How Green Becomes Wood

Despite his normal rules against not taking posed photographs, this seemed like... a fine time to break the rule, "Okay... but he said we aren't allowed to... touch, so..."

"Ah, I'll stand near him, if that's alright with you. Eveyrone wants a picture with the skin book," Pryce said, before leading them to where a number of books were shelved, all clearly very old, and since they were back there, one could guess they had some level of significant. He pulled one book off the shelf, bound in what seemed very simply to be leather, "This is Le traicté de Peyne: poëme allégorique dédié à Monseigneur et à Madame de Lorraynne," he did have to read from the cover, but his French pronunciation wasn't bad, "It's from the 16th century. This is it, the human skin book. It's actually the only confirmed book of it's genre to be bound this way. And have I what? Bound a book in human skin? Myself, no."
 
"Okay... no idea what any of that meant other than I think you said something about a madam and a mister," Xander said slowly. He moved to stand close to the book without touching it or getting too close to Pryce. He looked closely at the book for a moment before turning to Milo. He held his hand out and tried to make it look like he was balancing the book on his own hand without actually touching it, his face pulled into an overly serious expression as he glared at the camera. "How's this?"

He was trying not to let on, but he could feel the nervous sweat beading at his neck, and his hand trembled slightly. It was just a picture, he kept telling himself. He'd had those before. Dark was right, pictures were a way to preserve good memories. Sometimes, Alec would get out the photo album Ciara had given them, and Xander would look over his shoulder. Maybe someday he'd want to look back on pictures like that, and Milo needed the memories far more than he did. He needed them. This was for Milo and a little for himself. Mostly for Milo.
 
"I bet it looks great," Pryce said cheerfully, having absolutely no idea there was any deeper meaning to it.

Milo, who knew Xander didn't like pictures, and he knew what anxiety looked like, so he snapped two quick pictures, so he'd have a back up in case the first was blurry, and then said, "Cool." Then he came a bit closer to also look at the book, and after looking at the leather closely, he looked at the back of his hand, then back at the book, "Its pores are like mine."
 
Xander had been prepared to strike a funnier pose, but he couldn't feeling some relief when Milo only took pictures of the first one. There. One picture down. His goal was two pictures today. Maybe three. Definitely two. The next one he'd try to be a bit more goofy.

"Yeah," he said, moving so Milo could get a good look. "I know we have book covers made from, like, cow leather and a few others, but this just feels a bit weirder. I dunno. Maybe a cow would have a library that would have books like this and be repulsed by some of our books."
 
"It's weird to think that... It used to be a person who had thoughts like we do. And a family." Milo commented, but laughed at Xander's joke, "Do you think cows would wear human skin as a leather jacket? If cows wore jackets, I mean. I guess they don't, you know, read books, either, when it comes to it."
 
"Probably. It makes sense," Xander mused, rubbing his chin. "And there'd probably be people - I mean, cows - that would be determined to make certain that the skins were properly sourced. Like a cow PETA. What's PETA stand for? Something like People Ethically Treating Animals or something? Guess it would be CETA, then." He said it like "Seat-ah." "Or I guess 'keh-tah.'"
 
"That just sounds almost like cheetah, and I think cheetahs wouldn't care much," Milo said, laughing again, and taking one last photograph of the book before it was put away.

Next, Pryce showed them some pretty cool fossils that were of animals which were once local to the area, and then a glass case full of taxidermied birds, "These are all really great specimens," he explained, "but we can't have them out on the floor, because the chemicals used to taxidermy them are incredibly toxic. They're basically full of arsenic."
 
Xander stared at the birds solemnly. "Okay... birds that could literally kill me after death. If that's not a zombie, I don't know what is." He glanced at Milo. "How are we getting away from zombie birds during the apocalypse?"
 
Milo took a picture of the birds he liked best in the case, "That depends. How many birds are they? And what species? Are they just the birds in here or is it a zombie bird apocalypse?"
 
"I dunno. I just know we ain't outrunning them on a horse or a bike," Xander said. He scowled at one bird that looked awfully suspicious. "You. Stay dead. Or else." He turned away, still keeping an eye on the bird. Quietly, he added, "Or else what, I don't know."
 
"I think if we had an electric flyswatter we could take a few dead birds," Milo commented, walking with Dr. Pryce to the next neat thing had had picked out to show them, "But if there are too many birds we'd lose. They'd go for your eyes." After saying this, it occurred to him that Xander's home was already accessible, so he might make it work, but he thought that would probably be rude to say.
 
"As long as they only got as far as the eyes, I guess I'd be okay with that. Eventually. Guess I gotta stock up on batteries for swatters." Xander looked at the next thing Dr. Pryce had picked out and examined it with his usual intensity.
 
Eventually, Pryce walked them through the interesting items in Special Collections he and Daizi had brainstormed together, he led them downstairs to the public area of the museum, where he had a few exhibits he wanted to show them around personally: beginning with a somewhat small, temporary exhibit on the history of photography.

This was something Daizi knew would be there, but had kept dead silent on around her boys, purely so Xander and Milo would be completely surprised by it.

"You really got to thank your mom for this one," Pryce said, "It's not supposed to be open to the public until next week."
 
"No way! This is awesome," Xander grinned. "She knew about this? She didn't say." He turned in a little circle to get a quick overview of the immediate area and gave a tiny pleased nod. This was absolutely perfect! There was no way he could ever thank Daizi enough for this privilidged treatment. Then he turned to his friend. "Alright. Time to put your knowledge to the test, right?"
 
"You know her," Pryce said, amused, and stood to the side to let Xander and Milo look around inside the room before speaking. The walls were covered with various old photographs with placards explaining their significance, and various models of cameras dating from the first camera, all the way up to a slightly out of date cell phone, and above each one was a photograph of the sort of image it could produce.

"This is really cool," Milo breathed, looking in amazement at all of it as he took a slow walk around it, "this is really cool..." he turned to look back at Xander, 'They even have tintypes, look."
 
"They have what?" Xander asked, coming over to look down at the small images. "Oh, those really old photographs. I've never seen a real one before." He squinted down at them. "Are they made on actual tin or something?"
 
"Oh yeah," Milo murmured, looking very closely at them, "I mean, no? Yes they're on thin sheets of metal, but no it's not actually tin. And they're not actually the oldest kind of photograph, either. Some places still do them, actually, as like... a novelty."
 
"Oh, yeah. But not by a lot, those are, um, daguerreotypes, which aren't the first type of photograph, but they're like... the first kind of be fairly easily done, you know? And it's crazy because like we think of photography as pretty new, but it's just over two hundred years old, now. The very very first photograph was taken in 1822, but that's not a Daguerreotype."

He turned and looked at Pryce, "Are these, um, originals?"

"Most of them, yes. Some are copies, but these, the really old ones, are originals we have on loan."
 
"Dang. Talk about a snapshot of history," Xander said, thinking of all the different times he'd heard that phrase applied to things like pottery, clothing, or other items. These were literal snapshots! Kind of. He pointed to one in particular. "This one looks like Peter's multi-great granddad or something."
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top