a television. The technology used to play the movie back varies and most TV's don't look quite like this anymore, but that's how we can watch fings at home. Liam and I have a movie night every Friday night; have for as long as we've lived togevver.
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This place must have been such a shocking change for you...
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That's Boston. [Break says it softly.] That's where I live.