"It's okay Auru."
He forces himself to breathe as she speaks. His lungs are burning from his run, and the rapid pounding of his heart causes his breath to come in gasps far too shallow. To say nothing of the dizziness that panic brings upon him, and as she takes the note from him he slowly lowers his haunches to the floor, moving as gently as possible to not go falling with his shaking limbs. Once his rear end is down, he slowly slides forward until he is laying down as she reads, unable to care for propriety as he rests his head upon his forelegs and the ground, curving his head toward his chest as he heaves for breath.
It is easier to breathe now that he is off his hooves, now that he can stop trying to hold his weight on those shaking limbs, even as they tremble anyway with the aftereffects of exertion and the panic that burns through his veins like a wildfire. The inside of the keep seems blurred, and everything distant.
"It came from the Swamp?"
The most he can manage is a jerky nod of the head, not really lifting his visage as her voice is nearly unintelligible through the ringing in his ears. His head dips before he jerks it back upright, his unstable blood pressure leaving him near to passing out as he forces himself to breathe even as the keep seems darker, like the day is fading into dusk even though the sun outside is bright with spring's rays.
He distantly thinks that it is too nice of a day outside for this.
He does not listen as she calls for Cyrene, the face connected to the name momentarily escaping him as he struggles to remember which way is up and which way is down. He looks up as he feels her gaze come back to him, the thin, cowardly lion looking up at the flower girl, once silly and now forged into a noble visage, his eyes almost pleading as he prays to be wrong. He does not want to be wrong for he fears her wrath at his overreaction, but he wants to be wrong because of what being right would entail.
“You did well Auru. I am not sure this is a prank, even if so, we cannot treat it as such.”
Orange eyes dropped, as a moment of true, unbridled emotion, something like grief or sorrow but that he cannot name, settled over his heart, the sudden ache in his breast almost warranting a sob.
He was right.
He didn't want to be right.
Anxious nerves soon banished the grief-like emotion to the far corners of his mind as she continued.
“I do not suppose you saw who left this?”
He was shaking his head before she had even finished speaking. No, whomever had left the note had been gone before he arrived. He had not seen anyone who had come or gone, but he was certain no one else had seen either. He may have missed whomever had been by, but he had been close to the boardwalks for much of the Festival, and even if they had not been in his sight, he could often hear those who came by, the swamp man huddled in the shadows and listening from a distance, he did not think anyone else had been by.
His form was still trembling, but he found the energy to force himself to begin rising, even as he shook his head. His hooves stumbled underneath him a little, and his limbs were like leaves in a hurricane, but he managed, his mouth working as he found himself trying to continue speaking even though he had already given her a negative response.
There was something else, something in the back of his mind that was important, but he just couldn't think what...
He hadn't seen who had been by, but he had seen something, something that was important.
Something that he had seen and his brain had recognized but that he just couldn't remember for the life of him. It wasn't a person, but something about the note...
He closed his eyes as he grit his teeth, racing back through his memories to stand upon the boardwalk in the depths of his mind, the note hanging before him as he saw it for the first time.
Everything was slightly blurred and unstable, his memory far from perfect. Everything outside of what was directly before him was near invisible, and even the sight before him has a dream-like quality to it. Even his form seemed wispy and unstable, and there was something like a low hum around him, the other thoughts flowing through his brain like distant chatter that made background noise as he concentrated, standing in the memory of where he had once been.
He looked at the note, whose substance was dream-like and intangible, brow furrowing as he tried to focus harder on it.
In the depths of his mind, a scrawny black stallion approached the note as well, a crow swollen with maggots and fat seated upon the snapping shadows that hissed around the black man with a maw like a viper fish. Eyes as dark as the abyss looked upon the note from where the newcomer stood next to Auru, and Auru turned to the man in his memory with desperation.
Anxiety was very observant.
People were naturally observant, but their brain cast out thoughts deemed as irrelevant on a subconscious level before they were even aware of them. Anxiety wasn't like that, he took the thoughts Auru had and forced him to look at each one as if they were relevant, no silly thought was cast aside, the man obsessed over everything and Auru had to do so as well, was forced to listen to the insistence and look upon all.
Auru had seen something, something.
Anxiety noticed everything.
"Anxiety, Anxiety, what did you see?"
The maw parted, long, translucent fangs that stretched beyond lips, beyond the jawline of the beast. Saliva connected them where they held themselves at crooked angles as the man parted them with a guttural hiss of escaping air, soft crackling of bones and unnatural popping and stretching of flesh as he opened his maw to speak. The lips that were non-existent on the black man of skin and bones could form no words when they themselves existed not, and the words that poured forth from the all-consuming void within his jaws seemed to be formed from the air itself, no movement to the jaws as the man simply held them there, his mouth agape as he spoke.
The words were like the hissing of metal burning from the forge when dipped in water, and the force with which the shadowed man said them was as great as the plume of steam from the water that the metal created. They came so fast, so suddenly, the man not stopping for breath even once.
"Dry dry the note was dry the note was dry the ink was dry the ink was not old but neither was it fresh the ink was dry the note was dry the swamp is not dry the notes in the swamp the festival notes the paper is affected by the moisture in the swamp by the time the ink dries the note begins to curl at the edges from the water in the air the note was dry the note was crisp the ink was dry dry dry the note was dry..."
The hissing faded to unintelligible mumbles, the words being repeated over and over as Paranoia, the fat and bursting bird seated upon the skeletally thin stallion crowed with a noise like a rupturing buboe. Like the spurting of pus from a swollen, fat, maggot-filled lymph node filled to the brim with blackened and rotten flesh. Anxiety's hissing was like the buzzing of the flies around the dead as Paranoia crowed.
"If the note was dry and the ink was dry, it must have been written, pre-mediated. Someone did this on purpose, this was planned. Someone wants war and someone did this on purpose, the note was made before it was posted, someone waiting for the right moment when no one would be around to see. It was a secret, someone waiting for everyone to leave so that way no one would see them declare war. Waiting for you to leave so that-"
From there, Paranoia devolved into crowing about how it related to Auru specifically, but the cowardly lion ignored that, instead turning his attention back to the note in his memory.
"Dry dry the note was dry..."
"Someone did this on purpose."
"The note was dry the ink was dry..."
"This was planned."
"Dry dry the note was dry..."
The note had been dry.
Auru pulled himself from his memories even as Anxiety continued to hiss and Paranoia to crow, words stuttering to his lips as he desperately tried to pass on what little he knew, wanting to give everything that he could think of so that way they had ever detail they could to figure out what this meant. This was a game of gods and kings and he was not meant to be here, but he could at least help if he had been dragged into it either way.
"Th-The note!"
He stilled after his sudden outburst, taking a breath as he tried to gather his thoughts for a moment, more stuttering words spilling forth now that he had made his need to say something more known.
"W-W-When I found it, th-the note was dry. I-Ink takes a-a while to dry in th-the swamp, s-since there's so m-m-much moisture in the air, but the n-note was dry. The paper w-w-was dry too."
He fumbled for words, trying to convey what he meant by that, eyes spinning as he tried to think.
"W-W-When notes w-were hung up, th-the humidity made th-the paper get damp and c-curl after a little while, b-but the note h-hadn't curled yet, l-like i-i-it hadn't been there very long. Th-That's why I-I-I don't think a-anyone else saw, be-because the note hadn't b-been there f-f-for very long. B-B-But the ink was dry."
He took several breaths, looking up at Florentine for a moment as he struggled to breathe, wanting to convey what he felt was the importance of his recollections.
"L-Like it had a-already been written."
@
OOC: I swear, anxiety makes you notice and remember what seems like the most inane fucking details
