Farscape ficlet: "How Can I Keep From Singing?"

[icepixie]

While this calls itself a ficlet, it's really both an excuse to use some lines I'd thought up, but was too lazy to work into a poem, and a shamelessly sentimental love letter to my home country. Take it for no more and no less than that.


DISCLAIMER: Farscape isn't mine, but you all knew that anyway.
FEEDBACK/ARCHIVING: All feedback is welcomed. If you'd like to archive, please let me know where it's going by e-mailing author1[at]comcast[dot]net.
RATING: G
PAIRING: John/Aeryn
TIMLINE: Sometime late first season, perhaps?
SUMMARY: "Shenandoah is in Virginia, and it's the most beautiful place on Earth."

"How Can I Keep From Singing?"
by Icepixie, December 2004

* * *

Aeryn had been close to falling asleep, sitting here on the Terrace in the circle of John's arms with his fingers running through her hair. And then she heard him begin to hum absently, a wistful tune she had never heard before.

"What are you humming?"

"It's a song about a river valley, or maybe an Indian princess." John's arm tightened about Aeryn's middle, and he dropped his head so that his lips almost touched her ear. His voice took on a dreamy quality, and Aeryn knew that part of him had flown out of this magnificent room, returning to some memory deep inside his mind.

"Shenandoah is in Virginia, and it's the most beautiful place on Earth. There are bigger mountains out west, but none as pretty as these. They're old and plump, like a grandmother who bakes you cookies on Sunday afternoons, and they're covered in all kinds of trees--there are these pine trees that would be almost as tall as Moya if she were standin' up vertical, and they have needles as soft as wool. There's hardwood trees, too, and when they turn orange and red and gold in the fall, it's like..." John paused, wondering how to put it into words. "It's like God laughed, and the laugh broke into a million pieces and rained down on the leaves." He drew a deep breath. "And from a distance, all the mountains are the most incredible shade of blue--it's like nothin' you've ever seen before." John exhaled lightly, endless sorrow contained in one breath.

Aeryn, who had never seen a tree in autumn or a blue mountain, and who had little idea of what God was, grasped John's hand as she felt a few unfamiliar tears prick at her eyelids. "I would like to see this Shen-an-doe," she said.

She could sense John's gentle smile as he softly kissed her hair. "One day you will, Aeryn. I promise."

They lapsed into comfortable silence once more as the stars continued to move slowly past. Eventually, John began humming again. "Hmmm-hmm-hmm-hmm...I long to see you...I'm bound away, across the wide Missouri..."

End

Comments

[comedownstairs.livejournal.com]

Awwwww...