ONCE I HAD A LOVE, AND IT WAS DIVINE / SOON FOUND OUT I WAS LOSING MY MIND
❃
This place (and he must insist that he does not say this lightly) is a monster.
The moment that he sets hoof onto the bejeweled spine of the bridge, he comes to the unnerving realization that, not only is it composed of bone, it is composed of a sort of living bone – he is not so sure that the massive creature that left this bit of skeleton behind is dead in any way that matters. There is a sort of pulse to it, a heat that is unnatural in any dead thing, a half-living throb that reminds him of the steady, two-step beat of some great and distant heart.
In nature, bright things are a trap. Septimus knows that this is a trap, so he decides to split the difference for himself; even if he is doing just as this place, in its half-sentient changings, wishes for him to do, he knows that he is in a rather great and terrible danger as he draws deeper and higher into the unnatural cave and towards the city, which, he hopes, should keep him out of said great and terrible danger.
(The key word there, he thinks, is hopes.)
He has heard a few of the rumors, before he arrived on the island this season. An entire city does sprawl out below the surface, floating above a great and awful mass of…something that he knows better than to look at too deeply. If he were at home, he wouldn’t have shied away from it, but he is not at home, and he knows better than to provoke a hostile landscape. He is surprised to find most of them true and accurate – there are shopfronts everywhere, elegant facades and winding streets, and bedazzling wonders no matter where he looks. The place is also unspeakably abandoned, but, as he walks deserted alleyway after deserted alleyway, he hears more than the simple clip of his hooves against the almost aggressively clean and splendid cobblestone walkways.
He could probably find the source of the noise – which was something that he could not compare to anything else, a sort of sound that evaded categorization, though it did linger behind him like insect humming on an early summer night wherever he went -, but he doesn’t. There are some things, he knows, that it is wisest to avoid.
When he hears the scream, if it weren’t so definitively a person, he might have avoided it, too.
Instead, he finds himself whirling on his heel in a scuffle of hooves and rushing off in the direction of the noise, his satchel thumping insistently at his side. He nearly loses his glasses more than once, and, when he runs at such an exaggerated pace, the clink of the jewels that adorn his antlers is a bit less pleasant and rhythmic (like a windchime, he likes to think) than it is utterly chaotic and grating, but he soon finds himself turning into a storefront with a white flame in the window, his chest heaving and a slick of sweat dribbling down his forehead. He wipes it away and rubs his foggy glasses in the feathers of his wings as he steps into the room, his attention flitting between the three most evident things within it.
For one: a hallway illuminated by white flame, leading…somewhere.
For another: a unicorn, beautiful and slim and screaming at the top of her lungs.
For a third: a sculpture crafted entirely of bright pink glass.
The pink glass sculpture is across the room from the shrieking unicorn, and it catches his attention almost more than she does because it is so very large and detailed. He looks over at it through his spectacles, brow furrowing, and finds that it has a very unusual expression, for a sculpture, and a pose that is very unique-
Oh. Oh, that pink glass was very lifelike – and, if Septimus has learned much of anything during his numerous travels, it was that it was nearly impossible to blow glass into something lifelike, at least…without a suitable mold. He swallows, his eyes running from the scrunch of the man’s nose, as though he were about to sneeze, to the unsteady angles of his legs. That couldn’t be good. That couldn’t be good at all.
Rather than continue to look at the glass sculpture (which was almost certainly not a sculpture), Septimus turns his gaze on the frantic unicorn, his lips twitching into something very much akin to a grimace. “Are-“ He pauses, looking over her lilac-soft coat and snowy white hair for any sign of the glossy pinkness that had, evidently, overtaken the man who he is rather pointedly not looking at, “Are you alright, Miss?”
(Even if she isn’t, he doubts there is much that he can do; but he doesn’t say that, and he tries not to think of it.)
@Mesnyi || this reply was so much fun to write || ted kooser, "after years"
Speech
❃
This place (and he must insist that he does not say this lightly) is a monster.
The moment that he sets hoof onto the bejeweled spine of the bridge, he comes to the unnerving realization that, not only is it composed of bone, it is composed of a sort of living bone – he is not so sure that the massive creature that left this bit of skeleton behind is dead in any way that matters. There is a sort of pulse to it, a heat that is unnatural in any dead thing, a half-living throb that reminds him of the steady, two-step beat of some great and distant heart.
In nature, bright things are a trap. Septimus knows that this is a trap, so he decides to split the difference for himself; even if he is doing just as this place, in its half-sentient changings, wishes for him to do, he knows that he is in a rather great and terrible danger as he draws deeper and higher into the unnatural cave and towards the city, which, he hopes, should keep him out of said great and terrible danger.
(The key word there, he thinks, is hopes.)
He has heard a few of the rumors, before he arrived on the island this season. An entire city does sprawl out below the surface, floating above a great and awful mass of…something that he knows better than to look at too deeply. If he were at home, he wouldn’t have shied away from it, but he is not at home, and he knows better than to provoke a hostile landscape. He is surprised to find most of them true and accurate – there are shopfronts everywhere, elegant facades and winding streets, and bedazzling wonders no matter where he looks. The place is also unspeakably abandoned, but, as he walks deserted alleyway after deserted alleyway, he hears more than the simple clip of his hooves against the almost aggressively clean and splendid cobblestone walkways.
He could probably find the source of the noise – which was something that he could not compare to anything else, a sort of sound that evaded categorization, though it did linger behind him like insect humming on an early summer night wherever he went -, but he doesn’t. There are some things, he knows, that it is wisest to avoid.
When he hears the scream, if it weren’t so definitively a person, he might have avoided it, too.
Instead, he finds himself whirling on his heel in a scuffle of hooves and rushing off in the direction of the noise, his satchel thumping insistently at his side. He nearly loses his glasses more than once, and, when he runs at such an exaggerated pace, the clink of the jewels that adorn his antlers is a bit less pleasant and rhythmic (like a windchime, he likes to think) than it is utterly chaotic and grating, but he soon finds himself turning into a storefront with a white flame in the window, his chest heaving and a slick of sweat dribbling down his forehead. He wipes it away and rubs his foggy glasses in the feathers of his wings as he steps into the room, his attention flitting between the three most evident things within it.
For one: a hallway illuminated by white flame, leading…somewhere.
For another: a unicorn, beautiful and slim and screaming at the top of her lungs.
For a third: a sculpture crafted entirely of bright pink glass.
The pink glass sculpture is across the room from the shrieking unicorn, and it catches his attention almost more than she does because it is so very large and detailed. He looks over at it through his spectacles, brow furrowing, and finds that it has a very unusual expression, for a sculpture, and a pose that is very unique-
Oh. Oh, that pink glass was very lifelike – and, if Septimus has learned much of anything during his numerous travels, it was that it was nearly impossible to blow glass into something lifelike, at least…without a suitable mold. He swallows, his eyes running from the scrunch of the man’s nose, as though he were about to sneeze, to the unsteady angles of his legs. That couldn’t be good. That couldn’t be good at all.
Rather than continue to look at the glass sculpture (which was almost certainly not a sculpture), Septimus turns his gaze on the frantic unicorn, his lips twitching into something very much akin to a grimace. “Are-“ He pauses, looking over her lilac-soft coat and snowy white hair for any sign of the glossy pinkness that had, evidently, overtaken the man who he is rather pointedly not looking at, “Are you alright, Miss?”
(Even if she isn’t, he doubts there is much that he can do; but he doesn’t say that, and he tries not to think of it.)
@Mesnyi || this reply was so much fun to write || ted kooser, "after years"
Speech
AND RARELY, IF THE WOOD ACCEPTS THE BLADE WITHOUT CONDITIONSthe two pieces keep their balance in spite of the blow❃please tag Septimus! contact is encouraged, short of violence
