In darkness, we are naked. Our truest selves. Night is when fear comes to us at its fullest, when we have no way to fight it. It will do everything it can to seep inside you. Sometimes it may succeed - but never think that you are the night.
There is a beating heart of a city built on bones and built on stone. He scours the halls of the library for days, drinking down paper like one does poison in a desperate plea for death and all that should come, or would come, after it. Ceylon has buried his nose in the trees that surround Delumine, buried them in the trunks of shelves and raised it high to the branches folded over until they are so dense that not even the rain would dare come through and destroy the knowledge of that old library.
His candles do not often run low, nor are they snuffed out. Enchanted, as many of the candles and lights in the library are, they burn for weeks upon weeks. Perhaps he has forgotten some on tables long since abandoned by the man of sand and starlight. Another may have found the dancing flame and huffed it out of existence.
Ceylon does not know.
He does not care.
Once he leaves a book, having lapped up all the sweets it would offer, it is returned and his post, once well used and worn in, abandoned to find a more secluded section that has not seen the feet of man for many, many moon cycles.
Ceylon read there, in those ancient bowels, of a great tree growing in the center of Delumine. It is wide and tall, as immovable as the mountains themselves. Perhaps he missed its branches in the sky without meaning to, for there are so many branches that ache towards the sun and fall painfully short before they die.
He does not know, but now that the knowledge is his, he wants to see.
There is nothing to stop him as he walks through the city. Few wave, smiling in his direction in hopes that, perhaps, he would come over and investigate what they wish to sell or the gossip they have to offer. They do not know him. He is a creature wholly unto himself, needing little in the way of company and treasuring the silence that permeates the still and forgotten areas of the world more than the fortuitous hum that signifies life itself.
Ceylon does not care so much for living and present things.
Relics of the past and future interest him more.
Gold and blue feet patter along stone and dust. He moves as a ghost. Perhaps that is all he will be - a forgotten and fading ghost even when he lives.
@'Isolt'
His candles do not often run low, nor are they snuffed out. Enchanted, as many of the candles and lights in the library are, they burn for weeks upon weeks. Perhaps he has forgotten some on tables long since abandoned by the man of sand and starlight. Another may have found the dancing flame and huffed it out of existence.
Ceylon does not know.
He does not care.
Once he leaves a book, having lapped up all the sweets it would offer, it is returned and his post, once well used and worn in, abandoned to find a more secluded section that has not seen the feet of man for many, many moon cycles.
Ceylon read there, in those ancient bowels, of a great tree growing in the center of Delumine. It is wide and tall, as immovable as the mountains themselves. Perhaps he missed its branches in the sky without meaning to, for there are so many branches that ache towards the sun and fall painfully short before they die.
He does not know, but now that the knowledge is his, he wants to see.
There is nothing to stop him as he walks through the city. Few wave, smiling in his direction in hopes that, perhaps, he would come over and investigate what they wish to sell or the gossip they have to offer. They do not know him. He is a creature wholly unto himself, needing little in the way of company and treasuring the silence that permeates the still and forgotten areas of the world more than the fortuitous hum that signifies life itself.
Ceylon does not care so much for living and present things.
Relics of the past and future interest him more.
Gold and blue feet patter along stone and dust. He moves as a ghost. Perhaps that is all he will be - a forgotten and fading ghost even when he lives.
After a time of silent contemplation and resolute indifference to those around him, he stops. This...this is the heart of Delumine.
Great roots spring from the earth and tunnel back down, crisscrossing to and fro. Great branches bow toward the ground, weeping leaves from their highest reaches. New sprouts from Spring’s gentle breath arch over the broadstroked edges where last year’s leaves fell.
If he were more aware, more sensitive, he would tell you the tree whispers and moans. He would tell you that there is a beating at its center that is as old as this piece of land.
But he is not, so he does not.
Instead, the architect stares with furrowed brow and blue eyes heavenward, gazing up the length of the old, rooted god.
@'Isolt'
