immediately alerted to the knock at his door, adrian’s eyes flew open and flooded with the color blue. pools of moonlight draped over him from the skylight at the center of his ceiling, touching wooden floors and woven rugs and toys that had long-since been neglected due to age. he’d outgrown them, much like the hand-painted blocks and charts of english and enochian letters that were hung upon his walls. yet, even as he poured over texts of a more mature nature, he could not bring himself to be rid of them. from the woven stuffed wolves in his baskets to the book of old, greek myths. they were a part of this room, and not something he would soon want to discard.
he wiped at his face with the back of his hand, turning at his desk to meet the giant standing in his doorway. he looks exhausted, having lost track of time. he cannot recall the last time he had eaten anything that wasn’t brought to him by lyudmil or one of their armored servants. the devil familiar scurrying around on the back of his chair soon reminded him that he was being asked a question, and his little screech prompted him to answer.
“ if i am a filial son, then i would be hard-pressed to deny her request. ” his response was soft-spoken and even, hands rested in his lap. there was unspoken tension inside of him, like a balloon ready to burst. his calligraphic scribbling was littered across hundreds of pages scattered in books, across his desk, a few fallen to the floor. all with the same unanswered question, unable to break a hypothesis. “ …i do not understand how there is so little known about my condition. ” he admits, “ however, with so little reference i am left with few resources on vestigial subject matter. perhaps, father, you may know the answers ? ”
IRREMEDIABLE concern is what draws his father’s brow together, smile -- elicited by his son’s initial reply -- fading, wrinkles from endured centuries deepening as he considers Adrian’s confusion. He can sympathise with such a crisis; the transformative passage of both adolescence and a sombre reflection on his condition which separates himself from the human and inhuman all at once. But Adrian ------ oh, Adrian ---- the boy would not meet another kindred soul to truly empathise with his plight, wherein both night and day are married, at least not unless he travelled so far to find someone, footsteps carrying him through continuous cycles of time.
It is the ever-present, hopeless hope of a parent to have all the answers, to alleviate even the slightest possibility that his son may be in pain from such an alienating identity, but Vlad has no definitive source to draw upon and regurgitate as assured doctrine. He steps closer into the room, impeding upon the pensive silence, and his piercing red gaze softens when he looks upon his son’s face -- expectant.
“Unfortunately I have only encountered footnotes, simple acknowledgements... it is a field that both your mother and I scoured for, attempting to find sufficient enlightenment before you were even born but...” His justification for not providing the answers his son seeks falters, eyes averting to the window. The stars remain in their natural place, each hung by unseen string and Vlad remembers the wooden mobile that once orbited above Adrian’s cradle, an elaborate geometry of astronomy where opalline crystals shone in slow, cyclical patterns while their son slept ; his parents even measured the far-off projection of this moment in the future, but never could they formulate a solution to the question Adrian now poses.
And so Vlad looks back at his son, asking in return;
“Is there something about the way you are that troubles you?”