ANDRAS DEMYAN
no red feathers, all red ashes.
listen to me, child;
it always starts with you saying:
"I am doing something right."
no red feathers, all red ashes.
listen to me, child;
it always starts with you saying:
"I am doing something right."
Andras has been watching him.
He's propped up on the table before him, head angled to lay on one bent knee. Andras watches him as a spider might, through the window as he paces the courtyard - endlessly patient and only tangentially interested. It is easier to watch than to read, he supposes, and tilted like this he does not have to look at the stack of books piled on the table beside him, or the squeak of his clenched teeth when he adjusts his jaw, or anything at all that is not this creature come from Solterra to haunt Viride.
He sees them, too - caretakers of the library, perched on shelves and door frames and windowsills, all milling about in barely-veiled curiosity, gathering in the wide entrance hall in an attempt to look busy.
The wind groans through the trees - dark trees that haven't let go of night, dark trees that shield the library's knotted walls from the creeping light of dawn. And Andras cannot hear anything but the curious cooing of birds and the drumming of his raging heart.
It was not tragedy that brought Andras to Mathias. It was not some clever trick of fate, some sad and strange will that tells him you must, here is your mirror--you must. It is only the sigh of the wind and the high-pitched wailing of something buried, some deep and dark pit that yawns open in him, a pit that was born alongside and within him. Andras was born wrong. Andras was born with this boiling lake in his stomach. Andras was born with something black that sizzles and pops in his skin.
Something that echoes as loud as his footsteps, when Andras lifts his cheek from his knees and flows into the hall like ink.
At the door to the courtyard he can see the scars, the tense line of Mathias' back, the same rumbling echo that bounces between them, and the black pegasus folds his wings against his side the way someone else might clear their throat.
There, the scattered seed, held in the stranger's grip. Andras' face is bleak.
There, the glint against his glasses, a flash of something unsavory and thrilling.
"What are you doing?" he says, though it is not a question. More of an excuse.
He's propped up on the table before him, head angled to lay on one bent knee. Andras watches him as a spider might, through the window as he paces the courtyard - endlessly patient and only tangentially interested. It is easier to watch than to read, he supposes, and tilted like this he does not have to look at the stack of books piled on the table beside him, or the squeak of his clenched teeth when he adjusts his jaw, or anything at all that is not this creature come from Solterra to haunt Viride.
He sees them, too - caretakers of the library, perched on shelves and door frames and windowsills, all milling about in barely-veiled curiosity, gathering in the wide entrance hall in an attempt to look busy.
The wind groans through the trees - dark trees that haven't let go of night, dark trees that shield the library's knotted walls from the creeping light of dawn. And Andras cannot hear anything but the curious cooing of birds and the drumming of his raging heart.
It was not tragedy that brought Andras to Mathias. It was not some clever trick of fate, some sad and strange will that tells him you must, here is your mirror--you must. It is only the sigh of the wind and the high-pitched wailing of something buried, some deep and dark pit that yawns open in him, a pit that was born alongside and within him. Andras was born wrong. Andras was born with this boiling lake in his stomach. Andras was born with something black that sizzles and pops in his skin.
Something that echoes as loud as his footsteps, when Andras lifts his cheek from his knees and flows into the hall like ink.
At the door to the courtyard he can see the scars, the tense line of Mathias' back, the same rumbling echo that bounces between them, and the black pegasus folds his wings against his side the way someone else might clear their throat.
There, the scattered seed, held in the stranger's grip. Andras' face is bleak.
There, the glint against his glasses, a flash of something unsavory and thrilling.
"What are you doing?" he says, though it is not a question. More of an excuse.
they made you into a weapon
and told you to find peace.
