![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sakon76Papa-san is recovering nicely, thank goodness, and hopefully he'll get to come home tomorrow to finish his R&R period someplace with an actual comfortable bed.
Have not seen The Hobbit yet; I am deliberately waiting a week before going. Though I have purchased the special edition version of the soundtrack, and am listening to it at the moment; I quite like it. Howard Shore writes good stuff.
Late fanfic posting today; I'm debating whether or not to switch to daily fanfics for a while, just to get rid of all of my backed up RotG stories so I can eventually get back to various other WIPs. Anyone mind if I start clogging up their flists a bit more?
And,
Scenes From the Life and Death of Jackson Overland Frost
Part 6: Seabound
by K. Stonham
first released 15th December, 2012
May, 1823
Jack laughed, flying above the surface of the seeming endless northern sea. He dipped closer, letting his fingers skim the water, forming sea ice as he went. A thin, zig-zagging line of it trailed behind him now. He kicked higher for a moment, looking back at his path. With a wave of his staff, accompanied by a flurry of snowflakes, the thin ice thickened, grew broader and deeper. He reversed direction, flying back over the ice, fingers this time skimming along its frozen surface. Frost flowers bloomed in the wake of his touch.
He flew up into the air, high enough to see the entire pattern he had drawn.
From a few hundred yards up, the ice formed an outline, a sketch of a tree with winter-bare arms.
"Not bad," Jack said. "Just needs a little... huh?"
A dark form appeared below the open water in the center of his design, its back breaching the surface momentarily. A spray of water puffed into the chill air, followed by the brief appearance of a flat tail fin, then the creature disappeared back into the murky depths.
Considering the size of Jack's drawing, the creature had to have been nearly as big as a ship.
His eyes felt as big as saucers. "What was that?" Jack asked no one in particular. The wind, even if it had known what the creature was, wasn't really capable of giving him an answer.
As if to answer his question, another creature surfaced, and another and another....
Abandoning his drawing, Jack followed them.
There were eight of the creatures, he figured out, two smaller than the others. Baby whatever-they-weres, he guessed. They swam and they dove, and when they dove they went so deep he lost track of them until they surfaced again for another puff of air.
And then one surfaced, nearly its whole body coming upright out of the water before it fell back down with a huge, wave-inducing crash.
Wiping the sea spray off his face, Jack laughed, delighted, and watched as the others did it too, again and again.
He ended up following the gray whale pod for nearly a week.
* * *
Not all of the sea creatures were so fun, though. In certain areas, Jack found, if he hovered too close to the surface, the big mean fish with lots of teeth would jet up under him, breaching the surface, trying to eat him.
He did not like the sharks, and learned where they were likely to be.
It wasn't just the sharks who did that, either. The black-and-white whales would do it too, which confused him since most of the other whales he watched didn't seem to eat anything as far as he could tell. But the black-and-whites had teeth, and he saw them rend seals in half sometimes.
So he stayed far clear of the surface when the orcas were near, though they were still interesting to watch.
His favorite sea animals, though, he didn't see as much of, because they didn't often come where the water was cold enough for ice to form. They were toothy creatures as well, but they weren't that much bigger than Jack, so they didn't look at him as a potential food source. Instead, they sometimes surfaced nearby while he perched on an iceberg. Their heads bobbing above the water, bodies turning so first one black eye then the other regarded him, they chattered, high-pitched squeaky sounds that Jack felt sure were actual words, if only he knew how to understand them.
When they moved, they jumped like streaming ribbons, riding the waves and the water like he rode the winds. Jack flew along the sea after them, because he could not dive beneath the surface to follow them. He thought about it once, but something inside him quailed at the thought of the cold and the dark waiting under the water. But the dolphins... they were playful. Together, they had a grand time: Jack would make them ice floes and hoops and any number of fantastic floating shapes. And the dolphins would treat his creations like a playground, jumping over and through the ice, dancing in air and water in a way that made him laugh and whoop, following them as best he could.
Like the wolves back home in Burgess, the dolphins sometimes let him touch them. Their damp skin was cool and rubbery, strange to the touch, and their breaths smelled of fish. They were his seabound playmates.
Jack loved the dolphins.
*~*~*
Author's Note: Just a thought on the fact that when Jack touches Sandman's dreamsand, he gets dolphins. With a gratuitous reference to my other RotG story The Wolves of Winter.
Have not seen The Hobbit yet; I am deliberately waiting a week before going. Though I have purchased the special edition version of the soundtrack, and am listening to it at the moment; I quite like it. Howard Shore writes good stuff.
Late fanfic posting today; I'm debating whether or not to switch to daily fanfics for a while, just to get rid of all of my backed up RotG stories so I can eventually get back to various other WIPs. Anyone mind if I start clogging up their flists a bit more?
And,
Scenes From the Life and Death of Jackson Overland Frost
Part 6: Seabound
by K. Stonham
first released 15th December, 2012
May, 1823
Jack laughed, flying above the surface of the seeming endless northern sea. He dipped closer, letting his fingers skim the water, forming sea ice as he went. A thin, zig-zagging line of it trailed behind him now. He kicked higher for a moment, looking back at his path. With a wave of his staff, accompanied by a flurry of snowflakes, the thin ice thickened, grew broader and deeper. He reversed direction, flying back over the ice, fingers this time skimming along its frozen surface. Frost flowers bloomed in the wake of his touch.
He flew up into the air, high enough to see the entire pattern he had drawn.
From a few hundred yards up, the ice formed an outline, a sketch of a tree with winter-bare arms.
"Not bad," Jack said. "Just needs a little... huh?"
A dark form appeared below the open water in the center of his design, its back breaching the surface momentarily. A spray of water puffed into the chill air, followed by the brief appearance of a flat tail fin, then the creature disappeared back into the murky depths.
Considering the size of Jack's drawing, the creature had to have been nearly as big as a ship.
His eyes felt as big as saucers. "What was that?" Jack asked no one in particular. The wind, even if it had known what the creature was, wasn't really capable of giving him an answer.
As if to answer his question, another creature surfaced, and another and another....
Abandoning his drawing, Jack followed them.
There were eight of the creatures, he figured out, two smaller than the others. Baby whatever-they-weres, he guessed. They swam and they dove, and when they dove they went so deep he lost track of them until they surfaced again for another puff of air.
And then one surfaced, nearly its whole body coming upright out of the water before it fell back down with a huge, wave-inducing crash.
Wiping the sea spray off his face, Jack laughed, delighted, and watched as the others did it too, again and again.
He ended up following the gray whale pod for nearly a week.
Not all of the sea creatures were so fun, though. In certain areas, Jack found, if he hovered too close to the surface, the big mean fish with lots of teeth would jet up under him, breaching the surface, trying to eat him.
He did not like the sharks, and learned where they were likely to be.
It wasn't just the sharks who did that, either. The black-and-white whales would do it too, which confused him since most of the other whales he watched didn't seem to eat anything as far as he could tell. But the black-and-whites had teeth, and he saw them rend seals in half sometimes.
So he stayed far clear of the surface when the orcas were near, though they were still interesting to watch.
His favorite sea animals, though, he didn't see as much of, because they didn't often come where the water was cold enough for ice to form. They were toothy creatures as well, but they weren't that much bigger than Jack, so they didn't look at him as a potential food source. Instead, they sometimes surfaced nearby while he perched on an iceberg. Their heads bobbing above the water, bodies turning so first one black eye then the other regarded him, they chattered, high-pitched squeaky sounds that Jack felt sure were actual words, if only he knew how to understand them.
When they moved, they jumped like streaming ribbons, riding the waves and the water like he rode the winds. Jack flew along the sea after them, because he could not dive beneath the surface to follow them. He thought about it once, but something inside him quailed at the thought of the cold and the dark waiting under the water. But the dolphins... they were playful. Together, they had a grand time: Jack would make them ice floes and hoops and any number of fantastic floating shapes. And the dolphins would treat his creations like a playground, jumping over and through the ice, dancing in air and water in a way that made him laugh and whoop, following them as best he could.
Like the wolves back home in Burgess, the dolphins sometimes let him touch them. Their damp skin was cool and rubbery, strange to the touch, and their breaths smelled of fish. They were his seabound playmates.
Jack loved the dolphins.
Author's Note: Just a thought on the fact that when Jack touches Sandman's dreamsand, he gets dolphins. With a gratuitous reference to my other RotG story The Wolves of Winter.
