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 rises on another Delumine morning, spilling over the horizon in the warm yellows and sleepy blues of a winter dawn. Snow has finally broken through Viride's thick canopy and there is not much of it spread across the forest floor, but there is enough, and that's all that matters.
Andras is among it, perched in a bent old tree that makes a Y just wide enough for him to spread his wings and balance with the trunk to catch him if he sways too far to one side. A dawn this late in the year is so dark for so long that he might hardly be seen to be there at all except for the silhouette of his outstretched wings on the forest floor, and the glint of his glasses as he waits, poised like a cat on a fence, impatient and agitated.
There are dark things in Viride. Black things as black as Andras' rumbling heart and more.
Poachers, Emersyn had said, in a dusty, crowded room of the library where Andras had glowered from the corner with his wings crossed over his chest. Possibly multiple poachers, she had clarified. Andras with his gritting teeth and his smouldering rage had not needed to be told to hung - King Ipomoea could not have stopped him if he tried.
Andras draws in a breath so deep and so loud that he doesn't hear the footsteps until they are upon him, or below him: Mathias, tromping through the woods like the soldier he is, or was. He lets out the breath in a sharp sigh. Mathias.
He grits his teeth.
A lot has changed since they were boys in a courtyard full of birds. Too much for a system as fragile as Andras, too much for a little black horse with a big black heart and an anger so loud it shakes in his bones when he breathes -- so Andras has been ducking out of rooms and folding into corners when the other passes. (And if Andras is doing it with less than stealth, so what? Does he care? Should he?) Frowning, Andras leans forward to see.
"Oh good," he says, leaning just far enough that he tips out of the tree, open wings full of air that floats him gently toward the forest floor. Andras lands in a splash of wet snow and soggy leaves. Andras stares at Mathias for a moment - perhaps too long of a moment (searching for something to say?) - before his face pulls itself into a series of grim, impatient angles.
Andras doesn't wait. He is an arrow cocked back in a bow, singing against the string. His rage sings along with it. When he starts walking he does not look back. "Let's go then."
Andras is among it, perched in a bent old tree that makes a Y just wide enough for him to spread his wings and balance with the trunk to catch him if he sways too far to one side. A dawn this late in the year is so dark for so long that he might hardly be seen to be there at all except for the silhouette of his outstretched wings on the forest floor, and the glint of his glasses as he waits, poised like a cat on a fence, impatient and agitated.
There are dark things in Viride. Black things as black as Andras' rumbling heart and more.
Poachers, Emersyn had said, in a dusty, crowded room of the library where Andras had glowered from the corner with his wings crossed over his chest. Possibly multiple poachers, she had clarified. Andras with his gritting teeth and his smouldering rage had not needed to be told to hung - King Ipomoea could not have stopped him if he tried.
Andras draws in a breath so deep and so loud that he doesn't hear the footsteps until they are upon him, or below him: Mathias, tromping through the woods like the soldier he is, or was. He lets out the breath in a sharp sigh. Mathias.
He grits his teeth.
A lot has changed since they were boys in a courtyard full of birds. Too much for a system as fragile as Andras, too much for a little black horse with a big black heart and an anger so loud it shakes in his bones when he breathes -- so Andras has been ducking out of rooms and folding into corners when the other passes. (And if Andras is doing it with less than stealth, so what? Does he care? Should he?) Frowning, Andras leans forward to see.
"Oh good," he says, leaning just far enough that he tips out of the tree, open wings full of air that floats him gently toward the forest floor. Andras lands in a splash of wet snow and soggy leaves. Andras stares at Mathias for a moment - perhaps too long of a moment (searching for something to say?) - before his face pulls itself into a series of grim, impatient angles.
Andras doesn't wait. He is an arrow cocked back in a bow, singing against the string. His rage sings along with it. When he starts walking he does not look back. "Let's go then."
@
Anyone else is welcome to join this patrol thread if you want!
they made you into a weapon
and told you to find peace.
