Writer’s Block
A picture says a thousand words. Write them.
Mission: Write a story, a description, a poem, a metaphor, a commentary, or a critique about this picture. Write something about this picture.
Be sure to tag writeworld in your block!
So I saw the image prompt from writeworld, and this decided it needed to come out. I don’t know whether it’s going to be a standalone piece in the Barrow Wight series (I think I’m going to call the series “On the Naming of Things”), or if belongs somewhere in the next chapter or two. But since you follow my Tumblr, you get to see it now!
Barrow Wight Snippet, in which you learn why Sherlock always takes cabs:
The straight tracks.
A thousand years ago, when Sherlock last walked this world, the straight tracks ran, flowing from one sacred site to another, in the places where the Earth’s invisible blood welled up. One who could taste the unseen things of the world could tap that tide, even step into it and let themselves be carried, if they had the will and the courage.
Back then, humans marked the straight tracks with standing stones, which served as both veneration and warning. They still remembered, then, that there was no such thing as tame power. A man touched the straight tracks with as much care as he approached fire or lightning or love.
Now, Sherlock walks the railway tracks of London, feeling their Power tug at him, and wonders at what humans have become. Here, in their centres of power, they have built straight tracks of their own. Wrought them from the bones they wrested from the Earth and laid across her face, pumping London’s invisible blood through its human-built veins and flanked by the monolithic sentries of modern towers.
John walks next to him, his faithful chaperon. Sherlock can feel that sturdy hearth fire of human attention burning against him, trying to read Sherlock’s silence through the set of his shoulders and the swing of his stride.
“You built these rivers of Power,” he finally says out loud, just to give John something. “And then did you forget their price? You let your mortal souls be dragged along them, and think so little of it that you never even notice how they steal your essence away.”
John’s brow furrows. He takes a few more steps before he replies, trying to sense what Sherlock is talking about. Sherlock basks in a glow of pride; good John. He catches on so quickly. Humans aren’t entirely blind to the invisible world if they only pay attention.
“The Tube,” he finally says. “You’re saying that the Tube is dangerous.”
“Isn’t it?” Sherlock challenges him. “Haven’t you felt the pull of oblivion? The dissolution of the self?” John opens his mouth but says nothing, looking perplexed. “Tell me you can’t recognize that emptiness in the eyes that overtakes someone who’s travelled the Lines too many times.”
John closes his mouth, and turns his face down to the tracks they’re walking. ”The Tube,” he says finally. ”Magic.”
“Do me a kindness, John,” Sherlock requests of him, “and never take the Tube without need.”
BBC Sherlock fic: Barrow Wight Snippet