[ It’s almost ridiculous, he thinks— The halfhearted distrust that he observed in himself towards the poet. Yet, there was something about him. Nothing wrong, necessarily. Nothing that sank him down in Bahorel’s opinion. Yet, there was something. ]
❝ — I wouldn’t say necessarily that I’m worried. What does it matter if you pay attention? Come now, Prouvaire. ❞
[ What a curious mind. ]
[ Never the wiser, the poet is happy enough to seat himself beside his rather distrusting companion. He likes to sit with Bahorel because proximity to contradiction is always food for thought. He likes the last phrase -- "come now, Prouvaire" -- and he scrawls it absently in needlessly decorous script. ]
Come now, Prouvaire, come now Pick your scattered brains up as you go
[ He abandons this soon enough in favor of other ideas, which he writes in many directions all along the pages. He will likely go back later and collect what he likes of these, working them into something far more polished. For now he writes and he writes, and he hardly keeps his mind about him, lost in the words and their colors. ]
The blood in these veins is not thine own. It is promised to spill on the pavement like acid rain.
[ He stops abruptly. The colors of these last two phrases startle him, so dark that he feels that he has sunken into them and must come up for air. He drops his pen and pulls back, staring at the phrase absently before noticing that his little notebook has been cast aside and he has instead written (again) on Bahorel's arm. ]
