My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
- My Heart Leaps, William Wordsworth
Gansey
Gansey sometimes wondered what it felt like to be in love.
He wanted it in the ways of the poets, who spoke of a feeling so big it enveloped your entire being. A feeling that chased you until you could run from it no more.
He watched through the window as Adam left to meet the 'family friend' who made him grin as if he would explode if he didn't let his feelings out, despite trying his best to keep them in. The rain was spattering comfortably against the window.
Gansey was sitting on the windowsill with his Latin homework. He still hadn't been able to figure out the right verb tense on the last couple of questions and was beyond caring. He had thus far never taken Ronan up on his offer of copying his homework, but there was a first time for everything. His mind was too preoccupied by the poems of Lord Byron to focus anymore.
Gansey had always been a fan of the romantic era. He loved its use of seemingly grandiloquent language that let him glimpse landscapes and places he'd never before visited. He loved its ties to nature and the matters of the heart. He loved the way the poems and works of that time filled him with momentary ease. One insomniac like himself couldn't get from dreams. He loved how they grabbed ahold of his entire being and numbed his brain to the rest of the world.
But his appreciation of this appropriately named era had also led to him reading many a knight's tale with true love and kisses that made your heart stop at their centre, and it had turned him into a bit of a hopeless romantic.
His thoughts now lingered on the way Lord Byron spoke of the subject in She Walks in Beauty.
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Gansey wanted to believe in that kind of person, who you could see beauty in the inner as well as outer parts of. Who's lips weren't merely a sweet taste against your own and instead the way by which they trusted you with all their fears and you in turn trusted them with yours.
Yet, he didn't believe in true love. It was too silly of a thought and he knew his father would disapprove of it. But how he longed for someone like that, someone who brought beauty to his life just by existing. Someone that would make him feel more alive. Someone who could give him a new sense of purpose in life, who could make him smile and see the stars for what they were. Someone to find mutual comfort and respect from. Someone who was meant just for him.
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Dead Ravens Society
FanfictionAdam Parrish is a new student at Aglionby Academy, where the students are taught four core values; tradition, honor, discipline and excellence. While he has had to work for his place at the school, his roommate, Gansey, is the third of his family to...
