roman padgett

"the soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts"

[tatumreynolds-deactivated201804]

As much as Tatum could dislike the ocean itself - on the days when she felt particularly more emotional than usual - she could appreciate the charm that the actual boardwalk had. She remembered fondly the days when the sun shone overhead and tourists from faraway places would spend hours there on the Colby pier. Though her parents took her to the pier when the weather was nice enough, she was, of course, never allowed to walk too close to any edges and was not allowed to wander of. And she didn’t. Not all the time, anyway. 

Now the pier was empty and deserted, its former appeal completely vanished, as if the sea had washed over it and taken it for keeps. Surprisingly though, Tatum wasn’t the only one on the pier at this moment in time. A few feet away from her a young man appeared to be annoyed with a bird. Though Tatum glanced upward briefly to spot the animal, she didn’t see one. What she did see, was the proof of its visit on the young man’s shirt. 

“Ah, yikes. That’s shitty,” Tatum said, closing her eyes momentarily with a smile in place when she realized her poor choice of words. “No pun intended, really. I’m not that funny by nature. Though you know what they said when we were younger – it’s supposed to be good luck.” 

[roman-padgett-blog]

Roman turned just in time to hear a yikes, followed by two unexpected words of extraordinary brilliance, spoken by an unfamiliar blonde young woman. This event was no longer a tragedy; it was the cause of one single, shining instance of wordplay. (He felt slightly less hostile towards the seagull with this revelation.)

Roman’s face split into a blinding grin. “ Unintended puns are the best ones. That’s shitty,” he murmured under his breath, shaking his head in delight despite the aforementioned shit still sitting on his shoulder.

“I’ve never heard that adage, but something tells me that the only luck it means is that I’m lucky horses don’t fly.” What a situation that would be. “I’m, ah, not in your way, am I?” Roman stepped aside, attempting to remove himself from blocking her view of the ocean while simultaneously leaning to the side to prevent the birdshit from sliding off his shoulder and landing on his shoes.

[wesleydeiss-blog]

Wesley was cold. Cold and pissed off with it, hands jammed into pockets, his shirt sea-spray damp against his chest. There were no girls around to be impressed by the cling of the police uniform to his muscles, which increased the misery of the situation by at least 200%. Honestly, at this level of irritable, he’d have even welcomed the sight of a nervy boy to mess with. Intimidating them was its own kind of fun—not quite as enjoyable as a good flirt, but still amusing in its own right.

Instead Wes was stuck watching as Roman Padgett dollied his way down the boardwalk, stopping to stare as if love-struck across the waves. Wes had never been quite sure what to do with people who lived so much in their own heads; his own life was so enduringly physical he wasn’t much cop when those around him encouraged him to introspect. He decided to wander closer anyway, desperate for a distraction from the boredom of ‘patrolling’ a deserted boardwalk—and was rewarded almost instantly by the sight of Roman being decisively shat upon by a passing seagull.

“Horrible things,” he agreed amiably when Roman at last seemed to register his presence. The sight had been pretty funny, but an officer of the law was sympathetic first and a dick after—mostly, anyhow. Wes pulled his hands from his pockets, crossed his arms, and eased his weight against the wooden railing behind him. “It’s high time the government set about culling them, don’t you think?”

[roman-padgett-blog]

Roman glanced up to see a uniformed police officer, young and muscular, presumably having been audience to his poorly-timed interaction with the now-fled seagull. He remained frozen, his mind speeding through an endless litany of local laws to determine if he’d broken any, until the officer voiced his agreement and seemed to relax against the boardwalk’s railing. Roman’s feet remained firmly planted on the wooden flats, but he let his stiff posture settle almost imperceptibly.

“Culling them?” He repeated the words, somewhat astonished. The birds were horrible, yes, but defecating on one’s shoulder wasn’t a crime that needed to be avenged so seriously. Even if it were so... history proved that such a suggestion would come up short. “Seagulls are protected by the federal government under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918,” he cited mechanically. “And unlike other laws that have grown lax over the years, the fine on this one actually increased by three hundred percent in 1998, so it’s doubtful that the government would ever change their stance so abruptly.”

He examined the mess on his shirt, trying to decide how best to remove the uncomfortably wet splotch of shit, subtly keeping one eye on the other young man. He’d thought he’d been alone. Roman knew how to exist and be alone. In most instances, he preferred it. To now be so distinctly not alone, and with an unfamiliar law enforcement official for company all of a sudden, was unsettling. “Is seagull management in the job description for police officers nowadays?” he asked lightly. “If so, the guilty party is halfway across the harbor by now.”

[roman-padgett-blog]

-joshua edwards, “problems of knowledge”

roman padgett 1/?

[roman-padgett-blog]

Decaying boards creaked beneath his feet, the seagulls sweeping above his head. Roman remembered when the scent of cotton candy had overpowered the fishy seawater, when tourists covered the pier instead of only a stray bird strutting around here or there. Too many shops on the boardwalk had closed down in recent years; not enough business to keep most places afloat. Roman wasn’t even sure why he’d managed to wander all the way down to the boardwalk. He’d been reading too much Tennyson at work, he supposed. 

Break, break, break, on thy cold gray stones, o sea, he thought as he looked out at the waves. His poetic reverie was shattered by a plop on his shoulder, a lovely gift from a seagull passing overhead. It was a hazard of harbor life, not the first time it’d happen, and not the last. Still, washing bird shit off his shirt had not been a part of his plans for the evening. 

“Really?” he asked skyward, his tone resigned, the seagull already long gone. “Must you? Aim for someone else just once.” The unmistakable creak of footsteps sounded behind him. Roman froze and slowly turned. “Ah... birds, you know?” he said helplessly. 

[callum-mckinney-blog]

“Oh,” Callum said quietly, ducking his head, “I’ll pass that information along. I think it’s just, well, church attendance is so low as it is, you know? We’re looking for anything that may help us fill up the rows, but um…yeah, if they know English, no real point to it. Thanks.” But with the revelation about Secondhand Books, Callum became interested again. “You work there? Oh, that’s a great place. I must’ve always come when you weren’t at the counter. Wow. You must be able to read a lot, working there.”

As Roman lit up, talking about fluency in language, Callum had to consider him. There were complicated relationships with gifts in the town, it was true. But Roman, as he spoke then–Roman seemed in love with his. And Callum in turn smiled, smiled in the way one did when someone spoke about the person they loved. He could understand perfectly. And he knew he could sit and listen him talk about languages for a long time, if it meant this very shy-seeming person could speak freely.

“That is…” Callum started, then pausing. “I don’t know what to say,” he laughed, “Wow–wow, that’s so cool.” He thought for a moment, “Thank you for…that was a great answer. Really, really great answer.” He shook his head with Roman’s question, “No, not me. I took a few years of Spanish in high school, but that’s the length of my foreign language skills. Can’t say it’s much at all. Unfortunately. I’m sure we’d have more to talk about if we could trade it in a bunch of languages, right?”

[roman-padgett-blog]

“You genuinely care about this church,” Roman observed aloud. He knew the statistics of course, that only roughly twenty percent of Americans attended any sort of Christian service on a weekly basis (a flood of information followed, about cathedral architecture, and more statistics broken down by denomination, comparative knowledge of non-Christian faiths and their attendance, Roman blinked repeatedly to tamped down the waves), but it was a new experience to meet someone with such a seemingly personal investment in it, even in casual conversation. “Ah, yes. I’m partial to it,” he said in response to the comment about the bookstore. “You must have seen Grace, then." Their shifts didn’t often overlap. “But yes, time and materials to read are certainly a benefit of the job. Have you found anything good on your forays into our stacks?”

“You’re welcome,” he said, as he ducked his head, pleased. It was always a gift, when others found pieces of knowledge to be as intriguing as he did. “Unos años es más que nada.” A few years is more than nothing. The accent rolled off his tongue flawlessly. “It might be useful to you someday, right? But one language is just fine as well. Most of what I speak in other languages, I don’t mean to,” he admitted. “Speaking in just one is... nice, sometimes.”

[marniedowling-blog]

Marnie was a little taken aback by his response, to say the least, and she surely had not expected him to recite lines from her random shelf pick. But something about his voice made the words dance and sing and she nearly leaned in to listen. For a moment it made her believe she might enjoy a classic after all. Then he broke off, maybe even seemed a little embarrassed by the way his tongue had taken flight of it’s own accord. To her, it was something of beauty. Something she could have listened to all day if he would have continued.

“Did you… how much of that have you memorized?” As she said it, she made a feeble attempt at hiding the fascination in her voice and expression. “That’s impressive, it’s really…” But then she broke off, too. Glancing back down at the books she still clutched, Marnie remembered herself and the topic at hand. “Um, I like fantasy and mysteries… maybe science fiction?” She’d also read a good amount of romance, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to admit that to this stranger. “Although, that book - what was it, The Sun Also Rises? That sounds nice, too.”

[roman-padgett-blog]

Impressive? Most would say annoying instead. It was a welcome surprise, not to be embarrassed at the words that came flooding out of him. He offered the girl a small but bright smile. “A bit,” he admitted. It wasn’t that he memorized the words, in truth, but it was more that the words crawled inside his brain of their own accord and refused to give up residence. “Although that was a bit of something else from the Lost Generation... not Hemingway, one of his colleagues, T.S. Eliot... he wrote The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, have you heard of it? They didn’t much get along - a bit of an understatement, really - but their work parallels and feeds off each other in extraordinary ways.”  

As she listed off the genres she liked, he opened the door to the counter with a slow creak and stepped out from behind it and into the heart of the shop. Fantasy, and mysteries, and science fiction. “So, nearly everything.” His voice held a barely-perceptible inflection of teasing. Diving into the sea of books, he headed towards the fantasy section, glancing behind only to see if she was following him. He came to an abrupt halt in the middle of an aisle, tapping the spine of a gilded hardback. “If you like fantasy, I love recommending this one... it’s got a fair bit of mystery as well, for the characters at least. Faeries, and magic, and a fallen star turned into a girl.” A few steps down the aisle and across to the other side and he ran his finger along a long set of paperbacks. “These are mysteries, about a wizard employed by the Chicago police to solve crimes, murders, et cetera. We have nearly the whole series, though someone bought number four the other day... I’ve read just the first few, and but they were delightful. Though if you want the same idea but set in Victorian New England, Jackaby’s your better bet. That’s around the corner.” One shelf lower than the previous one, he pulled a weathered novel from the stacks and stared at it intently. “Or there’s this series. Saying it’s about ‘a fry cook who sees ghosts and tries to stop the apocalypse’ doesn’t quite cover it, as the story has an incredible amount of heart. I shed a tear at the end of the first one,” he mused. “Though the narrator is certainly hilarious throughout most of the story. These are worth reading as well.”  

Having been enraptured by the books for the entirety of his explanation, he finally looked back up at the young woman who’d asked for the recommendation in the first place. “Do any of those, ah, sound interesting to you?” Roman tapped his fingers behind his back apprehensively. It was so hard to choose which books to recommend, and though he was usually spot-on about what certain people would love, he’d been wrong before. “If you don’t think you’d like those, I can try again.” 

[marniedowling-blog]

say anything // marnie & roman

The allure of a clear, mildly blue day may have coaxed Marnie out into the open, but the heat of the afternoon sun turned out less friendly than she had hoped. She ducked into the nearest store in search of a few minutes of cool air, removing beads of sweat from her forehead with the back of one hand as she entered. The tinkling of a bell above the door and the stale scent of old books met her as she began browsing the shelves. Disorganized stacks of books were cramped into every last bit of space, making it impossible to identify many of the titles. But in her years of experience, sometimes the best thing was to let the right book find you. So Marnie chose a nearby shelf, reached out a hand, and seized a book at random.

A well worn copy of A Farewell to Arms. She had never been one for classics, so she tried again. This time, a small book on basic algebra. Once again, the subject didn’t appeal to her, but there was something charming, almost enticing about the dog eared pages and margin-scribbled notes. Frowning slightly at the two books in her hands, she turned to the man behind the counter.

“Any, uh, any recommendations other than these?” she tried, lamely holding out the two books for him to see. “I like to pick at random but it didn’t really work this time.”

[roman-padgett-blog]

A tinkling of the bell rang throughout the shop, a thin layer of dust swirling from the tops of the bookshelves at the gust of air from the door. Roman sat atop a short step-ladder behind the register, in his lap a singular thick tome he’d pulled from the newest stacks. Engaged in his own examination of the binding, he didn’t bother looking up until the customer - or, presumable customer at least - approached the counter. 

He looked up to see a young woman tentatively holding out two books towards him. Any recommendations, she asked. A complex question if there ever was one. 

“Ah,” he said, peering over the counter at the offerings. “A Farewell to Arms, yes, that one’s... not terrible, I suppose, but The Sun Also Rises is the better Hemingway choice. Though perhaps it’s only my infatuation with the idea of the Lost Generation that makes it seem so. A bit reminiscent of here, disrepair from disrepair. ‘For you know only a heap of broken images, where the sun beats, and the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, and the dry stone no sound of water...’” He broke off quickly and gave a short cough. “A Farewell to Arms isn’t as engaging, in my opinion. And I probably wouldn’t bother with the algebra at all.” 

Roman mentally chastised himself. She didn’t care what he liked, only what he thought she would like. So he swiftly moved on, closing the book he’d been examining so he could slide off the stepladder and move over to the counter. “What sorts of books do you usually enjoy? Or... what topics do you think you might enjoy?”

[callum-mckinney-blog]

Callum recognized Roman. He’d been the smartest boy, the high school’s darling. Even if he was a couple years ahead of Callum, everyone knew who the genius was. But beyond that–a mystery. Still, it was a place for community, and if there were places that people sat alone…Callum didn’t think a church should be one of them. “Yeah?” he checked, not wanting to completely intrude. Though he slid in, he promised, “I won’t stay long, promise.”

He nodded thoughtfully, “I don’t think I forgot anyone, so yes, thank you.” He let silence settle between them, “They’re trying to get a ministry in French going, you know, since tourists from Quebec come down sometimes. But…they don’t speak French real well.” He snuck a glance at Roman, not wanting to seem strange for remembering his gift for languages, but also knowing that perhaps this could be something to draw him out of shyness. “Ever want to be a multilingual priest?” he laughed at his own joke.

He thought for a moment, wanting to keep the conversation without uncomfortable silences, since those were the most common kind. “Is it true what they say about knowing you’re fluent in a language when you dream in that language?”

[roman-padgett-blog]

“Of course.” The other boy clearly belonged here more than Roman did; it wasn’t his place to force him away. Though why he was speaking to Roman was still a mystery. “Stay as long as you’d like.”

The boy’s laugh broke the silence of the hall, but gently, like a sunbeam splitting a cloud. Roman chuckled under his breath as well. “I’m certain I don’t have the necessary priestly qualifications, but thank you for the unauthorized job offer.” He paused for a moment to consider the problem. “Almost all Québécois speak English as well as French. Or, rather, it’s rare that one speaks French exclusively. They’d be able to get by with an English mass. But in the spirit of multiculturalism... your priest would only need to know enough French to get through the homily, if they had a French bible someone could use to stumble through the readings.” That would at least take care of the vocabulary. An improper accent would make the francophones cringe, but surely that shouldn’t matter in a house of God. “If you let your church know, they can send their priest to Secondhand Books for assistance if they’re interested. I work there,” he clarified with a tiny shrug. “I can help them improve, if they’d be interested." 

He didn’t feel the need to explain that he could help since he knew French - clearly the boy already knew that, or he wouldn’t have brought it up. And therefore, he knew at least something about Roman. Perhaps they’d gone to school together? If they had, he must have been in a different year than Roman, or he should have recognized him. He’d have to get the boy’s name before he left. 

Roman blinked at the question. A pinprick of information began glowing in the back of his mind and he reeled it forward, his dark eyes alight with insight. “Oh, that’s not true at all.” He turned to face the McKinney boy and began counting on his fingers, relaxing back into the pew as he did so. “One: You can’t trust the verity of anything in dreams. Obviously. But two,” he punctuated with another tap of his fingers, “scientifically, any language you comprehend in a dream is only a repetition of already catalogued speech. Say... you’re trying to learn Russian, and you begin to dream in Russian. All of the words in your dream are only subconscious memories of words you’ve already heard, either from other speakers, or television, or... what have you. Or you dream in French... but it’s only because you’ve heard a priest attempting to practice for his parishioners, and your mind recorded snippets of it.” Roman smiled wryly. “Your dreams only spit out what you’ve heard, not necessarily what you understand. Unfortunately. Have you been dreaming in foreign tongues?” 

[callum-mckinney-blog]

And please, Lord, heal Mama’s foot. She’s still limping a bit. Thank you. Thank you for all things, big and small. Thank you. He made the sign of the cross as he finished his prayer. Amen. With that, he raised from his kneeling, lifting the kneeler into its standard position. As he exited the pew, he knelt towards the altar, again making the sign across his forehead and chest, and then turned. The church, opened to the public for meditation and prayer, was sanctuary in more ways than one to Callum. And he knew it was the same for others. This piece of thought was obvious in the way that the person sitting in the back, though not praying, was here for something. He caught their eye, stopping by where they were sitting, “Do you want company? Or do you have, uh,” he gestured to the place, the dwelling place of the divine, “Enough company already?”

[roman-padgett-blog]

Roman’s back slouched against the hard, wooden pew. He had never been particularly religious, despite his mother’s attempts to the contrary, but it was quiet here; the air was muffled, full of whispered prayers and hopeful intentions. There were so few places that were quiet. 

So he sat, and he watched petitioners come and go, and he let the sharp scent of lingering incense and the flicker of the altar candles lull him into a state of meditation, more reflective than introspective. His heartbeat slowed, and though his brain didn’t - it never did - he could slowly begin to turn down the volume, muting his thoughts with a heavy cloud of opacity. No one paid him much mind - until one person walking back down the aisle caught his eye. A McKinney boy, but the looks of him. Company? A strange offer. 

“I didn’t come looking for company, either human or divine,” Roman admitted. “But by all means, sit down.” He slid slightly farther down the pew, though there had already been plenty of room. Roman clasped his hands together, not sure what else to do with them. Was the other young man offering silent company? Or did he expect conversation? What did one even converse about in a church? “I trust your prayers, ah, went well?”

[isobel-caldwell-deactivated2016]

It wasn’t sleepwalking if you were awake, Isobel knew, but it felt like it as she stumbled down the almost-silent suburban streets. They were empty- or, rather, they would have been empty to someone who couldn’t see the countless pulsing echoes of those who were dead and gone in all but spirit. Seeing them was difficult, though, their light dulled in the darkness so that she could only see them when her flashlight passed over them. They were dim in comparison to the cracks and bangs of light down towards the end of the block that had been keeping her (and probably the rest of the street) up half the night. Firecrackers, probably, or illegal fireworks from some one of those superstores by the highways that Isobel’s father had mentioned a while back. It’d be smarter to light them up during the day, closer to the woods where there’d be less people around, but then again no one had ever said the town was filled with geniuses.

What she’d do when she’d reached the source of the racket Isobel didn’t know. She wasn’t brave or brash, wanted to shy away from most confrontation. But if she did nothing, she’d be exhausted the next day and she had an interview- not that she was particularly excited about the job. Another pop and bang shocked her out of her worrying, the sudden sound making her jerk. The beam of her flashlight bounced up and down, revealing a new figure; one not made of light like the others but alive.

“Ahh!” Isobel stumbled back, dropping her flashlight in shock. “What are you doing out here?”

[roman-padgett-blog]

The lights of the stars peering down from over his shoulder, the glow of his smartphone lighting up his face from below as he knelt on the pavement. Three, two, one... he lit the firecracker. It was a quick burst of light, over in an instant, the sound’s echo already a memory. But Roman didn’t look up. 

He was otherwise engaged, scrolling through the data sent to him by the transmitter he’d set on the ground at the end of the block. He scribbled the numbers on the ground with the bit of spare chalk he’d remembered he had in his pocket, just below the other tests he’d been running for the past... however long. Too many numbers. Words were his forte, his twin, his soulmate; numbers, his complicated cousin, one that both intimidated and inspired him but sometimes he wished would just shut up at holiday supper. 

Halfway through the process of sketching out a diagram - one step better than numbers, though still not to the level of words - he heard a shout and a thump. A flashlight nearly rolled into his left boot. A girl, presumably previously attached to the flashlight, was standing nearby. 

“Sound... travels differently in Colby Harbor,” he spoke, lowly and in a rush. “I’m almost entirely certain. The air is thick with something. Unsurprising, given the nature of this place, but even with peculiarities of locale, tonight, sound waves are moving at an alarmingly slow pace, and sound being one of the primary senses, its verity must be thoroughly tried. ‘What is the sound of sounds, sounding indefinite, fist in face again and sound of the surprise of it coming from nowhere,’” he rattled off, his wide eyes staring up into the night. 

Though perhaps she was looking for a shorter answer. Oh. Well, it was too late for that. He brushed the chalk residue off his hands and onto his pants before standing up. “What are you doing out here?” he responded, volleying her previous question back, his tone now almost painfully casual. 

[sukicirillo-blog]

Suki stood behind the worn wooden counter, her body lazily folded over the surface. The shop was dead, and she had made the mistake of making a comment about it to her mother, which resulted in Suki being left alone to run the 24/7 Tarot for the afternoon. Shockingly none of the locals wanted their fortune told by a bitter woman with a withering ability.  Releasing a heavy sigh, she rested her head in her hand. Her eyes gazed at the door longingly, willing someone to come in. 

[roman-padgett-blog]

Roman cracked open the door of the Tarot shop, rapping his knuckles on the doorframe as a warning as he entered. "Hello..." he called out cautiously to the young woman standing at the counter, his voice rich and soft. "I'm not here for a reading. I'm looking to borrow a pen." Who even knew if a Tarot shop would have such modernities as the ball point pen? Though really, any writing utensil would do. He began to glance around curiously, observing the surrounding decor.

[boysbygirls]

[roman-padgett-blog]

boysbygirls:

“5 minutes with Harry”. Read here.

[roman-padgett-blog]

How much of Roman is truly Roman, and how much is from what the ley lines gave him? The magic running through the veins of the town gives him a golden key that just keeps unraveling lock after lock after lock - but the moment he sets foot beyond the boundaries of those veins, he is cut off, a dangling puppet, his precious key to the universe only molten liquid dripping from his grasp.

The last time it had happened, he had been out in the forest, a reluctant guest at a youth-filled party, bonfire roaring in the background atop the sand-saturated ground. After a while, some had gotten bored with just the fire and wanted to go for a nighttime jaunt in the woods. When no one disagreed, they set off, the embers still glowing with the remnants of heat. Roman followed slowly into the trees, lagging behind the laughing twenty-somethings.

A shiver ran from the top of his skull through the tips of his fingertips as he followed the group farther into the wood. Roman busied himself in his head, mentally listing off the Greek names of the plants he spotted, then translating into Farsi. Why Farsi, out of all languages, he didn’t know. But he could find the words, so he did.

It was a purple flower, tinged with blue around the edges of its tiny petals, that pulled him from his reverie. He had never seen it before. Finally stumped, he glanced up to realize that he had fallen behind. So far behind, in fact, that he could no longer hear the unruly crowd. The only sounds outside his head came from gently rustling branches, a woodpecker in the distance.

No use in following; the only thing to do was to go back to the campsite. He’d come from the west, because the bonfire had been closer to the water. Roman took out his phone to use the compass app but when he swiped to turn it on, the device flickered and went dark. Slipping it back into his pocket, he shrugged, unbothered. So he’d have to figure it out the long way.

The moon should be setting in the… east? Or was it like the sun, rotating the same way? That the answer didn’t immediately come to him was… concerning. Roman slowly circled the ground, peering upwards to get a glimpse of the sky through the treetops. Why couldn’t he remember?

It was just one fact, one tiny piece of information. But one that he knew once, without hesitation. Roman pressed his palms against his eyes until he saw stars. He was outside the ley lines. He must be.

When he glanced up, he noticed the the nameless flower remaining motionless in its patch of moss, taunting him. Roman felt a wave of self-disgust roll over him as he couldn’t help but draw parallels between himself and the stupid flower. Power-less. Defense-less. Use-less. Those were the only words he could recall, a pathetic trio of failure, but only one began cycling on repeat.

Useless. Useless. Useless.

The word rose in him, circled his neck, and began to squeeze.

[ripeandruinrp-blog]

                                                                          “Thought is the sculptor who can create —————————————————————————-The person you want to be.”

NAME: Roman Padgett AGE: Twenty-five OCCUPATION: Employee at Secondhand Books FACE CLAIM: Harry Uzoka

what lies within

Would you trust a flower that bloomed in the dark? It’s a question that presses to each surface in Roman’s mind, providing enough pressure some days to give him a migraine. Famously known as the boy who spends far too much time in his head, there has never been a defining moment that has severed his history into two even parts. Most young people have a distinctive childhood but it’s arguable that Roman leapt straight into adulthood following his first word– it had three syllables and made his mother drop the salad bowl. From that moment he hasn’t changed much, spending the majority of his young years stuffed away indoors, propped up with a thick book. Learning became less of a pass time of his and more of his calling, he found that words and phrases and ideas cling to the walls of his mind, staying there until he beckons a particular fact forward. He had always been a viciously clever boy, one that hungered for knowledge wherever he could obtain it. When he was old enough to work, he took up a part time job at the second-hand bookstore to cement his access to old and forgotten literature. Over the years he’s racked up quite the repertoire of spoken languages, flaunting them subtly with little mentions of French or Italian in conversation, always finished with a wry grin. His ability is knowledge, a genius one would say; he speaks in riddles and poetry– entirely unaware that the edges of the information that he’s gathered are starting to grow fuzzy and translucent.

what lies beneath

His greatest strength is also Roman’s deepest insecurity. The intelligence that he is so proud of has frequently been his worst enemy; trips through the woods have ended in catastrophe as he stumbled out of Colby’s borders, suddenly all notion of sense or direction evaporated with the leyline. It only had to happen once or twice before he came to the conclusion that he could never leave, declaring himself too stupid to make it outside once his magic faded away. His intelligence isn’t always a virtue, it has made sort of a hermit out of Roman, who finds himself getting short in conversation, ending long winded speeches hastily when they’re met with dull, uninterested eyes. It’s not in his personality to be obnoxious, but he just doesn’t quite realize when he talks down to those around him. Roman has been explaining things for so long that every story is starting to sound like schooling, every lesson feels like scolding. The steady drain of magic hasn’t been noticed by him yet, he’s considered the recurring headaches to be attributed to dehydration– but the fact that he’s forgetting words now and then mid-sentence: it’s getting harder and harder to ignore.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - roman is open

[ripeandruinrp-blog]

———————————————————- Character Teaser for Ripe and Ruin RP

He was a genius. That might have been why you loved him. But he didn’t see you and that’s alright because maybe this is how Icarus felt about the sun when it burnt him to dust. He shines so bright against this town, so brilliantly bright that sometimes you imagine him being a second sun. He can create in a way that takes you back to when the earth was new and growing, when things were so easily progressing if you just added a little water and a little light. Things grow from his finger tips like flowers in bloom, each time he has a thought the world shakes a little. And the town cries out sometimes in the night when he’s scribbling in his notebooks and figuring out the universe because his brilliance can never stretch out of its bounds. You ask him one day how it feels to grow inside of a little box. You ask him if he’s suffocating, if he’s burning up under his own light. He replies simply and doesn’t meet your eyes and that breaks your heart a little. “For me,” he starts, and you notice his voice and how its as solid as a marble sculpture crafted hundreds of years ago, “This town is my world.”

OPENING SOON / MAIN / PLOT / CHARACTERS——————-