AND I KNOW THAT ROME WASN'T BURNT IN A DAY
BUT IT COULDN'T HAVE BEEN MORE THAN A WEEK
BUT IT COULDN'T HAVE BEEN MORE THAN A WEEK
A
ndras watches him: quill, ink, notebook, rooting around in the field for secrets. Over his shoulder the sun is waking up. Far behind him, the city stirs to live, smoke starting to pour out of chimneys, dishes clinking delicately together in an attempt to collect the morning’s affairs. The sky is smeared with a gray-blue, cold sort of color– but Andras is watching Septimus, rooting around in the field for secrets.He wonders what that’s like, for just a brief, floating moment, before the thought passes into the static hum of his heart.
Then Andras remembers that Septimus was gone, for almost a year (or maybe more). Monsters, as we know, are never quite monstrous enough in their stories, behind the bars of someone’s teeth or trapped in the page of some well-worn book with loose binding and yellowed pages. Andras almost envies him–
–except that he has his routine, the oft-trodden path from the library to the capitol. He has his stack of books and his windowless room and his single candle and the faint scent of desert spice that still lingers weeks later, unless he’s imagining it (and he’s not brave enough to wonder, just yet.) He has his cold tea and his cup tucked under his wing and everything is right and comfortable and safe.
He wouldn’t have it any other way… right?
“You and me both,” he admits, Septimus’ smile mirrored in his own, though Andras grins with a mouth full of flat teeth made sharp by their touching. Sharp teeth that are only sharp in the mind. “but you must have been busy.”
Andras tucks his cup away–it is precarious–and tries not to feel the lump of it beneath his wings as he moves, stepping into Septimus’ trail so as not to get in the way, extending the other to give him leave to do as he pleases.
Septimus mentions his catalog, and Andras looks from his face, to the notebook, to the quill, to the wildflower-freckled grass of the meadow, still mostly frosted except where their bodies have warmed the earth just enough to melt it. Hardy, smiling winter plants that draw their light through the cloud cover must be all that’s left of the field that he knows.
But, he doesn’t come here often, because– well, because–and even if he did, Andras doesn’t know much about botany to begin with. A jack of all trades but a master of none, his mother would say, when she could stand to be around him.
It’s hard to be interested in anything when you are roaring all day and all night. “Have you asked Ipomoea?” he offers. “I think you might know more, but I think he could coax your hard to find ones out of hiding if he tried.”
Andras shrugs. Septimus then asks Andras why he is there, and Andras has to take a moment to think. Why is he? Does he even know the answer? Is it acceptable to say that his life has become so monotonous in this desperate attempt to return to normal when he feels like doing nothing but screaming and laughing and throwing punches (and lightning) that this thing–this one little moment, where he walks off the path and into the field–is the most exciting thing that’s happened to him in weeks?
The warden goes still, and turns his head away. He looks at the rising sun, and thinks nothing.
“Just on a walk.” he says, with an air of finality. There will be no more to the answer from him. “Where were you?”
ANDRAS, WARDEN OF DELUMINE
they made you into a weapon
and told you to find peace.
