FROM THE LANDSCAPE: A SENSE OF SCALE
from the dead: a sense of scale
Winter has come; crushed the leaves from the branches. Septimus could mind, and sometimes he almost does – it is harder to find things to study in the cold, when so much is dead or slumbering. Still. He appreciates the thin, early-morning sheen of frost on the dry grass, the chunks of ice frozen over in the few, slow, rock-shielded eddies in the Rapax, the blank stillness of receding patches of snow, largely undisturbed from a recent fall but already melting. A cardinal inhabits the dark, sleeping skeleton of a tree on the opposite side of the river, red as a splash of blood.
(Every natural phenomenon – even a cold, culling one – has its place. The feathers on his wings ruffle, like a bird’s, and he presses them tight against his sides to block out the cold.)
Tepid daylight streams through the bare branches, dappling the forest floor in early-morning gold. His breath still streams out white; it is not as cold today as it has been, but it is still cold, though it does not much bite. He disturbs each undisturbed patch of snow, leaves deliberate hoofprints in it, plucks a few bright red wintergreen berries – careful to avoid holly, which is altogether more common, though not out in the woods – and pops them into his mouth, pauses here and there to half-sketch some utterly mundane sight and then, feeling uninspired, returns his quill and whichever leather-bound notebook he pulled out to his back with almost too much delicacy for their well-worn forms, leaving the sketches unfinished. It’s a lovely morning, but it isn’t anything exciting, and Septimus-
Well. There is a reason why he spends so much time on the island. Certainly, he can just as easily find himself entranced by a colony of ants or a flock of common sparrows as he can become enamored by the strange, wild magic that inhabits the strangest regions of Novus, but it is rare for any one thing to hold his attention for long. There is a reason why he is a perpetual traveler, always in motion – he hasn’t even set down a proper home in Delumine, though, by now, he has spent years in Novus.
(He should probably, he thinks, do that. Sometimes he wonders if he will ever make it home; sometimes he wonders if he will die here. Never for long, because he knows that he could find his way out if he really wanted to, to a place where the parts of his blood that sing immortal and faewild start to hum again. He is just fascinated by this strange land, fascinated by how it swallowed up those fiercest parts of him, effectively blunted his teeth.)
(But sometimes he misses his siblings. The younger ones, particularly. His mother. He wonders if she has had more children, while he was gone. Probably. She is always enamored with one creature or another. He wonders if he gets it from her.)
He finally emerges from where he has woven near the edge of the trees to stand in a crop of dry roots and snow that borders the bank. One fell; the trunk hangs over the water, a convenient (but precarious, and dripping with ice) passage from one side to the next. It is utterly unnecessary for him, but somehow deliberate. He wonders if someone in Delumine had meant to make a bridge of it.
That is irrelevant, though. He looks down into the water, then out at the rocks, and finally settles on the bank, pulling a notebook – the one with maps; he checks twice to be sure – from his satchel and flipping it open to reveal his developing cartography. He notes down the log with a horizontal slash, then scribbles a careful, messy note in the margins.
No use in being neat in his own notebooks, he supposes.
@Elliana || me, rapidly shedding my emo skin: science man I owe you my life
"Speech!"
from the dead: a sense of scale
Winter has come; crushed the leaves from the branches. Septimus could mind, and sometimes he almost does – it is harder to find things to study in the cold, when so much is dead or slumbering. Still. He appreciates the thin, early-morning sheen of frost on the dry grass, the chunks of ice frozen over in the few, slow, rock-shielded eddies in the Rapax, the blank stillness of receding patches of snow, largely undisturbed from a recent fall but already melting. A cardinal inhabits the dark, sleeping skeleton of a tree on the opposite side of the river, red as a splash of blood.
(Every natural phenomenon – even a cold, culling one – has its place. The feathers on his wings ruffle, like a bird’s, and he presses them tight against his sides to block out the cold.)
Tepid daylight streams through the bare branches, dappling the forest floor in early-morning gold. His breath still streams out white; it is not as cold today as it has been, but it is still cold, though it does not much bite. He disturbs each undisturbed patch of snow, leaves deliberate hoofprints in it, plucks a few bright red wintergreen berries – careful to avoid holly, which is altogether more common, though not out in the woods – and pops them into his mouth, pauses here and there to half-sketch some utterly mundane sight and then, feeling uninspired, returns his quill and whichever leather-bound notebook he pulled out to his back with almost too much delicacy for their well-worn forms, leaving the sketches unfinished. It’s a lovely morning, but it isn’t anything exciting, and Septimus-
Well. There is a reason why he spends so much time on the island. Certainly, he can just as easily find himself entranced by a colony of ants or a flock of common sparrows as he can become enamored by the strange, wild magic that inhabits the strangest regions of Novus, but it is rare for any one thing to hold his attention for long. There is a reason why he is a perpetual traveler, always in motion – he hasn’t even set down a proper home in Delumine, though, by now, he has spent years in Novus.
(He should probably, he thinks, do that. Sometimes he wonders if he will ever make it home; sometimes he wonders if he will die here. Never for long, because he knows that he could find his way out if he really wanted to, to a place where the parts of his blood that sing immortal and faewild start to hum again. He is just fascinated by this strange land, fascinated by how it swallowed up those fiercest parts of him, effectively blunted his teeth.)
(But sometimes he misses his siblings. The younger ones, particularly. His mother. He wonders if she has had more children, while he was gone. Probably. She is always enamored with one creature or another. He wonders if he gets it from her.)
He finally emerges from where he has woven near the edge of the trees to stand in a crop of dry roots and snow that borders the bank. One fell; the trunk hangs over the water, a convenient (but precarious, and dripping with ice) passage from one side to the next. It is utterly unnecessary for him, but somehow deliberate. He wonders if someone in Delumine had meant to make a bridge of it.
That is irrelevant, though. He looks down into the water, then out at the rocks, and finally settles on the bank, pulling a notebook – the one with maps; he checks twice to be sure – from his satchel and flipping it open to reveal his developing cartography. He notes down the log with a horizontal slash, then scribbles a careful, messy note in the margins.
No use in being neat in his own notebooks, he supposes.
@
"Speech!"
AND RARELY, IF THE WOOD ACCEPTS THE BLADE WITHOUT CONDITIONSthe two pieces keep their balance in spite of the blow❃please tag Septimus! contact is encouraged, short of violence
