rec: Salt by Cathica

[elliptic-eye.livejournal.com]

One to make up for Wednesday, which I most shamefully missed.

Story: Salt
Author: Cathica
Rating: All ages
Word Count: 1,284
Author's Summary: Tears always leave an aftertaste.
Characters/Pairings: Rose Tyler
Warnings: none

Recced because: Salt has a beautiful, cutting quality to it. It's a miniature mystery, though one that's entirely about Rose's inner world, and worth reading for the prose alone: It achieves a timbre that's at once matter-of-fact-and opulent, hyperreal and slightly absurd. It has edges where you don't expect them.

Salt captures a room in the TARDIS from what's at once an inside and an outside perspective flawlessly. Does a fine job with the inside of Rose's head, too.

One small pot, hand-thrown, painted in bands of red and peach, lifted in passing from the ruins of Pompeii. Still a faint dusting of ash inside. Volcano Day , she thinks, and drains her wineglass too quickly.

A heavy gold bracelet set with pigeon-blood rubies. A fine piece of jewelry. Or it could be part of an alien internal combustion engine.

One twenty-year-old blonde who, tonight, feels as if she has too much in common with the Doctor's stash of memorabilia.

And, of course, there's the statue.