TO TRAVEL ON AND TRAVEL LIGHT
to travel deep into the night
Thin crystals of frost crunched beneath Septimus’s hooves as he landed – gracefully, but only considering the hour of the morning and how little he’d slept the night before – on a snowy hilltop, his teeth chattering in the only-just-dawn chill. He’d come running to the island again the moment that he heard it had reappeared, gathering his notebooks and quills in a hurry and leaving his makeshift home in Delumine looking much like a tornado had passed through in his wake. If he were more organized by nature, or more practical, he might have waited until morning or been more meticulous about it, but Septimus could not wait. He’d left at some ungodly hour of the night.
Now – after ambling, again, over that thin strip of bridge, mumbling complaints all the while about not being able to use his wings to cross the considerable stretch, a limitation that did not seem to have changed with the seasons – he was back on the island, and it was reborn. Ghostly pale, and, in the morning light, covered in a thin, pastel, and ghostly sheen of fog. It was though the world was crafted of winter itself; the sparse trees were dark and skeletal, poking out of the fog like specters, and, though Septimus was well-enough accustomed to cold, the cold of the island was something different. He could feel it somewhere deep inside, in his bones. It was a cold with teeth.
But what was stranger than that was the feeling of something else.
It was familiar. It was so, so very familiar – it was so familiar that it ached in the way that it ached when you bit down on something too sweet, an ache you could feel like a throbbing in your jaw or a burning on the tip of your tongue. Was it the magic? Something about it had shifted. He did not expect it to feel like it had before – he was not even sure if it was the same island -, but this felt like home, too much like home. It had been similar, last time, wonderfully and uncontrollably wild and apathetic, as nature so often is, but that was where the similarities ended.
He glanced about himself, his eyes narrowed to emerald slits. He had the sudden sense of being watched, and not by the shifting shadows of birds huddled together for warmth in the creeping boughs of the slumbering trees. His stare caught in a glimmer of light peeking out almost shyly from around the trunk of a tree, hazy and orb-like in the fog; he took a tentative step forward, then another, his lips slowly falling open as he took measure of the shifting, nebulous creature that seemed oh-so hesitant to meet his eyes. He dragged in a deep breath of cold air.
He didn’t want to be foolish enough to hope that it could be like him, but he could not stop his treacherous heart from hoping regardless. He felt so strange in this world of mortals, so wrong, and he had lingered far too long already; the broken-off half of him that was magic woke him up at night, sobbing like a child for attention. He was not whole. (He had never been whole.) Septimus draws closer to the light, and closer, enraptured by how it trembles, enraptured at how it changes-
And a greeting fell from his open lips, an unnatural combination of sound that Septimus had almost forgotten until he spoke it. The light watched him for another long moment, then, like a falling star, dashed deeper into the sleeping forest that stretched out into the valley. He did not know if it was running or begging him to follow, but the disappointment is crushing.
A moment later, he spotted what he hoped was another spark of light, just a bit further away, a glimmer of brilliance among dark branches; and though Septimus was no fool, raised on tales of tricky spirits and will-o-wisps, he followed.
@Andras || <3
"Speech!"
to travel deep into the night
Thin crystals of frost crunched beneath Septimus’s hooves as he landed – gracefully, but only considering the hour of the morning and how little he’d slept the night before – on a snowy hilltop, his teeth chattering in the only-just-dawn chill. He’d come running to the island again the moment that he heard it had reappeared, gathering his notebooks and quills in a hurry and leaving his makeshift home in Delumine looking much like a tornado had passed through in his wake. If he were more organized by nature, or more practical, he might have waited until morning or been more meticulous about it, but Septimus could not wait. He’d left at some ungodly hour of the night.
Now – after ambling, again, over that thin strip of bridge, mumbling complaints all the while about not being able to use his wings to cross the considerable stretch, a limitation that did not seem to have changed with the seasons – he was back on the island, and it was reborn. Ghostly pale, and, in the morning light, covered in a thin, pastel, and ghostly sheen of fog. It was though the world was crafted of winter itself; the sparse trees were dark and skeletal, poking out of the fog like specters, and, though Septimus was well-enough accustomed to cold, the cold of the island was something different. He could feel it somewhere deep inside, in his bones. It was a cold with teeth.
But what was stranger than that was the feeling of something else.
It was familiar. It was so, so very familiar – it was so familiar that it ached in the way that it ached when you bit down on something too sweet, an ache you could feel like a throbbing in your jaw or a burning on the tip of your tongue. Was it the magic? Something about it had shifted. He did not expect it to feel like it had before – he was not even sure if it was the same island -, but this felt like home, too much like home. It had been similar, last time, wonderfully and uncontrollably wild and apathetic, as nature so often is, but that was where the similarities ended.
He glanced about himself, his eyes narrowed to emerald slits. He had the sudden sense of being watched, and not by the shifting shadows of birds huddled together for warmth in the creeping boughs of the slumbering trees. His stare caught in a glimmer of light peeking out almost shyly from around the trunk of a tree, hazy and orb-like in the fog; he took a tentative step forward, then another, his lips slowly falling open as he took measure of the shifting, nebulous creature that seemed oh-so hesitant to meet his eyes. He dragged in a deep breath of cold air.
He didn’t want to be foolish enough to hope that it could be like him, but he could not stop his treacherous heart from hoping regardless. He felt so strange in this world of mortals, so wrong, and he had lingered far too long already; the broken-off half of him that was magic woke him up at night, sobbing like a child for attention. He was not whole. (He had never been whole.) Septimus draws closer to the light, and closer, enraptured by how it trembles, enraptured at how it changes-
And a greeting fell from his open lips, an unnatural combination of sound that Septimus had almost forgotten until he spoke it. The light watched him for another long moment, then, like a falling star, dashed deeper into the sleeping forest that stretched out into the valley. He did not know if it was running or begging him to follow, but the disappointment is crushing.
A moment later, he spotted what he hoped was another spark of light, just a bit further away, a glimmer of brilliance among dark branches; and though Septimus was no fool, raised on tales of tricky spirits and will-o-wisps, he followed.
@
"Speech!"
AND RARELY, IF THE WOOD ACCEPTS THE BLADE WITHOUT CONDITIONSthe two pieces keep their balance in spite of the blow❃please tag Septimus! contact is encouraged, short of violence
