andras
i am angry.
i have nothing to say about it.
i am not sorry for the cost.
W
hat would you shed, if you could shed anything? Peel back the skin and see the blood and the bone and the muscle that makes up who you are, for better or worse? What would you cleanse?Andras has never wondered.
He is painted red, like blood. What started as small circles and patterns became one glob of wet paint after the other, until he is red almost head to toe. He touches the brush to his knees and watches it soak into his coat. He drags it down and then up, red stocking that become a red vest that become a full-bodied statement. When he approaches the start line, he is the kind of mottled color that comes with paint that dries slowly, only a crack to show the black face beneath. The lighter color hugs his ribs in ways his natural one won't. It draws the eye to the sharp shoulders of his wings. For good measure, before he nods and departs, Andras splashes paint over the rim of his glasses, which stare back at him less like a mirror and more like circles of wood. He tucks them away, a pocket beneath one of the tables where no one will look.
He wonders, What do I look like, for perhaps the first time in his life.
The answer is nothing spectacular. The effect is dulled somewhat by the red-gray smear at his elbows and jaw where the skin rubs together. The dry bits are flaking because he cannot stand still. Later he will shed it in sheets like a snake: another metaphor on the heap of metaphors that unzip him, inch by inch, as the night wears on.
By the time the race is about to start he is breathing so quiet he is not getting enough air, sucking it silently through his nose and holding on. Around him it is almost bright enough to be day. There is music, and laughter, but instead of growing it becomes quieter as the night wears on and Denocte's citizens start to give him strange, inviting looks.
"Warden," someone asks him-- he doesn't know who, because he doesn't look; he is busy breathing quietly, and feeling his skin tighten where the paint has now dried. He wonders how they still know him. He suposes the tight line of his mouth and the audible sound of his teeth grinding against each other might give him away.
"Warden," they insist, now.
"What." He says, without looking. Without asking.
"What are you hoping to cleanse?"
It's a simple enough question, and an understandable one. It's not like his people know him well. When he is not holed away in the library he is leering through the streets with a snarl on his face. It is not exactly the picture of approachability. Sane men do not paint themselves red all over and call it art. Andras tilts one ear, nothing more, their way.
"I'm not here to cleanse anything. I'm just here to--" he pauses. Perhaps it says more than he can. "--race."
What are you hoping to cleanse? What would you shed, if you could shed anything. Andras thinks of Pilate, as Andras often does, chewing the inside of his cheek. He can't tell if he has any sins. He wonders if he can burn away someone else's.
The call goes out. The line starts to form. Andras stretches his wings to crack the paint.
they made you into a weapon
and told you to find peace.
