Torchwood drabble: Mercurial

[littledoglaughed]

Title: Mercurial
Author: rustydog
Characters: the Rift
Rating/spoilers: rated G, no spoilers
Beta: mad_jaks
Notes: Written for tw100's challenge #102, "endangered words"


It appears on soft paws: its dexterous tentacles choose one knife from a drawer of dozens; this child but not her sister; the husband from bed, leaving the wife among the sheets, the tinny taste of ozone ringing her throat.

Or it is a lightning cloud: mercurial as a tornado, it skips this farmhouse and devastates the next, no pattern to its swirling atomic trail of debris. It deposits the flock on a grassy hill a century hence and drops the lamb light years away on the shore of a poison sea.

Without conscience, the Rift gives and takes away.

Comments

[rustydog.livejournal.com]

Even if you've studied the New Testament, that might be one that's not too memorable - I suspect it's not really quoted a lot except in evangelical circles when people are talking about the concept of the Rapture. In fact, I forgot it was in Luke, I looked for it first in Revelation.

Yeah, "Adrift" was *about* the Rift itself more than any episode before, though I think it raised more questions than it answered!

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

I like how the Rift is sort of another member of Torchwood, an unpredictable and kind of mean one, but a member none the less