Fanfic, shameless author-self-insert

[butterflydreaming]

Tsukimine Shrine Challenge
Topic: Change of Pace
Rating: PG…  Length: a little over 1,000

“Special requirements: Everybody needs a break once in a while. Or at the very least, a change of scenery. Take your favorite character(s) out for a spin in an entirely new place - a setting they wouldn't normally find themselves in. This could mean a well-deserved vacation, or even an all-out AU if you'd like. The beach, the countryside, the moon...anything's game.”

 

. . .

            “Tassa said I could take you in a different place, put you in a different position, that kind of thing…” I leered, swinging my legs as they dangled over the edge of the counter on which I was sitting.  My breath as I spoke made swirls in the vapor-heavy air.  Yue, wisely, did not reply to my implications.  Wordlessly, he stuck his arm out beyond the shower curtain, beckoning for a towel.  I leaned across the distance and handed him two, still freshly warm from the dryer: one for his hair and one for his… uh… body.  “But seriously,” I continued while watching the drying-off motions of his silhouette, “You’ve never been in the Pacific Northwest, right?”  A blur of color and movement was all I could see of him wrapping one of the towels around his hips.

            His answer came after a brief delay, muffled by the towel drying his hair.  “Not that I am aware of.”

            “Well, this way I can give you and our readers a micro-tour of the pretty places where I live.” I hopped off of the counter and began to leave the bathroom so Yue could get dressed in privacy.  Shutting the door softly, I stood just outside in the hall.  “And this way, I get to spend a whole weekend with you.”

            “It’s only supposed to be 1,000 to 2,000 words,” countered Yue, his resonant voice projected through the door so that I could hear him. 

At first, I tried not to imagine him dressing.  Then I remembered that this was my fic, and a wicked grin spread over my face.  “Then I’ll just do the part about Hurricane Ridge,” I answered.  “I’d much rather describe you on horseback, but I don’t know a damned thing about riding.”  

Yue opened the door, stepping out, and I couldn’t help backing up with shyness, or biting my lower lip.  He looked every bit as breathtaking as I imagined he would, in a blue, cotton buttoned-down shirt, faded jeans, and bare feet (naturally).  I had been tempted to put him in shorts just so that I could look at his knees, but I didn’t think he would’ve forgiven me for that.  The outfit was missing one thing, however.

“Put this on, would you?” I asked, picking up a the newly finished necklace from my worktable.  The white shells, silver, and small, irregular blue chalcedony beads were a complement to his beautiful complexion.

“I have to admit that I am… a somewhat hesitant about this author-self-insertion,” he said, incrementally shy himself.

I smiled a little smile.  Yue looked at me expectantly.

. . .

-Panoramic View-

 

            The warmth of the morning only hinted at what the heat of the future day would be like, but it was enough, even with the sun just marginally over the horizon, to make the heavily-scented air intoxicating.  The mountain lupine and other wildflowers bloomed thickly in the alpine meadow during the months of summer, and the perfume that those flowers made was trance-inducing, thickening the otherwise thin mountain air invisibly but with as much narcotic presence as smoke in an opium den.  An opium den, Yue considered, or maybe the incense and cigarette smoke of a certain witch.  The rich, deep purple color of the lupine overpowered even the vast, vivid blue of the wide open sky.

            Yue took his time climbing the short trail up to a higher part of the ridge.  There had been deer on the path a few feet back, an appraising doe and a placid young buck with short prongs, but because of the early hour, not even the park rangers were up at this popular lookout.  He was alone on the mountain, having left his traveling companion still dreaming in their tent at the Heart of the Hills campground.

            Hurricane Ridge, above clouds that rolled in slow motion, opened the Olympic Mountain range in a panoramic view that took in the thin sapphire line to the north that was the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the distant Pacific Ocean to the west, and an expanse of mountain peaks to the east and south, some of which still had ample snow mantling their shoulders.  The sky seemed impossibly large.  A soft wind wafted tendrils of cloud in upward spirals to the empty sky.  Looking at the glow of the early morning sun cresting the jade mountains, Yue could imagine that he was the only living being in creation.

            Yet, he did not feel alone.  For once, his mind did not worry on the usual catalog of troubles.  He breathed in the ozone smell of clouds and let his mind be as empty as the clear sky.  He amused himself, instead, with the way that his shadow looked on the clouds below him; the angled sunlight and the cloud vapor formed rainbows around him, like a visible aura, the spectrum reflected and repeated in a double-circular rainbow.  For a moment, because he was alone, he brought out his wings.  An angel’s shadow raised its arms and waved.

            For these silent moments, he would just let himself be.  There were no questions of identity, no regrets of a broken heart, or ruminations on the past.  He wouldn’t wonder if the loose braid that he had slept in was crimping his hair, or what his future would be when his traveling companion woke from her dreams and crawled out of her sleeping bag.

            “Let’s do things differently,” she had said to him.  “I want you to smile.  And to be happy.”  She kept insisting that falling in love again was not the answer.  “It doesn’t have to be a romance,” she proclaimed repeatedly.

             She regarded him with an unfaltering adoration; she wrote poetry to him.  She had promised him a happy ending.  She promised not to leave him until he didn’t need her anymore.

            It was a change of pace, the way she wrote about him. 

            The morning was growing older.  A line of sunshine now highlighted the cirque to the west and the deep valley below its wide arc.  He imagined that it might be fun to fly the bowl-like circumference of that wide open space, and his wings twitched with anticipation.  He wondered if he could get away with it, for the little while when no one was watching.

. . .