in my mouth
turning
my tongue into
rivers of blood.
A
ndras is not a night owl. It’s rare that he’s awake much past sundown. If asked–and he wouldn’t be asked–he would admit that it feels like the day ends when the sun sets, and flowers shut their bright cups for the evening, and the woodland birds bed down to rest.Truthfully, he is just tired, burning all day as brightly as this or any other sun, clenching his jaw so hard that it hurts by the time the sky has begun to be smeared with reds and violets. Andras as an entity is not sustainable. His anger is not sustainable.
It is only a matter of time before the engine of his rage breaks him down like one, too. But, until that comes to pass–
–it is late. The halls are lit only by a series of lanterns. The windows are black pits rimmed by spade-shaped leaves, creeping ivy reaching out into the void with its fishing-line arms. Andras is not only tired but he looks tired, bent over a table in the glow of a stacked candelabra that almost washes out the weak pop of his magic as it arcs off his skin in sluggish waves– or as sluggish as electricity can be, anyway.
Before him is a table of paperwork (still unfinished) that seems to multiply as he looks at it. On the side of the desk are his glasses, discarded so that he can scrub his face with one wing. It is a moment or two before he hears footsteps outside, the telltale clatter of hooves on the stone in the hall.
He doesn’t want to admit that, just for a moment, when he looks from the desk to the black window to the door and the sliver of orange light creeping in from beneath it, he is tense.
If the saying is true, if the stories are right, and light cannot exist without the shadow it casts, surely Delumine is nestled behind some great, sun-blocking wall that drops a blue-black shape over its back. Funny, too, how no one mentions that sure, light can’t exist without darkness– but the courtyard outside the window is as black as the bottom of the sea.
The footsteps continue. Andras rises from the desk, lifts his glasses off the table and sets them on the bridge of his nose. The door creaks as it opens. When he leans out, he sees Ceylon, backlit by a lantern so that the light catches the individual strands of his hair.
And, in his shadow: Andras, glowering.
“Hello.” he states, simply. I would go as far as to say curtly. “Who are you?” It is just barely a question at all.
they made you into a weapon
and told you to find peace.
