Andras Demyan
"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 your spear and say 'yes' as it flashes."
"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 your spear and say 'yes' as it flashes."
Andras draws in a breath. It is long, and it trembles as his lungs fill and then, just as slowly, empty.
The courtyard is quiet except for two boys with their hearts on their sleeves - bleeding hearts, hearts like firebrands that burn in the pit of them, hot and fierce. Maybe Mathias is just the coals - maybe Mathias is what's leftover when blazes like Andras have burned down to nothing - and maybe he has been trying to be coals this whole time. But, Andras thinks, he is still the fire - blinding, simmering - and he has never wanted to be anything else. Andras does not want calm. Andras does not want peace, such as it is.
Andras wants to scream so loud that the ground shakes beneath him. Andras wants to burn and burn and burn until he has become something holy. Andras does not want to hurt anyone (not nearly as much as he wants to be hurt) but he does not want to be told to calm down.
Mathias offers him the bag of seed. Birds have started singing again, comfortable in their trees. There is a sense about them of something unfolding, or a door closing, or a door that unfolds as it is created, and the room on the other end is soft, and warm, and dark. Andras stares at it--the bag, the room, the man--and Delumine herself sighs along with him.
The little black pegasus reaches for the bag and takes it more gently than he should, floating it close to his chest as he looks from Mathias, to the seeds already scattered on the ground, to the doorway of the library behind him. "Fine," he says. Andras digs deep with invisible hands, sifting around in the bag for a generous handful before scattering that handful in one sweep across the courtyard. The single bird that hops toward them leers at the boy as if worried - it is there in its tense feathers that fluff up around its frame. It chirps loud, inching its way across the courtyard.
Andras watches it come. Andras watches it pick at the ground, and give a relieved shake of its wings, smoothing the feathers that had been displaced. Andras feels... nothing. He looks again from the bird, to the bag, to the man - Mathias, who is watching him with some ineffable expression that Andras doesn't focus on for long enough to decipher. He clenches his teeth tight.
The pause before his statement is too long, and when he does speak it is sudden, and loud, and desperate. "Well, have a nice day." he says, unbidden, and tosses Mathias his bag of birdseed before turning to disappear into the cool shade of the library, wings tucked tight against his side, hunched over his racing heart like it's all he has.
It's all he has. And he feels... something. But not something he understands.
The courtyard is quiet except for two boys with their hearts on their sleeves - bleeding hearts, hearts like firebrands that burn in the pit of them, hot and fierce. Maybe Mathias is just the coals - maybe Mathias is what's leftover when blazes like Andras have burned down to nothing - and maybe he has been trying to be coals this whole time. But, Andras thinks, he is still the fire - blinding, simmering - and he has never wanted to be anything else. Andras does not want calm. Andras does not want peace, such as it is.
Andras wants to scream so loud that the ground shakes beneath him. Andras wants to burn and burn and burn until he has become something holy. Andras does not want to hurt anyone (not nearly as much as he wants to be hurt) but he does not want to be told to calm down.
Mathias offers him the bag of seed. Birds have started singing again, comfortable in their trees. There is a sense about them of something unfolding, or a door closing, or a door that unfolds as it is created, and the room on the other end is soft, and warm, and dark. Andras stares at it--the bag, the room, the man--and Delumine herself sighs along with him.
The little black pegasus reaches for the bag and takes it more gently than he should, floating it close to his chest as he looks from Mathias, to the seeds already scattered on the ground, to the doorway of the library behind him. "Fine," he says. Andras digs deep with invisible hands, sifting around in the bag for a generous handful before scattering that handful in one sweep across the courtyard. The single bird that hops toward them leers at the boy as if worried - it is there in its tense feathers that fluff up around its frame. It chirps loud, inching its way across the courtyard.
Andras watches it come. Andras watches it pick at the ground, and give a relieved shake of its wings, smoothing the feathers that had been displaced. Andras feels... nothing. He looks again from the bird, to the bag, to the man - Mathias, who is watching him with some ineffable expression that Andras doesn't focus on for long enough to decipher. He clenches his teeth tight.
The pause before his statement is too long, and when he does speak it is sudden, and loud, and desperate. "Well, have a nice day." he says, unbidden, and tosses Mathias his bag of birdseed before turning to disappear into the cool shade of the library, wings tucked tight against his side, hunched over his racing heart like it's all he has.
It's all he has. And he feels... something. But not something he understands.
@
they made you into a weapon
and told you to find peace.
