I DON'T BELIEVE IN LIFE and I won't believe in death until I die
Although Septimus has always been an avid artist, he doesn’t often paint.
It just isn’t convenient. He is a naturalist, and his work always requires him to travel; sketching is comparatively quick, though woefully colorless, leaving him to fill in the blanks that paint would cover with messily handwritten notes that rarely do the radiance of the world around him and the creatures that inhabit it any justice. When he still had his magic, he managed to craft spells to fill in the colors for him, but that always felt cheap. Now, stripped of almost everything that makes him himself, he doesn’t so much as have the option.
He has spent the past several weeks travelling well outside of the dominion of Delumine and only arrived in the court two nights ago; exhaustion still pulled at his limbs, his wings, his eyes, the corner of his lips. Still, he’d awakened at midday, collected his supplies, and marched into the woods to paint. The wanderlust and agitation seemed to grow worse by the week. The time he spent inside walls was agonizing, and travel was less and less a balm to the anxious fidgeting of his soul than a distraction, thinly-veiled at best. Where had his magic gone, and what did he have to do to find it again? Without it, the sharp points of his teeth felt unnatural beneath his lips, the bulk of his antlers felt too-heavy on his skull; he was all the trappings of the fae creature he tried to tell himself he remained, but he had none of the essence. The world was no longer effortless. It was heavy and cold, and he was tired. He had never been tired before he came to Novus, and he had lost count of the thousands of years he had spent wandering.
Feeling weight, he decided, was the worst consequence of mortality. The weight of his antlers, or his wings; the weight of exhaustion; the weight of other people; the weight of being trapped here, unable to escape; the weight of days as they passed him by; the terrifying, looming sensation of getting older. He hated it. He didn’t understand how mortals could tolerate it.
Maybe that weight was what made him set up the easel by the creek in the snow, half-frozen in swirling patches and surrounded by dusted, slumbering oaks. He had always valued the things he saw on his travels, but he had never valued them like this - it had always been with the understanding that he could return to them someday. Now, he simply tried not to think about all the things he might never see again, the way his mind had begun to tick steadily towards some sort of obsession with preservation.
But he doesn’t think about that as he paints. He thinks about the shape of the branches – their lines and contours, the colors he will have to mix to make that specific shade of brown. He thinks about how to shape water with a brush, how to separate it from the glossy clumps of ice, how to texture the snow. He tries to delude himself into imagining that it is something like what he could do when half his blood was good as ichor, when he could still spin life from air and breathe it into motion. It isn’t. The sensation can’t compare. The image can never be touched.
Against the bleak melancholy of the landscape, a swarm of greys and whites and browns so dark that they might as well be black, the sudden appearance of red is almost startling - like a blooming wound on ghost-pale skin.
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
I say the poem to myself as I walk, because it reminds me of the woods, what it looked like before winter set in like a sickness.
In the forests of the night What immortal hand or eye
I say the poem to myself as I walk because, without it, the world is far too silent. Chips of ice silver the branches of the birch trees, and frost hangs in awkward teeth from bent-backed willows, and all across the dead ground a blanket of snow lies webbed by early shadows of leafless maples. In some places I sink farther than I mean to, stumbling into holes badly stopped with ice until it reaches past my ankles and cold crawls up me like vines.
I watch my breath in the air, tumbling all over itself, the cold white of a waterfall.
In what distant deeps or skies
I am not thinking of anything, really. I am trying very hard not to. When I think, it often gets out of control. It often gets away from me. When I think, the thoughts grow teeth; they make my brain hurt; when I think, it requires turning away from the task at hand—that is, the world; that is, acknowledging it really does exist, the bare trees and hard-packed snow, the glitter of sun-on-ice, the curves and ridges—so when I think it’s like I leave this world, and I cannot do that anymore. I can’t.
My hair is cold against my neck, ribbed with thin crystals of ice, and it crackles when I move. I am leaving a distinct trail in the snow, I realize. Moons crushed into the ice. A straight line. Defined steps. If someone were following me, or something, I would be easy to find—
Someone is following me.
Down the streets where the lights are off, around the corners, over hills; no matter where I weave I can feel them following, a soft pattern of hoofsteps on cobblestone, a knowledge that some hard-edged shadow is just behind, and it makes my skin hurt, my teeth itch.
I walk faster.
It follows.
I walk faster. I am about to trip, because the streets are cobblestone, and slicked with rain. Whatever is following me doesn’t seem to care. They do not seem to tire, and they have no problem traversing the places where I am having so much trouble. Maybe I am just afraid. Maybe this is fear, the thing that makes my legs tremble, and not the cold, like I’d thought. Fear, maybe, is what slows me down. My mouth tastes like iron. Now the moon is up, but the lights are still out; I can’t see anything, only feel it, the scraping of my hooves on the stone, steps on solid stone, and then another step, followed by the feeling of falling, falling, falling.
I don’t like to call it “waking up”, because I don’t think I am actually sleeping. But I don’t have any better words to describe it.
Realizing. Emerging. Drifting to consciousness. None of these are quick or panicked enough.
Like ripping a leaf from its stem: this is how I “wake up”.
And I am still in the forest, but not in the place I was when I drifted away. I am deeper now, close to the edge of the river which is half-water and half-ice, broken by floes and dirty slush and the bodies of leaves leftover from the dying fall. It is cold-cold-cold, and the horizon is slashed with criss-crossing branches.
Someone is standing by the bank: a body with an easel. It has a rack of cervine horns and long, dark hair, a pile of paintbrushes, a canvas half-finished. It does not seem to notice me, or if it does, it doesn’t acknowledge my appearance.
But maybe it’s not an appearance. I have no idea how long I’ve been standing here. It could be I’ve had a whole conversation with him and don’t remember any of it, that I’ve said something I can’t take back which has made him turn away from me, or that I am afraid but cannot remember why, or how.
When the stars threw down their spears
“I’m sorry,” I say, though I don’t quite know why. “I—hello.”
I DON'T BELIEVE IN LIFE and I won't believe in death until I die
The red girl is beautiful. There is no other way to say it.
Beautiful, he decides, but, distinctly, beautiful in a way that is somehow wrong. Her red too dark against the snow. Her eyes too pale. Those roses, in her hair, half-thorn, spots of blood on ivory – too much a sign of spring. Roses on her skin. A mere image of the ones strewn in her hair, but somehow more alive, regardless. A crooked spiral of a horn with a sharp, sharp point. He is not sure what she makes him think of. Some sort of animal, probably, or a particularly dark and vivid flower. She is beautiful in all the ways that suggest a warning sign.
Her eyes are already on Septimus when he sees her, but he cannot say that they are looking at him, at least in any way that makes sense. It is the way that you look at something when you only half-understand its character, and you reduce it to parts to try to get it right – the sharp point of a cheekbone or the curve of a hock, shades of color without hue. He cannot shake the feeling that she looks confused, though he cannot for the life of him piece together why, and, a look of concern slowly creeping across his dark features (the furrowing of the brow, lips half-open, ears twitched straight forward), Septimus puts aside his paints, disposing the brushes on a towel and closing the bottles of paint, and he cautiously steps around the easel, drawing just a pace closer to the girl.
She is still looking at him. “I’m sorry,” she says, abruptly, and then, before he can piece together a response, “I- hello.” She must be ill somehow, Septimus decides. Were he still in possession of his magic, he could have figured out why. He’d crafted spells for all manners of sickness, during his travels; some were more deep-rooted than others, but no ailment of the body had eluded his understanding forever. (Ailments of the mind were something else entirely. He had never been particularly good at curing those – perhaps it was because he had never understood them. How could a fleeting, immortal creature who only loved other fleeting, immortal creatures possibly comprehend the mystery of the mortal heart? But his had always been half, so he had never been quite so good at ignoring them as his family. He still didn’t understand, but he was beginning to.) But he has no magic, and Delumine has doctors besides. There is no need for that contemplation. “You’re-?” He cuts himself off, blinking in confusion, then shakes his head. Better not to ask. Better to try to soothe her, instead. “No, no, you have…nothing to apologize for.” He regards her with sharp green eyes, taking another step forward; a thin layer of ice, splashed up on the rocks by the river, cracks beneath his hooves. “Hello, there. My name is Septimus – I’m a scholar in Delumine. Are you alright, Miss?” She doesn’t seem well. If asked, Septimus would not be able to point to why. Perhaps it was the dream-like quality of her pale eyes, or the way she was looking at him, as though she didn’t quite know where she was or why he was here – perhaps it was simply her apology, which seemed such a strange thing to say to someone you’d only just met.
It did not occur to him until the words were out of his mouth that perhaps she would prefer not to be asked, that prodding her about her health might be a bit invasive, and perhaps it would be more tactful to simply ignore her confused demeanor. Still – it was cold, dangerously so, and they were near the riverbank. You would not have to drift so far down the bank to arrive at the rapids, and a part of Septimus is worried that she would fall in if she stumbled upon them in such a state.
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
I am already ashamed of myself when I see the way he looks at me. Like a sick person.
It is a look I get quite often, more and more so, recently—the concerned eyes, the strange tilt of the head, the soft, downturned lips in a facsimile of real worry, and I say facsimile because it is always strangers that do this, people who cannot possibly have any real care for me. I am shivering. It is only partially because of the cold.
His eyes are green, so green, hard like emeralds. When he blinks at me, I think, unbidden, of what it looks like to stare into the eyes of a god. (How could I possibly know this?)
I do not know what to think. I do not know what to feel. My stomach is starting to turn. I can feel it writhe like a snake, spit bile into the back of my throat, cold and acrid.
He is moving toward me, and I want to move back. Want-want-want. The feeling is so goddamned familiar. My muscles coil of their own accord; my heart beats hard against the underside of my tongue until I think I am tasting iron. I swallow, swallow, swallow. And it hurts.
I look at him. Really look, for the first time. He reminds me of—the best parts of the world. The Earth itself. The spiral of his horns like the branches of birch trees. The deep, rich brown of his skin, how it matches the color of perfect soil. White stripe like a bank of untouched snow. Eyes like grass. Like the wings of jewel beetles.
If he is looking at me in the same way I am looking at him—watching, scrutinizing, categorizing—I know he will see only blood.
Are you alright?
Something in me bristles. I should not be offended by the way he speaks to me, because I know he thinks he is being kind. I should not be offended, because his concern is, in some ways, warranted.
But I am not a child, I am not a child, I am not a child:
“Yes,” I respond, and manage to do so with some semblance of grace. If my body is tight, at least my voice does not betray it, light like butterfly wings, similarly sweet. (I have always been a good actress. I think. If I’m remembering right.) I nod at him slowly, and say: “I’m well. I only—am prone to—“
God, what word to use?
I smile. Warm, I think, and a little faint. “Spells.”
Spells of what, spells of what, spells of—
I am looking into the eyes of something with a pupil like a slit made in a piece of cloth, a slice of black in a pool of green iridescence, like this stranger’s, perhaps, if he were more fearsome.
NOBODY KEEPS ANY OF WHAT HE HAS and life is only a borrowing of bones.
She is red. She is so red, and he wonders why the color is beginning to make him think of death; perhaps it is that violet-eyed unicorn and the way that he saw the world withering behind her, once (it feels like a long time ago, now), or perhaps it is the way that he is beginning to understand what it means to bleed in a way that matters. She is red like a spreading pool of blood, red like a gaping wound, or like violence. He wonders, a bit, how she is still so beautiful for it.
For a moment – for a moment, when he prods her, she is so stiff that it almost makes him cringe. It occurs to him that he has certainly prodded a nerve, but the tension is quick to melt out of her. He could almost believe that it was never there at all.
She insists that she is fine, and she smiles. (He has been alive for long enough to discern that it is not entirely genuine.) She claims that she is prone to - spells. He eyes her, and he considers simply letting it go; that doesn’t seem like the kind of claim that it is polite to push.
But – his curiosity has always been just a bit stronger than his social graces. (And besides, he tells himself, if she is sick enough to wander into the woods with no recollection of her own actions, it might be better to figure out what her spells entail.) “Spells?” He pauses a moment, and then he adds, as though it makes his intrusion a bit more legitimate, “I have some – medical experience. Is there anything that I can do to help?” He does certainly have some medical experience, though he has not devoted his life to it like he has to his naturalism; thousands upon thousands of years of travel do allow for some experience, however, and, when he still had his magic, he was quite adept with healing spells. They were another form of creation, another way of inspiring life, and, if there was anything that Septimus cared for deeply enough to make something out of it, it was life itself. The way it ebbed and flowed beneath the gentle pressure of his magic, the way it wove through an unstitched wound – it was as fascinating as it was nauseating. Katerina, she calls herself. Another scholar. He dips his head, a particular gleam in his eyes; it is always a pleasure to meet another researcher, of some sort or another. “Katerina. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he says. “What are you doing out in the woods?” He – hopes – that it is a less invasive question than the question of her spells. Something softer, to wash the taste out of the mouth.
His eyes never leave her own – jewel-bright and scientific, his stare somehow meticulous.
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
My skin is crawling. The hairs on my spine stand up, one by one; it feels as though someone is running slimy, scaly fingers through the mass of my white hair, and I am cold-cold-cold, colder than I should be. The wind surely makes it worse. Or perhaps I am just weak. I watch my breath curl in the air. It coalesces, a cloud of frost.
My skin is crawling because I don’t like the way he looks at me. His eyes are cold, hard green, jewel-cut and unforgiving. They do not move from me, even as the seconds past and the air between us begins to shift. I am not afraid, at least not in the traditional sense of the word, but I am tooth-itchingly perturbed by the intensity of the way he looks at me, or more pressingly the complete lack of feeling to accompany it.
He does not care about me. He does not want me to feel better. He does not want me to recover, nor my condition to change at all.
He only wants to know—what is wrong with me, and why, and all the things I have and haven’t done to fix it. I know this kind of person. This is what happens when Oriens goes too far, when knowledge, rather than recorded, becomes worshipped like a god.
He wants to know. Not to help.
I smile. It is a cool, pleasant, placid thing that curls the corners of my lips like the ends of a red ribbon and does nothing more. Perhaps I a, not holy enough to judge him, but—
I am human enough to keep her distance.
“Thank you,” I say; the tone is sweet, and the sincerity impossible to judge. “But no. That’s alright. They are always brief.”
I blink, a dulcet slash of dark lashes. Always might be an overestimation. If they were always brief, I would not be here; if they were always brief, I might feel at least a little more in control of my life. But he does not have to know that. I will not let him know that.
All he has to know is: I can take care of my damn self.
I clear my throat. The breath scrapes a little, roughened by cold; I am flushed from the wind, but of course that is impossible to see. “Wandering,” I respond finally, and continue with an arched brow: “The way the forest looks in winter is…”
I want to say familiar, but I really have no reason to.
“…Divine. Which you seem to recognize, too.” With a little nod I gesture toward his canvas, which glitters now with still-wet paint.
He has done quite a good job so far, but I’m not in the mood to tell him so.
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
