scream when captured, arch your back
let this whole town hear your knuckles crack
It is midday.
The sun falls in slanted gold shafts through the canopy and then the uneven paned window. The library is busy but quiet, as if often is: here there is a small family, a mother and her sun curled up with a thin, colorful book; here there are scholars bent like the branches of old trees over a long wood table, debating the finer points of old medicine and its merits (or lack thereof) in the current age; here there many lone bodies, pulling books from the shelves, carrying stacks as tall as their necks are long, spread out on pillows to turn pages as the day peaks, then begins its slow unwinding.
And, in the middle of it all, there is Andras, trying to breathe when his lungs are full of gunpowder and rage, when his gut is just bile and lightning. It does not come easy, he finds. Breathing, and especially breathing deep, is a learned skill, and one not taught to feral boys in the woods, or Wardens, or-- him.
Andras tries: in-- hold it-- out. What comes out is much more of a sigh than an untying of his knots. He wonders if he will ever exhale and not sound like he's dying. He wonders if the atlas, laid open on the table, ever feels quite as thick as it is, or as heavy. Does each carefully rendered page feel fully realized, each hatch mark perfectly placed to convey a message: you can know where you are.
Andras wonders if he knows where he is. Delumine, sure. The library, of course. But, existentially, he's not so sure. Andras wonders when he became the sort of person that wonders when he is used to being a verb and nothing more. For some reason the discovery is more unsettling than it should be. He clenches his teeth, and sucks in a breath, and it is not deep, or calm.
'Corrdelia,' someone greets her, though he doesn't know who, and the name sounds so familiar it drags him away from the table, tucking the atlas under one wing. When he sees her--gray as a winter evening except where she's black, jewelry rattling like a bag full of bones--he is more relieved than he should be. Corrdelia, of course. Corrdelia, who doesn't ask hard questions, who is strangely comforting, he thinks, because she makes him so very uneasy. This is his natural state. He is glad to find it again.
--until he sees Hāsta, or-- "Wow." --what might be Hāsta, if he squints. He looks from her, to Corr's face, and back. There is some disconnect in him, some sound like radio static, like his brain trying to catch up to his eyes.
He drops the book. It lands with a loud crash. Andras doesn't even notice. "What happened?" he starts, "Why is-- can I-- are you okay?" He tells himself to breathe. He does not breathe at all.
Delumine has treated her well so far with its lush greenery and friendly souls. Originally she was staying here to get justice for Hāsta, but now a whole season has passed and she realized how comforting it is. In a way, it's like Corr can start fresh here. Even while the forest sometimes whispered those harsh memories to her, she mostly feels safe here. There is something to the land that speaks to her in ways that the swamp could not.
So, she decided to stay.
One perk to being here now is having Dawn's library more accessible. The moment she had laid eyes on it last year, she fell in love. From the way the tree branches intertwined and combined with that old book smell- it brought Corr to a level of zen she hadn't felt in some time.
So today she decides to visit it again in search for some new titles to read. Her home library is already large, but the Court library collection is enormous. It's likely she'll find something new and fascinating to take home to study this time.
She is welcomed by the fox creatures as she enters and they quickly sniff her. Although, lately they've seemed more fixated on Hāsta than anything else for some strange reason. Corr still lets them inspect before they scurry off to tend to the library. Someone greets her and she recognizes them as the troubled man she did a reading for recently. It felt good to break out her deck of cards again and help someone. He seemed appreciative after the fact too.
Corr is about to head down a hallway when she hears a more familiar voice- Andras, the man with the glasses she met here before. The one that helped her find the books on Tempus. It didn't answer all of her questions, but they had been good reads.
However he seems more troubled than she remembers him. He's staring at her in shock and even drops his book as he desperately asks if she's okay. She's confused, but can't help but laugh.
"What are you talking about? Of course I'm okay, you silly goose!" she replies, leaning over to pick up his book to hand to him. "Here, you dropped this."
Then it dawns on her. "Oh, is this about that book I forgot to return? Listen… I'm so sorry. I got carried away there," she explains, her cheeks getting warm from embarrassment. "Okay… maybe it got lost underneath a bunch of my dried roses, but I swear I returned it when I got here! I think I put it in the right place…" Corr remembers putting the book back on the shelf, but doesn't remember what section it had been in. There were two that seemed pretty similar to each other, so it's possible she got them mixed up. Hopefully the fox creatures were able to fix her mistake before anyone noticed.
"Smooth," she "hears" Hāsta say in her mind and Corr looks over at the bird with a disapproving look.
"Oh hush now," she whispers at her, then looks back at Andras. Hopefully he isn't too upset at this. She doesn't tend to hold on to other people's things for long, so she feels very bad for being so careless.
rage is not beautiful.
it is the ugly head of a rabid animal
foaming at the mouth,
worms in its heart.
The girl turns to face him; Andras watches the crow sway as she does, creased in some places that crows--or, truly, most things--should not crease. It is a rice-filled accordion wobbling dangerously on Corrdelia's back. Andras looks in its blank, black eyes and sees nothing. Andras looks at the still-gleaming curl of its beak and feels his stomach turn.
More time passes than it should. Each second is another heartbeat faster. Each three seconds is another alarm that sounds in his core but does not crawl far enough up the back of his neck to get to the skull.
What are you talking about? Corrdelia asks, and Andras scoffs in the back of his throat - the sort of sound that frightened men make when the words have abandoned them. "Thank you." he breathes, almost too quiet to hear. The girl holds out his book. The polished leather of its cover laughs like sunlight when his eyes drop to it. He can see the book and her chest and his wings unfolding to tuck it back under but out of the corner of his eye there is still the crow, bent like a broken pipe, leering at him with cold, blank, black eyes.
He takes the book. It is not easy. He tries to smile but his mouth won't lift from the firm, grim line that it's set in. Suddenly all the thunder in him feels like a spring shower. Suddenly he feels more like a flash bulb than a cherry bomb.
Corr is talking, blushing, fidgeting and Andras is trying his hardest not to look at Hāsta until she turns back to the bird and says something he doesn't quite here--because the alarms in him are ringing louder and louder and he can no longer hear himself think, let alone someone else.
She apologizes again. Andras breathes in. Andras breathes out. He does it once more for good measure.
After, he says: "I... don't run the library. That's someone else's problem. Thankfully." The warden is silent for a long moment--long enough to take off his glasses, rub them on the black hill of his shoulder, and replace them. His heart feels like a livewire. His legs feel like sharp ice.
"How's--" and here he stammers, the thought catching, as though it should not be thought or said or considered-- "How's your bird?"
There is something about the man that she can't quite figure out. Is he nervous about something? Corr can feel it in pulses and notices his aura flickering, but she's not sure what to make of it. Quickly she looks around to see if it's something around them, but it's all calm otherwise. There had been a couple other horses in the library, but they just left and so it's just the distant pattering of the fox creatures' footsteps that she hears. Maybe it's just the way the man is. Their first meeting had been a bit different too.
Thankfully he doesn't seem too bothered by her confession of the late book return and Corr lets out a sigh of relief. "Ah, well good! I just assumed you had some part in it since you seem to be here often," she says with a laugh and looks up at the intricate ceiling of tree branches. "I can't say I blame you though. This place is so beautiful and calming… I could probably spend a whole day here. Maybe longer." The thought is tempting, but she would miss her tea and everything else that makes her home, well, home. At least now she lives in Delumine, so the library is much more accessible.
He then asks how Hāsta is doing and she finds it to be a weird question. Though, Corr supposes it would be rude of others to check on her but not her companion. "She's fine! Stubborn as usual," she says with a smirk, turning to look at the bird on her shoulder again. In Corr's mind, the crow is eyeing her as she usually does when she's not impressed. In reality, she's leaning to the side as if she might fall off the mare any moment. It's the true reason she has Hāsta tied around her, but her mind has done a good job at warping her perception.
"How have you been?" she smiles, completely unaware. Then it dawns on her that this is the first time she's bumped into him since she moved. "Oh! I don't know if you heard the news, but I moved here a season or so ago. I'm one of you guys now in the Dawn Court! So you know, if you ever want your cards read, just come find my house in the woods." Corr nudges him with her wing to hint that she wants him to take her up on it. The one downside to moving is that her clientbase is mainly in Terrastella, so she's had to rebuild it all over again. Considering how strange Andras is acting today, she has a feeling that having a reading might do him some good.
