[P] ash-hands and honey-tongue

[Andras]

a shard of god
in my mouth
turning
my tongue into
rivers of blood.

S

somewhere, in the library, there is a room with his name.
Not literally, so to speak; there is no plate on the door announcing that he was there, that once it was his as much as any old, magic thing can belong to anyone (which isn't much, truth be told), but there is still a clean square on the table otherwise covered by a thin film of dust, and there are feathers stuck to the walls and the floorboards, and there is wax from his candle tacking them to the surface in places.

It's been days, a week or two, tops, when Andras steps through the front arch into the library's tall, ancient foyer and a part of him melts like it's fainting in his shell. He had never expected it to feel so much like home. He had never expected anything to.

Needless to say, this still does not ease his nerves. These days Andras is a tightly coiled spring, held in place by sheer force of will, always strained at the edges and waiting to unwind. It, like many things about him, is not sustainable. None of it is sustainable: the boredom, the dam of his self-control, and the bubbling, black sea that it holds back. It's almost impossible to be solid, when you were born with cracks in your walls.

Delumine is quiet, safe. Everything is quiet and safe around it. The nightmare of a few winters past seems to be much more of a nightmare than anything else, not, just another ghost story told in the dark. It is quiet enough that Andras can hear his blood, singing. The crackle of his magic is so loud when the world around him is hushed.

Andras walks the halls one by one, passing shelves of books he's read and ones he hasn't. His jaw aches from holding it closed. In one room, where the hall branches into another, and another, until the labrynthine wood of the library becomes a tangle of paper and lanterns and leaves, he finds-- not what he's looking for, not by a long shot, but something. Gold like the summer sun, white as winter snow, with the sharp bones in places that betray his age. His feathers are maybe not as straight and pristine as he might have imagined, the sharp point of his horn might be worn, some, with time.

But he is unmistakable. Andras has never met the man, but he could call his name across the room. There is only one Somnus.
"You're the former king, right?" This he says through clenched teeth. "Where have you been?"

ANDRAS

@Somnus

[Somnus]

an eye for an eye and the world goes blind

When the Gods finally emerged from their wayward respite to walk the land of Novus once again, Somnus donned his mottled brown cloak and did the same.

”Walk tall,” he had promised Oriens with a sightless warm smile, before finally descending down the mountain.

His return to Delumine had gone without fanfare, without notice, without grandiose preamble or unnecessary embellishment. ’As it should be,’ the wise voice of Oriens echoed in his ear, remnant phantoms from the vast time he had spent in his patron deities’ company.

The climb down from Veneror had been difficult, but it had transpired with far more ease than his climb up many seasons ago. Back then, he was new to his blindness, the gashes upon his milky-green eyes barely even scabbed over. It had been recent, and he had struggled to traverse the land that he could now barely see. The smallest of rocks were enough to trip him and leave him unbalanced, wayward sticks and natural debris an utter nightmare, but Alba had been a patient, cautious guide. The barn owl had become his eyes, guiding him with remarkable patience that she had never before displayed, pedantic and spoiled as she was…

But in seclusion, he had mediated. With no visitors save for the sparse pilgrims who made the dangerous trek up Veneror, Somnus of Delumine had lived his life in quiet servitude to his godly patron. He mediated, he prayed, and he learned.

The dunalino adapted. It took weeks, months, years, but he learned. He learned to navigate the world without the use of his vision, to step lightly but with purpose, to listen and feel in a way he had never done before. He could move with grace and poise like a dancer across the worship hall of the temple, tending to the candles and incense and cleaning the dust and grime from the dias reserved for each holy relic. It took a great amount of resolve to test his patience such a way, but Somnus had always been a patient man. This had simply been a larger test than all of the others, but he had always so loved a challenge.

His first visit would not be the streets of the Court he had loved since Vhallen. Instead he walked through the forests to return to the dusty tomes, ancient scrolls, reaching wood archways with leaflet halls, and wondrous knowledge that was the Library. It had always felt like home, even when his own Court had not.

It was there that he sank, letting himself go through the motions despite his lack of vision. Somnus was so intimately familiar with these halls that he could, quite literally, traverse them with his eyes closed. He reached out and plucked up a number of old scripts that Alba ensured he could read before finding a quiet place to read.

Roosting upon the top of a shelf, Alba bristled at the sound of someone approaching. Her head swiveled around, beady black eyes blinking slowly as a soft trill left her hooked beak. ’You have a visitor, Somnus.’

He smiled. So he did. A graying-gold ear ticked back to listen, yet he remained focused on the scripts unrolled before him. The cadence of hooves did not sound familiar, but it had been so long since he had been around anyone save the presence of the Gods. The newcomer, whoever they were, had no qualms with simply, speaking, and so that is what Somnus let them do.

’You’re the former king, right?’ Ah. Is that what this was about? Somnus frowned softly, his sightless, milky-green eyes focused on the unrolled manuscript in front of him. Was he truly still recognizable? Had Ipomoea not done enough for Delumine that the golden king of Dawn could not retire and be forgotten in peace?

’Where have you been?’ Somnus knew that tone. The tension in a jaw, the blame like nails in a throat. What had happened during his absence?

With a deep breath, the dunalino took a step back from the table and turned his head, focusing his sightless, scarred eyes upon the young man standing only a few short paces away. Was he truly still so recognizable? Even with his narrowed frame, the dullness of his horn, the weakness in his wings, would he still be recognized everywhere that he went? Alba had bristled, and rather rudely did she pop her beak loudly at the stranger. Lifting his head with a cocked ear, Somnus offered this youth a rather melancholic smile.

“Serving Oriens atop Veneror, but I do not believe that is entirely what you meant.”

---

tag: @Andras

[Andras]

a shard of god
in my mouth
turning
my tongue into
rivers of blood.

T

he first thing Andras thinks is that Somnus looks old in ways he's never seen: not world-weary as much as rooted too deeply in it, like his forest god has stretched out hands to hold him to the ground. He wonders, if that connection was severed, would the man simply... float away?

The second is that he looks like Oriens has been holding him down, marked with the handprints of divinity in all ways that matter. Andras had stood next to Oriens, almost shoulder to shoulder. His magic had stroked the side of his rib and begged for more. He had not felt, or even looked, so divine. He would not wish to repeat it. The king's reverence is built on a foundation of fear.

After all, Oriens had looked at him, all his black dogs with gnashing teeth, the boiling cauldron of his rage, and he had said: I will let that out.

"It is entirely what I meant. It was just a question."
He looks, through the shield of his glasses, guarded against both the curl of his lip that be bites down on to keep it from curling at all, and the clackclackclack of a barn owl with round, black moon eyes looking back at him.

Andras pauses for a moment, stares at the scarred, blank, white eyes of the former king, newly come down from the mountain, and then turns away, crossing the room to a shelf full of books bound in linen with clean white lettering stamped onto their spines. The first book pulled off the shelf takes some wrestling before it falls into the palm of his wing, but the second comes more easily.

How does one ask a stranger how to do anything? Andras does not know. Instead of trying he sets the smaller of the books on the counter, a surprisingly frantic motion, and folds the other open, busying himself with flipping through pages, comforted by the sound of the rough fiber on its equally rough brethren. A nervous habit. Pages that fold far too fast to have been more than glanced at. Andras forgets to care.

Finally, he looks back to the dunalino and his owl. "What's that like?" he asks, almost noncommitally. Almost. "Does Oriens take his tea with much sugar?"

ANDRAS, Sovereign of DELUMINE

@Somnus