“You look like you're having fun.” says the Warden, smiling like a wolf might smile-- all teeth in clean rows, like sticks of chalk.
Here is an emotion to try on, to wear like a winter coat in the dead of summer-- the kind of thick, heavy fabric that makes you itch in the sun. Here is a feeling to make you sweat:
Fear--of nothing in particular. Dull fear, back-of-the-mind fear, fear that drives and digs in insidious ways, almost not there until it is, almost not volatile until it is eating away at you. This fear is slowly waning but he has known it so long he does not even seen it. It is just white noise, a distant roar like the Rapax, always running but never at the front of his mind.
Joy-- or something like it. Not wholesome joy, not baking pies and soft voices and laughter. There is laughter, sure, but it is a high-pitched, panicked kind. Trapped animal laughter.
Deafening anger, anger that comes out in waves, anger that rarely falters and always consumes-- anger that Andras wears as a second skin, anger that Andras uses to mask the fear and the joy. Anger with sharp claws and sharper teeth that arcs off his skin like literal lightning. Anger that rules him more than he rules it. Anger that turns to hatred that turns to boiling, red-hot rage before it explodes.
Apoplectic anger. Coexisting with everything else not because it can but because it must. The sort of anger that Oriens took one long look at and decided it was not a gift but a curse.
And, still deeper-- something else. Something cool and blue and soft. Something that Andras doesn't touch, doesn't look at, doesn't want to know is there. It has the face of a prince and a fist full of moths ready to give him a swift punch in the gut.
All of these, tucked into a that thin, toothy smile, the rough lines of his face, the shield of his glasses. When he looks from Elena to the slowly growing crowd, and the drying grass between them, freckled with light like the sun is not sinking, it feels like home in a way he doesn't expect. Few things truly feel like home.
Though it has just begin, though the lanterns are just being lit, tourists are just streaming in from outside, Andras asks, "Are you here for the festival?"
i am being perfectly fucking civil
@
god i am so sorry he's a toxic good boy
