Title: Orlando Cannot Be Seen
Author: Lobelia; [email protected]

Website: http://www.geocities.com/lobelia321/
Pairing: Orlando Bloom / Dominic Monaghan
Rating: G
Category: Curlficlet.
Summary: The curls are flying in the breeze.
Feedback: Yes, please, I would love feedback! Anything, even if it's only one line, one word!
Content/Warnings: RPS. Second person singular.
Spoilers: None.
Archive Rights: Beyond the Fellowship. My niche. Anyone else, please ask.
Disclaimers: This is a work of amateur fiction. I do not know these people. I am not making money. The events described in this story did not happen.
Author's Notes: For Jenn.

-----

Orlando cannot be seen.

Orlando is standing in front of the sun. He is a black silhouette, black against the sun. The only thing that can be seen of Orlando is the halo around his head. The backlit, sunshone aura around his skull, where the sun gleams through the curls.

The curls are flying in the breeze. They are tugged hither, they are tugged thither. They look alive. They look like sprites dancing around the inert centre of Orlando's blackness.

"I'm not sure this'll turn out," you say. But you press the shutter, anyway.

When the picture is printed, weeks hence, you will look at the silhouette, you will look at the sun around Orlando's head, you will look at the spots of light blotched across the paper in an unintended photographic effect. The photo look blotched, as if it's been lying in the puddles next to a kitchen sink. As if someone's been dripping tears on it. As if the sun itself had turned to liquid salt.

You will go back to the darkroom and you will burn in the surroundings. You'll use matt, low-contrast paper and you'll expose the centre for half a second only. You'll whip the card out of the fixer and peer at it in the infrared light.

And there's the face. It will be seen. Orlando will be seen. He will be looking straight at you. He won't be smiling. His features will only just be visible in the murk of his low-contrast face. And the sun will have gone. All that will be left will be a drab grey-in-grey blotch, all around Orlando's murky face.

'Was I really there?' you'll think. 'Did this really happen?'

-----

1 July 2003

All original parts of this story: © Lobelia