in my mouth
turning
my tongue into
rivers of blood.
H
e is often quiet without being so: tight-lipped and brow stern, thinking little and saying even less. But Andras is a verb given a body, and he is surprisingly loud as he lives day to day. As they walk his magic crackles across the planes of his skin with the keen of an electric guitar. His footsteps are heavy on the road. There is a constant, audible shuffling as he endlessly tucks and untucks wings, laying one on top, then the other, then the other.The warden's mother would have said he was a fussy child, if she had been so inclined. She would say he knows only two things: how to yell, and how to scream-- and they are not the same thing. Fussy boys become fussy men with heavy brows on their thin faces. Fussy men say "There's nothing wrong with a sense of duty," as he notes, out of the corner of his eye, the way Pravda stares.
Delumine has a way of producing vague things out of thin air. Sometimes it is a bird, or the morning fog. Sometimes it is a man with braided hair who asks, what do you love of our court? as the path melts into a side street lined with lanterns. Their light glances off the sharp curve of his glasses.
He does not quite know what to say-- and even if he did, Andras is less likely to say it than most.
"Most of it. I like the library. I like the trees. Why do you want to know?"
Andras has always known he loves Delumine, as an undercurrent to every day, the same electric background hum of his magic. He stands in festival squares because, as small and volatile as he is, to do anything other than protect his home would not be just unthinkable, but impossible. Andras walks through the woods to the city every morning. He sits in the same dark, stuffy tea shop where the girl at the counter smiles at him and calls him by his name. He stares at the trees and tastes blood when it snows and shivers at night because his love for Delumine is all-encompass.
It has just... always been there. He has always thought actions speak louder than words-- and not only because words often elude him.
"I don't like the snow."
Blood-spattered snow on a mountain of mangled flesh. But he doesn't say. He wouldn't. Andras doesn't realize his body has gone tight again until his legs ache with the effort.
they made you into a weapon
and told you to find peace.
