SEE? ALL THESE YEARS / MY BRANCHES SANG WITH BIRDS
and my leaves drank sunlight - I haven't missed much.❃
It’s summer, Septimus thinks, but summer with a bit of a draft – summer with a storm rolling in, and all the wind that accompanies it, which has left the coastline pleasantly cool but humid, so thick with moisture and salt that it is nearly hard to breathe. He stands with his hooves halfway buried in a fine layer of dirty grey sand, watching a seagull circle over the white foam crest of a distant wave; here and there, it dives, much to the irritation of the pelicans who are bobbing in the dark froth below. He doesn’t know how much time he spends watching them in silence – only, he thinks, that his glasses have fogged up by the time that the seagull is gone and he has pulled himself away.
He hasn’t been able to put his finger on what he’s been feeling lately. It’s not melancholy, exactly, though he tends to dismiss that as too mortal an emotion for him anyways. He doesn’t know what it is instead.
All he knows is that he woke up this morning to the furious, buzzing songs of cicadas and the distinct sense that the world was changing in ways that he’s not sure that he’s comfortable with, because he’s very well used to the world changing, but he’s never grown accustomed to having to be a part of it as it does. He’d strode out into the pale blush of dawn and looked at the dew on the grass, and he’d been struck with the somewhat awful realization that the morning wouldn’t last forever, or very long at all, and it hadn’t mattered, once, but now it did. So he’d gone to the sea. So he was at the sea. And so nothing had really come of it – he wasn’t sure that he’d learned anything that approached an understanding from the incident, which, he supposed, was how mortals felt all the time. It was awful. Normally he could think about it until he understood it, turn it over and over and around in his head until all of the pieces fit together into a perfect image, but now-
Now he stretches out his wings, feels the harsh fingers of the wind thread through his feathers, tucks his glasses neatly into his satchel, and jumps into the air without a second thought.
He’s not unaccustomed to flying in a storm, and it’s not quite storming yet besides; the wind is harsh and tastes like rain, and he can see the dark clouds gathered on the edge of the horizon, nearly indistinguishable from the black waves. He’s not sure that it will come to the coast, but he can see lightning, sharp bright arcs cut through the clouds; he can’t hear the thunder.
He flies near the surface of the sea, close enough for his pinions to hit the surface; they send up a spray of salt water that catches on his skin, even as he dips low enough to drag one hoof across the water. There is the occasional silver gleam of a fish or dark, lashing tail of a ray, the curved spine of a dolphin or the sharp hook-fin of a shark; as he flies out farther and farther, he thinks that he sees the fin of a whale break the surface, some kind of baleen one, but he snaps out his wings and turns back towards the coast before he can get a good look at it, because he’s gone far enough and the winds are growing stronger, and he has no magic to protect him here.
(But – when his magic was at its strongest and wildest, he didn’t know what a sea was. There are bargains. Always bargains.)
Septimus circles back towards a dark outcropping of cliffs, flying up the face of them almost too close to the ragged surface of the stone; it is only when he is suspended well above them that he catches sight of the woman on the cliffs, with her fantastic, star-strewn flanks and pale face. He blinks, hovering a moment, and then quickly descends down towards the stretch of cliff where she stands.
His hooves clatter down against the seaswept stone with a rhythmic, half-stumbled clatter and the musical clink of the ornaments strewn about his antlers. “Kassandra?” He comes to a flighty pause in front of her, his wings outstretched to their fullest length and feathers displaced by the wind, like a bird just come in from a thunderstorm, and smooths them – and his forelock, which threatens to fall into his eyes – back into place.
@Kassandra || it's been too long! <3 || billy collins, "days"
Speech
and my leaves drank sunlight - I haven't missed much.❃
It’s summer, Septimus thinks, but summer with a bit of a draft – summer with a storm rolling in, and all the wind that accompanies it, which has left the coastline pleasantly cool but humid, so thick with moisture and salt that it is nearly hard to breathe. He stands with his hooves halfway buried in a fine layer of dirty grey sand, watching a seagull circle over the white foam crest of a distant wave; here and there, it dives, much to the irritation of the pelicans who are bobbing in the dark froth below. He doesn’t know how much time he spends watching them in silence – only, he thinks, that his glasses have fogged up by the time that the seagull is gone and he has pulled himself away.
He hasn’t been able to put his finger on what he’s been feeling lately. It’s not melancholy, exactly, though he tends to dismiss that as too mortal an emotion for him anyways. He doesn’t know what it is instead.
All he knows is that he woke up this morning to the furious, buzzing songs of cicadas and the distinct sense that the world was changing in ways that he’s not sure that he’s comfortable with, because he’s very well used to the world changing, but he’s never grown accustomed to having to be a part of it as it does. He’d strode out into the pale blush of dawn and looked at the dew on the grass, and he’d been struck with the somewhat awful realization that the morning wouldn’t last forever, or very long at all, and it hadn’t mattered, once, but now it did. So he’d gone to the sea. So he was at the sea. And so nothing had really come of it – he wasn’t sure that he’d learned anything that approached an understanding from the incident, which, he supposed, was how mortals felt all the time. It was awful. Normally he could think about it until he understood it, turn it over and over and around in his head until all of the pieces fit together into a perfect image, but now-
Now he stretches out his wings, feels the harsh fingers of the wind thread through his feathers, tucks his glasses neatly into his satchel, and jumps into the air without a second thought.
He’s not unaccustomed to flying in a storm, and it’s not quite storming yet besides; the wind is harsh and tastes like rain, and he can see the dark clouds gathered on the edge of the horizon, nearly indistinguishable from the black waves. He’s not sure that it will come to the coast, but he can see lightning, sharp bright arcs cut through the clouds; he can’t hear the thunder.
He flies near the surface of the sea, close enough for his pinions to hit the surface; they send up a spray of salt water that catches on his skin, even as he dips low enough to drag one hoof across the water. There is the occasional silver gleam of a fish or dark, lashing tail of a ray, the curved spine of a dolphin or the sharp hook-fin of a shark; as he flies out farther and farther, he thinks that he sees the fin of a whale break the surface, some kind of baleen one, but he snaps out his wings and turns back towards the coast before he can get a good look at it, because he’s gone far enough and the winds are growing stronger, and he has no magic to protect him here.
(But – when his magic was at its strongest and wildest, he didn’t know what a sea was. There are bargains. Always bargains.)
Septimus circles back towards a dark outcropping of cliffs, flying up the face of them almost too close to the ragged surface of the stone; it is only when he is suspended well above them that he catches sight of the woman on the cliffs, with her fantastic, star-strewn flanks and pale face. He blinks, hovering a moment, and then quickly descends down towards the stretch of cliff where she stands.
His hooves clatter down against the seaswept stone with a rhythmic, half-stumbled clatter and the musical clink of the ornaments strewn about his antlers. “Kassandra?” He comes to a flighty pause in front of her, his wings outstretched to their fullest length and feathers displaced by the wind, like a bird just come in from a thunderstorm, and smooths them – and his forelock, which threatens to fall into his eyes – back into place.
@Kassandra || it's been too long! <3 || billy collins, "days"
Speech
AND RARELY, IF THE WOOD ACCEPTS THE BLADE WITHOUT CONDITIONSthe two pieces keep their balance in spite of the blow❃please tag Septimus! contact is encouraged, short of violence
