i used to pray like god was listening
i used to make my parents proud
i used to make my parents proud
You can hear the churn of the crowd outside. Terrastella is always so busy, with soldiers bustling from the barracks to training and back again. Your chest tightens a little, hearing it. There is much to do and you cannot bring yourself to do any of it. It is as cold as the winter wind that blows in from the open door. You feel like your candles, dancing to stay alive. You look like your candles, too, flickering helplessly in the dark. If they go out it is not their doing. If they go out, well-- you look down, at an empty matchbox.
That's fitting.
It almost makes you laugh. Instead you just smile, like you're telling a private joke.
Across the room, backlit by the light of winter that enters your workship in sharp angles, like a backwards shadow, Lyr is smiling at your back. You don't see that it looks like yours - tight lips, pressed together too tight, the way people smile on a crowded elevator, the kind of smile that does not quite feel like a smile at all - which is maybe for the best, because it would shake you. Turn your bones to ice.
You don't like when your own misgivings are reflected back at you. You don't like to see yourself look so strange and inhuman. You drink because it's easier when the world is a blur of color and light. You smile because it is the only reason that no one asks questions you are either unable to answer or entirely uninterested in answering, either way.
"Lyr." you repeat. Lyr is deliberately avoiding your eyes, which is unnerving. It is all too much like looking in a mirror. You are smiling, but it has the air of a trapped animal. Before you can think you are moving forward, carefully sweeping past in a flurry of feathers: orange, white, black.
"You can bring it in here," you say, lighting more candles, and then the lantern that swings quietly over the work table until the room itself is cast in a faint yellow-white glow that illuminates the rows of shelves and bounces off the curves of blades and the tips of broken arrows all stacked in a barrel. When you smile now it is comforting, though you're not sure if it's comforting to you or him. "You should know I'm going to judge your choice." This is said flippantly, but the weight of the room makes it drop to the floor line a ringing nail.
You figure, if he does go out to bring it in, it will have been worth waking up for. If he goes out, and stays out-- maybe that's better. A part of you hopes.
That's fitting.
It almost makes you laugh. Instead you just smile, like you're telling a private joke.
Across the room, backlit by the light of winter that enters your workship in sharp angles, like a backwards shadow, Lyr is smiling at your back. You don't see that it looks like yours - tight lips, pressed together too tight, the way people smile on a crowded elevator, the kind of smile that does not quite feel like a smile at all - which is maybe for the best, because it would shake you. Turn your bones to ice.
You don't like when your own misgivings are reflected back at you. You don't like to see yourself look so strange and inhuman. You drink because it's easier when the world is a blur of color and light. You smile because it is the only reason that no one asks questions you are either unable to answer or entirely uninterested in answering, either way.
"Lyr." you repeat. Lyr is deliberately avoiding your eyes, which is unnerving. It is all too much like looking in a mirror. You are smiling, but it has the air of a trapped animal. Before you can think you are moving forward, carefully sweeping past in a flurry of feathers: orange, white, black.
"You can bring it in here," you say, lighting more candles, and then the lantern that swings quietly over the work table until the room itself is cast in a faint yellow-white glow that illuminates the rows of shelves and bounces off the curves of blades and the tips of broken arrows all stacked in a barrel. When you smile now it is comforting, though you're not sure if it's comforting to you or him. "You should know I'm going to judge your choice." This is said flippantly, but the weight of the room makes it drop to the floor line a ringing nail.
You figure, if he does go out to bring it in, it will have been worth waking up for. If he goes out, and stays out-- maybe that's better. A part of you hopes.
Hugo Arkwright
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@lyr
