ANDRAS DEMYAN
who would believe the fantastic
and terrible story of our survival?
who would believe the fantastic
and terrible story of our survival?
The sun is down, early.
And he, above it, hung like a black candle in the dusky air, pressed between the red light of the horizon and the weight of a million far-off stars: something beautiful in its simplicity.
If Andras had been born a slug he would still remember flying; the air that gushes through him feels like it has been his forever. He has never been able to put a name to the strain of his existence but it feels a lot like opening your lungs and filling with too much oxygen. Dizzying. Terrifying. He is a balloon about to pop.
He has been buried in the Library, only ever at home among its knotted wood, in the company of its chattering staff. The small things are tired of Andras' glowering, of his smudged notes and his tactless slumbering, collapsed over books and cracked parchment far older than anything else he's seen. One or two of them had suggested (begged) that he go, for a night - abandon his obsessive reading and do literally anything that does not involve ripping volume after volume off the shelf in a desperate search for-- well, something. Andras cannot argue with an entire society and so he goes - packs his bags and flies South. It happens that Denocte is throwing a festival, one that celebrates their planet, plummeting into winter, and their dead, on a spiral through spacetime that he can only guess at.
The pegasus hopes that he'll find something here - anything, really. As long as it makes him feel alive. As long as he can feel anything but the bitter lump in his throat. If he must be gnashing teeth and bloody knuckles every other night of the year, perhaps he can have this one.
Oriens help him, he has become something hateful.
Andras banks eastward, chasing the gold-orange light of the markets in full celebration.
But he has always been hateful.
The little horse lands with a graceful whoosh and the clatter of hooves on pavement, scattering a small crowd before they find their way back to each other with more than a few dirty looks and curses, mumbled too quietly for Andras to hear. He has no ghosts to lay claim to; the empty space of him (and it is massive) does not echo some long gone thing -- if he were to miss anyone it would be his mother and he's sure, with an almost bitter sense of finality, that she is not here, among Novus' numbered dead.
"It is beautiful, though," he remarks to no one, rubbing his glasses on one inky shoulder before placing them on the bridge of his nose and tucking his wings neatly against his ribs. Even here he is pulsing with something he has no name for. He knows only that it is black and red and tastes like bile in his tongue. Even as Andras rounds one decorated corner after another--streets hung in gold and red, candles flickering weakly at the corner of every stall, some patrons intricately costumed--he is biting his tongue so hard he tastes blood.
He wonders if he will ever be big enough for his anger.
He wonders how anyone else survives like this.
(He does not know that most don't.)
And he, above it, hung like a black candle in the dusky air, pressed between the red light of the horizon and the weight of a million far-off stars: something beautiful in its simplicity.
If Andras had been born a slug he would still remember flying; the air that gushes through him feels like it has been his forever. He has never been able to put a name to the strain of his existence but it feels a lot like opening your lungs and filling with too much oxygen. Dizzying. Terrifying. He is a balloon about to pop.
He has been buried in the Library, only ever at home among its knotted wood, in the company of its chattering staff. The small things are tired of Andras' glowering, of his smudged notes and his tactless slumbering, collapsed over books and cracked parchment far older than anything else he's seen. One or two of them had suggested (begged) that he go, for a night - abandon his obsessive reading and do literally anything that does not involve ripping volume after volume off the shelf in a desperate search for-- well, something. Andras cannot argue with an entire society and so he goes - packs his bags and flies South. It happens that Denocte is throwing a festival, one that celebrates their planet, plummeting into winter, and their dead, on a spiral through spacetime that he can only guess at.
The pegasus hopes that he'll find something here - anything, really. As long as it makes him feel alive. As long as he can feel anything but the bitter lump in his throat. If he must be gnashing teeth and bloody knuckles every other night of the year, perhaps he can have this one.
Oriens help him, he has become something hateful.
Andras banks eastward, chasing the gold-orange light of the markets in full celebration.
But he has always been hateful.
The little horse lands with a graceful whoosh and the clatter of hooves on pavement, scattering a small crowd before they find their way back to each other with more than a few dirty looks and curses, mumbled too quietly for Andras to hear. He has no ghosts to lay claim to; the empty space of him (and it is massive) does not echo some long gone thing -- if he were to miss anyone it would be his mother and he's sure, with an almost bitter sense of finality, that she is not here, among Novus' numbered dead.
"It is beautiful, though," he remarks to no one, rubbing his glasses on one inky shoulder before placing them on the bridge of his nose and tucking his wings neatly against his ribs. Even here he is pulsing with something he has no name for. He knows only that it is black and red and tastes like bile in his tongue. Even as Andras rounds one decorated corner after another--streets hung in gold and red, candles flickering weakly at the corner of every stall, some patrons intricately costumed--he is biting his tongue so hard he tastes blood.
He wonders if he will ever be big enough for his anger.
He wonders how anyone else survives like this.
(He does not know that most don't.)
@isra
they made you into a weapon
and told you to find peace.
