Starry Night...
Dec. 24th, 2005 10:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fajrdrakoI couldn't let Christmas go by without writing some sort of Christmas ficlet. I may write more.
Title: Starry Night
Fandom: Horatio Hornblower
Starry Night
Christmas Eve: the sea was calm, the breeze was fresh, and Captain Horatio Hornblower had dismissed his Lieutenants in various stages of inebriation. The doctor, worried about a recent amputation, had departed to visit his patient below, and Horatio was free to stand alone on the deck, to listen to the silence of the night.
The night was not entirely silent, of course. A ship never sleeps. But the sky was as clear and starry as he had ever seen it. He looked up at the sky and wondered what to make of his dramatic patchwork of a life. Was he happy? Tonight, he was content.
He thought about another man, half the world away. What was
Pellew doing this night? He had done so much to shape Horatio's life; to give it meaning.
A Captain's life was characteristically lonely. Wives and sweethearts were left ashore. Lovers of the other type could
not be kept close. Yet the briefest of times with loved ones made all the rest bearable.
While Edward Pellew was alive, Horatio would never feel truly solitary.
He had a small flask of rum in his pocket, and used it to salute a bright star above that shone also over Pellew. "Thank you," he murmured, "for everything."
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Date: 2005-12-24 07:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-24 08:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-25 01:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-25 08:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-25 09:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-25 11:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-25 11:47 pm (UTC)I posted Interlude earlier today - and had a startling revelation while driving to my parents' house this morning - that the things I love about Renown-era Archie are very Lymond-ish. Hmm. More (http://www.livejournal.com/users/rosiespark/49316.html?nc=2) in my reply to
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Date: 2005-12-26 08:58 pm (UTC)Understood - and I love the way you are so tolerant of my Horatio/Pellew fixation.
Your Archie is indeed rather Lymond-like; fair hair, smart mouth, nobly suicidal tendencies. I see less of that in the Archie of the show than you do, but that's okay too; I can still enjoy your version thoroughly. There is lots of room for many interpretations of these characters.
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Date: 2005-12-27 12:47 am (UTC)Your Archie is indeed rather Lymond-like; fair hair, smart mouth, nobly suicidal tendencies.
He is, isn't he? Which may be why you thought (very flatteringly!) that parts of Interlude felt vaguely Dunnettish. Maybe Archie deliberately provoking Bush echoes some of Lymond's less happy scenes with Jerrott? How interesting! And not all that surprising, really, seeing that I've been reading Dunnett for seventeen years.
The funny thing is that, although it now seems so obvious, it hadn't occurred to me before yesterday.
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Date: 2005-12-27 02:36 pm (UTC)Hee - I never thought of Bush as Jerott-like before! But yes, you have that dynamic going on.
Funny what we'll write when we don't realize it.
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Date: 2005-12-27 02:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-27 03:33 pm (UTC)And
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Date: 2005-12-27 06:40 pm (UTC)