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

[love-jackianto.livejournal.com]

Oh I liked that last line. Very poetic :D

[itsarift-thing.livejournal.com]

OH that's got a lot of depth to it.

one knife from a drawer of dozens; this child but not her sister; the husband from bed leaving the wife among the sheets

Is absolutely gorgeous.

(and I have PM'd you - is compulsive beta *aplogises*)

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

oooh, the rift as an entity itself, picking and choosing. Love it

[hab318princess.livejournal.com]

lovely, scary but true

[adafrog.livejournal.com]

Lovely.

[topgeargirl2.livejournal.com]

very good

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Beautiful. This really brings home how dangerous the Rift is, how it can affect anyone randomly at any time.

[rabecka.livejournal.com]

That's gorgeous. And eerie. I love the image of something alive sending out tendrils.

It appears on soft paws
This really, really reminds me of something, but I can't think what. Arg!...