darththalia (darththalia) wrote in tpm_flashback, @ 2004-10-04 14:34:00 |
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Original poster: raina_at
Title: Carefully Everywhere Descending
Author: Jane St. Clair
Rating: PG
Pairing: Q/O
Warnings: none
Author's e-mail, web site and/or LJ id: janestclair15@hotmail.com
website
3jane
Link to story: Carefully Everywhere Descending
Reasons for recommending: What can I say? Yes, Obi-Wan's characterisation doesn't ring entirely true for me. But oh dear, the language. The images. The play of light and shadow. The deep silence of the piece. I just adore her style, her way of creating atmosphere, the almost meditativ calm of the story. This - for me - is a pure mood piece, and a beautiful one at that. I come back to this story often, sometimes at night when I need a sense of quiet, sometimes at day when I try to recapture a certain mood for writing. Jane St.Clair's writing influenced my own.
Her other stories are on the website, I recommend reading all of them, especially "Breath", the sequel to "Carefully Everywhere Descending".
Quote from story: The palette in the corner had been his since he was a narrow-bodied adolescent, and he settled onto it with the force of old habit. It would have been customary for him to kneel, or sit cross-legged, but his body's reaction was to pull close together, and he found himself with his knees pulled up to his chest. He started talking with his face almost buried in his robe-covered knees; Qui-Gon was totally hidden from his line of sight.
"When I was fifteen, we went on a diplomatic mission to Tofino, and afterwards you took me away to the seacoast there to train. We stayed in a hostel, it was huge and so stark it felt like an institution. I remember thinking that the owner must have had Jedi training, because it looked so much like the Temple, the rooms just a bed, a chair, and a wash stand, not even a writing table or a desk. You took me running along the beach. It was remarkable -- volcanic, I think -- there were hollows in the rocks that filled with water at low tide, and there were so many small creatures in them.
"The beaches had the finest sand I'd ever encountered, and it got in everything. All my clothes were full of it, and it was in my hair and the hollows of my ears. The rooms didn't have private bath facilities, there were only bathing rooms on every floor. The one on our floor had three bathtubs, I think, all free-standing, and its plumbing was exposed. I was bathing there, late in the afternoon, when you came in. I must have looked like a drowned rat to you -- I had been immersing my head to rinse the sand away. You didn't bathe, just stripped to the waist and washed down, and then came over and knelt beside me. I still don't know if you knew I was watching you; you never give anything away.
"You rested one hand on the back of my neck and just rubbed me until I felt every muscle in my back unclench. I was almost liquid under your fingers when you let me go and started washing my hair. It felt so good, your fingers and the warm water and very bright sunlight coming in through the high windows. When you'd rinsed me, you took a cloth and dried my face off, and you cupped my cheek and looked at me until I couldn't remember to breathe. And then you dressed and left.
"I sat there until the water was colder than the room. You had bathed me like that before, but not for years. I was far too old for it, but the only thing that occurred to me at the time was a massive joy that you still loved me."
Silence. He could feel Qui-Gon's eyes on him in the dark, and could see the man's silhouette in the nighttime Coruscant brilliance that filtered thinly through the tinted view.
"How dare you. How dare you let me love you if you were only going to give me up."