Mar. 1st, 2017

[personal profile] witchweird
[The camera starts off focused tightly on Wanda's face, the smile on her lips and the glint in her eyes. The background is green and out of focus.]

[She tilts her head to the side, choosing her words with care.]


There's something I want to share.

[Wanda turns the camera away from herself and tilts it up to show a gold and white globe dangling from a giant branch far up in the forest canopy. The picture cuts out for a second, and when it resumes, the camera is rising toward the globe.]

[Plausible deniability -- it could very easily be a camera attached to a remote control helicopter or some other device capable of flying. It isn't; Wanda's doing the filming by hand. But it could be.]


It's a traditional design from a world far away from here, but I was the apprentice paper-folder and I folded almost every fold -- it was a great deal of work -- and I have permission to show you the result.

[The ascent takes longer than might have been expected and the globe, when it's reached, seems larger than it had from the ground.]

[As the camera moves around the globe, it becomes clear that it's made entirely out of a shiny waterproof paper. Some areas are folded into organic designs, folded so much these areas are duller than the rest -- they almost look formed by some biological process. Some sections are more geometric. On of the pentagons is actually an opening that the camera passes through.]

[The inside is filled with structural components, thin cables and shiny metal fasteners and more sturdy paper folded into delicate supports. As the camera moves through what is a surprisingly large area, light and shadow mingle in complex patterns.]

[When the camera reaches the middle of the sphere, the top unfolds in an iris pattern, the whole structuring compressing to make an opening, and light pours in.]

[A stick-like alien suddenly leaps through the opening, and everything starts swinging back and forth, dizzying. Wanda can be heard laughing before the picture blips again, back outside, Wanda perched on a wide tree limb and the paper globe -- still swaying, though it may just be the breeze now -- behind her.]


I think it's beautiful.

[Wanda glances back, then shrugs at the camera.]

If you're not shaped like an insect, if you weigh more than a grapefruit, there are more practical, less fragile designs -- I'm making my own place to live, too, now that this is done, and it won't be a hanging garden...

But I think I'd like to live somewhere ... somewhere that makes me happy to live there, because it means something, even on a foreign planet. Something that reminds me of who I am, but also... [She hesitates.] A place that is beautiful.

[She shrugs, and adds, a little wry--] I suppose one must always have dreams.