The great library had weathered many Long Nights before Jigano had arrived, but this was the first for their new guildhall. He had locked the metal-sheathed door tight, and the main hall and inner rooms had survived intact, but the two rooms against the edge of the Atheneum, with the high windows, had suffered some damage. The dirt that filled their window wells had trickled in through the broken one and cracked the glass of the remaining window, and made a bit of a mess of the floor, with worse in the future now that the spring rains were returning. There was work to be done now that the snows had melted, and the lorekeeper was eager to begin, buoyed by the return of light and life to the world, and the retreat of the monsters.
Buoyed, too, by what he had done with Amalia and Edy and Rory, and the joy that they had brought to those who sheltered in the Sanctuary. It had been bought in madness and pain… but, in the end, it had been worth it, he thought. Not just for people they had helped, but in how it had bound three of them closer together. There was something there that he was only beginning to let himself explore, a possibility he had closed himself off to long ago. Something fragile and precious and warm… something he had lost, and something else he had never found. Something… that deserved time, to unfold slowly.
And he was keeping it deliberately vague, for fear of putting too much pressure on himself or anyone else, to try and make what was happening be something it was not. Which meant, rather than dwelling on it too deeply, he needed distraction. And what better distraction than physical labor?
So it was that the elegant bard bound back his sleeves and was found at the outside of the Atheneum with a shovel, starting to dig in the dirt in the bright Flowerbirth sunshine – a task he didn’t look terribly well-suited to at the best of times, slender as he was.
Buoyed, too, by what he had done with Amalia and Edy and Rory, and the joy that they had brought to those who sheltered in the Sanctuary. It had been bought in madness and pain… but, in the end, it had been worth it, he thought. Not just for people they had helped, but in how it had bound three of them closer together. There was something there that he was only beginning to let himself explore, a possibility he had closed himself off to long ago. Something fragile and precious and warm… something he had lost, and something else he had never found. Something… that deserved time, to unfold slowly.
And he was keeping it deliberately vague, for fear of putting too much pressure on himself or anyone else, to try and make what was happening be something it was not. Which meant, rather than dwelling on it too deeply, he needed distraction. And what better distraction than physical labor?
So it was that the elegant bard bound back his sleeves and was found at the outside of the Atheneum with a shovel, starting to dig in the dirt in the bright Flowerbirth sunshine – a task he didn’t look terribly well-suited to at the best of times, slender as he was.
