YOU WHISPER / THEN HOLDING YOUR BREATH,
place this cup on yesterday's saucer / without the slightest clink.❃
As the cardinal disappears from his sight, Septimus tells himself to soak in the sight of the light cast around each tip of its bright, blood-red feathers.
Sometimes, his present mortality feels more like his most ambitious experiment yet than it does a trap; sometimes it feels more like a study in something he’d previously found inexplicable, rather than a violation of his very nature. After all, for all his half-mortal blood, Septimus has never really thought of himself as a mortal. He has never been touched by the most mortal quality of them all – that is, death -, and he has never had any particular desire for it, either. At best, he has possessed a morbid fascination at the science of it, the methods of decay and the creatures that feed on rotting things; a swarm of vultures, or fast-growing white-capped mushrooms, the kind you find growing on moss-coated logs that have fallen to the forest floor. He has never longed for time in much the same way, because time, too, is a kind of death.
(In fact – it is the only kind of death he can even claim familiarity with. Even for a creature that exists untouched by the strain of it, the passage of each slipping moment can never be regained, once lost. He simply tries not to long – never to long – for what is already gone; to keep his eyes trained always on what is to come, rather than what has already passed. It would be more properly mortal, he thinks, to be preoccupied with history. He isn’t, though. He barely thinks of the people he has loved before (but for his family; none of the others have mattered for more than a blink), or the places he has been, or all the wonderful and terrible things that he has seen.
It is a trait, he thinks, that he must have inherited from his mother.)
The cardinal slips, like a gash against the sky, through the bony branches of the forest before him. There is barely a moment before it is gone entirely; and he is left, not with a cardinal, but the memory of one, the lingering impression.
If he were the sort to feel much in the way of melancholy (and he most decidedly isn’t), he thinks that he might have felt it then; staring after the ghost of red feathers, unsure of where to go next, aimless, caught with one hoof in winter and one in spring.
But he is not aimless for long. There is the sound of metal-on-metal. A clink, or maybe – the faint ringing of small bells. It is hard to be sure from a distance, but the sound itself is enough to pique Septimus’s curiosity. (It is not much of a feat to do so; his hunger for any kind of knowledge, however small and however specific, is nearly insatiable.) He can hear it rather clearly, so he suspects that the source must be close, and he finds himself striding in the direction of the sound, almost thoughtlessly.
He presses through branches and thicket, lets his hooves crunch across half-patches of snow and fallen twigs, tugs the tangles of his mane and jewel-adorned antlers from the brush-
and he steps out across from a red mare. He immediately pegs the jewelry that adorns her neck, and tail, and crown as the source of the sound – the character of her accessories is distinctly foreign, he thinks, but suits her. She looks decidedly young, too; and, when he manages to trace her blue-eyed stare up, into the leafless canopy, he catches sight of the cardinal again, not quite so gone as he expected. It is nearly enough to make him smile.
(He reserves that, however, for his greeting.)
“Why,” he says, a quiet smile settling across the dark, faintly wolfish (but ever-so friendly) curve of his lips, not pulled back far enough to show his canine teeth, “hello, there. I wasn’t expecting to find anyone else out in the Viride this morning.” He takes care to keep distance between them, settling his hooves where he stands between an arch of bare-branched Oaks, but he lets his eyes drift over her carefully, taking account of her colorful, elegant jewelry, the shape of her antlers, the red of her coat – the markings around her bright blue eyes that might be paint or might be the natural character of her fur.
At any rate – he is pleased by the company. “I don’t think I’ve seen you around-“ Septimus hasn’t, but that doesn’t mean much, since he never remains in one place for very long at all. “I’m Septimus. Who are you?”
He has, on more than one occasion, been accused of being overfriendly with perfect strangers.
(Better overfriendly, he would say, than underfriendly – especially when one was running on limited, perfectly mortal, time.)
@Torielle || <3 || billy collins, "days"
Speech
place this cup on yesterday's saucer / without the slightest clink.❃
As the cardinal disappears from his sight, Septimus tells himself to soak in the sight of the light cast around each tip of its bright, blood-red feathers.
Sometimes, his present mortality feels more like his most ambitious experiment yet than it does a trap; sometimes it feels more like a study in something he’d previously found inexplicable, rather than a violation of his very nature. After all, for all his half-mortal blood, Septimus has never really thought of himself as a mortal. He has never been touched by the most mortal quality of them all – that is, death -, and he has never had any particular desire for it, either. At best, he has possessed a morbid fascination at the science of it, the methods of decay and the creatures that feed on rotting things; a swarm of vultures, or fast-growing white-capped mushrooms, the kind you find growing on moss-coated logs that have fallen to the forest floor. He has never longed for time in much the same way, because time, too, is a kind of death.
(In fact – it is the only kind of death he can even claim familiarity with. Even for a creature that exists untouched by the strain of it, the passage of each slipping moment can never be regained, once lost. He simply tries not to long – never to long – for what is already gone; to keep his eyes trained always on what is to come, rather than what has already passed. It would be more properly mortal, he thinks, to be preoccupied with history. He isn’t, though. He barely thinks of the people he has loved before (but for his family; none of the others have mattered for more than a blink), or the places he has been, or all the wonderful and terrible things that he has seen.
It is a trait, he thinks, that he must have inherited from his mother.)
The cardinal slips, like a gash against the sky, through the bony branches of the forest before him. There is barely a moment before it is gone entirely; and he is left, not with a cardinal, but the memory of one, the lingering impression.
If he were the sort to feel much in the way of melancholy (and he most decidedly isn’t), he thinks that he might have felt it then; staring after the ghost of red feathers, unsure of where to go next, aimless, caught with one hoof in winter and one in spring.
But he is not aimless for long. There is the sound of metal-on-metal. A clink, or maybe – the faint ringing of small bells. It is hard to be sure from a distance, but the sound itself is enough to pique Septimus’s curiosity. (It is not much of a feat to do so; his hunger for any kind of knowledge, however small and however specific, is nearly insatiable.) He can hear it rather clearly, so he suspects that the source must be close, and he finds himself striding in the direction of the sound, almost thoughtlessly.
He presses through branches and thicket, lets his hooves crunch across half-patches of snow and fallen twigs, tugs the tangles of his mane and jewel-adorned antlers from the brush-
and he steps out across from a red mare. He immediately pegs the jewelry that adorns her neck, and tail, and crown as the source of the sound – the character of her accessories is distinctly foreign, he thinks, but suits her. She looks decidedly young, too; and, when he manages to trace her blue-eyed stare up, into the leafless canopy, he catches sight of the cardinal again, not quite so gone as he expected. It is nearly enough to make him smile.
(He reserves that, however, for his greeting.)
“Why,” he says, a quiet smile settling across the dark, faintly wolfish (but ever-so friendly) curve of his lips, not pulled back far enough to show his canine teeth, “hello, there. I wasn’t expecting to find anyone else out in the Viride this morning.” He takes care to keep distance between them, settling his hooves where he stands between an arch of bare-branched Oaks, but he lets his eyes drift over her carefully, taking account of her colorful, elegant jewelry, the shape of her antlers, the red of her coat – the markings around her bright blue eyes that might be paint or might be the natural character of her fur.
At any rate – he is pleased by the company. “I don’t think I’ve seen you around-“ Septimus hasn’t, but that doesn’t mean much, since he never remains in one place for very long at all. “I’m Septimus. Who are you?”
He has, on more than one occasion, been accused of being overfriendly with perfect strangers.
(Better overfriendly, he would say, than underfriendly – especially when one was running on limited, perfectly mortal, time.)
@Torielle || <3 || billy collins, "days"
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
