[P] [spring] the fist and the fire

[Andras]

AND I KNOW THAT ROME WASN'T BURNT IN A DAY
BUT IT COULDN'T HAVE BEEN MORE THAN A WEEK

S

ometimes a hand doesn't know it's a hand until it's too late.

Andras stands at the brink of the meadow, the line drawn on a map between the wide-open sky and the last dewey tree. He is a shadow among a line of long afternoon shadows cast by the sinking sun, the time just before golden hour when the world holds its breath in waiting. He, too, is holding his breath.

In the clearing: long oak tables already spotted with thick, red and blue paint, the heavily pigmented sort used for body art, or war paint. There is a small smattering of faces, just bodies to him, with no names. He wonders if they are his people. He wonders if they are from Denocte, or the desert, or the coast. He wonders why he must wonder-- probably because he is here, at the brink of the meadow, watching from the gathering dark, as usual.

It's like pulling his own teeth, waiting for the sun to set and the course to be finished, burning rings and wide squares of smouldering coal that will soon roar to life. It's the sort of thing that makes savage animals giddy with anticipation. It's the sort of thing that makes Andras' skin crawl with the want.

Sometimes a hand is just a hand, palm-up, fingers curled forward in beckoning. Sometimes a hand has to be something else.

Andras wants to be the hand, as he stalks out of the treeline and picks up a jar full of brushes, some thick and some almost impossibly slender. He wants it as he sets the jar and the brushes aside and pulls one, medium-sized and square, and dips it in a pot of bright, red-orange paint. He wants it as he pulls it back out and it drips on the grass at his feet. He starts to forget, just a bit, when he touches the brush to his knees, painting a wet, red circle on each. The brush shakes as he sets it back down.

Sometimes a hand just can't be a hand. Sometimes a hand is only a fist.
Often, Andras is only a fist.

"Welcome," he says as her footsteps near his place in the clearing. His voice is thick with the strain of composure. He does not look at her because he is watching the brush, tremble, and wondering if it is with this giddy joy or something else. "having fun yet?"

@morrighan | speaks

ANDRAS, WARDEN OF DELUMINE

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