so did anyone go back at a certain point to reread what the Speaker of the House said about river gale. about how they were too boring and tedious for anyone to believe that someone would ever run away with them. about how people drew straws to pick who would sit with river so everyone else could avoid them. how bone crushingly lonely it must have been to be river gale, that we see them interacting more with the mammoths than actual people. just asking for a friend.
how does one share their original writing on tumblr. i don't know, but here's mine anyway
based on the prompt from this uquiz: A factory worker finds himself increasingly enamoured with a Luddite leader during the Industrial Revolution. Meanwhile, he harbours suspicions that his boss is not just a manifestation of capitalist evil, but of ancient, eldritch evil as well (but wlw, and reluctant co-conspirators/sort of enemies to lovers)
1825
It was snowing inside the mill. Or at least it looked like it.
Wool dust floated suspended in the air, stirred into moving only when it caught a draft. The larger tufts settled on the ground like powder snow that scattered as Emmy walked between the power looms that produced them.Â
She coughed, and the sudden plume of air sent the particles swirling like frost over a puddle.
When she wasn’t checking on the looms every half-hour, most of her work consisted of sweeping the wool away, which wouldn’t have been such a dreadful task if the wool wasn’t endless.Â
She skipped sweeping underneath the loom, worried that if she leaned close to reach then the gears would catch her hair and pull her in. She dismissed the thought with a shudder that left knots in her shoulders. Once she thought of bringing matches with her to just try and ignite the wool and let itself burn out, except the floorboards were made of old wood and would catch fire just as easily.
The nail of the candle clock clanged onto the metal tray, signalling that another half-hour had passed. She leaned the broom against the wall and made a poor attempt to beat the wool fibres and dust from her smock.Â
Typically, women and children worked the mills, but at this hour the children were at home and the women were looking after them and cooking their dinner. And Emmy, being neither married nor a mother, was happy to take the shift for the slight extra pay. Working alone had terrible safety risks and everyone knew it, but Emmy regarded herself as skilled and not stupid. She was qualified enough.Â
Each loom stood two feet clear over her head. They were laid side by side in four rows of ten, reminding her of horses in stalls. Emmy felt like machines were akin to horses too; large and useful but dangerous if one got too close without a skilled hand and an understanding of its temperament.Â
She got dizzy watching the machine weave the weft and warp over the frame, so she looked instead at the finished cloth being fed out of the mouth. Fine and precise, worth days of what a weaver could do on a hand-pumped loom at home. She dragged the tips of her fingers along the front where the fabric was coming off the reed, feeling for frays and breaks in the threads, and did that for the thirty looms she was responsible for.Â
When the children were working to help their mothers or older sisters, Emmy played a game with them. At the start of the shift she lined them up like a governess and had them tuck in shirts, roll up sleeves, braid away all hair and keep it behind their heads, even the boys. Taking the end of the broom, she drew a wide border in the yarn-snow around the loom. Their main job was to cut and trim threads too small for the older women to see, but if for any reason they needed to cross the border to reach the weaving or untangle the yarn from the pegs, they had to call an adult. The more instances they called for real help the more points they got—recorded on a chalkboard at the front doors of the mill—and subsequently fewer fingers were put at risk of being eaten by the gears. Whoever got the most by the end of each week got a tart.Â
It was arduous for the women to keep up with every child’s summons, but it was far more laborious to care for a terrible workplace injury and have both child and caregiver out of a job. Emmy had seen enough gruesome mill injuries.Â
She cocooned her shawl around her shoulders to trap her arms, keeping them well away from the churning mechanical loom and cleared herself another step back for good measure. She’d long been unafraid of the machines, but one could never be too careful. A broken horse could be tamed but still deadly if spooked.Â
When she was done, she screwed another nail into the candle wax to wait another half hour.
Her ears rang dully from the clang-chang of the active looms. When she went home some nights her ears rang, so she resorted to stuffing her ears with a mix of scrap cotton mixed with wax because if not she would be deaf before she turned thirty.Â
And because they worked so well to drown out the looms, she almost didn’t hear the window behind her shatter, only felt the cold and the sharp glass rain on her back before she swung around.
She had a clear three seconds to stare at the destroyed window until a man with a hammer hauled himself through. He wore a coat that looked too big for him which billowed heavily like a cape. If he hadn’t been wearing it his arms and shoulders would have been shredded by the glass.
Logic was crushed between the gear teeth. Her first thought was that she was so small that a swing of a hammer would kill her instantly.Â
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
when natasha pulley said “he would be none the wiser and he would be staying at filigree street, probably for years, still happy, and he wouldn’t have stolen those years from a lonely man who was too decent to mention that they were missing” and “don’t tell me, just intend to, then i’ll forget if you change your mind” and “no one asked him if he wanted anything or if he was all right. It was mori who asked those things” and “i came to england for you” and “you are my best friend, you have always been that” and “you weren’t my thaniel yet” and-
AND WHEN SHE SAID “i didnt say anything. My ribs ached with wanting to. Atom by atom he had managed to become more important than clem or cinchona or anything else, but he was going to live for hundreds of years and i was nothing but another one in a long line of people he would never know well, who died like leaves.”
IM NOT DONE AND WHEN MS PULLEY SAID “he loved mori so hoplessly he could have found a way to excuse cemeteries of dead wives” AND “isnt that what impoverished young artists usually do with old millionaires who fall in love with them” AND “i dont tolerate you. I cant breathe when youre not here, i cant think, i cant write music properly. I spend my whole bloody life waiting for the post. I never said because i thought you didnt want to hear it. We dont talk about any of it” AND “he wanted to drop everything and steal mori away and get drunk at home, and shout at him for being so reckless, and die for him, or live for him, and everything.”
ONCE AGAIN WHEN SHE SAID “I think you’re the same thing in three different lights.” AND “These memories are the best things I have. Please.” AND “You’re my family! You were family before any of them. I’ve missed you even when I didn’t remember you. Everything I’ve done since losing you has been about getting back to you. And I know I’ve left you behind before for other families, but not this time. I can’t do it again.” AND “Home. It was coming up through the deck.” AND “I think that was the happiest I’ve ever been. I’d been sick missing you…and then there you were.”
and whEN SHE SAID “…it was worth risking his life to have just another five minutes of speaking to someone who wanted to listen.” AND “Against the wool, breathing was easier. Shenkov stroked his back, as if he were something nice, like a tame fox. It felt safe.” AND “Shenkov’s gloved hands were still on his ribs, holding him steady on the uneven ground. It felt so safe it was terrible.” ANDD “He would never come first for anybody, that was silly, but he would have given anything for second” AND “If I look sad, it’s because this is the happiest I’ve been for years, and you did that, but you aren’t even one tenth mine and you never will be…and you won’t remember my name, because I’m no one, and that’s how it should be, that’s how healthy minds think. But I’ll just – stop, and you’ll always be important.” AND “All the atoms that make you. You’re star dust.” AND “I know you must be scared of me, God knows I know, but I’d rather shoot myself than hurt you.”
OKAY HI in anticipation of the mars house being published i thought i'd make a side blog for natasha pulley stuff!! and maybe general sci-fi but that pretty much already goes on my star trek blog (which is @agios-rio) my main is @calnrio :)
(my fav pulley book so far is valery k -- i suspect that'll change once the mars house is out though)
i'm absolute shit at answering PMs but i'll answer asks and chit-chat in comments under a post so don't be afraid to say hi!
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