He spends the majority of his time outside the keep, where a man can see for miles in all directions and count the stars at night and shit wherever he pleases. It is a simple lifestyle, and he prefers it to getting tangled in the complexities of war and politics. But the day court has its mysteries, and he is a sucker for an unanswered question. At night there is one room in particular that often stays lit into early in the morning. He cannot say why but it beckons to him, draws him like a moth to the flame. Perhaps it is the thought that he is not the only ghost in these sun-drenched lands.
It is on this night (the full moon, that gleaming temptress, mischievously keeping him from sleep) that he winds through the hallways of the day court, seeking the room that stays lit when all others surrender to the night. It does not take long for him to find a door cracked open, spilling candlelight into the hallway. He pushes it open to reveal a round room with shelves curved around the walls, full of papers. At the middle of the room is a table that hosts an unrolled scroll. On it are rows and rows of black symbols, lines and curves like nothing he's seen before, except for maybe in the strange shapes the dunes make in the Mors Desert.
As enthralling as the paper is, his attention is sharply drawn away to the woman who stands at the other side of the table. Emisary. He knows who she is, but she is a stranger to him. Funny how that happens, our presence preceding our essence. She looks different in the glow of the candlelight, or maybe it is sleep deprivation distorting his vision.
"It seems to me you are everywhere." The stone walls bounce his low voice to and fro, making his words sound like waves. He hesitates, body poised to leave even as his face is turned to the woman of stone. A moment seems to stretch to a hundred-- the awareness of being pulled in two directions seems to slow time.
Suddenly it occurs to him that he had made up his mind the instant he saw her. Why lie to himself, he does not want to leave and come back another time. He does not want to let another ghost slip away. At this moment he would like to pinch himself, pull his mind back to his body. He is the sort of person who defines a difference between deliberation and hesitation, and values one but not the other.
"May we share words." Eik takes a step forward, entering the warm glow of the library. "Ser a pheen a." He says her name slowly, pulling it straight from his memory to his lips. He tilts his head-- it is his way of indicating that he has just asked a question.
BY THE PRICKING OF MY THUMBS something wicked this way comes--
Candles cast stark shadows on the silver mare’s face as she lingers at her makeshift desk, somehow more corporeal in the flickering golden light than she ever seems in the day; in the disjointed darkness, she looks tired and far older than she is, worn down by memories she wears as scar tissue hidden beneath the sleek silver exterior of her coat. Seraphina is in the libraries most nights, cast out over a veritable sea of paperwork, devoting what she can of the hundreds – even thousands, a marvel in the desert – of scrolls organized haphazardly on the worn shelves. She sometimes remembers being a small girl, staring into the library from the cold darkness of the hallways outside in the rare moments she was separated from Viceroy. Sometimes she would look up to see the flicker of candles and the promise of light, but she wasn’t allowed inside. Those days seem like a distant dream, now.
(She ignored that every little part of her from before felt like a distant dream – and that even now she wandered as though sleepwalking, still caught up in a great and tangled catastrophe of something that she couldn’t place, no matter how hard she looked-)
Her ears flick upright at a sound from the door, and she glances up to search for the source. Her eyes come to rest on the ghostly coat of one of the warriors – Eik. He offers her something that she wouldn’t quite consider a greeting and lingers in his place, clearly reluctant, before he approaches her. (She supposes that she is still a fearful creature to some among the court, with her dead eyes and vacant stares. She also surmises that it is better – or, at the very least, easier - that way.) “Eik.” Comes her own greeting, soft and subdued as he steps into the candlelight. “Being everywhere is my vocation.” It is supposed to be, anyways; it is the Emissary’s job to travel Novus, though she finds herself spending the majority of her time within Solterra. With her leg still injured from her fight with the inky stallion, she has been largely confined to the library and the fort for the past several days. (She still holds it awkwardly, but she has positioned herself carefully to obscure it behind the table. She does not want the court to see her weakness.)
Eik pronounces his words strangely, foreign tongue stumbling over the syllables, and makes a request of her – she surmises that he has questions for her. She expected as much, after his interaction with Rostislav in the dungeon. Seraphina settles in her place, mismatched eyes resting on him coolly, giving absolutely nothing away. “Certainly,” Seraphina says, then, her tone as cold and even as ever. “What would you know of me?”
I'M IN A ROOM MADE OUT OF MIRRORSand there's no way to escape the violence of a girl against herself.☼please tag Sera! contact is encouraged, short of violence
He flicks an ear at the sound of his name. He is surprised that she knows it- is that too part of her vocation? Not many do here.
(Or anywhere, he reminds himself, still-- still not numb to the ache of loss)
"Is not sleeping your vocation too?" He is quite serious, but there is the slightest gleam in his eyes that suggests he is playing with her- mocking her, even? Truth be told, 'vocation' is not a word he has ever heard before. But it is not so hard to figure out. His homelands must seem backwards to the citizens of Novus- there were no vocations- you simply did what you could, what you must, to survive and help your people survive. There was no written language, no magic, not even weapons- he only knows how to fight with his body, and his mind. Thankfully, the latter is sharp enough that he hasn't made too much of a fool of himself here. Yet.
He has taken to spending most of his time in the sandstone canyons, and so he does not waver at the ice in her voice. It is a pleasure simply to hear the voice of another. And besides- he's more at ease in ice and snow than here surrounded by walls.
"What is this place?" He takes a step further into the light, it paints him a flickering orange. It would almost seem a cell, but- "These things?" With a sweep of his head he gestures to the scrolls that surround them. They call to him as all mysteries do, begging to be revealed. For all the things he knows, he knows so little.
(1. 2. Wouldn't it be a sight to spill yourself right here and now, paint the walls with your questions. Would they even exist without you, or you without them? 3.)
The questions continue, before she even has a chance to answer them. "What does your name mean?" He stops himself then, another question at the tip of his tongue, which he presses to the back of his teeth. His dark eyes meet her own. A feeling akin to hunger rests below his skin, electrifies the air above him even as he breathes in, and resumes his state of deep calm.
BY THE PRICKING OF MY THUMBS something wicked this way comes--
Seraphina watches him with empty eyes flickering in the candlelight, ebbing and flowing with the bob and weave of the small flame; she does not pretend to miss the mischief in his first question, but, if there is offense to be found in his tone, it rolls off her back like water. “If that is what is required of me,” She says simply, voice flat. Seraphina is a creature of deliberation and duty, and she lives her life while running along on mechanical tracts, repeating the same, tired motions that she is meant to do day after smoldering day. Perhaps this is not who she is, but it is certainly who she has become; a mess of chains and crumpled ambitions laid out in her wake, she drifts like she is being tugged along on strings.
His next questions provoke a slight tilt of the mare’s ashen skull. Has he never seen a library before? She has never been outside of Novus, but she supposes that it is entirely possible that some foreign lands don’t have a writing system…strange as it seems to her. There isn’t much writing in Novus, and most of it is kept by the elite. (She’d only learned to read and write herself because of Viceroy’s tutelage – as the Warden, he was privy to such things, though he still wasn’t allowed in the library.) “This is the library – and these are scrolls. They contain our writings, and these specifically…all our recorded history, save for the parts of it that only exist in oral tradition.” Wrapping her mind around the length of thin paper in front of her, Seraphina brushes it towards the ghostly warrior and unrolls it with her mind, revealing the swirling black script of its contents. The letters are neat and crisp, written in a careful hand.
His next question draws her eyes back to him, and she pauses for a moment, as though considering her answer carefully. Her name is the one foreign part of her, bestowed upon her by Viceroy; amongst her people, her name is isolation. “…burning one.” Her voice is soft, even reluctant. Blind loyalty, feathered, divine, seething creatures that bowed to the throne of some foreign god -that is what her name really means, she reminds herself, but she doesn’t think that she can explain that. “It is a foreign name – something from my…mentor’s land.” Her mother might have given her a different name, but, if she did, she can no longer remember it; she is Seraphina now, and whoever she might have been before was lost to her. (Is it supposed to feel so empty to forget, like a gaping hole gnawing at the walls of your stomach, burning like acid? It doesn’t matter.) “And what about you, Eik? What does your name mean?” It is only fair, she thinks, to turn the question back on him.
I'M IN A ROOM MADE OUT OF MIRRORSand there's no way to escape the violence of a girl against herself.☼please tag Sera! contact is encouraged, short of violence
10-28-2017, 09:01 PM - This post was last modified: 11-17-2017, 04:59 PM by Seraphina
The many mysteries of this land draw out the fantastical nature of his being, the free-floating philosopher and his endless questions. At the same time, he often feels terribly old and wishes only to be alone with the desert and his thoughts- and still (and always) those endless questions. Thus the almost constant feeling of being torn in two, except when there is someone or something else to pour his attention into.
(There are parts of you that change with the place and time, like leaves on a tree. Then there are parts that you cannot leave behind, that grow back even when you chop them off, even when they're ripped from you. That eternal part of you is the quiet one... If you would only Stop Thinking you might be able to hear it)
He takes a step back, ears half-lowered as the scroll unfolds before him. Despite living in Novus for months now, he is unacquainted with telekenesis. He is aware of the magic here-- he can feel it like a slow, strong undercurrent-- but does not know what it is or how it can be used. The idea that he could wield such magic has never even entered the periphery of his thoughts.
"History..." Eik repeats quietly. He's never been fond of history, for he's never trusted the collective memory of the hive mind. But he's never seen history-- solid, tangible. Old. He supposes older than the oldest living memory. The text seems to hold more power than words alone, but maybe that is because he does not know what it means.
When it is clear the scroll is not going to strangle him or slit his throat, he reaches his nose forward and breathes in. Breathes in first sand and dust (the desert touches everything here), and beneath that... the crushed-bark smell of what he will learn is paper, and the earthy carbon smell of ink. He begins to lip at the curious thing, stopping abruptly as he raises his eyes to hers and finds she is practically stabbing him with her gaze.
He feels a bit sheepish, but unapologetic. A younger version of him would have even chuckled. Instead he politely listens as the conversation rolls on.
Seraphina. He repeats her name again in his mind. burning one. How hard she is to pin down- woman of stone and ice and now fire? Yet the more he stands before her the more he can see all of the elements in her, taking turns in the subtle shifting of her expressions. He reckons she is probably far more dangerous than she looks. (Truly, most women are.) Instead of caution he feels more at ease.
As his question is returned to him, his thoughtful expression morphs to a faraway look. He doesn't often think of home. "Eik is our name for the oak tree." He pictures the great tree he was born under. In his mind it still stands strong and tall, boughs emanating a sense of wisdom... but it is impossible to think of it how it was and not remember the way it looked the last time he saw it. A blackened, scorched tombstone standing taller than himself. At the memory he begins to smell the soot and smoke and his heartbeat quickens. He feels the panic rising in his chest, and then before he can control it it is leeching into his face, desperation and pain twisting his features into something... something he would not say is himself. Something weak.
He breathes in, and out, and it takes a minute but he forces the pain back down inside of him, where it can smoulder quietly instead of burn burn burn us alive. He feels shakey and unsettled and hot, but at least his face is back under control and his heart is not raging like a caged animal. He wishes Seraphina had not witnessed that, and offers her a weary half-smile in apology. He turns his attention back to their surroundings, eager to move on and happy to focus again on her scrolls--
"It must have taken a long time, to learn to make sense of these? Did your mentor teach you." To him, the words are meaningless symbols. He is surprised to find he is a little jealous-- he's always been fond of silent and secret things. "How old are they?" For every answer, two more questions. As his panic fades further, he finds himself comfortable enough to look at her again. Her stone and ice and fire, meeting his great river. He still feels a little shaky, his ghosts not that far gone, and is scrambling for something solid in her eyes. "Have you found what you're looking for?" He realizes he's getting carried away again, the ache ebbing and flowing like a dark tide. He wishes he had more for her than questions. "Sorry," he murmurs, thinking it does not need to be said but it feels right.
Only trust the story.
- E I K
@Seraphina holy cow sorry this is so long, I got a bit carried away... somehow we go from nibbling the scroll to minor panic attack to a bunch of questions lol
BY THE PRICKING OF MY THUMBS something wicked this way comes--
She doesn’t fail to notice the shift in his posture as she unrolls the scroll – it was common among foreigners, she thinks, to be caught unaware by the inherent magic of Novus. (For even the telekinesis, she imagines, was a gift from the gods. Seraphina had been told that not all gods were good outside of Novus, or kind; sometimes she isn’t even sure if her own were, either.) He moves closer to the crisp papyrus, breathing in its musky scent, and, to her surprise, begins to nip at the paper’s stained edges. She considers warning him to be careful with the document, but thinks better of it. Eik doesn’t seem to be doing it any harm, and far be it from she to dissuade him from learning more of Novus, even if the object of his curiosity seems, to her, entirely mundane.
He seems to realize that she is watching him, and, with a hint of dry amusement creasing his features, returns his dark, dark eyes to her. Seraphina still hasn’t decided what to make of him, this curious and somewhat elusive being, difficult to read as she has ever seen; he was clever, she decides. She’s not sure what kind of cleverness it is yet. Some are blessed with a cleverness that pulls them from the flames, but others have a cleverness that burns - and perhaps Eik has a bit of both. She eyes him clinically, as though she intends to take him apart and piece him back together with her gaze. However, as he answers her question, her expression morphs to something more enigmatic. Perhaps there is a bit of concern buried within it, even, because she has seen that distant stare. “It suits-“ She begins, then leaves him in quiet. She has felt that distant stare, when she remembers those upturned eyes, facing the sky like glass marbles. She has seen those eyes on Viceroy when he dipped into those long, unpleasant periods of silence, not seeing anything, not hearing anything, not really there, possessed by memories of a land of ghosts. As his expression and posture devolve into panic, she thinks of Viceroy again, but she doesn’t think of him as Viceroy the beast, the horror that shattered her memories to strands and broke her time and time again; she thinks of a crumpled Viceroy, a screaming Viceroy, a Viceroy that felt all too much or nothing at all, a Viceroy in caught like an animal in a trap, struggling to find his way free. (She pitied him, sometimes. It was hard to. Now, it is hard to feel anything, but sometimes it still pricks.) She shakes those thoughts away, and, as gently as she can muster (which is still not very gently), asks, “Are you alright, Eik?”
He breaks free of what she can only assume was his own memory with an apologetic ghost of a smile; she wants to tell him that there’s no need for that kind of a look, not in a land like Solterra where it seems everyone is just a broken piece attempting to mold themselves into something whole, but she stays silent. His next question brings a faint curl to the edges of her lips, her eyes flickering away. “Yes, he…he did. It’s like learning to speak, if you grow up with it.” Viceroy. He had taught her everything, but memories of him still scrape at the back of her mind because she still can’t decide who he was, much less who his ghost, so permanently entrenched in everything she says or does, is. She is quick to change the subject. “Do you have writings like this in your homeland?”
Her eyes find their way back up to him at his next remark. “It varies. Most are from the past few centuries, but others…” She trails off, considering. “Others are more than a thousand years old.” There might be the faintest hint of pride in her tone, pride for the half of her lineage that grew among these sands – pride for a society that has overcome the inhospitable dangers of the land that was given to them.
He continues, and she responds in kind. “I don’t know if I’m looking for anything,” She admits, her voice dipping low. “Zolin kept all but his most trusted advisors out of the library when I was younger – he kept knowledge from the people. Our history, our writings, our beliefs…he feared them, so he kept them locked away.” Knowledge was dangerous to men like Zolin. Fortunately, it did not seem that Maxence felt the same way, much less she; a well-educated populace was invaluable. “I am simply trying to familiarize myself with what is here.” Maybe it is a bit more than that – Seraphina does not know who she is. She thinks she might have known, once, but her memories lie in incomprehensible fragments, now, her existence consisting wholly of little blips of who she was. If she found her people, perhaps, she thinks, she will find herself. His next remark is enough to bring a flicker of amusement to her features, though it is banished almost immediately. “You don’t need to apologize for asking questions,” Seraphina assures him, but she notes that he sounded wholly unapologetic in the first place.
@Eik - no worries, especially since I wrote a book in response, haha <3 sorry for another late reply
I'M IN A ROOM MADE OUT OF MIRRORSand there's no way to escape the violence of a girl against herself.☼please tag Sera! contact is encouraged, short of violence
11-17-2017, 05:40 PM - This post was last modified: 11-17-2017, 05:40 PM by Seraphina
Out in the open, on top of the world with Vadim, he was able to remember in that detached way. Remember in that easy way, when you separate thoughts from feelings as simply as plucking the frosting off the top of a cupcake. But here, surrounded by stone walls and candle smoke and the smell of her something like a slow leak in his air mattress (what), all of it in symphony with the relentless beat of his heart, the fear of hope, all of it swelling like a tidal wave, broken strings, mania, all of it in rising in a sweet and terrifying crescendo.
Are you okay, Eik?
Her voice rings like a gentle bell, and the orchestra quiets, curling at her feet like an old dog. As though all you had to do was ask it nicely. When he slows his racing heart, gets his face under control, shoves his feelings deep down, he finally speaks: "I- I don't like to remember, sometimes."
That is it, and he forces his attention elsewhere, unnerved but trying to ignore it- for everyone knows that is the best solution to the things that ail you.
And what a fantastic distraction lies before him in those dark, mysterious symbols. Sometimes when the wind blows and the trees hunch over, it seems like they're trying to say something. He wonders if reading is like talking to trees. It is hard for him to imagine looking at the writings and learning them the way one would learn to speak.
She asks of his homeland, if they have writings like these. "Nothing like this at all. No walls either. Just voices and bodies." The panic is gone from for now, leaving behind something like melancholy as he thinks of the herd, of sharing stories and warmth beneath the cold moonlight. Life had seemed so complicated then. The thoughts of himself as a child bring a fleeting smile to his face. He feels a hundred years old.
She speaks of Zolin. The name alone seems cold and menacing, and Eik thinks he would not like the man-- he sounds like a coward. However, he is not one to go spouting off his opinions so he simply nods, storing each of her words in his memory. An idea has planted itself in his mind, and the more he learns of the writings in this room, the more it grows.
He decides that he will learn to read. Not now, probably not for a while, but some day. How odd it is for him to have that some day dangled before him. Where the future was once just some endless dull shade of grey, shadowy forms begin to take shape. He wonders again where his path will lead, and begins to feel the tickle of a feeling that he is in control of his life. For a man who's always let his feet guide him, this is a new sensation. It will take him some time to decide if he likes it or not.
But what he really wants is to write.
Promise slowly unfolds, the tease. He thinks this night will be one of those you remember for a while. It makes him wonder what Seraphina's memories are like, what details stand out to her, or if she remembers not in details but broad brushstrokes of color and feeling. And feeling? What depth of feeling lies behind that placid surface?
You don't need to apologize for asking questions, she says, and while there is no warmth from the statement he is surprised that he hasn't annoyed her with all his questions. He nods firmly in response, thinking briefly of Tirzah and Rhoswen as he realizes he is always apologizing to women. It isn't the questions he's apologizing for but everything, all of it.
Eik tends to look at others in that faraway way, that kind of looking without seeing. Looking can be powerful, he's never understood how most everyone can do it so casually. It takes a certain amount of focus but our special snowflake really looks at her now, in the seeing way. We won't dive into the depths of what he sees, none of us has time for that. You really could spend a millennia reflecting on any single instant in time, diving into it, decomposing it. Sometimes this knowledge is crippling, today it is empowering. Today it makes each word more important to him, knowing that there are infinitely many words to fill its place. So when his surprised thoughts form the words she can't be half my age, it seems somehow more insightful than if he had realized it yesterday.
"I don't want to keep you from your vocation for too long." It is unlikely he will ever stop using that word. He is incredibly childlike, in some ways. In many others, he's an old bat. He hesitates, searching for the right words to follow. "If you ever need me, for anything... I'm here for you. Please." Burning one.
Only trust the story.
- E I K
@Seraphina no worries <3 I'm going to have him leave next post because at this rate we really will literally write a book together lol. And I'd love to have them thread together soon! Maybe after she's named sovereign? I didn't want to time bend in this post because its long enough already -_-
BY THE PRICKING OF MY THUMBS something wicked this way comes--
He seemed to be crumbling, she thought, as she looked him over – falling to pieces in front of her, and she was not sure that there was anything she could do to stop him from unraveling. (She wondered what would be left behind if he collapsed completely; his pale frame, illuminated in the candlelight, seemed already something like a ghost, and, as he seems to slip out of her grasp entirely and she is left with little more of the impression of him, she almost expects to see the wall right through him.) If she remembered her life better, like she had when she was younger, she thought that she might know what he felt like, being lost in something that had disappeared long ago. (She might have, once, but that was little more than a haze, a creeping darkness, a memory that disappeared as soon as she managed to focus her gaze on it.) She stood, frozen, unsure of the words, unsure if speaking would just make it worse-
But her words seemed to snap him free of his trance, and he settled, slowly. Sometimes, she had learned, it was just a matter of calling them back to the present. His expression shifts as he seems to regain control of himself; she focuses on his eyes, waits for that snap of awareness. When he spoke, it was with a stammer that made some, small part of her twist into a knot. (That, she thought, did not happen very often – whatever plagued the warrior left a scar that even she could feel.) Seraphina had never been good at things like this. She had been built and bred for war, forged like a knife in a blacksmith’s hands; she was carved for a single purpose, and that was not love or kindness or sympathy. She watched him carefully for what felt to her like a very long time, but was probably only seconds in reality, then offered a soft, “I understand.” Well, she did in a sense, anyways. Her memories were largely muddled because of Viceroy’s intervention, but she supposed that there were probably some of them that she’d blocked out herself, much as she disliked the notion that she couldn’t handle what had happened to her.
She shook those thoughts off, though, because the conversation had turned to his homeland. “I see,” She said, but added, “I’m not sure I can imagine that.” This was partially because Seraphina was not very imaginative and partially because she had spent her entire life within the confines of the Day Court. She could imagine the storytelling, though, to some extent – soldiers told stories often, in her experience. Anything to make noise as they walked towards what could well be oblivion, anything to keep the silence at bay. When he spoke of it, she noticed the smile that darted across his features. A fond, fond expression; not cold or forced, like some smiles she’d seen in the past. She wondered about his home, for a moment, and why he’d left when it seemed quite obvious that he cared for it deeply.
And, then, why his past provoked such a painful reaction.
His next words caught Seraphina off guard. He didn’t want to keep her? So he was leaving – that was probably for the best, she thought, eyeing her stack of paperwork. But, then, what he said next…
His words gave the mare pause; she stared him down blankly, her eyes widening fractionally in the closest display she had to shock. In all of her years (though she hadn’t many), Seraphina had never heard anyone…offer to support her, or be there for her, or help her. Those words, then, provoked some kind of feeling, but she didn’t know what it was – if someone were to ask her to name it, she was sure that she would fail to describe it. (Around her neck, her collar prickled.) When she found it in her to respond, which, again, likely didn’t take as long as she imagined, she swallowed, and offered a soft, distinctly genuine, “Thank you, Eik.”
With their conversation complete, she returned herself to her paperwork – if she buried herself deep enough, she was sure that she could ignore whatever strange, burning sensation was left to linger in the very back of her mind.
@Eik - thought I'd close this up, RIP <3 Sera doesn't know how to handle this emotional support
I'M IN A ROOM MADE OUT OF MIRRORSand there's no way to escape the violence of a girl against herself.☼please tag Sera! contact is encouraged, short of violence
Isn't it true that we are all just flesh and bone and blood? Often he feels like more than that, like while we're here we're also paddling down some mystic stream, carried mostly by the current but sometimes, sometimes steering ourselves a better path than chance alone would provide.
But don't we also, sometimes, feel like less than flesh and bone and blood? We feel every particle we're made of- and then we feel the space between those particles, the gaping holes that nobody sees. Maybe it isn't so far off to say he's on the brink of fading away like a ghost- that is what he once claimed to be, foolish man.
Instead of vanishing he steels himself in her eyes and focuses on the familiar, constant in and out of his breath, as he's learned to do years ago. He might flicker from time to time, but it would take more than some painful memories to snuff him out. When she says she understands he wonders how deeply her understanding goes- it seems like a half truth of sorts, although he does not know this for sure and he would not hold it against her. What else do you say to a grieving man?
She says she is not sure she can imagine a world without buildings, and there is amusement in the crease of his eyes. How different their two worlds are- one wonders how many lands there are with customs and traditions beyond their wildest dreams, worlds on the other side of a portal or across the formidable Terminus. The simplicity of his past life pleased him, even as his heart was called to new places. "I would show you if I could." And that is all he says of his homeland-- sharing personal information has never come easily to him and now, wounds reopened by memories, he is particularly wary.
All this feeling, this storm of emotion, is exhausting him and without realizing it he withdraws- mentally and emotionally. For all the ways she intrigues him, draws him in, his mind already feels impossibly full of things to mull over. He has the uncanny feeling that the future is unfurling before him, and if he's too slow to the trail he'll lose his way once more. So instead of pondering it now he memorizes the scene before him, the expression in her two-toned eyes, the hungry flicker of the candles, the smell of smoke and parchment. He stores as much as he can commit to memory, locks it away in the vault of his mind to be replayed another time.
Eik nods his head and turns from the warm glow of the library. His thoughts overflow and hit the floor as he walks away, landing with soft plops that only he can hear. The gentle sound reminds him of fat raindrops, and with every step a small ache in him grows larger and larger. The future looms, inescapable.
Only trust the story.
- E I K
@Seraphina <3 this was such a fun thread, thank you!
