interndana (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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bigapplesauce2014-03-10 10:10 pm
interndana) wrote in bigapplesauce2014-03-10 10:10 pm
Entry tags:
The Howard Gilman Gallery --Dana's Arrival [Open to Multiple]
She is so close to being free.
After talking to Cecil, Dana pockets her phone and takes a deep breath, looking at the door before her. A slight breeze sends hot desert air into the shadowed stillness of the house, and Dana misses that dry desert heat more than she thought possible. She is surprised at her own hesitation to move, but she thinks of her mother and brother, her friends, her work at the station. She exhales shakily and steps forward.
Dana stumbles as she steps through the doorway. When she regains her balance, she looks up and for a moment cannot move, all her forward momentum dissipated into the void. She cannot believe what she is seeing, can barely register the sight at all. For that moment she is numb.
Cold. Dana feels cold, the shock of it cutting through her hoodie, her skin, down into her bones. It is such a violent difference from the light and heat and hope of the desert that she saw through the doorway that it makes her stomach clench.
She is not outside at all, but in a cold room. The air is dry and processed, odorless, sterile. Dana blinks, and when her eyes adjust to the sudden darkness she sees blue-gray walls and alcoves. She looks around, looks behind her at the doorway, but the doorway is gone. There is solid wall behind her, and something else. A framed black and white photograph, lit from above by a subtle recessed bulb. Dana's eyes widen—
The card next to the photograph reads:
Latch and Chain
Ansel Easton Adams (American, San Francisco, California,
1902-1984 Carmel, California)
1927, printed ca. 1936
Gelatin silver print
"What..." Dana murmurs, dismayed. She turns away and sees that the dark walls are hung with other photographs, black and white, the only bright spots in the room. She is in a gallery, and it feels so much stranger to her, somehow, than the dog park or the old empty house. There is nothing dreamlike here, nothing to suggest this place bends reason or physics. It is just a room of photographs, and cold air, and it is so mundane that it terrifies Dana a little.
There is no sign of the doorway through which she entered this place, and the image on the wall before her seems to imply that the way is barred, the door is shut. Dana feels with a cold bleak certainty that she will not go home. Not this way.
"What in the world," she says to herself, looking out at a hallway beyond the gallery's exit. "If this is even the world at all..."
Dana finds herself in a veritable maze of galleries and hallways, and there are other people, which is much less intimidating than being in a large and unfamiliar museum alone. But the other people are all looking at the artwork, or engaging in conversation, and Dana feels the urge to keep moving and see what is beyond the walls. Perhaps if she finds the exit, perhaps this time, finally, she can get home.
She checks her phone; it seems to be getting much better reception than in the old house, and the screen no longer has silvery spider-shapes crawling around the edges. This is probably an improvement.
When she finds a map and directory, she stops, peering at it. The name is familiar to her somehow. Dana frowns at her phone while she composes a text.
[So Dana's at the Met! She'll be making her way into the park from there to see the sights, and if she runs into anyone she will be Extremely Delighted to know that she is in fact corporeal and people can interact with her. Hooray!]
After talking to Cecil, Dana pockets her phone and takes a deep breath, looking at the door before her. A slight breeze sends hot desert air into the shadowed stillness of the house, and Dana misses that dry desert heat more than she thought possible. She is surprised at her own hesitation to move, but she thinks of her mother and brother, her friends, her work at the station. She exhales shakily and steps forward.
Dana stumbles as she steps through the doorway. When she regains her balance, she looks up and for a moment cannot move, all her forward momentum dissipated into the void. She cannot believe what she is seeing, can barely register the sight at all. For that moment she is numb.
Cold. Dana feels cold, the shock of it cutting through her hoodie, her skin, down into her bones. It is such a violent difference from the light and heat and hope of the desert that she saw through the doorway that it makes her stomach clench.
She is not outside at all, but in a cold room. The air is dry and processed, odorless, sterile. Dana blinks, and when her eyes adjust to the sudden darkness she sees blue-gray walls and alcoves. She looks around, looks behind her at the doorway, but the doorway is gone. There is solid wall behind her, and something else. A framed black and white photograph, lit from above by a subtle recessed bulb. Dana's eyes widen—
The card next to the photograph reads:
Latch and Chain
Ansel Easton Adams (American, San Francisco, California,
1902-1984 Carmel, California)
1927, printed ca. 1936
Gelatin silver print
"What..." Dana murmurs, dismayed. She turns away and sees that the dark walls are hung with other photographs, black and white, the only bright spots in the room. She is in a gallery, and it feels so much stranger to her, somehow, than the dog park or the old empty house. There is nothing dreamlike here, nothing to suggest this place bends reason or physics. It is just a room of photographs, and cold air, and it is so mundane that it terrifies Dana a little.
There is no sign of the doorway through which she entered this place, and the image on the wall before her seems to imply that the way is barred, the door is shut. Dana feels with a cold bleak certainty that she will not go home. Not this way.
"What in the world," she says to herself, looking out at a hallway beyond the gallery's exit. "If this is even the world at all..."
Dana finds herself in a veritable maze of galleries and hallways, and there are other people, which is much less intimidating than being in a large and unfamiliar museum alone. But the other people are all looking at the artwork, or engaging in conversation, and Dana feels the urge to keep moving and see what is beyond the walls. Perhaps if she finds the exit, perhaps this time, finally, she can get home.
She checks her phone; it seems to be getting much better reception than in the old house, and the screen no longer has silvery spider-shapes crawling around the edges. This is probably an improvement.
When she finds a map and directory, she stops, peering at it. The name is familiar to her somehow. Dana frowns at her phone while she composes a text.
[So Dana's at the Met! She'll be making her way into the park from there to see the sights, and if she runs into anyone she will be Extremely Delighted to know that she is in fact corporeal and people can interact with her. Hooray!]