eight hundred excuses ☼ emmeline + dorian
Ah — look, I’m sorry. I’ve just too much to do around here today…
I don’t know, I — have to take care of a few things, Emmeline. Another day, perhaps?
Uh - can you come back another time? — I have been struggling to get this method working, and I’ve just started to pick up pace —
Sorry Emmeline. Dante asked me to help him fix the shelves today. He’s actually an old man and can’t do it himself, see, and he’s also a slave driver.
Dante broke his back trying to fix the shelves the other day and now I have to nail his bones back together, you see. Oh, there he is now. Go back to bed, Dante, you’re an old man. Or at least go get the hammer please.
Unfortunately, I found a wood borer beetle in the firewood today, and it’s sick. I will talk to you soon.
Unfortunately, the beetle died. I must perform an autopsy. Another day?
There is actually a singular grain of sand by the river that requires my attention today. Maybe some other time?
I’m so sorry, Emmeline — but a leaf fell onto my shoe and I actually can’t wear it now so I — can’t leave.
But underneath this coiling chain of ever-more ridiculous dishonesty, the truth of the matter was simple: he did not want to go. Not yet, and certainly not with her. He did not want to be within a mile’s radius of her, if the University was also within such an area — in physical proximity, in conversation, even in thought if he could help it. But with every day that slunk by, Dorian grew more and more restless — and with such restlessness came thoughts of his own shortcomings. He could only sweep the rooms (haul the wood, stoke the fire, clean the tools, count the money, organise the logbooks, attempt and fail to resume work on Ode to an Elytra Part II) so many times before his muscles felt they’d fall to pulp, shreds, and his bed began to seem so terribly appealing. However, when he was resting, he wasn’t working, and when he wasn’t working, he was being rather useless and Dorian could not be useless. He could, of course, count his negotiation with Miss Bridge as an achievement — but then, at this point, even a step outside made for some pathetic feeling of accomplishment.
He was weak. In body and, though he was loathe to admit it, mind. Breathing was a chore — the only thing that kept those many risings and fallings to any kind of rhythm was his shaky old pride. I own this, he thought, this is mine, they took nothing away from me. The bandages were unravelled from round his hand about a day ago, sticky and off-white, though the burn was still raw and glistening pink. Painful as anything. His bruise had faded to a smudge of discolouration under his eye. I am healing. But he was still so weak.
So weak, that he could not face half his own mind, could not allow himself to breach topics he’d wrapped up in an untouchable list. So weak, he had told Dante to say he was unwell should Emmeline — or anyone else — visit. So weak, and every kind of weak, that he shut himself up in the shop and hardly dared leave. Weaker, still, that he prowled off to the University alone two or so weeks since he last saw her, when he thought she was working. Weaker yet when he hid behind a bookshelf, because it just so happened that he had been mistaken.