Guild Love For Danee - The Bookworm
HAPPY BIRTHDAY @daneecastle
Der Bücherwurm, Carl Spitzweg
Anastasia - Once Upon A December
Rouge’s fingers touched the canvas, and like water, it rippled in circles until they reached the other three corners and disappeared. He pressed on, and his hand was sucked into it, feeling the familiar, cosy temperature that he remembered of his bookshop. His arm followed, and his shoulder, his torso and his head entered the painting entirely, until he had crawled all the way inside it.
He was standing on a stool, both his arms holding a stack of books, and he turned around; in front of him, a library was opening into rows like a gigantic Door of Judgement, offering him the view of eight thousand years of memories, the aspen wood lighting up and glimmering under a line of chandeliers. With a soft wave of his left hand, the books flew off his arms and hovered around him.
The Angel World, and other poems opened its covers and rose up to the ceiling, where it slotted itself at the side of Work and Art.
“Far round the infinite extremes of space,” he recited, stepping down the high stool, pointing to another shelf that Odes of 1819 whooshed towards. “Star unto star spake gladness, as they sped, On their resplendent courses,” he continued, and with a snap of his fingers, Hamlet crashed into his full collection of plays and sonnets. He sighed, closed his crimson eyes for a moment, then reopened them to the library shining brighter than the Versailles palace on a ball night.
“And a smile, Enkindling on the countenances of the suns…” He brought the last book, The Sandman, to its place and invited it to slot itself back where it belonged. The corner of his lips lifted slightly as he saw the soft yellow sheen that the walls had adorned themselves into. “Thrilled to the heart of nature, while there rose,” he whispered, passing his fingers against the spines of the books on the main corridor.
He turned his head, and the fleeting memories of a dream cracked in the air; a hand with long fingers, thin lips stretched in a smile, crimson hair tied in a delicate braid, yellow eyes piercing into his heart. He slid his hand into Crowley’s and pulled close to him, feeling the ghost of a touch on his waist.
“Expressive of divine felicity,” he murmured, breathing his companion’s air, gorging himself on his pink peppercorn smell. There was a smile, and there were two; there was a step, and there were two forms moving in unison, their heels clicking on the white cherry wood; a hand slid from a shoulder and joined a cheek, and a tear fell down, burning the skin with a scarlet trail.
“A clear bright strain of music, like a braid Of silver round a maiden’s raiment,” he kept on recounting into Crowley’s ear, and saw shivers running down his neck as he deposited a kiss on his skin. His eyes fluttered shut, and he gulped.
“All Imbounding and adoring,” he continued, and when he opened them again, he was under an arch made of white pheasant's eyes, the sun shining bright above their heads.
Wooden petals swirled around them, pushing them only closer and bringing with them the murmurs of undisclosed promises.
Like Death, empty were the chairs, silent was the park, white was the building.
Like Life, scarlet was Crowley’s hair, ruby were Rouge’s pupils, crimson was the rose adorning the left side of the demon’s chest.
Their lips were grazing one another, and the fallen angel had a soft gasp. He could almost taste him with the tip of his tongue pulling out for a second; his hands wrapped into Crowley's, fingers tangling into his, and he pressed forward to close the final gap.
“Crowley… please.” His throat clenched shut, and he sobbed, his trembling hand grasping the sleeping being in his bed. “I miss you… and I do not know how much longer I could survive without you.”