ALL YOU WANT TO DO IS DANCE OUT OF YOUR SKIN
INTO ANOTHER SONG NOT QUITE ABOUT HEROES,
BUT STILL A SONG WHERE YOU CAN LIFT THE SPEAR
AND SAY "YES" AS IT FLASHES."
INTO ANOTHER SONG NOT QUITE ABOUT HEROES,
BUT STILL A SONG WHERE YOU CAN LIFT THE SPEAR
AND SAY "YES" AS IT FLASHES."
If anyone had told Andras, out loud and with the full earnestness such a thing demands, that his magic was a shield, not a sword, he would have laughed at them. How can an animal be anything but destructive when it is all teeth? How is he anything but a demolition waiting to happen? Andras might have smiled his wolfish smile, toothy and white, a continuation of the bleached hair of his chin.
He might have said to her, you're mistaken. I break things. It's my job. And maybe, truly, that would have said enough.
--but it is a shield, of course, and he pulls it close to his skin as he nods his affirmation and waves with one wing for her to follow. It is a shield as much as every other part of him is. Something to stand against the world that has not been particularly cruel but just does not seem to see eye to eye with him. He walks through it never quite knowing--who he is, what he is, why the sound of anyone else in the room sets his nerves running, why he often feels like a drum singing day and night about war--and because of that there is no other option.
"It's a forest," he says, as he carves his way through deer tracks that wind their way toward the direction he came, where the rolling back of the landscape is interrupted by deep ruts and mounds of roots almost as tall as his knees in places. "The oldest and tallest there is, without having to cross an ocean to see it. It doesn't quite let in the light like you'd hope."
The woods and its people lapse into silence, only the sound of the hooves on the packed dirt, or far-off birds fleeing the electric crackle of Andras' movement, or a stream that slices the trail in half as they go standing as a soundtrack to whatever strange moment is happening. "If you want to see the sunrise, you have to go toward the border."
Sure enough, dawn creeps its way closer to the horizon, turning the deep-ocean blue of the night sky to a slightly paler shade, framed here and there by the clouds that had gathered overnight. As Andras draws toward the border, where the woods fade into small, separate stands of young trees and the plains open up on their east end, there is nothing to stand in the way: only undulating grassland, far as the eye can see, and beyond that the rising dunes and rocky hills of the desert, still too far to reach its small hands all the way into the sky.
Around him everything is turning a dark shade of lavender. He watches it somberly, like a vigil. "I'm Andras. Here is your sunrise."
He might have said to her, you're mistaken. I break things. It's my job. And maybe, truly, that would have said enough.
--but it is a shield, of course, and he pulls it close to his skin as he nods his affirmation and waves with one wing for her to follow. It is a shield as much as every other part of him is. Something to stand against the world that has not been particularly cruel but just does not seem to see eye to eye with him. He walks through it never quite knowing--who he is, what he is, why the sound of anyone else in the room sets his nerves running, why he often feels like a drum singing day and night about war--and because of that there is no other option.
"It's a forest," he says, as he carves his way through deer tracks that wind their way toward the direction he came, where the rolling back of the landscape is interrupted by deep ruts and mounds of roots almost as tall as his knees in places. "The oldest and tallest there is, without having to cross an ocean to see it. It doesn't quite let in the light like you'd hope."
The woods and its people lapse into silence, only the sound of the hooves on the packed dirt, or far-off birds fleeing the electric crackle of Andras' movement, or a stream that slices the trail in half as they go standing as a soundtrack to whatever strange moment is happening. "If you want to see the sunrise, you have to go toward the border."
Sure enough, dawn creeps its way closer to the horizon, turning the deep-ocean blue of the night sky to a slightly paler shade, framed here and there by the clouds that had gathered overnight. As Andras draws toward the border, where the woods fade into small, separate stands of young trees and the plains open up on their east end, there is nothing to stand in the way: only undulating grassland, far as the eye can see, and beyond that the rising dunes and rocky hills of the desert, still too far to reach its small hands all the way into the sky.
Around him everything is turning a dark shade of lavender. He watches it somberly, like a vigil. "I'm Andras. Here is your sunrise."
they made you into a weapon
and told you to find peace.
