Photo album spread out on my bedroom floor...

[almost_knightly]

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 hadengineered, retraced, of_murder, standstilltime, smallkindnesses, info_barma]

Comments

[smallkindnesses.livejournal.com]

Such a face, Mr. Break! Whatever did he do to earn that?

[almost_knightly]

That's not a book you sit down and read! Not for fun! It's a textbook, you use them in school.

[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

[smallkindnesses.livejournal.com]

Well, now, I hardly think there's anything wrong with a bit of healthy curiosity...

It is one of my favorites. XD

[almost_knightly]

[With great dignity:]

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

[smallkindnesses.livejournal.com]

Then, it's like a play...



How is it that you can watch it at home?

[almost_knightly]

Ah -- we've got ways to record moving images the same way we can record photographs, and you play 'em back on these sort of -- wait.

[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.

[smallkindnesses.livejournal.com]

How fascinating!



This place must have been such a shocking change for you...

[almost_knightly]

[The very first photo on the next page most likely confirms her statement for her -- a skyline of the city in the evening, all lit up and beautiful against the darkening sky.]

That's Boston. [Break says it softly.] That's where I live.