THE END OF MAN IS KNOWLEDGE
Austere. Severe. Pragmatic.
By all accounts, those are all descriptors of Lyr; he knows it, and if he were another man he might have found humour in the fact the adjectives now regard something else entirely. They are the words that run through his mind as he studies his barrack’s room, having not yet found lodging elsewhere. Although the architecture mimics that of Terrastella as a whole, by nature military dwellings are always less inhabitable than other housing. Or so Lyr believes.
Everything is a hard, unforgiving line. Utilitarian and minimal, his quarters contain nothing aside from the bear essentials. A desk, a lamp, a rack.
There is certainly something disheartening about the fact there is nothing on the walls, and the only personal item in his possession is a journal he has never written in.
(A counsellor his father demanded he speak with a year ago had suggested he begin to write down his thoughts and feelings; he would help him cope with the incident.)
Lyr never did; but rather than wonder why, he thinks of how his mother had decorated their Delumine cabin with poems and breathtaking art. There is a moment when he closes his eye and begins to doze—he has no duties until much later that evening—and Lyr later awakens with a start, some half-remembered dream fresh in his mind. It is the pitching of a ship, he thinks; the sound of wind catching in the masts and the waves breaking against the bow. Lyr would prefer not to dwell on such things and so he rises from his bed; he leaves the room and trots down the long corridor with several conjoined single or double-man rooms.
He does not know where he intends to go until he is there.
Lyr hesitates at the door; there is no reason for him to be there, no reason at all. In fact, he shouldn’t be. Then, before he can talk himself out of it, Lyr knocks his hoof against the door in a succession of three knocks. “Euphrosyne?”
This is not:
Austere. Severe. Pragmatic.
This is not:
Disciplined, logical.
There is a bluebird in my heart.
He tries to get out.
But I’m too tough for him.
Embarrassed and uncertain, Lyr turns away.
