Andras Demyan
"All you want to do is dance out of your skin into another song not quite about heroes, but still a song where you can lift your spear and say 'yes' as it flashes."
"All you want to do is dance out of your skin into another song not quite about heroes, but still a song where you can lift your spear and say 'yes' as it flashes."
The sun has yet to fully crest the horizon, filtered through the fog of winter in thin streams of cold blue light. There is a heavy silence over the area, and Andras is at the bridge, glowering down its length toward the island in the distance.
He hadn't cared, when he heard the first time. Thought it stupid, even. Hadn't wanted to stand shoulder to shoulder with complete strangers and pledge his heart and soul to the spirit of adventure. Andras doesn't need adventure. For all his bile in him, for this beast that begs for the sting of impact - a beast that wakes only under threat of injury - he really does not savor the idea of dying senselessly on a god-forsaken island in the middle of the sea. And when he does come, it is with an air of teeth-clenched defiance.
Andras decided, last night, that he is not afraid of the island.
Andras decided that if it was going to swim back up from the sea he was going to stomp it back down.
Andras left that second.
So, the warden stands, glaring down the black glass of the bridge, and when he surges forward it is is with the savage determination of a wild animal, an engine churning endlessly toward the island that glitters like diamonds in the light of the rising sun. Each stride winds him tighter, each clattering footstep rings in him louder than his blood ever has.
(And it's still there, singing in his heart: a hymn to rage, a song of white-hot stars and teeth closed so tight around his tongue it bleeds. But his foosteps are louder than even that - until he steps off the bridge and the soft crunch of snow meets him as if he were a rock falling. He falls like an angel cast down. His landing bruises the world.)
Around him, everything is white, and both around and inside him, everything is a cold he can't quite feel, one that sinks into the marrow of his bones and turns his blood to ice. Andras thinks again that this is stupid, thinks that this is possibly the stupidest thing he's ever done, but here he is, in the cold and the snow.
To his left, there is a strange sound in the trees - something that doesn't sound quite real, or equine, but that is so tangible and so close that he cannot help but follow it, diving through the trees that shed snow on his back faster, and faster, in pursuit until--
A horse.
Specifically one that smells like the tall, old trees of Viride. Old trees, ink, and parchment.
Did it... come... from him?
Andras sighs. This figures.
He shakes the snow off his back and unfolds one wing to brush off the flakes that remain, fixing Septimus with a firm glare. "What are you doing?" he asks, as if he has any right to know - as if he has any right at all. His glasses are half-fogged over in the cold air.
He hadn't cared, when he heard the first time. Thought it stupid, even. Hadn't wanted to stand shoulder to shoulder with complete strangers and pledge his heart and soul to the spirit of adventure. Andras doesn't need adventure. For all his bile in him, for this beast that begs for the sting of impact - a beast that wakes only under threat of injury - he really does not savor the idea of dying senselessly on a god-forsaken island in the middle of the sea. And when he does come, it is with an air of teeth-clenched defiance.
Andras decided, last night, that he is not afraid of the island.
Andras decided that if it was going to swim back up from the sea he was going to stomp it back down.
Andras left that second.
So, the warden stands, glaring down the black glass of the bridge, and when he surges forward it is is with the savage determination of a wild animal, an engine churning endlessly toward the island that glitters like diamonds in the light of the rising sun. Each stride winds him tighter, each clattering footstep rings in him louder than his blood ever has.
(And it's still there, singing in his heart: a hymn to rage, a song of white-hot stars and teeth closed so tight around his tongue it bleeds. But his foosteps are louder than even that - until he steps off the bridge and the soft crunch of snow meets him as if he were a rock falling. He falls like an angel cast down. His landing bruises the world.)
Around him, everything is white, and both around and inside him, everything is a cold he can't quite feel, one that sinks into the marrow of his bones and turns his blood to ice. Andras thinks again that this is stupid, thinks that this is possibly the stupidest thing he's ever done, but here he is, in the cold and the snow.
To his left, there is a strange sound in the trees - something that doesn't sound quite real, or equine, but that is so tangible and so close that he cannot help but follow it, diving through the trees that shed snow on his back faster, and faster, in pursuit until--
A horse.
Specifically one that smells like the tall, old trees of Viride. Old trees, ink, and parchment.
Did it... come... from him?
Andras sighs. This figures.
He shakes the snow off his back and unfolds one wing to brush off the flakes that remain, fixing Septimus with a firm glare. "What are you doing?" he asks, as if he has any right to know - as if he has any right at all. His glasses are half-fogged over in the cold air.
@
they made you into a weapon
and told you to find peace.
