Father Zeus held out his sacred golden scales: in them he placed two fates of death that lays men low—one for Achilles, one for Hector breaker of horses—and gripping the beam mid-haft the Father raised it high and down went Hector's day of doom, dragging him down to the strong House of Death
There is nowhere else Pravda feels more at ease, more at home, than Delumine’s library. Perhaps it is the dappled forest overhead; perhaps it is the familiar scent of parchment and ink; more likely still, it is the combination, and the specific sound of the wind as it rustles leaves and pages alike. The library offers sanctity.
Mostly, from himself.
There are more stories than he can keep track of. Letters of long-dead dignitaries. Mythologies, of Shed Stars and Eira and Davke. Poems and screenplays. The knowledge seems both endless and utterly finite; Delumine largely reads of this world, or the stories Novus residents have written. He does not have to think of his own story while he walks the aisles of tree-shelves; he does not have to remember the narrative of his life, so long as he is Pravda of Delumine and not Pravda of the City Debro.
Yet, the things he read maintain a certain distance. They are stories that do not belong to him. This morning, he reads nothing. He simply walks along the books, running a telepathic finger down the spines. He breathes in the fresh, bright air and tries to feel alive, tries to feel new, instead of a over-read, too-old classic—
Later, he will assume that he stopped to observe her because there was some note of hesitation on her face. Later, it will be because there was something in her posture that intrigued him.
(Truly, it is because he is alone, and that aloneness sits between his ribs as sharply as a knife).
Pravda clears his throat softly at the end of the aisle. “May I help you? Are you looking for something?” Although not a librarian, the scholar has spent more than enough time cataloguing the contents of the library. He cannot quite keep the sharp otherness from his face, the inquisitive raise of his brows, the profound depth of his eyes. Regardless of how mundane the question, Pravda’s voice carries a disembodied, misplaced severity: the voice of scholars, of priests, of warlords and men of station.
It does not correspond with his youthful face and disposition.
But, he is nothing if not contradictory.
"Speech." || @Meira
