@lizbob asked for Goodsir and “burst”
Harry is entrenched in the warm nook of his study, making the final corrections to the proofs of Anatomical and Pathological Observations, when his brother deposits a thick cream envelope onto the desk, Harry’s name written in rounded copperplate just below the prominent seal of the Admiralty.
“Morning post just arrived,” John says, his eyes warm with pride.
As he opens it, Harry can barely breathe for excitement, his heart fit to burst within his chest – for here it is, his commission, an appointment to serve as the assistant surgeon on board the HMS Erebus, the flagship of the expedition sent to chart the Northwest Passage, commanded by Sir John Franklin himself.
The expedition is set to depart from Greenhithe in mid-May, and already Harry is thinking of all the work that must be done before he leaves Edinburgh: the necessary observational equipment and tools to be purchased and packed, his passage to London booked, and of course he must at once begin a proper inquiry into all the relevant Arctic memoirs and works on the natural history of the region.
And after he returns to England, laden with notes and crates of specimens, perhaps he will compose his own authoritative study, one that would undoubtedly secure his reputation as one of the new scientific lights of the age.
[send me a Terror character + a word and I’ll write you a five-sentence fic]
