Fic Rec: Anisoptera
Aug. 31st, 2012 05:30 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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221b_recsTitle: Anisoptera
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
aderyn8
Pairing: Can be read as Sherlock/John or Gen
Length: 1,849
Rating: NR (I would say maybe PG)
Warnings: none
Verse: Sherlock BBC
Author's summary: “Anax imperator,” says Sherlock.
“Who?” says John.
"Emperor Dragonfly," Sherlock says.
*
“What do you expect me to do? “says Sherlock from the bed’s edge.
Not think about anything for two hours except the (iridescent) insides of your eyelids.
Stay.
Stop for a second; we may have days, months, years, but stop for minute.
Lie down.
Sleep. (Let nothing catch fire.)
Reccer's comments: Art and science married. Sumptuous prose. Subtly expressed emotions as the undercurrent that pulls me under unexpectedly. Sherlock and John chasing after a tattooed killer. That's the surface. Watch out for those unexpected depths. I feel like I've drowned in beauty only to be washed up on the Thames's flats, just revived, incoherently pointing to the gems, the bits of glinting wing, feather, shell, and bone. My sympathetic rescuers staring at me, uncomprehending (they don't yet detect the delicate framework binding those objects), until I shove them in that same roiling river.
Excerpt: “What kind of tattoos?” John says. Sherlock is already manic, ripping the curtains aside and flinging open the windows, letting the aerosphere in and out, stuffing his mobile into a too-close pocket, pulling it out again, pulling up images of shimmery flying gems (Azure Damselfly, Norfolk Hawker) and the sinuously curved winged things of Lalique and Mucha, holding his laptop in front of John’s face on the fly.
“Tattoos where?” says John. It’s not really the right question, but it seems important.
“Everywhere,” Sherlock says, “ DPhil in Chemical Ecology with a bit of a strange history. He killed his girlfriend and left her in a greenhouse."
“And we’re going to pick him up.”
“It’s all over but the weeping,” Sherlock says, and winks, hands John a set of crime scene photos and an Art Nouveau-style Calopteryx virgo he’s sketched on the back of a receipt.
In the photos (somehow badly lit) the bruises on the girl’s (Lila, Lila W.) neck look like wings. The world’s so tragically appropriate; we are what we are and we leave our traces, John thinks, and nips upstairs before they leave to slip Sherlock’s sketch into a drawer.
Author:
aderyn8Pairing: Can be read as Sherlock/John or Gen
Length: 1,849
Rating: NR (I would say maybe PG)
Warnings: none
Verse: Sherlock BBC
Author's summary: “Anax imperator,” says Sherlock.
“Who?” says John.
"Emperor Dragonfly," Sherlock says.
*
“What do you expect me to do? “says Sherlock from the bed’s edge.
Not think about anything for two hours except the (iridescent) insides of your eyelids.
Stay.
Stop for a second; we may have days, months, years, but stop for minute.
Lie down.
Sleep. (Let nothing catch fire.)
Reccer's comments: Art and science married. Sumptuous prose. Subtly expressed emotions as the undercurrent that pulls me under unexpectedly. Sherlock and John chasing after a tattooed killer. That's the surface. Watch out for those unexpected depths. I feel like I've drowned in beauty only to be washed up on the Thames's flats, just revived, incoherently pointing to the gems, the bits of glinting wing, feather, shell, and bone. My sympathetic rescuers staring at me, uncomprehending (they don't yet detect the delicate framework binding those objects), until I shove them in that same roiling river.
Excerpt: “What kind of tattoos?” John says. Sherlock is already manic, ripping the curtains aside and flinging open the windows, letting the aerosphere in and out, stuffing his mobile into a too-close pocket, pulling it out again, pulling up images of shimmery flying gems (Azure Damselfly, Norfolk Hawker) and the sinuously curved winged things of Lalique and Mucha, holding his laptop in front of John’s face on the fly.
“Tattoos where?” says John. It’s not really the right question, but it seems important.
“Everywhere,” Sherlock says, “ DPhil in Chemical Ecology with a bit of a strange history. He killed his girlfriend and left her in a greenhouse."
“And we’re going to pick him up.”
“It’s all over but the weeping,” Sherlock says, and winks, hands John a set of crime scene photos and an Art Nouveau-style Calopteryx virgo he’s sketched on the back of a receipt.
In the photos (somehow badly lit) the bruises on the girl’s (Lila, Lila W.) neck look like wings. The world’s so tragically appropriate; we are what we are and we leave our traces, John thinks, and nips upstairs before they leave to slip Sherlock’s sketch into a drawer.
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Awesome rec!
Date: 2012-08-31 02:21 pm (UTC)Re: Awesome rec!
Date: 2012-09-01 06:00 am (UTC)I hope you enjoy it. My emotional reaction was based on also reading one of her other river-related pieces, River Gods (http://archiveofourown.org/works/434000), so that by the time I came to the end of "Anisoptera" the moment of Sherlock and John falling asleep was intensely moving for me. Why? Aderyn likened it to a tide going out (the Thames being a tidal river). It was (finally!) a moment of ease, peace, and rest for them and it highlighted their fragility and mortality (death sometimes being likened to a tide going out). Bittersweet.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-01 07:18 am (UTC)