Random elseworld piece
Sep. 23rd, 2010 10:46 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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writing_shadowsRio Knight was mildly irritated. The comparative philology seminar she'd arranged for her postgrad students was down to two. She was meant to be overseeing the MPhil course this year, and she was meant to have five students on it. It was the first year she'd been in charge of the course and she'd been pretty damn proud of herself for getting that. OK, so it was only because Jack Hanrahan had vanished on sabbatical, after getting a research grant, and Mavis Peppers had had to taken early retirement for health reasons, but that wasn't the point. It equally was not the point that comparative philology was a tiny and obscure subject and she was still expected to teach Latin to snotty undergraduates to make up her teaching hours. The point was that this was a huge step forward for her, for her career, for...for everything really. Even if it did mean that the odds of her being able to take maternity leave this year had just dropped to non-existant, but that didn't matter really. This was far more important.
Except that this was the first of the compulsory weekly seminars for the postgrad students, and already she'd lost over half of them! Two of them, apparently, had to go to the same funeral. They had gone to the same expensive girl's boarding school, once upon a time, and one of their classmates had died of a drug's overdose. The message that she had received from one of them had sounded as if she ought to know this girl - Venice Fortescue - and should entirely understand why they had to miss the seminar. Rio had not heard of this unfortunately named individual. A quick google search had told her that she was the daughter of someone rich, who Rio had also never heard of, and the discovery of her dead body, which had been found absolutely naked in the bath of a Roman Catholic Cardinal, had been a major news story for three days last week.
Rio had pulled a face at this and commented darkly to Jonah that she hadn't missed seminars for funerals when she was doing her MPhil. Jonah's expression had been understanding, and he hadn't mentioned that Rio didn't really have many people she could go to the funerals of. She had colleagues, rather than friends. She had Jonah rather than a family. She had kept in touch with Isabelle until her death last year, and since then she hadn't spoken to anyone from their shared childhood. Really, Isabelle had been the only link for years, through her relationship with Raph.
The other student, Rio was informed, was going to the circus. This pained her more than she could say. She didn't care if it was an amazing troupe, who were on Oxford for one day only. That was not an OK reason to skip a seminar. She had walked past the circus that morning, and glared at the posters as she did so, and later complained vehemently to Rowan Cant, who was one of the mature students on the Latin course. Rowan had grinned.
"It's as good a reason as any. I used to be in a circus, you know..."
Rio had blinked at this.
"You were in the circus?"
Rowan smiled.
"Yeah. Ran away from home when I was sixteen to join the circus. I used to do acrobatics, and some stage magic. It wasn't anything like the kind of show that your student has gone to see, but it was fun. Best five years of my life."
Rio tried not to wince at that statement. Why would someone do that? Not run away from home - she'd pretty much done that when she was eighteen - but just leap into the unknown, the unpredictable, the messy and the dirty?
"Five years?" she said, in what she hoped was her polite tone of voice. Jonah sometimes teased her for her bluntness.
Rowan grinned.
"Yeah. Five years. Then I moved to Edinburgh. My husband was going to university there. Well, boyfriend at the time. We lived in this tiny room with a bed in one corner, a kitchen unit in the other and a shared toilet in the hall. We were stupidly poor. I used to dodge the police to busk on Prince's Street so we could pay the rent."
Rio did wince at that. She hated talking about poverty. It brought back too many bad memories, even though she now lived in a four bedroomed Georgian house and drove a brand new mini cooper. She didn't like to remember the years when she hadn't been able to eat, hadn't been able to afford shoes.
"I suppose at least you're at university now," she'd said instead, aware she sounded faintly disapproving.
Rowan had nodded. "David's working these days, and we worked out we could afford for me to do it."
She smiled. "Even if it's the most useless degree I could have chosen. He said it was probably too much to ask for more from me..."
Rio had laughed at this. It was a fair cop. Not many people thought Classics were useful, but it had worked for her. Or she had worked for it. She wasn't sure which, but at least she had worked, which was more than three of her postgrad students were doing.
And now she was sitting in the seminar room with her remaining two students, trying to motivate herself to start the session properly whilst they gossiped about their grandmothers of all things.
"I never realized that she was a lesbian," one of the students was saying, which was one hell of a sentence for Rio to mentally enter the conversation on. "I mean, I always knew that there was this huge scandal in the 1960s, when she left my grandfather, because people didn't get divorced in those days. He was her childhood sweetheart, my mother always said. He'd met her when she was 13, in 1943. He was 18 and about to join the army. He carried her picture on him for two years during World War Two and proposed to her the day that he got back. But she was only fifteen so they had to wait until 1947, when she was seventeen. It was this big romance, and then suddenly, fifteen years later, she left him.
"Just turned around and said that she couldn't live in this cage anymore. She went off to live with this other woman, who was this Bohemian artist. I remember her when I was a kid - she was older than Gran - very tall and thin with grey hair and a craggy nose. Quite posh - totally unlike my Grandpa. They were very working class, you see. Quite ordinary people. It shocked everyone. My great-grandparents apparently kicked up this huge fuss and my mother had to go and live with them. Wouldn't let her stay with Gran and this woman. Now, when I was a kid, I never quite got why. What was so shocking about getting divorced? But now I see that wasn't it at all..."
"That's kind of sweet," the other student said, and smiled a little. "And amazingly brave of her to do that. I mean, just defy convention like that. I like hearing stories about women who can do that. But I'm from this line of really tough women. My grandmother was a member of the Knesset and was there for the founding of the state of Israel. Not a signatory, but there for it. She and my mother were the only two of my family to survive the Holocaust. They walked out of Birkenau together, and apparently my grandmother pretty much got them both on the first ship she could find which would get them to Israel. She said that the one thing that Birkenau had taught her is that you can't rely on the sympathy of others. She was very tough. Very big on not being a victim, on never thinking of our people as victims."
The first student blinked.
"I didn't know you were Jewish?"
"Oh, we're not religious at all," the other student assured the first.
Rio cleared her throat.
"OK," she said, with some determination. "Enough with the family history."
She sighed slightly. Family histories always depressed her. Families, in general, depressed her. Still, she wouldn't think of that. She had Jonah and that was all she had ever needed. She straightened her notes.
"So," she said firmly. "Cuniform. Shall we begin?"
Except that this was the first of the compulsory weekly seminars for the postgrad students, and already she'd lost over half of them! Two of them, apparently, had to go to the same funeral. They had gone to the same expensive girl's boarding school, once upon a time, and one of their classmates had died of a drug's overdose. The message that she had received from one of them had sounded as if she ought to know this girl - Venice Fortescue - and should entirely understand why they had to miss the seminar. Rio had not heard of this unfortunately named individual. A quick google search had told her that she was the daughter of someone rich, who Rio had also never heard of, and the discovery of her dead body, which had been found absolutely naked in the bath of a Roman Catholic Cardinal, had been a major news story for three days last week.
Rio had pulled a face at this and commented darkly to Jonah that she hadn't missed seminars for funerals when she was doing her MPhil. Jonah's expression had been understanding, and he hadn't mentioned that Rio didn't really have many people she could go to the funerals of. She had colleagues, rather than friends. She had Jonah rather than a family. She had kept in touch with Isabelle until her death last year, and since then she hadn't spoken to anyone from their shared childhood. Really, Isabelle had been the only link for years, through her relationship with Raph.
The other student, Rio was informed, was going to the circus. This pained her more than she could say. She didn't care if it was an amazing troupe, who were on Oxford for one day only. That was not an OK reason to skip a seminar. She had walked past the circus that morning, and glared at the posters as she did so, and later complained vehemently to Rowan Cant, who was one of the mature students on the Latin course. Rowan had grinned.
"It's as good a reason as any. I used to be in a circus, you know..."
Rio had blinked at this.
"You were in the circus?"
Rowan smiled.
"Yeah. Ran away from home when I was sixteen to join the circus. I used to do acrobatics, and some stage magic. It wasn't anything like the kind of show that your student has gone to see, but it was fun. Best five years of my life."
Rio tried not to wince at that statement. Why would someone do that? Not run away from home - she'd pretty much done that when she was eighteen - but just leap into the unknown, the unpredictable, the messy and the dirty?
"Five years?" she said, in what she hoped was her polite tone of voice. Jonah sometimes teased her for her bluntness.
Rowan grinned.
"Yeah. Five years. Then I moved to Edinburgh. My husband was going to university there. Well, boyfriend at the time. We lived in this tiny room with a bed in one corner, a kitchen unit in the other and a shared toilet in the hall. We were stupidly poor. I used to dodge the police to busk on Prince's Street so we could pay the rent."
Rio did wince at that. She hated talking about poverty. It brought back too many bad memories, even though she now lived in a four bedroomed Georgian house and drove a brand new mini cooper. She didn't like to remember the years when she hadn't been able to eat, hadn't been able to afford shoes.
"I suppose at least you're at university now," she'd said instead, aware she sounded faintly disapproving.
Rowan had nodded. "David's working these days, and we worked out we could afford for me to do it."
She smiled. "Even if it's the most useless degree I could have chosen. He said it was probably too much to ask for more from me..."
Rio had laughed at this. It was a fair cop. Not many people thought Classics were useful, but it had worked for her. Or she had worked for it. She wasn't sure which, but at least she had worked, which was more than three of her postgrad students were doing.
And now she was sitting in the seminar room with her remaining two students, trying to motivate herself to start the session properly whilst they gossiped about their grandmothers of all things.
"I never realized that she was a lesbian," one of the students was saying, which was one hell of a sentence for Rio to mentally enter the conversation on. "I mean, I always knew that there was this huge scandal in the 1960s, when she left my grandfather, because people didn't get divorced in those days. He was her childhood sweetheart, my mother always said. He'd met her when she was 13, in 1943. He was 18 and about to join the army. He carried her picture on him for two years during World War Two and proposed to her the day that he got back. But she was only fifteen so they had to wait until 1947, when she was seventeen. It was this big romance, and then suddenly, fifteen years later, she left him.
"Just turned around and said that she couldn't live in this cage anymore. She went off to live with this other woman, who was this Bohemian artist. I remember her when I was a kid - she was older than Gran - very tall and thin with grey hair and a craggy nose. Quite posh - totally unlike my Grandpa. They were very working class, you see. Quite ordinary people. It shocked everyone. My great-grandparents apparently kicked up this huge fuss and my mother had to go and live with them. Wouldn't let her stay with Gran and this woman. Now, when I was a kid, I never quite got why. What was so shocking about getting divorced? But now I see that wasn't it at all..."
"That's kind of sweet," the other student said, and smiled a little. "And amazingly brave of her to do that. I mean, just defy convention like that. I like hearing stories about women who can do that. But I'm from this line of really tough women. My grandmother was a member of the Knesset and was there for the founding of the state of Israel. Not a signatory, but there for it. She and my mother were the only two of my family to survive the Holocaust. They walked out of Birkenau together, and apparently my grandmother pretty much got them both on the first ship she could find which would get them to Israel. She said that the one thing that Birkenau had taught her is that you can't rely on the sympathy of others. She was very tough. Very big on not being a victim, on never thinking of our people as victims."
The first student blinked.
"I didn't know you were Jewish?"
"Oh, we're not religious at all," the other student assured the first.
Rio cleared her throat.
"OK," she said, with some determination. "Enough with the family history."
She sighed slightly. Family histories always depressed her. Families, in general, depressed her. Still, she wouldn't think of that. She had Jonah and that was all she had ever needed. She straightened her notes.
"So," she said firmly. "Cuniform. Shall we begin?"
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Date: 2010-09-23 10:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-23 10:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-23 11:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-23 11:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-23 12:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-23 12:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-23 12:38 pm (UTC)I actually have no idea what they'd be like without the Magic, as they'd be so wildly different, and just boring people.
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Date: 2010-09-23 12:41 pm (UTC)Wolfram would have ended up being in the Nuremburg Trials what with having been an SS Doctor.
The rest I have no idea who they were before The Event (to steal from Mitchell & Webb) to say what they would have been like without it.