i know i am deathless
i know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter's compass
Everything is a story.
This, here, stretching between them infantile and uncertain—this is a story. Vercingtorix thinks it when the gravity of the man’s gaze meets his own; the meeting of two stares.
Quite. Standing for comparison. There are plenty others, I am sure. Vercingtorix traces the tight expression on the other man’s dark face; the effect is quite fathomless, as if Torix is staring into a clouded night without stars or moon, or a very deep and dark pool of water. The expressions seem faint glimmers, the sentiment within them the suggestion of a reality that is not true; imagined light; imagined movement, given animation by something inanimate. The contradiction is one Vercingtorix almost recognises, in that when he smiles it does not feel as if it belongs to his face, but someone he used to be.
Torix remains equally mirthless; and equally analytic. There is a part of him that recognises this man should unsettle him; and that same part laughs at his current indifference. Torix does not recognise fear in the way he used to; he sees only a man capable of atrocity, with eyes like black holes. He has met many men with similar expressions and, now supposes, he often composes himself similarly. The difference is that his eyes are the cool turquoise of a Mediterranean sea.
And what stories do you seek? the other stallion asks, as though he is the keeper of them. The tone is baritone; not threatening, but not kind.
Vercingtorix stretches his neck casually; he lolls it to one side, and then the other. With that accomplished, he steps down the aisle of trees to examine the book the stranger had been reading. It is not a story at all, he sees, flora and fauna of solterra by zaursc cereti.
Vercingtorix thinks of poisons and fruits; there is no in-between. “Why Solterra?” he asks as way of answering the other man’s question.
And then, because to ask and not to give seems unfair, Vercingtorix adds: “I seek the story of us all.”
What unites us, here, in this place. In this lost man’s library. In this strange world of foreigners and magic and beasts.
When he turns his eyes to Erasmus, now, Vercingtorix is not smiling; he is measuring, as a lion measures another lion. It is because Vercingtorix knows intimately the reflection of his soul; the abyss cries out to the abyss; the monster to the monster. Yet he knows even more intimately that, in a realm like Novus, there is only so much room for those of their breed.
He is quiet for an endless moment; he has put himself physically close by habit and intent. Vercingtorix learned young he is imposing, nothing but corded muscle and, now, snaking scars. His eyes are fixed on Erasmus, unwavering until, at last, he smiles.
But his smiling is like an affront to the expression; his smiling is tight, cruel, mirthless and yet knowing. “I had to ask, because the only reason I would ever look at a book of botany is for the classifications of poisons.”
And in his mind the continued passage from the History of Oresziah:
The Comathians were prosperous for many years, until a particularly difficult summer hit them. Accustomed to long winters of sea-ice and snow, the warm spell altered their trade and raid routes. Foreigners came from the east and threatened the Comaethians, who responded with aggression. A short war raged for the next five years, one that left them with few resources. The King of Comaetho, Solveig, decided to pioneer an expedition beyond all previously known territories, beyond the Land of Black Cliffs.
Their vessels were caught, rather unfortunately, in a very late winter storm. The entire expedition was upturned and those who survived did so only by making it to shore on an island they previously knew only as belonging to their dark god Oresziah. Those who stayed behind in Comaetho never heard from them again, and their story is lost.
But they did not die.
No, Vercingtorix thinks.
They did not die.
"Speech" || @Erasmus
i know i shall not pass like a child's curlicue cut with a burnt stick at night. i know i am august, i do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or to be understood, i see that the elementary laws never apologise.
