Time seems irrelevant when his whole life is marked only by pages, structures, and stone. In the Monastery, the monks did not tell him when it was morning or night, nor when to rise, nor when to rest. They only brought him to lesson after lesson in a house that was not a home. How could a temple, a holy place Ceylon's father would likely have destroyed if he'd had the chance, ever be more than a cage to hold the heart of a bird that longs for something more than what it's given without ever knowing exactly what?
It can't. Simple. Like him. Ceylon is a simple thing that lives between the lines of text historians write down to catalog the events of the world. The rise and fall of kingdoms, places, people. All of it. Everything. It's the same.
One face blurs into another, they don't look at him, not really.
Ceylon wouldn't ask them to look at him. His blue eyes do not yearn to reach out and touch their skin, find solace on the image of their lips forming his name, learning the curve of their lashes until they are the inspirations to the rise of his next great masterpiece and resurrection of the past. He's tired of making people into places, of watching their lips curl up, down, and being unable to decipher exactly why. Of course, it really isn't as though he's tried hard, or at all, to learn what emotions look like on another's face. Only his sister's face showed him what the world could be like if he dared to step into it. She taught him to laugh, to sing.
When she left him, too, he forgot those things.
The monks made sure that he knew only papers, pencils, and particles until he dreamed them into existence, brought back the world that the demon of the sand so desperately tried to destroy. Why? He'd ask over and over at first. Why? he'd question the silence surrounding him. Eventually, Ceylon stopped asking people.
Eventually, Ceylon started asking papers.
In the monastery, there were plenty of books to occupy his hungry mind. Always, always is he thirsty for something new, an appetite for knowledge growing and growing with the passing of every moon cycle.
Someday, it might kill him.
Until then, he'll eat another book for breakfast and start another with his morning tea. It doesn't matter when the end comes, when time forgets that it has meaning, it only matters that he's here. Spines of trees have morphed into spines of books, titles carved into their stout trunks until they scream.
It is not a peaceful place, but instead, this library is a place of memory. So many memories that are dark and hidden. He'll learn them all. Someday soon, he'll know everything this wooded refuge has to offer.
NOW RUSHED INTO THIS BRIGHTNESS as if by a shutter / that, once opened, can never be closed
It is a particularly cold day, and, although that does not especially bother Septimus, he opted to flee into the library with a cup of tea rather than to study outdoors after he woke this morning.
He’d slipped through the court, found one small café or another that he hadn’t visited yet, and picked up a cup of blueberry green tea. It wasn’t especially good, but he drank it regardless while watching the passers-by on the streets of Delumine through windows fogged over with a fine layer of frost. He’d intended to take the tea with him, but, since he didn’t like it, he finished it as quickly as he could and then hurried to the library, washing the aftertaste out of his mouth with winter chill.
He might have encountered familiar faces on the way, if he’d been paying attention. He might not. Septimus is a perpetual drifter, even in the court he technically calls his own, never quite willing to cling to anyone or anything for too long. He might say that it is in his nature, because that has always been what he has been told; he might say that it is a consequence of his fae-blood. He’s never been sure of the veracity of that statement, however, since his relatives are content to stay in the wilds forever, for eternity, and he could probably never be content with anything at all.
And – his blood lies dormant, now, anyways.
After several hours of studying a text on Denoctian wildlife, Septimus stands up to stretch his legs, and that is when he happens upon the man.
Maybe he is intrigued by him because it seems precisely like he does not want to be seen. He is not especially striking; he is colorful, certainly, yellow-gold and white with a gentle touch of blues and violets like expanding nebulae or a bruise, but bright colors alone are hardly enough to render someone striking, particularly after the many years that Septimus has spent wandering. (He has seen wonderous things, and he has seen them often – but that has mostly given him appreciation for things that are smaller and plainer, the oft-ordinary foundations to the marvelous sights and structures and creatures that he has encountered. A forest of great trees cannot grow without the little things squirming in the soil, or the underbrush.) At any rate – the man, in his wandering, catches Septimus’s eye.
(Perhaps it is merely because he remembers being a stranger, here, too.)
The library in Delumine is not the largest that he has encountered, in his many, many years of travelling – it isn’t even in the same caliber. Still, it is large enough to be daunting, particularly to those unfamiliar with the system, or the small helpers that inhabit the arboreal shelves. He strides forward, and forward, and forward until he has bridged much of the distance between himself and the man, and then he tilts his head, a gentle smile curving across his dark lips. “Looking for something?”
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
When he looked to the skies outside before entering, what little glimpses were offered, he couldn't tell you if he prayed to the moon or the heavens or the sun. Now, they are gone and all that is left are phantom lights carefully controlled around the wooded shelves so that they might not burn out of control and destroy the masterpiece Delumine holds on a pedestal, displaying for the world that dares come closer, be wrapped in twigs and branches, become as much a part of the wood as the books are. Now, as he looks up with pale blue eyes that reflect as much of the light as they absorb and look nearly glowing, nearly silver in their reflective way, all he sees is tower upon tower of pages sewn together. The piles and shelves are not as high as at the Monastery, perhaps, but they are tall enough that it is a stretch for him to pull down a title from an upper shelf just to find what it is about.
He's doing this, quietly, softly, like dripping rain on eaves, like morning dew on sunflower petals, when footsteps approach on a breath of wind. It is not well insulated here, but he wonders how well a library made of trees could be insulated after all?
Lips purse and he casts nary a glance toward the horned man, not caring if he stays or goes, only that the silence is left between them and a distance that would not be breached. Until it is. Footsteps draw nearer and his skin almost crawls; these are strangers in a strange land, they are not the teachers he knew, they are not his sister and her terrifying mercy. Theirs is a velvet touch he does not long for, does not want to become familiar with. Theirs is a dark curl of words that can stay silent in a tomb far away from his own mausoleum of memories and focus.
He is a cathedral built on devotion, concentration and drive. In his walls, there are no rooms reserved for the living - his love belongs all to a past that would never be again.
So when the voice rings out, its smooth, rich tones touching lightly on his ears as the priests once did, Ceylon pauses to push the book back up to a shelf he could not ordinarily reach without the help of their telekinesis. Phantom hands reverently set it down, careful to slide it without catching any loose pages from the scripts surrounding its home. Once his task is complete, and not a moment before, the man seems to settle more into himself with a breath before angling his head to the left. Brown like wood and a good deal taller, the fae-like creature stares at him with a smile and soft mossy eyes. There is no ill-intent on his skin, and it's not as though Ceylon would understand what that looked like.
It makes about as much sense to him as smiling at a stranger.
Pale brows draw down over eyes that look more like ice in that moment. He quiets the ticking seconds in his head, reminding him of his mortal life, of the many thousands of years of history he must atone for on his father's behalf. When their silence at last rings out, only then can his voice be found, only then does it come like a babbling brook, soft, detached. Ceylon gives more attention to his own drawings and structures than he does to Septimus in that moment. There is no love lost between them.
"Everything," is all he says. Their hearts beat in tandem as he waits for the Pegasus to take his leave. "Do you have a section you prefer?" He asks after seeing the fae quite decidedly not leave. Frustration doesn't dare peek out from under its blankets, instead hiding like the rest of his emotions; irritation happily hunkers down next to frustration and they watch as Ceylon watches: with their undivided attention focusing now on a source of information and nothing more.
No one is anything more. They all say the same thing in the end.
NOW RUSHED INTO THIS BRIGHTNESS as if by a shutter / that, once opened, can never be closed
If the man is irritated by his sudden appearance, Septimus does not appear to notice, though he makes note of the fact that his response is more lukewarm than anything else. Everything, he says, and he gives a short laugh that is delighted, rather than mocking. He does not say anything else for an inordinately long moment, and Septimus readjusts his glasses on his nose with one chocolate-brown wing, the gesture somewhat awkward, space-filling.
(It doesn’t once cross his mind to leave, however.) “A rather tall order,” he remarks, finally, more than a hint of amusement coloring his jovial tone. He isn’t sure if the man’s next works it’s the result of his remark or the uncomfortable silence weighing on the him, too, but, at his question, Septimus’s expression turns rather thoughtful. A section he prefers? How could he? Novus is full of new knowledge and strange magic, regardless of whether or not this is the largest (or most developed) library he has ever encountered. (Septimus has stumbled across lands with electronics and buildings that he doubts most people in Novus could ever imagine – but that, he supposes, is far from the point.) In that regard, the sections dedicated to the folktales and history of the continent are the most interesting to him, the tomes of never-before-seen philosophy and religion, the works of fiction and poetry that he’s never seen before in any other land. Those are the newest, and, in that way, they are certainly the most appealing to him. However, this land is full of other, strange things too. Most of the plants and animals are familiar, but others are certainly not, and the magic, in certain places, is incredibly unusual and volatile. He still remembers his utter fascination with the island, the first time he encountered it. In the years that have followed, it has not stopped surprising him.
And – if it comes to things that Septimus simply likes the most, he’d lean towards the natural world, rather than literature and art, much as he likes knowledge in most any form. He tilts his head at the man, considering, and then says, “I’m…something of an ecologist. I think that I enjoy the sections dedicated to biology, and botany, and sometimes even geology the most – oh, and the maps of Novus, and the books on magic...I specialize in environments that are heavily enchanted.” After all, they are what he is the most familiar with; he is an enchanted creature from an enchanted wood, and, though he cannot quite connect with that half of himself like he feels that he should, he has dedicated most all of his life to trying to understand it regardless. The alternative, he supposes, would have been focusing his energy on his more mortal half, and he has no particular desire to do that. (His father was mortal, but he was no real family; in fact, before he left his home, he had never even met another mortal creature.) Without his magic and his immortality, he certainly feels mortal, but he also feels that something inside of him lies dormant, like flowers buried beneath a carpet of winter snow. The sensation is more unpleasant – itching, he might say – than anything, a sense of wrongness like a scab begging to be picked off.
He appreciates the mundane for what it is, for what it is worth. It just doesn’t enchant him like the enchanted - he doesn’t long for it in the same way that he longs for that part of him. (His interest in wholeness has never fallen on his mortal half, as much time as he has spent around mortals; perhaps it has always been an issue of time. Lately, as he watches his own form age, as he watches the season pass and finds that they mean something to him, personally, and not just in the abstract – he has been inquisitive enough about the melancholy of it to humor his own mortality. Never enough to let it take him entirely, however.)
But he is here, in the library – and there is the man. He has very little time to contemplate his own interests if he’d like to keep their conversation moving. “And you,” he says, tilting his head in a gesture of practiced, polite curiosity, “do you have a section that you prefer?”Beyond everything, he nearly says, but holds the urge in.
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
If words are a poem then oh, Septimus opens a floodgate of them, haiku after haiku, sonnet upon sonnet. They rain down on him as the man of chocolate and smoke's attention does. Eyes, they are blue and beautiful between the star that would shine even on the darkest of nights, are bright, eager. How Septimus devours his own words! They would be a wildfire in this library if he ever let them go, out of control, a conflagration taking on its own life and will thundering through the hole oft he structure until there is nothing but ashes of what once was and the knowledge that would be lost...
Oh, but Ceylon is lucky that the winged man stops, pauses. Ecology. Magic. Botany. They are words that he knows. Concepts he is familiar with only in the way that he is familiar with building garden walls and fountains, carving stone, marble, into something more beautiful than its natural formation would allow. Of course, of course, he'd had to study that too back home. When the great demon came to swallow the city, it took with it countless wonders that their city had to offer the world and its denizens. He knew so few of them as a boy, but he remembers those green days that his sister would play with him beside the mermaid fountain in the colossal garden. The Garden of Song.
It was beautiful.
Now, it lives only in the memory of those who visited before its destruction. One day, once he is well versed in the art of building everything and anything in the world, Ceylon knows that his city will ask him to build it up again and make it just as beautiful if not more so. They expect so much of the man.
He does not know how to disappoint them.
"Are there many enchanted lands for you here?" he says into the silence. It is not so much a question nor a demand, ending almost monotonously. Uninterested in the most polite of ways if indifference could be considered polite at all. Septimus might have Ceylon's attention and eyes, the blue of them shining just as Sept's own, but he does not have his heart, his emotion to back it up. There are so few mortal attachments that would hold him to any single place or person.
The last person he cared for left him over and over and over. What a pathetic life it had been, loving one who would only leave.
For a brief moment in time, Ceylon pauses. Wayward hair inches nearer the ground as he tilts his head, lips pursed in thought. His favorite section... "History..." he hums at last with a decided nod. "It is my most wide read subject." The monks at the monastery made sure of that. Every book on their history he was to consume, integrating it as a part of himself until he could recite it, could draw every detail in picture after picture down to the most agonizingly small pebble.
He was not to peruse so many other sections than that. There was simply not enough time. Still, the maps of Novus (this land) sound interesting enough, almost as fetching as the enchanted areas. "Would you show me the scrolls on your...enchanted lands?" he inquires. At the end, Ceylon clears his throat and looks to the ground. Before, he would not ask for books. They were always piled up every morning and taken away every evening once he'd run through the pages. It was both a gift and a curse to be pampered with all the knowledge his thirsting mind could want, but never to be able to make his own choice on what he would most desire to learn.
In that regard, he knows as he knows precious few other things, his life is changed. Whether it is for the better or worse, he's yet to decide.
