| day 8: this is why I don't do fandom anymore. |
[08 Feb 2017|12:38pm] |
Things had been relatively quiet in and around the city. Almost peaceful, even. Difficult, almost inconceivable to think he could ever have a semblance of a life like this back - just Will and his legion of stray dogs, and restful nights listening to the haunting siren singing between the sound of the waves - and yet here he was.
There was solace to be found in his isolation, but there was only so much self-imposed isolating he could do. The hustle-bustle amidst the urban jungle called out to him when errands had to be run. Undeterred by the winter chill the army of metropolitan soldiers trudged on all around him. Bleak steel and glass, constant white noise, acrid smog, greyscale concrete - every vehicle that rolled past and the crowd of strangers surging around him overloaded the senses and drowned out the smell of rain on the road.
In the afternoon he retreated into the library, and there was colour in his world again. Paintings on the wall in their faded gold-tinted frames, rows upon rows of book spines in green and brown and red, smiles and tears on paperbacks mounted on steel shelves. Basking in the soft light, Will pulled his lukewarm hand out of his pocket and his palm ghosted over the banister, leaving a trail of ephemeral warmth up the handrail as he ventured into the second floor.
He wove in and out of the aisles, aimlessly ascending and descending his way through the dewey decimal numbers until his fingertips snagged on something that caught his eyes' attention. As soon as he plucked four books from the shelves, Will was an unintrusive presence occupying one of the corner tables, hiding behind his hedge of prose, looking rather than reading through pages that threatened to be too interesting. There was very little that he could invest into without his imagination taking over, and he would rather quietly pine his losses and disentangle his mind from slipping between the lines than spin absurdist fantasies out of fiction.
Resting his heavy head on his folded arms, the relentless assault of rainwater on the windows cast long shadows of droplets over the centrefold of the open book laying in front of him, and trickled slowly into the nascent roots of his dream.
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