Maria Cyphert (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
gunbladegrrl) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
concoursec2012-06-06 03:02 pm
gunbladegrrl) wrote in concoursec2012-06-06 03:02 pm
Homecoming
Characters: Maria and YOU?!
Location: Dollet Habor and Beach to start
Rating: PG.
Open/Closed/Finished: Very open.
Summary: Maria has come home, and is pondering the effects of losing ten years to Time Compression.
Dollet.
Home.
She sat on the railing at the harbor, back to the sea, watching the town itself. The old rental shop: still there. Boats, drifting in and out of their docks just as always. Every so often a car sped by, and perhaps there were more of them than there used to be, but she had never counted back in the day. She had no way to know.
She pushed herself off the railing, to walk down the street.
Ten years had passed in the blink of an eye, thanks to Time Compression and bad luck. Dollet was ten years older than Maria Cyphert, now. If she looked carefully, she could recognize old friends, old acquaintances, beneath the passing years that otherwise made them strangers. She tried not to do that, though some of them recognized her.
She wasn’t afraid of meeting people she knew. She was afraid of meeting people she used to know, who ten years had changed to strangers.
Down the streets, and so to the beach. She walked halfway down the stairs that led from the road to the sand, stopping on the landing midway down. Six months ago, by her reckoning – well, six months and change – she had stood on this same landing, staring out to the sea. This beach was the one the SeeD transport ships had slammed onto, releasing the Garden cadets for their exam in the Siege of Dollet. Ten years ago… or twenty. And six months ago she had stood here, vowing fiercely to someday do the same. To do more! And yet… ten years of wear and tear had accumulated on this staircase since then. Amazing it hadn’t been replaced. It was due.
But she’d done it, hadn’t she? She’d become a cadet. She was living up to everything she had expected of herself -- everything and more, she was proving she could do every day. Sure, the path wasn’t easy – sometimes it seemed like she had no hope of pleasing anybody, much less everybody. And she’d had more problems than she’d ever imagined, and which – ruefully – she acknowledged she should have expected. Funny how much maturity six months of SeeD training could bring, so that she could now look on her slightly-younger self in fond, head-shaking disbelief.
“Ten years or not,” she said quietly, as the waves rolled softly on the shore, “it’s worth it.”
Location: Dollet Habor and Beach to start
Rating: PG.
Open/Closed/Finished: Very open.
Summary: Maria has come home, and is pondering the effects of losing ten years to Time Compression.
Dollet.
Home.
She sat on the railing at the harbor, back to the sea, watching the town itself. The old rental shop: still there. Boats, drifting in and out of their docks just as always. Every so often a car sped by, and perhaps there were more of them than there used to be, but she had never counted back in the day. She had no way to know.
She pushed herself off the railing, to walk down the street.
Ten years had passed in the blink of an eye, thanks to Time Compression and bad luck. Dollet was ten years older than Maria Cyphert, now. If she looked carefully, she could recognize old friends, old acquaintances, beneath the passing years that otherwise made them strangers. She tried not to do that, though some of them recognized her.
She wasn’t afraid of meeting people she knew. She was afraid of meeting people she used to know, who ten years had changed to strangers.
Down the streets, and so to the beach. She walked halfway down the stairs that led from the road to the sand, stopping on the landing midway down. Six months ago, by her reckoning – well, six months and change – she had stood on this same landing, staring out to the sea. This beach was the one the SeeD transport ships had slammed onto, releasing the Garden cadets for their exam in the Siege of Dollet. Ten years ago… or twenty. And six months ago she had stood here, vowing fiercely to someday do the same. To do more! And yet… ten years of wear and tear had accumulated on this staircase since then. Amazing it hadn’t been replaced. It was due.
But she’d done it, hadn’t she? She’d become a cadet. She was living up to everything she had expected of herself -- everything and more, she was proving she could do every day. Sure, the path wasn’t easy – sometimes it seemed like she had no hope of pleasing anybody, much less everybody. And she’d had more problems than she’d ever imagined, and which – ruefully – she acknowledged she should have expected. Funny how much maturity six months of SeeD training could bring, so that she could now look on her slightly-younger self in fond, head-shaking disbelief.
“Ten years or not,” she said quietly, as the waves rolled softly on the shore, “it’s worth it.”