in my mouth
turning
my tongue into
rivers of blood.
S
somewhere, in the library, there is a room with his name.Not literally, so to speak; there is no plate on the door announcing that he was there, that once it was his as much as any old, magic thing can belong to anyone (which isn't much, truth be told), but there is still a clean square on the table otherwise covered by a thin film of dust, and there are feathers stuck to the walls and the floorboards, and there is wax from his candle tacking them to the surface in places.
It's been days, a week or two, tops, when Andras steps through the front arch into the library's tall, ancient foyer and a part of him melts like it's fainting in his shell. He had never expected it to feel so much like home. He had never expected anything to.
Needless to say, this still does not ease his nerves. These days Andras is a tightly coiled spring, held in place by sheer force of will, always strained at the edges and waiting to unwind. It, like many things about him, is not sustainable. None of it is sustainable: the boredom, the dam of his self-control, and the bubbling, black sea that it holds back. It's almost impossible to be solid, when you were born with cracks in your walls.
Delumine is quiet, safe. Everything is quiet and safe around it. The nightmare of a few winters past seems to be much more of a nightmare than anything else, not, just another ghost story told in the dark. It is quiet enough that Andras can hear his blood, singing. The crackle of his magic is so loud when the world around him is hushed.
Andras walks the halls one by one, passing shelves of books he's read and ones he hasn't. His jaw aches from holding it closed. In one room, where the hall branches into another, and another, until the labrynthine wood of the library becomes a tangle of paper and lanterns and leaves, he finds-- not what he's looking for, not by a long shot, but something. Gold like the summer sun, white as winter snow, with the sharp bones in places that betray his age. His feathers are maybe not as straight and pristine as he might have imagined, the sharp point of his horn might be worn, some, with time.
But he is unmistakable. Andras has never met the man, but he could call his name across the room. There is only one Somnus.
"You're the former king, right?" This he says through clenched teeth. "Where have you been?"
they made you into a weapon
and told you to find peace.
