who would believe the fantastic
and terrible story of our survival?
Every day, the birds in the trees, singing endlessly. Every day, fox-like creatures in the library that suggest Andras do something else, go somewhere else, so they do not have to watch him glower at powdery scrolls and books so brittle he worries they will turn to ash in his hands. He still has not found what he's searching for. He's still not entirely sure that he knows what it is. But it has to be here.
Andras has not entertained, and cannot bring himself to face, that his suffering may be senseless, that he may be so angry and so full simply because he was born wrong. Born with a thing in him that crackles and pops in the pit of his stomach. Something that surges. Something that roars.
No, it cannot be that.
So, Andras stalks the library's singing chambers in the company of birds (his brothers) and helpers and buzzing insects, pulling books from the shelves in piles of three, thumbing through the pages as if there is nothing else to him, no air to breathe except in the space between letters, until he can't see, or hear, or feel anything except hot frustration bubbling up in him. He knows this frustration well. It is his constant companion. And it sits in him, warm and black, with teeth like a wolf's teeth.
Today it's cold, and wet, and when Andras finally listens, when he is too tired to argue with the helpers and his insides sound like war drums, deep and loud, thumping to the toon of some ancient dirge. Outside the leaves clatter happily, letting only stray drops plummet through the canopy. He would think it was peaceful if he was not a cauldron, or a stove stoked to bursting.
With a heavy sigh, Andras pulls his glasses off his face, rubs the glass on one inky wing, and is surprised to see the king down the hall, when he puts them back on.
"Hello," Andras says through clenched teeth, as he says most things. "you're the sovereign, correct? I'm Andras, and I was just leaving."
He wasn't, and he makes no move to, but it is often easier to avoid the obvious - and the stack of books beside him is obvious.
@ipomoea
they made you into a weapon
and told you to find peace.
10-17-2019, 09:01 PM - This post was last modified: 10-17-2019, 09:03 PM by Andras
For a while all he does is wander. There’s a thousand hallways to lose himself down in the library, an endless maze of alcoves and study rooms that he walks by dutifully. The titles of dozens of scrolls and books leap out at him, readings on horticulture and gardening and harvesting. As a boy this had been one of his favorite sections, a place he could spend hours losing himself in.
Now for as much as he tries, he finds himself reading the same line over and over again.
”…true lilies. These include the day lily (Hemeracallis) and various species of the family Amaryllidaceae. The genus includes somewhere between 80 and 100 species, 12 of which can be found in various parts of Delumine. Father Weir, a monk from 332, contributed to much of our knowledge about the species…”
He places the book back on the shelf and continues on. He’s too restless today to lose himself even in his favorite subject, and yet the presence of the library alone is comforting. While he can’t enjoy the bounty of information it holds, he can still enjoy the quiet nature of the place, the dry shuffling of pages and the sweet scent of anemones that color the air. So he ducks in and out of hallways and atriums, watching the way the sunlight plays across the mirror-like floor of one room, and the hanging planters filled with vines in another. Ipomoea had learned long ago that the library was more than just a place for books and reading - the passageways were endless, containing innumerable rooms filled with all kinds of wonders. All one had to do was find them.
He had doubled back in an attempt to find the main hall, but truly he did not mind the prospect of being lost. Sooner or later, he was sure, one of the helpers or another patron would come find him and point him in the right direction. He was not wrong.
”Hello.” He looks up and for a second, thinks he is looking simply at a darker part of the room. But then he blinks and his eyes adjust, and the light from a nearby light is strong enough for him to see the shape of a dark pegasus across the hallway. ”You’re the sovereign, correct? I’m Andras, and I was just leaving.”
The words are blunt, but Ipomoea doesn’t mind, he hardly notices. The other stallion makes no move to leave - a stack of books remain firmly in place beside him - so he comes a little closer instead.
“Yes, I am. But you may call me Ipomoea if you wish.” It still feels strange, and the response is mechanical and automatic, a reflex. He glances down at the stack of books. “What are - were - you reading?”
"Speaking."
@Andras this is late but i am excited <3
"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 is biting his tongue--not in some metaphorical sense to suggest he is struggling to dam the bile that is rising in him, higher and higher every day; but in a literal sense. And he is biting his tongue so hard it hurts.
"Ipomoea," he echoes, "will do." He likes it, and someday he will say so - someday it will come out of him in waves - but today he is quiet, and still, and as the king steps closer the little black pegasus leans out of his way.
He is trying to listen to his heart, and it isn't that it is loud and groaning, the roar of an old engine that creaks with the effort of being, or that it beats as fast as a panicked bird or as hard as the drums or war--but rather that it doesn't. For one blissful minute he is an empty chamber full of nothing but the wind, a canyon with an open mouth and the sand that blows in from its cliffs only piles in the corners against the wall. Andras cannot remember the last time he was anything but a fist, or a snarl. He must look startled when he meets Ipomoea's eyes again, breathless and close to shuddering.
Were you reading? What were you reading? The king asks, and there is the hum again, the chattering teeth of a soul too big for its body - the sobbing ache of the damned.
Andras turns to his pile of books, stacked meticulously so they suggest disarray without drawing the eye: the first book is in line with the edge of the table, the next set down so each corner meets the middle of each flat edge, and the top (a thick tome bound in navy leather titled A History of Delumine) laid down the same. Each of them are marked with strips of paper to act as bookmarks and haphazardly stuffed with pages of notes.
He feels like he's been caught doing something wrong, or something taboo - and he cannot help the hot shame that walks its prickling fingers up his spine to the base of his skull. It turns his ears back and draws his mouth into a firm, grim line.
"I was." Andras mumbles, and then, louder: "I'm looking for something, but I'm not sure what. I figure I'll know it when I see it."
It is not lost on him, the way the other man leans out of his way and grits his teeth before speaking his name, and Ipomoea silently checks himself. He wonders if it would have been this way before - if he hadn’t left, if he hadn’t become king, if things had been different. A part of him hates the way Andras turns his ears back and tightens his jaw, and the other part hates the way he notices it.
So he leans away, resisting the urge to look over the shorter man’s shoulder. But he does not leave, not yet. Ever the optimistic, Ipomoea is prepared to set his jaw and remind himself that this is fine, nothing’s changed, not really, only everything.
The response is as scholarly an answer as he’s ever heard, and he can’t help but wonder if this stranger is from Delumine. It wouldn’t surprise him if he was - the stack of books, the glasses, his searching for an answer without first knowing the question - it all fit in perfectly within the Court. But there were very few young adults who had been born and raised within Delumine who would be caught reading A History of Delumine for fun.
“Fair enough,” he says lightly, nodding his head along as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.
And in a way, it is. The dark pegasus isn’t treating him like he’s a Sovereign, and for the moment it makes it easy to forget that he is.
He’s busy admiring the engravings on one of the book’s covers, a fine, elegant script that carves golden flowers into each of the four corners, when the next question is asked. Ipomoea’s eyes flick upwards again to meet Andras’ gaze, and for a moment it catches him by surprise. For a moment he feels almost embarrassed, afraid to admit that he was bored and a little restless, that in a library full of books he had nothing better to do than wander around and bother strangers.
His mouth opens, as if to say Nothing. Just looking around, before he thinks better and closes it.
“I’m not sure,” he admits, with a smile that is caught between apologetic and forced. “I’m looking for something too, I suppose. But it feels like I’ve already read everything I came here for.” It’s the opposite of a scholarly response - a scholar never stops searching for answers, that’s what his tutors would always tell him - but the words are out of his mouth before he has a chance to regret them.
A heartbeat passes between them, the silence stretching and then -
“I can leave,” he says, perhaps a little too quickly, “if I’m disturbing your studying?”
"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 can hear fire crackling in an adjacent room. He can hear the buzz of insects and the quiet chatter of birds, and something else he can't quite name.
(Andras will come to know this as the sound of the earth coming to life, of flowers bending their stems to look the king in the eye - the laughter of tall trees and tiny bushes and the clatter of leaves as they whisper his name over and over, as if it's the only name they know. As if it's the only name they care to know. But now it is an alien sound and it raises the hairs on the back of his neck.)
He runs his tongue along the back of his teeth, looking at this spotted king and his thin smile, his surprisingly kind eyes. It occurs to him that he hasn't really been looking until now, that it took the silence in him to really see. But now he feels like a dark cave full of dark water with only the trickle of drops coming in from the ceiling to act as the soundtrack to his living, and he can see Ipomoea as he is.
Embarrassed?
Andras thinks, no. That can't be. Why?
But Andras knows, because it sinks into him too. He doesn't realize he's stretched one wing out until he hears the shff of his own feathers as he touches the covers of the stack of books, sliding their edges along each spine.
"It can be hard," he says, and he does not sound quite as guarded but he is still not friendly, or welcoming, or anything of the sort, "to find what you're looking for. Speaking from experience."
There is a long silence, or at least it feels long. And in it he can hear his heart start up again, the drumming and the incessant growl of being alive. He almost sighs outwardly instead of the private clenching of his stomach. He almost looks like he's suffering.
He has never suffered under the weight of his affliction. He is sure he is meant to be this way - he is sure that it is all he lives for. But sometimes he comes close.
I can leave, Po says suddenly, and Andras jumps in spite of himself, rattled when he turns his attention back to the king and his heart swims back into focus. "You don't have to." Andras says, too quickly, almost before Ipomoea has finished speaking. "I'd hardly call it studying. It's more like... staring. I could use the interruption--if I'm honest." And he smiles - it isn't a particularly charming smile, and while it touches his eyes it looks like it causes him genuine pain.
"So," he says, removing his wing from the book before picking it up and settling back into his nest of pillows, "What do you think you're looking for?"
He watches the way Andras stretches his wing out, filling the room with all those black feathers, skimming them over the covers of that stack of books. Almost as if he’s hiding them. But Ipomoea can’t think of a reason why. His brow creases for a heartbeat as he watches, fast enough that it might never have happened.
“Depending on what you’re looking for,” he agreed. The silence continues.
It suddenly occurs to Ipomoea how very much like a game this feels, as the two men stand across the room from each other. He is watching Andras even as Andras is watching him, each of them trying to gauge the other’s reaction, each of them (seemingly) failing.
Ipomoea smiles, in spite of himself. He can’t help it. It’s a nervous smile, one that says I’m sorry without even knowing what it’s supposed to be apologizing for.
”You don’t have to go,” Andras says.
Ipomoea sighs with relief.
“Sounds like a good time to take a break then,” he says amicably, breezing past their previous silence as if it had never happened. “Reading gets progressively harder when the words seem to be swimming off of the page.”
He goes to the nearest bookshelf, glancing over each of the gilded covers. So many books - so many scholars who had devoted their entire lives to a single study. Ipomoea shakes his head, turning away from them. He doubted he would ever have the patience, let alone the scope, to write a book.
“Some sort of answer,” he murmurs in response, as he moves on to the next bookshelf. He steps carefully around Andras’ table. “But I have too many questions I need answers for. Sometimes I wish they could be a “one size fits all” sort of deal.”
He pauses, skimming his telekinesis over the book titles again. He picks one up, letting it fall open in his grasp. The pages flow like water before they settle. In the winter of year 203, the Dawn Court experienced one especially devastating blizzard that would come to be known as the- He lets the book fall shut again, replacing it a little too quickly on the shelf.
“Sometimes I wonder how all these writers managed to focus so thoroughly on a single subject. Imagine studying the same thing for all your life, never caring about anything else…” his voice trails off. Ipomoea glances back at the dark pegasus.
A wan smile spreads across his lips.
“Perhaps I’m doing them a disservice. Perhaps the study of-“ he rereads the book title, “'Prominent Weather Events of the Third Century,' is a more interesting subject than I give them credit for.”
"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 has never been good at dancing - cannot move with much grace, and he is not so much like a stream as he is a geyser, superheated and belching acid over and over until everything around him is dead and bone-white. And--standing so close to a person, face to face, chest to chest, eye to eye... a hell which hath no equal.
Which is why it is no surprise that, with nothing but the birds and the weather and the lull of the library to break each long, tense stretch of silence, Andras is the one that trips--maybe not this moment, but soon enough that he feels he has lost whatever game they're playing. Ipomoea is speaking, level and calm, and then suddenly he isn't, sifting through books on the shelf like Andras might, like someone else would shuffle their feet, or twiddle their thumbs.
Or, float their glasses off of the bridge of their nose and clean them for the twentieth time in a day, rubbing a nonexistent spot off the lens before holding the pair up to the light, as if to examine--as the pegasus does.
"I don't know, maybe they're prominent enough to be... at least a little interesting." He gives a thoughtful pause, not as long as the others and not quite so stiff. "Well, probably not." he decides, finally. This pause is long, and possibly more tense, as Andras places his glasses back on his face and takes several short breaths to steel himself.
When he looks back to Ipomoea, meeting whatever gaze he finds there with one of unstable but tangible resolve, it comes almost out of nowhere.
"I hope it's okay that I've been... here for a while." He says, giving the room a sweeping gesture with both wings, to suggest that be here he means the library, and by for a while he does not mean the several hours one would typically spend perusing the shelves. In fact it has been much, much longer.
The edge of his lips quirk into a smile, as he turns back to the pegasus. And for one brief, quiet moment, he says nothing - only watches Andras clean the lens of his glasses, wiping away an unseen mote of dust with meticulous precision. "Perhaps," he concedes, with a short dip of his head. His wings flutter against the ground heedlessly, stirring fresh dust and dirt into the air.
Ipomoea has to concentrate to force himself to stop. Tucking his wings slowly back against his fetlocks, so tightly the bones begin to ache. And he can’t help but wonder, distantly, if Andras’ jaw ever feels this way when he clenches his teeth tight enough to break them.
"Oh?" he looks up in surprise from the bookshelf. For a moment Andras’ meaning is lost on him, but then like a fire roaring to life -
"Oh," he repeats, "Oh that’s fine, I’m sure no one minds it. I don’t." Another beat passes, and he tightens his wings again.
"It’s probably good actually, the library seems to get less and less use these days, after all…" he’s rambling, and he knows it, so he forces himself to stop. And smile. And breathe. And trail his eyes over the books again. Rinse and repeat, back and forth across the book titles as if he hasn’t already read them.
His wings are beginning to protest, so he relaxes them slightly, but somehow it only makes it worse. Tapping one hoof impetuously against the ground, he asks, "So. Enjoy your stay, Andras." And then with his book held tight to his chest, he turns back into the library.
"Speaking."
@Andras andras’ stress is causing ipomoea stress and i love it
