![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
garnigal.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
tamingthemuseTitle: Paradise
Fandom: Firefly
Prompt: A Fool’s Paradise
Warnings: None
Rating: G
Word Count: 527
Summary: A clean, white place.
It was so clean and white here. Nothing like home… nothing like the place I’d grown up. Mother had tried. Probably she’d tried. She’d always been busy at the stove, always mixing up a big stew or porridge to keep the family, the extended family and the occasional wandering tramp well fed. And wasn’t that a pleasant thing to come home to after a long day at school – a smelly hobo grinning idiotically and shovelling mush into his toothless mouth.
And Father had been no help, really. Mother and the children had adored him, his booming voice and ready laugh and constant playfulness. He’d been a good provider, I suppose. There was always plenty to eat, and I couldn’t fault his concern for my education. I’d gotten the best schooling I could on our tiny moon, and Father had been the one who found the scholarship that got me off to university on Ariel. But he’d never managed to control himself, and Mother was always in the family way, with the babies stair stepping down year after year. They’d might have been well-off and well-respected, had Mother not been so trapped by the babies, had all the money not gone to feeding the small army Mother and Father had single-handedly brought into the world.
They’d cried real tears when he left, all of them waving frantically, Mother, Father and all his sibs. They’d told him he would do wonderfully, not to worry if he felt homesick. They’d told him it would be a short four years and then he’d be back home with them, as if that was supposed to cheer him up. As if that was what he dreamed of.
He said nothing, just smiled and waved back, knowing this would never be his home again. This might be their paradise, but he had nothing in common with those fools.
His years on Ariel had been an education all senses of the word. He’d learned so much at the school, but so much more from his new classmates. Classmates who’d seen his intelligence, his quality, his ambition and nurtured it. Polished him to a shine and delivered him to the world. Delivered him to this clean, bright place.
He’d been recruited for this job right out of school. He’d been awed when the letter came, boasted to all his friends, and waved his parents with the good news. They’d been… disappointed. They’d truly believed he’d come home, waste his central planet polish on that backwoods moon, waste his days working for the same company his father worked for, waste his nights impregnating whatever uneducated girl they chose for his wife.
Instead he was here. He was doing important work, work for the government. He was working with some of the finest minds in the central planets, in the entire Universe. He was working with the most advanced equipment he’d ever heard of and even some that he’d never seen before. He was being paid more in a single year than his father saw in a decade.
And he never had to return to the dustbowl town he grew up in. Now this… this was truly paradise.
Fandom: Firefly
Prompt: A Fool’s Paradise
Warnings: None
Rating: G
Word Count: 527
Summary: A clean, white place.
It was so clean and white here. Nothing like home… nothing like the place I’d grown up. Mother had tried. Probably she’d tried. She’d always been busy at the stove, always mixing up a big stew or porridge to keep the family, the extended family and the occasional wandering tramp well fed. And wasn’t that a pleasant thing to come home to after a long day at school – a smelly hobo grinning idiotically and shovelling mush into his toothless mouth.
And Father had been no help, really. Mother and the children had adored him, his booming voice and ready laugh and constant playfulness. He’d been a good provider, I suppose. There was always plenty to eat, and I couldn’t fault his concern for my education. I’d gotten the best schooling I could on our tiny moon, and Father had been the one who found the scholarship that got me off to university on Ariel. But he’d never managed to control himself, and Mother was always in the family way, with the babies stair stepping down year after year. They’d might have been well-off and well-respected, had Mother not been so trapped by the babies, had all the money not gone to feeding the small army Mother and Father had single-handedly brought into the world.
They’d cried real tears when he left, all of them waving frantically, Mother, Father and all his sibs. They’d told him he would do wonderfully, not to worry if he felt homesick. They’d told him it would be a short four years and then he’d be back home with them, as if that was supposed to cheer him up. As if that was what he dreamed of.
He said nothing, just smiled and waved back, knowing this would never be his home again. This might be their paradise, but he had nothing in common with those fools.
His years on Ariel had been an education all senses of the word. He’d learned so much at the school, but so much more from his new classmates. Classmates who’d seen his intelligence, his quality, his ambition and nurtured it. Polished him to a shine and delivered him to the world. Delivered him to this clean, bright place.
He’d been recruited for this job right out of school. He’d been awed when the letter came, boasted to all his friends, and waved his parents with the good news. They’d been… disappointed. They’d truly believed he’d come home, waste his central planet polish on that backwoods moon, waste his days working for the same company his father worked for, waste his nights impregnating whatever uneducated girl they chose for his wife.
Instead he was here. He was doing important work, work for the government. He was working with some of the finest minds in the central planets, in the entire Universe. He was working with the most advanced equipment he’d ever heard of and even some that he’d never seen before. He was being paid more in a single year than his father saw in a decade.
And he never had to return to the dustbowl town he grew up in. Now this… this was truly paradise.
