andras
i am angry. i have nothing to say about it.
i am not sorry for the cost.
H
e concedes, fine, and the trees open up like petals, green-gold light like spears from the canopy to the soft, dry ground that crunches underfoot. Andras cannot remember a time that the woods did not feel like home, even when they were full of blood, even when they were full of fear-- and especially since then, when he has been lifting his head from his bed of pillows and staring upside-down at the thick old branches that line the library walls.A red-breasted robin flits across the path in a hurry, taking the spoils of war home to its nest in a bed of old twigs. It is almost peaceful, if it were not overshadowed by the creeping fear of whatever it was that goaded him into its game and whatever it is in him now that feels warm and still and quiet in spite of it.
He has never known how to feel warm, and still, and quiet. He has never needed to.
The same way inland cities don't think of their homes torn away by the sea, he had never considered that he could feel this. It is like another language altogether.
Around him it grows dark, more blue shade than green-gold light, and the singing of birds becomes more of a far-off screaming after their numbers have grown to the point that they are all he can hear.
I'll play your game, he sneers, to himself, at himself, in his head. Sometimes he is profoundly stupid. Sometimes he thinks far too little and acts far too soon. Andras thinks this on repeat until the sound of old Viride drowns it out, as well. Behind him there is a sound like an animal crashing through the underbrush but when he turns there is nothing there. Behind him, the road winds on and on through the dark. He swallows. He holds his breath. The road stands, unchanging, in spite of his best efforts.
It is only when he turns back that he sees: lights, more than he can count, humming their way down the path toward him, like stars taken form and brought down to meet them. As the cloud of them passes a lantern it winks faintly, like it's laughing, or longing to join the procession. Andras wonders vaguely why it feels more like a dirge than a celebration.
It has a shape, like the outline of a horse trying to hold itself in place, twitching here and there as or light bobs too far off to the side, or too high, or blinks out altogether. Andras can't see a face, if it has one, and it does not have a voice, but it does have a hand, or a claw, or a tentacle that touches his face like the bright light of noon. For a moment Andras is warm all over, almost too warm, enough that a sweat breaks out on his neck.
And, when they pull away, when they lilt down the path and then off of it, spiraling out of shape in the dark, Andras feels cold, cold, cold. He thinks he sees the shape wink. He thinks the lights, though faint, blinking just bright enough that he sees them even as they, collectively, hurry off stage, can mean only one thing: that he is meant to come.
Andras thinks. He thinks he is so tired. He thinks he has so much to consider, and to do, and to hope or not hope-- but Andras would not be Andras if he thought things through. And he is--
so he goes, and he does not ask himself why.
Andras follows the fireflies into the woods for better or for worse. :)
@Official Dawn Account
they made you into a weapon
and told you to find peace.
