Birds of Feather

Chapter 32: ...?

You sat on the floor of your library, but it wasn't yours. The endless shelves faded into clouds, and the floor was glass. It was a library, but not yours.

You were at peace in it, however, the edges of understanding nipping at your fingers as you got to your feet and walked casually through this dreamscape. It was cooler here than in your space. The shelves were steel or chrome, not the warm walnut shelves accented with bright red cherry wood. Patterns of inlaid gold you could trace while you red were replaced with deep red spinels, polished smooth and given an eerie shape.

Like bloody rocks slipping down the silver structures.

Unsettling as it was, it was so beautifully done that it didn't bother you. When you ran your fingers over the red stones you could sense him.

A man looked at you from within a nearby bookshelf. His fingers dripped pages onto the floor, ink splotched the papers, dripping from his hair and beard. Silver and red crawled like ivy against large hands and powerful arms. His labored breath made the shelf shudder with every heave he clawed from the air.

"You're dying." You say simply, standing away from him, but close enough to see the state of his legs. Boot leather cracking the glass floor as his feet seep into the ground like the roots of a tree.

"I'm already dead, girl." He sighs the words before a hearty laugh leaves him. The sound is too clear, too certain, it's the first sound that grips your heart.

"It's my own fault," he continues, the holes in his wide grin leaking gold. "Out maneuvered by an office worker. An ex-noble at that." His laugh has less life to it.

Less of him.

"... It was because of him." You say after a moment, resolute gaze getting dragged into the dark abyss of his irises. "If you had acted sooner, or hadn't involved him." You let the words drop.

The silence between you is only broken by the shivering, ragged breaths being clawed from his lungs as he is consumed slowly by the world around him.

"I... won't apologize." You say finally.

"Zhehahaha!" The full laugh booms against the world. "ZHEHAHAHAHA! THAT'S THE SPIRIT!" The bellowed words diminish quickly, his skin turns a silver grey, and you can see his body age before your eyes. "I don't mind losing... ta' someone like that."

His eyes stay on you, and you hold the gaze until the light in the endless abyss flickers out. You stay, as his skin ashes into silver, and the blood of his drips like polished spinels against the shelf. You stay until the color leaves his boots, and become clear like glass, the cracks of golden roots sealing shut.

The blots of ink, the scattered pages, the scraping draw of labored breath, are all gone.

Maybe consuming the unwelcome was how the library had built its knowledge. Though there was nothing within the pages of the books you had read to leave you with that impression.

It was a collection.

But knowledge resided within people. Within their very bones. Generation built upon each generation, and over the decades the divine became wisdom. Wisdom begot language, language begot alphabets and pictures became a means of recording so much more than before.

Knowledge translated the wisdom residing in bones and blood, and made it something more.

Something more resilient.

Something that could grow, like a vast forest with an inviting warmth of blood-stained wood and bones of gold.

A/N: 2-3 more chapters to go \o/