Tears of laughter, tears of sadness
Mar. 7th, 2007 10:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
layne67I cried, I really cried when I read what ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cloudlessclimes wrote as a follow-up to Deeper Than All Roses. The pain, the sadness, the despair. The grief that everyone must at one time or another go through when a loved one leave us forever. She began thus ...
"I loved my friend. He went away from me.
There's nothing more to say.
The poem ends, Soft as it began ----
I loved my friend."
Langston Hughes
The night presses down around him like a fresh bruise; spreading dark and painful. Orlando hates this. He hates it—this fear and sadness that sucker-punches him when he least expects it. He’d much preferred the endless grey wool days of new found mourning. He could wrap his grief around him like a blanket, cocooning him from the rest of the world as it went about its business. It was all so much easier, waking and knowing that the pain of loss would flare to instant, aching life. As the days without Elijah stretched into weeks, and then, cruelly, into months, the knowledge of once having loved someone so dulled, only to spread its wings and beat a painful lamentation against his heart at the most unexpected times, and at the slightest of things. He’d tilt his head to smile into the cloudless blue of the summer sky and be brought to his knees, gasping and breathless with sorrow. A child’s giggle could cause him to wrap his arms tight around himself, searching for warmth. Nightmares wake him and he stifles his sobs, reaching across the vast and empty bed, grasping only linen where once blunt, sure fingers would soothe away his fears.
He pours out all his fury into empty air, and bashes the sharp angled corners of his loss against his (their) bedroom wall. He yells and screams and cries and sobs until even the dogs give up their snuffling nudges to his fist-curled fingers and frantic licks to his tear-streaked face. With no one there to keep the demons away, he leaves the lights on, cursing the shadows. When he is hoarse and spent he sinks down that wall and stares at nothing at all; a curled parentheses of pain.
~Fin
But not all tears are of sadness, or evil, as Gandalf wisely said at the Gray Havens. I cried too, when I read these two fics but this time the tears that came forth were of laughter, and delight.
City of Night bymontmorency and Mrs Craddock's Diary by arabia764.
The former is an Orlijah vampire!fic in which Elijah was an American vampire in Paris with Orlando as the tourist who was more than a little fascinated with his unconventional tour-guide, taking him on a journey to the darker side of the most romantic city in the world. Totally hilarious, brilliantly written.
The latter is an Orlijah, too, but one written in a fresh, new way. It's RPS Orlijah from the POV of one Mrs Craddock, an utterly charming elderly lady whose new job was to look after Elijah's and Orlando's apartment in London. I was in stitches the whole time I was reading it. And Part 2 is no less hilarious either.
Three fics that made me cry with sadness, and with laughter.
Thank you, ladies. You're all Awesome.
cloudlessclimes wrote as a follow-up to Deeper Than All Roses. The pain, the sadness, the despair. The grief that everyone must at one time or another go through when a loved one leave us forever. She began thus ..."I loved my friend. He went away from me.
There's nothing more to say.
The poem ends, Soft as it began ----
I loved my friend."
Langston Hughes
The night presses down around him like a fresh bruise; spreading dark and painful. Orlando hates this. He hates it—this fear and sadness that sucker-punches him when he least expects it. He’d much preferred the endless grey wool days of new found mourning. He could wrap his grief around him like a blanket, cocooning him from the rest of the world as it went about its business. It was all so much easier, waking and knowing that the pain of loss would flare to instant, aching life. As the days without Elijah stretched into weeks, and then, cruelly, into months, the knowledge of once having loved someone so dulled, only to spread its wings and beat a painful lamentation against his heart at the most unexpected times, and at the slightest of things. He’d tilt his head to smile into the cloudless blue of the summer sky and be brought to his knees, gasping and breathless with sorrow. A child’s giggle could cause him to wrap his arms tight around himself, searching for warmth. Nightmares wake him and he stifles his sobs, reaching across the vast and empty bed, grasping only linen where once blunt, sure fingers would soothe away his fears.
He pours out all his fury into empty air, and bashes the sharp angled corners of his loss against his (their) bedroom wall. He yells and screams and cries and sobs until even the dogs give up their snuffling nudges to his fist-curled fingers and frantic licks to his tear-streaked face. With no one there to keep the demons away, he leaves the lights on, cursing the shadows. When he is hoarse and spent he sinks down that wall and stares at nothing at all; a curled parentheses of pain.
~Fin
But not all tears are of sadness, or evil, as Gandalf wisely said at the Gray Havens. I cried too, when I read these two fics but this time the tears that came forth were of laughter, and delight.
City of Night by
montmorency and Mrs Craddock's Diary by arabia764.The former is an Orlijah vampire!fic in which Elijah was an American vampire in Paris with Orlando as the tourist who was more than a little fascinated with his unconventional tour-guide, taking him on a journey to the darker side of the most romantic city in the world. Totally hilarious, brilliantly written.
The latter is an Orlijah, too, but one written in a fresh, new way. It's RPS Orlijah from the POV of one Mrs Craddock, an utterly charming elderly lady whose new job was to look after Elijah's and Orlando's apartment in London. I was in stitches the whole time I was reading it. And Part 2 is no less hilarious either.
Three fics that made me cry with sadness, and with laughter.
Thank you, ladies. You're all Awesome.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-03-07 03:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-08 02:23 am (UTC)Juliet
Langston Hughes
Wonder
And pain
And terror,
And sick silly songs,
Of sorrow,
And the marrow
Of the bone
Of life
Are smeared across
Her mouth.
The road
From Verona
To Mantova
Is dusty
With the drought.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-08 06:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-08 04:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-07 06:02 pm (UTC)Mrs Craddock is frikkin hilarious. The Deeper fic is sad, very sad. Plus the beautiful Hughes poem. *sigh*
no subject
Date: 2007-03-08 04:29 am (UTC)And the picnic, don't forget that picnic! I love all of your fics, yes, Hector/Troy too, but that one is my absolute favourite
no subject
Date: 2007-03-09 04:12 am (UTC)*peers over Monty's shoulder*
Don't forget to eat, sweetie.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-07 08:18 pm (UTC)*LOOOVES*
no subject
Date: 2007-03-08 04:31 am (UTC):DD
no subject
Date: 2007-03-07 08:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-08 04:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-07 10:09 pm (UTC)*hugs*
no subject
Date: 2007-03-08 04:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-08 02:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-08 04:38 am (UTC)*accepts tissue gratefully*
no subject
Date: 2007-03-08 08:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-08 08:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-08 09:55 am (UTC)And run. :D
Btw, I found this: http://samdean.archive.nu/
no subject
Date: 2007-03-08 02:12 pm (UTC)*implodes*
Now which one shall I read first :D