STILL, WHAT I WANT IN MY LIFE IS TO BE WILLING TO BE DAZZLED-
to cast aside the weight of facts and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world.
His response is slightly awkward, as though he doesn’t quite know what to make of me. I’m too focused on the bookshelves and the building, which is unlike anything I’ve ever seen, to pay much mind to his reaction; I hear him say that the maps are on the next floor down, but I don’t really process his words until he is already walking. I halfway-startle, and whirl to follow him so quickly that I stumble over my own hooves.
(Like a child. This body is nearly frustrating, sometimes.)
“Oh, okay – thank you,” I say, and then I realize that I’ve repeated myself, almost word-for-word. “Uhm. Again.”
I trail after him, still gaping at the vaulted ceilings and the ornate floors; even the stairs are somewhat mind-boggling. There were barely any, at home, and never so many, and they were certainly never wooden. (I realize that there might have been more than one reason for it, when they creak obnoxiously beneath our shared weight.)
I follow him through rows and rows of shelves, and, when he stops, I am so distracted by looking at everyone around us that I very nearly run into him. There are four massive tomes on pedestals in front of us; one for each of the courts, I assume.
I am about to start towards them when he asks me if I know how to read; the question stops me short. For a moment, I am nearly offended, but that is before I remember my own, (young) age. Worse, it makes me consider something that might be more problematic than my youth. Do I even speak the language of these people? I can certainly understand some of their words - but who’s to say that the ones in the map books are in a language that I am familiar with.
“I do, but-“ I pause, a bit embarrassed at the admission I am about to make, “-but I’m not so sure that I understand this land’s writing, to be honest. I’m not sure that the language of my homeland is the same as the one they use here.”
I eye the tomes apprehensively, as though I am a little bit afraid of approaching them to find out. I can probably read them, even if I don’t know the language - maps are more pictures than words, diagrams than dialogue, in my experience, but that is beside the point. (Who is to say that outsiders even use the same kinds of maps as we do?)
@Liatris || <3 || "nocturne," cesare pavese
"Speech!"
EVERYTHING IS RISK, SHE WHISPERED.if you doubt, it becomes sand trickling through skeletal fingers.☙❧please tag Nic! contact is encouraged, short of violence
