I want to be happy but something inside me screams that I do not deserve it.
Forest decorates every inch of Delumine. From the outskirts to the heart of it, wood buries its roots more deeply than the gods of his home. The waters and great rains in the desert could wash them away from time to time, but they always come back. Would these trees come back as well if all of them were burned to a crisp or ripped away in a mighty tornado? Is there another, like his father, who would so desecrate the land for their plan, whatever it is, and do anything everything to achieve it?
The monks, he knows, told him that there is always great evil in the world, but without this darkness, there would be no light. Ceylon is rather fond of moonlight, starlight, the mystery, and shadow it shows. Perhaps it is because when it's dark, he can see the galaxies his skin is modeled after. They wink high above, and he imagines them colorful, he imagines solar storms raging out of control in terrifying displays of fuchsia and coral, of seafoam green and darkest teal.
His buildings are never so bright nor brilliant. Oh, but he is.
Although he does not think it so, Ceylon is a statue of gold and glory, splashed with the night sky that winks to those who pass him by. The blue of him is as lovely and soft as his mother. The rest of him is every inch his father's son, and he is a Greek Adonis, he is a Cupid shooting his bow and arrow, he is everything splendid and lovely tucked into the curves and planes, the palatial expanses between his bones, the sleek sigh of every breath, and the whisper of his skin on a winter's day.
Frost kisses his nose, it bites at him like a wolf, and he only knows to hold it gently, softly. Ceylon would pull a blanket closer, bring another candle forth, were he home. And he is not.
Ceylon may never go home again.
So he moves between the walls of stone that tower higher and higher. Sky-blue eyes follow ivy up the stone cracks and he aches to piece the palace back together again. He knows he could do it. Ceylon knows he is as skilled with a chisel and hammer as he is with anything else.
Oh, the things he would do, the things he will do! Until that time he would wait, patiently, and bide his time. He is not an impulsive creature, not so overly bold and brash as to rush in headfirst without a plan, without first knowing where exactly he was and what exactly that meant. His sister would be proud, at least, that he has learned caution, at last, under the unwavering hand that raised him.
a shard of god
in my mouth
turning
my tongue into
rivers of blood.
A
ndras is not a night owl. It’s rare that he’s awake much past sundown. If asked–and he wouldn’t be asked–he would admit that it feels like the day ends when the sun sets, and flowers shut their bright cups for the evening, and the woodland birds bed down to rest.
Truthfully, he is just tired, burning all day as brightly as this or any other sun, clenching his jaw so hard that it hurts by the time the sky has begun to be smeared with reds and violets. Andras as an entity is not sustainable. His anger is not sustainable.
It is only a matter of time before the engine of his rage breaks him down like one, too. But, until that comes to pass–
–it is late. The halls are lit only by a series of lanterns. The windows are black pits rimmed by spade-shaped leaves, creeping ivy reaching out into the void with its fishing-line arms. Andras is not only tired but he looks tired, bent over a table in the glow of a stacked candelabra that almost washes out the weak pop of his magic as it arcs off his skin in sluggish waves– or as sluggish as electricity can be, anyway.
Before him is a table of paperwork (still unfinished) that seems to multiply as he looks at it. On the side of the desk are his glasses, discarded so that he can scrub his face with one wing. It is a moment or two before he hears footsteps outside, the telltale clatter of hooves on the stone in the hall.
He doesn’t want to admit that, just for a moment, when he looks from the desk to the black window to the door and the sliver of orange light creeping in from beneath it, he is tense.
If the saying is true, if the stories are right, and light cannot exist without the shadow it casts, surely Delumine is nestled behind some great, sun-blocking wall that drops a blue-black shape over its back. Funny, too, how no one mentions that sure, light can’t exist without darkness– but the courtyard outside the window is as black as the bottom of the sea.
The footsteps continue. Andras rises from the desk, lifts his glasses off the table and sets them on the bridge of his nose. The door creaks as it opens. When he leans out, he sees Ceylon, backlit by a lantern so that the light catches the individual strands of his hair.
And, in his shadow: Andras, glowering.
“Hello.” he states, simply. I would go as far as to say curtly.“Who are you?” It is just barely a question at all.
I want to be happy but something inside me screams that I do not deserve it.
Silence, it is blessed and holy between the walls of his heart and the confines of his mind. Solitude, it is thoughtful and rejuvenating as it has always been taught to him. Both these things Ceylong holds close, clutches to his breast as a knight would his token from some maiden or another.
All is still.
It is perfect.
Until it is entirely not perfect nor still. First is the creak of a door with an increasing of light behind him. The man, barely out of boyhood, sees this as his own shadow grows on the curved wall before him. Then, it is only clearer as another form eclipses his own, much closer to the light source, much larger on the wall so that Ceylon is ensconced in the shadow of the other man. There is a decidedly unhappy huff of air behind him.
With the slowness of his own leisure, without proper care to or for the other’s displeasure, Ceylon turns as a ghost in the palace. His face is as smooth as a rock worn by years of water to its face - unchanging even as swords as knives come racing toward him.
He does not move.
He cannot flinch.
Ceylon merely flicks his ears forward, looking on the statue of a dark man with an even darker scowl. And he is certain, quite certain, that if Andras holds such an expression any longer it would be permanently carved upon his face. Had he marble and the right tools, he would mould that expression, that pose, into immortality so that it might always stare down, imposing, on any who would look into some building or another. Perhaps this very tower.
The thought brings him joy. Thoughts of what he will create.
So at last, with no flourish and need for excess, Ceylon answers after what must have been an insufferably long silence for the other. ”Does it matter?” and he is entirely too monotonous to be even remotely respectful or truly interested in the other’s response. What is another ghost in a castle after all? They’re all full of the dead and dying no matter if you see them or not.
”Are you a guard?” because only they should take him from his evening stroll and cast him from his isolation.
It is an isolation broken by some heretic who is, would be, absolutely breathtaking if only he were something, anything, other than flesh.
a shard of god
in my mouth
turning
my tongue into
rivers of blood.
T
here is a black line cut into the floor stretched out from one man to another, between Ceylon, backlit by the lantern, and Andras, a dark shape in the orange glow of the doorway. His face is not even visible in the dark of it, only the light cast off the lens of his glasses, two glowing, yellow circles in an otherwise perfectly formless hole.
He is still tense. His wings ache on his back with the effort of staying so perfectly still. His jaw is clenched as he waits for something to happen-- an answer, an attack, a departure… he isn’t quite sure. Ceylon, too, is impossibly still, and for a moment they are discolored mirrors of each other, both silent and grim and unmoving as angels perched on a headstone, or the very walls that surround them.
The other moves first, just a tilting forward of the ears, and that is all it takes to make Andras impatient. He huffs, and steps out of the doorway. For the first time, the light falls on his face: black as ocean rock and white as hail, all sharp lines and teeth.
Teeth because now he is grinning, or something like it. A spark rises off his chest and crawls up his cheek. Sluggishly, his anger rises to the surface. Unsustainable. He is already so tired.
"It matters.” He states. There is nothing more to be said on the matter.
Andras has never liked this, the constant greeting, new faces full of anything-- amusement, anger, fear, joy, whatever. Men like Ceylon who ask does it matter are why he stays in the library, shielded by miles and mile of thick-trunked trees and a lightless, pervasive silence.
He is already thinking of his bed, when Ceylon asks him, are you a guard? and because Andras is not facetious, he is not good-humored or good tempered, because it does matter, much more than it should, he answers: "No. I’m the Warden.”
He takes a single step forward, more light on his face, more light on the thin cut of his cheekbones, more light everywhere except for his eyes which are dark and tired and empty. Unsustainable.
He says, again, demanding this time: “Who are you?”
I want to be happy but something inside me screams that I do not deserve it.
He does not mind the shadows sitting prettily on the floor, nor the way the light refuses to devour Andras’ skin and instead shows only reflections for eyes. They are two moons upon his face, whole and terrible, staring at Ceylon as though they would damn him, as though they are that of a demon to drag him to the pits of hell.
Were he not to possess the stories of his father and their likeness, perhaps he would imagine the man who is the other half of him to look something like Andras. Well. No. His father, if he looked anything like the man before Ceylon, would have been larger with a grinning mouth hung open to swallow the world and feet that could cleave the deserts in two
Perhaps his father is nothing like the exhausted heap of flesh before him after all.
These thoughts do nothing to bring comfort or interest. They do little more than draw attention inward, temporarily removed from the blue spark that zips from chest to chin. Vaguely, Ceylon is aware of the white of Andras’ mouth and the pink of his bottom lip. They mar the purity of the black that, when exposed to light, is nothing less than godly.
Obsidian stone is just as beautiful and would make a striking likeness to the warden.
Ceylon does not dabble in the arts of living people. He does not care to paint them into the annals of history once more for all to remember. Because people remember his father, he is set on the path that he now walks. A pity. This is a life chosen for him, not by him. Who is he to change it now? How could he even ask to when everything he touches thrums with the possibilities of a future.
It is a future that would one day crumble just as the title Warden would fall from Andras’ shoulders with time, but it would be a future that he carved for himself.
Blue dances back, languidly roves over black, and he inclines his head. ”I am your newest denizen. Ceylon. There’s an observatory I’d like to see.”
With those words, he readjusts himself, moving from one hoof to the other, and lets stillness steal him once more. He knows so little of people, but he is sure this warden would have a retort, some unassuming comment, to dismiss or dissuade him from his path. That is, of course, all that it is - this is no mission he’s been sent on, to see all that is beautiful from a high tower and imagine a life outside of it - and nothing more than curiosity being sated would come of it.
A clock ticks, and with it the man blinks once, twice. Expectantly.
