by Glenn » Sat Nov 16, 2019 2:11 am
The brain of Glenn Burnie churned. It was a river, raging. It raged when he slept. It raged when he dined. It raged when traveled. It ranged when he had sword in hand and practiced patterns upon his heels. It raged through the night and the day. Only did it ever stop when he put ink to paper. Only did it ever stop when words escaped his lips. Generally, usually, mercifully (for others at least), he could stop the tide, still his hand, shut his mouth. Now though? Now, after hours that were not hours but that were certainly hours of questing through glamourie, now with his affliction grasping him by the throat, there was no dam to block off the river. He ran a weary hand, his left, down that self same side of his face, all but pulling the mirth down, down to his collarbone.
When he looked back to her, the smile was gone but the sparkles in his eyes were dancing. "No." He took a step towards her, focused not upon mole or bird or any other friendly creature, not on hair or legs, distracting as they may be. He moved towards her slowly. He stared at her intently. And to the dismay of the entire province, he took a breath.
"And I shall tell you why. I was in a room, a box, in exile, in a land grander than this, but emptier all the same. I was there, locked up, atoning and imprisoned, kept safe from myself and with others kept safe from me." His voice was low and his steps small, shallow. If he meant to reach her, it would take some time. "I reached out so rarely, and when I did, one time when I did with some meaning, a response arrived from Myrken, from here, from home, from a stranger with a false face, to fill the hole through which my words escaped, to make more permanent the seal.
"Well then, it's one thing for me to do it to myself, but for someone else to impose, that is a challenge, and challenge give we fool mortals life, do they not? So I responded, and the letters continued and what began as a warning became a game and what became a game was planted anew as an exchange, as your people so enjoy, as you bandy about even now, and what grew from that seed was a confusing thing, a friendship, an accord, a relocation of sorts so that two, so very far away, could be neighbors." She could fade away, shift backwards or forward, be in front of you or behind. Burnie, on the other hand, seemed to drift upon his own words. He was walking a pathway that would not end until that final period.
The pace of his arrival was the pace of his story, the speed the volume, and it was only beginning to rise. "Not a tree, for a tree is one thing, no matter how far its roots may stretch. You could make someone a tree; this isn't that. A forest though? Like this one, but between two people, reflected through their people, traversing backwards and forwards in time, full of dark foreboding patches and beautiful, calm clearings." And here, in this moment, his foot scuffed just a little. The focus in his eyes faltered, just for the briefest second. Here, now, in the midst of this, after all that, before her, there was a real danger of losing one's self to metaphor.
With a firm step, however, the longest and most definitive of this little stroll between one point of view and another, his gaze sharpened once more. "Throughout all of this, due to our distance, you meet me halfway with letters. You are fluidity and grace. To pin yourself down through writing chafes; there is a danger to it, an alteration you cannot so easily return from, especially if you write truth. In return, I will meet you halfway as well, opening myself to emotions long tied down and controlled, would engage in a sort of merriment deep within your realm of being."
He was close now. That last step was a meaningful one. This close, he had to look up to her, but he was always willing to do that if the other person was worth the effort. "That is not the whole of me. That is not the whole of you. As much as I am that, I am also this," he pressed two fingers to his own lips, and then pressed them onto hers delicately. "As much as you are that, you are also this. Stories, arguments, building and tearing apart and building again, something fluid, something that can shift with the moment, that is never pinned down, but that is always growing and expanding. Long nights and harrowed mornings. Lilting rhymes and tricky bits of wordplay, not things thought out and rehearsed but instead a perfect, true moment."
Finally, then, he'd draw his hand back, would plant his feet, here, in this spot, right before her. The Wood seemed to resonate with him and he with it. This was his home, both the Myrken and the Wood, even if he had a different relationship with each. "You pulled me out of that box. I crawled the rest of the way here, one step after another, despite everything that drove me away in the first place. Do you think I'd take that journey, come all this way, and rob of us the the reason why? Yes, I've come for my people and for yours. Yes, I've come for those who care about me and whom I care about. Yes, I've come for another chance at a better future. But so much of that I could have done there, in different ways, with a different color. No, most of all, Finn, I think I've come to talk to you."
And somewhere in all of this, as he craned his neck slightly, as he kept that slight, meaningful distance between them, a smile had inched back upon his face, connecting the sparkles in his eyes with the wildness around them. "So you'll not take my voice, because you want all of this, all that's to come, as much as I do. You'll return Benedict's voice, because he was the bridge between us, and he should be both rewarded and punished for that." If it was laughter, it was brief and kind. "He should be part of our conversations to come. He deserves no less, don't you think?"