008: Sherlock (ACD): Gen
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vocab_drabblesTitle: Halcyon
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (ACD)
Length: 400
Rating: Gen
Notes: Holmes as Captain Basil, during the Hiatus
Summary: Captain Basil tends an injured albatross.
Long after the journey was over and everyone had gone their separate ways, the crew of the Emma Jane would find Captain Basil’s behaviour toward the albatross fodder for a good yarn.
“The way he fretted after that little bird, never seen anything like it,” they would say, of an evening, when old sailors were swapping stories.
Some of the men were eager to kill the albatross and use its hollow bones for pipes. None had read their Coleridge and remembered the plight of the ancient mariner and the luck that messing about with the bird got him.
But Captain Basil had.
The bird had fetched up battered and broken in an odd sort of nest floating on the water. It had been the longest day of winter; everyone who told the story remembered that. The seas had been threatening something fierce and hatches were being battened down as swiftly and surely as they could, but as soon as Captain Basil ordered the bird scooped up, as soon as the creature was out of eminent danger and onto the deck, everything went quiet and still, and so it was for days and days and days. None of the crew had ever seen so many days of good weather, before or since.
And Captain Basil, well, he tended that bird like a mother would tend her only child. Doting-like. Fussy. The crew had never seen him act like that, either. One of them, as a joke, asked if he’d christened it, and he replied, in earnest,
“Names mean something. Its name is Halcyon. It could only be named ‘Halcyon,’ like the bird of myth which charms the winds and waves into calm.” Then he had given a little shrug and a little smirk and added, “Just like John means ‘God is Gracious.’” Then his face took on an expression which many a sailor knows; he was thinking of home, a fond home, far away, which may never be seen again.
But as many a man on deck was named John, or some variation on, they were touched, too, by the captain’s words.
A month later, Captain Basil and the crew said farewell to Halcyon. They all watched as the bird took flight and became a speck, and then only a memory, on the horizon.
Not two days later, there came a storm which would nearly tear the Emma Jane in two.
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (ACD)
Length: 400
Rating: Gen
Notes: Holmes as Captain Basil, during the Hiatus
Summary: Captain Basil tends an injured albatross.
Long after the journey was over and everyone had gone their separate ways, the crew of the Emma Jane would find Captain Basil’s behaviour toward the albatross fodder for a good yarn.
“The way he fretted after that little bird, never seen anything like it,” they would say, of an evening, when old sailors were swapping stories.
Some of the men were eager to kill the albatross and use its hollow bones for pipes. None had read their Coleridge and remembered the plight of the ancient mariner and the luck that messing about with the bird got him.
But Captain Basil had.
The bird had fetched up battered and broken in an odd sort of nest floating on the water. It had been the longest day of winter; everyone who told the story remembered that. The seas had been threatening something fierce and hatches were being battened down as swiftly and surely as they could, but as soon as Captain Basil ordered the bird scooped up, as soon as the creature was out of eminent danger and onto the deck, everything went quiet and still, and so it was for days and days and days. None of the crew had ever seen so many days of good weather, before or since.
And Captain Basil, well, he tended that bird like a mother would tend her only child. Doting-like. Fussy. The crew had never seen him act like that, either. One of them, as a joke, asked if he’d christened it, and he replied, in earnest,
“Names mean something. Its name is Halcyon. It could only be named ‘Halcyon,’ like the bird of myth which charms the winds and waves into calm.” Then he had given a little shrug and a little smirk and added, “Just like John means ‘God is Gracious.’” Then his face took on an expression which many a sailor knows; he was thinking of home, a fond home, far away, which may never be seen again.
But as many a man on deck was named John, or some variation on, they were touched, too, by the captain’s words.
A month later, Captain Basil and the crew said farewell to Halcyon. They all watched as the bird took flight and became a speck, and then only a memory, on the horizon.
Not two days later, there came a storm which would nearly tear the Emma Jane in two.
no subject
Date: 2022-07-20 07:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-20 08:26 pm (UTC)Yeah, we know what normally happens at sea in a Holmes tale!
no subject
Date: 2022-07-20 07:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-20 08:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-20 09:50 pm (UTC)Love the icon!