Cory Guevera | Logan Cale (openwindow) wrote in thereincarnates, @ 2016-10-13 00:20:00 |
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Entry tags: | !au, !fairytale, cory guevera, morgan lang |
Who: Cory Guevera & Morgan Lang
What: Just like fate, she finds her way to his open window.
Where: A tower in the depths of the Dark Forest.
When: Late afternoon
Warnings: TBD, probably pretty mild
Sometimes, Cory wished that his mother had been less of a slave to her cravings, while she'd carried him. Not that he'd had the story from her himself. No, he'd heard it all from his foster mother, when he'd pestered her enough about where he'd come from, why he was alone in the tower. His mother, she'd said, had wanted nothing more than the richly spiced food that she and his father had enjoyed during their travels, before they'd settled down to raise a family together. They were artists, she'd told him with a sneer. Cory hadn't exactly met any artists, but he didn't think he'd like them, just from the way she said it. His mother had wanted spices, and his foster mother's garden, her magical garden, that had been the only place that she'd been able to find them. His father had snuck over the wall, picked out everything she wanted. And then he'd gotten caught at it.
It always made perfect sense, when Cory's foster mother told it, why she'd ended up with him. How it was a fair deal, for what they'd stolen from her. How they'd been willing to make the trade, hadn't even fought to keep him once he was born. Just named him Coriander, after the spice she'd craved, the spice that had left him in a tower away from everyone but his stepmother, and given him over. Cory wanted to be angry at her for it, but how could you be angry at someone you'd never even met? They were flighty, obviously, and he was probably better off without them, anyway. Cory was practical. That was a word he'd learned from his books, and he'd liked it enough to adopt it. He was practical, and that was better than being a flighty artist, even if he was practical and alone in a tower and they were flighty and out there seeing things that he only read about.
Cory had learned almost everything about people from his books. That was the one indulgence that his foster mother really gave him, as many books as he'd asked for, books enough to flood his tower, about all sorts of people. About history, and the world outside that he'd never see for himself. It was like looking at it through a mirror, everything twisted and distorted by the people who'd written it, but Cory didn't mind. Cory didn't know the world any other way. It was better than nothing, no matter how much he thought that he might like to explore the world outside the tower, see where the birds flew when they flapped out of his sight. Not that he was being fanciful and flighty about it, or anything. No, he was just... curious. He'd read about birds migrating, stuck in his tower, and thought it sounded interesting, to live in one place when it was cold and another when it was hot.
The air was starting to get a chill now, but it wasn't bad yet. It was just about right for leaving the window open in the afternoon, letting the sunlight and some fresh air in while he sat, head bent over a book and a scroll, taking notes. Scrolls and quills were something else she brought him, too. Cory liked to take notes from all his books, put them together. Sometimes, you could learn more putting things together for yourself, putting everyone else's notes together and seeing how they lined up, than you could just from reading. The wind ruffled the parchment of his scroll, just a little. Not enough to disrupt him, but he held it down absently, anyway, lost in thought. He'd like to write about things that he'd seen himself, for once. He wouldn't mind coming back to his tower later, if he could have his own notes about something he'd seen. Something that other people would read.
It would never happen. There was no way into or out of the tower, except by scaling the wall, or the lift that his foster mother took... but that took two people to use, Cory balancing the weight on the other end. She'd joked about making him grow his hair out so she could just climb it, a time or two. He thought she was joking. She'd never actually done it, and his foster mother was a powerful witch. If she'd wanted to, she could have done anything to him at all.