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metonomial_a_r_m showed me this blog that was all in raptures over the following short story, which was written by Eileen Chang:
Love
This is real.
There was once a daughter of a tolerably well-off family in the country who was very lovely and sought out by many matchmakers, although nothing had come of their efforts. That year, she was only fifteen or sixteen years old. One spring evening, she stood by the back door, hands resting on a peach tree. She remembered that she was wearing a moon-white tunic. She had seen the young man who lived across the way, but they had never spoken. He walked toward her, came to a halt close by, and said softly: “So you’re here, too?” She did not say anything, and he did not say more. They stood for a moment and then went their separate ways.
That was all.
Later, the girl was abducted by a swindler in the family and sold as a concubine in some far-off town, then sold several times more, passing through any number of trials and ordeals. When she was old, she still remembered that incident and often spoke of that evening in spring, the peach tree by the back door, that young man.
When you meet the one among the millions, when amid millions of years, across the borderless wastes of time, you happen to catch him or her, neither a step too early nor a step too late, what else is there to do except to ask softly: “So you’re here, too?”
---
It's pretty writing, to be sure, but I don't really like it at all - we spent quite some time discussing how it make such a fantasy out of love, and in such a way that to me seems so negative. The girl gets one glimpse at love and then it makes it alright that she gets kidnapped and sold as a sex slave, because she has that one memory of that one moment with the guy who happened to be her true love. I want more from it - I want to know something about the boy, I want to know just why it remains so firmly in her memory, I want more focus on how awful it is that she gets enslaved...the love becomes a fantasy - for all we know she imagined the encounter! - and the story is way too apathetic to match the sense of wonder and peace that I think it's trying to evoke.
And so, as one does, LaRM and I decided it needed to be fixed through fan fic, so we wrote Lucy/Caspian drabbles using the story's formula, ish. I don't actually really love mine - I think it might possibly be just as apathetic as the original, but hey, it was an excuse to write Lucy/Caspian, so I'm all over it.
There was a girl – a queen, though sometimes she was just a girl – and she loved a boy.
Once upon a time, she and her brothers and sister helped him win his kingdom. She remembered the first time they’d spoken, outside, at night, with the moon overhead and the stars singing to welcome her return, the blood done spilling and the healing beginning. “So you’re here, too?” he’d asked as he came upon her in the tall grass, a question but one without any surprise.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she’d replied. “The castle smells like winter, and blood.”
Neither spoke any more that night, but they sat together watching the sun rise, and then they stood up and walked back together.
That was all the time they got together, before she was sent back into the world where she was a little girl without a kingdom or a king. But she remembered, and often dreamed of that night, quiet and calm beneath the sky, that boy whom she loved in that world that she loved.
And when they finally met again, years and a year later, finding each other across oceans and worlds, she could think of nothing to say except, “So you’re here, too.”
“I am here,” he said, “and so are you,” and the reality was sweeter and more beautiful than any remembrance of a dream.
Love
This is real.
There was once a daughter of a tolerably well-off family in the country who was very lovely and sought out by many matchmakers, although nothing had come of their efforts. That year, she was only fifteen or sixteen years old. One spring evening, she stood by the back door, hands resting on a peach tree. She remembered that she was wearing a moon-white tunic. She had seen the young man who lived across the way, but they had never spoken. He walked toward her, came to a halt close by, and said softly: “So you’re here, too?” She did not say anything, and he did not say more. They stood for a moment and then went their separate ways.
That was all.
Later, the girl was abducted by a swindler in the family and sold as a concubine in some far-off town, then sold several times more, passing through any number of trials and ordeals. When she was old, she still remembered that incident and often spoke of that evening in spring, the peach tree by the back door, that young man.
When you meet the one among the millions, when amid millions of years, across the borderless wastes of time, you happen to catch him or her, neither a step too early nor a step too late, what else is there to do except to ask softly: “So you’re here, too?”
---
It's pretty writing, to be sure, but I don't really like it at all - we spent quite some time discussing how it make such a fantasy out of love, and in such a way that to me seems so negative. The girl gets one glimpse at love and then it makes it alright that she gets kidnapped and sold as a sex slave, because she has that one memory of that one moment with the guy who happened to be her true love. I want more from it - I want to know something about the boy, I want to know just why it remains so firmly in her memory, I want more focus on how awful it is that she gets enslaved...the love becomes a fantasy - for all we know she imagined the encounter! - and the story is way too apathetic to match the sense of wonder and peace that I think it's trying to evoke.
And so, as one does, LaRM and I decided it needed to be fixed through fan fic, so we wrote Lucy/Caspian drabbles using the story's formula, ish. I don't actually really love mine - I think it might possibly be just as apathetic as the original, but hey, it was an excuse to write Lucy/Caspian, so I'm all over it.
There was a girl – a queen, though sometimes she was just a girl – and she loved a boy.
Once upon a time, she and her brothers and sister helped him win his kingdom. She remembered the first time they’d spoken, outside, at night, with the moon overhead and the stars singing to welcome her return, the blood done spilling and the healing beginning. “So you’re here, too?” he’d asked as he came upon her in the tall grass, a question but one without any surprise.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she’d replied. “The castle smells like winter, and blood.”
Neither spoke any more that night, but they sat together watching the sun rise, and then they stood up and walked back together.
That was all the time they got together, before she was sent back into the world where she was a little girl without a kingdom or a king. But she remembered, and often dreamed of that night, quiet and calm beneath the sky, that boy whom she loved in that world that she loved.
And when they finally met again, years and a year later, finding each other across oceans and worlds, she could think of nothing to say except, “So you’re here, too.”
“I am here,” he said, “and so are you,” and the reality was sweeter and more beautiful than any remembrance of a dream.
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Date: 2010-04-28 09:11 pm (UTC)