Chapter 54
Quill
Our Almost. Our Never.
Unwritten
Natasha Bedingfield
The rain drummed against the windows. Those were the only moments when I wasn't listening to one of Davian's old cassettes on the Walkman, which he must have used regularly long ago before locking it away in the basement, along with his passion for writing.
Admittedly, it was risky to sit down at his desk chair and just write. It felt personal. Too personal for an ordinary student-mentor relationship. One that we had never really had, if you left out the long, exhausting practice sessions with him and Monica, as well as his lectures and seminars.
I studied a lot, at least when I had the energy and motivation to do so and wasn't carried away by new writing ideas, as if I were not their creator but their servant.
When I wasn't studying or spending my breaks with Lara and Thomas, I chatted in the forum with all the people who had also developed a fascination for Atrianima.
Who would have thought that the publisher would actually respond?
Atrianima would in fact find out that more and more people were reading her book.
What if we could set off further chain reactions as a result? An interview? A statement? Book Two?
No one believed that the author would sit down again and dig up old skeletons. No one except a handful of people who now wanted to get Atrianima's attention.
Although I wouldn't hesitate to get in touch if the opportunity arose, some students had already gone so far as to try to find out who was behind the pseudonym, placing bets on whether it was really a woman, and the Maplecrest University newspaper had already started a second petition demanding an interview with Atrianima from the publisher.
Lara was the only one who hadn't joined her friends because she thought it was intrusive. She was right. But the author wasn't forced to respond. I would make sure people didn't overdo it.
The Voice in My Heart – Piano
(Violet Evergarden Original Soundtrack)
maats, Evan Call
The door opened and I looked guiltily at the man who also spotted me.
Those moments when he caught sight of me somewhere he hadn't expected to find me, when his gaze lingered on me for a fraction of a second too long, were my favorites. Those looks were real, so familiar and yet different every time.
“Quill.” It sounded observant, surprised, as so often, awakening hundreds of hope-thirsty moths in my stomach.
“Of course.” He raised both eyebrows before he began to smirk.
“Always happy to.” He closed the door with one foot and came to the desk, where he set down two cups of cinnamon coffee, which made my smile intensify. “Make yourself at home.”
Lara and he had managed to make me cautiously dare to trust that this place was the first refuge for my paper castle that could withstand the storm of my life. One where I could escape from myself for a short time.
Grinning, I put down my pen, stretched behind my head with both hands clasped above me, and flashed him a daring look.
“If you’re inviting me in, maybe I can have your whole study while I’m at it?” I lowered my hands, got out of my kneeling position, shifted my weight, and folded my legs beneath me into a cross-legged position. “After all, you have two.”
Davian hesitated before playfully narrowing his eyes and sitting down across from me on the chair I had pulled out of the corner earlier.
We wanted to write together. He had asked me.
“You're quite demanding.” He moved closer, placing the cup right in front of my nose, so that my gaze automatically lingered on his veiny hand for a few seconds. “Has anyone ever told you that?”
“You're the first...” He grinned, and I paused deliberately to capture his smile, which I needed at least a certain dose of every day, before continuing. “...who I feel confident enough to be demanding with.”
His smile faded and he looked up.
Those were the moments I most wanted to repress. Moments that reminded me that what blossomed and breathed so naturally between us had no right to exist in this world. A flower that had bloomed in the wrong garden. But where was our garden?
I cleared my throat and looked down at the sheet of paper.
“While you withdrew to escape your creative block – under the excuse of making coffee – I actually got into a flow.”
Davian looked in astonishment at the many sheets of paper that had gathered around me in the last fifteen minutes.
“You always write a lot.”
“You should see the thick manuscripts I've...” I bit my tongue. He shouldn't know where they were. “...already written. Mostly book series, some unfinished. But I'm working on it.”
“I have the feeling that thick books come from authors who have a lot to say, but no one listens to them.”
Ouch. How right he was. If you didn't have anyone who could spend hours on end listening to you raving about the complex concept of a book idea or the emotionally profound development of a character, you felt like the loneliest person in the world.
As if the fabric from which one were woven was one that had no relevance to existence. As if the fact-focused minds of sensory people were not programmed to harmonize with the idea-focused minds of intuitive people.
“The longest book series with the most detailed world-building come from those who had to build a wonderland from the ashes of their reality in order to survive.”
Our eyes met, but I forced myself to gather up what I had written, my fingers trembling because of what I was about to do.
It was a stupid idea. And yet I was going to do it.
“Quite bittersweet,” Davian laughed absentmindedly. “The best books wouldn't exist without all the pain authors had to go through.”
“Bittersweet?” I snorted in frustration, trying to push aside the thought that my books would never be among the best. “You mean rather tragic.”
“You turn suffering into art. The only choice you have is to accept that this coping mechanism has found you.”
This time, I raised my eyebrows. “For someone who's stopped writing, those are optimistic words.”
Davian clenched his teeth, staring intently at the sheet of paper in front of him, his jawbones moving precisely against his cheeks, giving me the opportunity to lose myself in the soft gray hairline at his temples.
A kiss of time. Nothing more than a quiet warning from life that we were all subject to the four seasons.
We were both in summer, but for me it was early June, for him late August. And yet our summer seemed mild, far too cold to be called summer.
“How's your hand?”
Surprised, I looked from Davian to my hand, lifted it, and stared at the crusty scar that itched when I didn't use the ointment Davian had given me.
Sometimes it tore open in the palm of my hand, bleeding slightly, reminding me that the people whose job it was to protect us had the closest reach to destroy us.
“Better than my knuckles and elbows,” I laughed softly, because I didn't want to have to think about something Davian didn't even know about.
“What's wrong with them?”
Surprised, I looked up and showed him the red protruding bones above my wrists.
“Don't you have this? When you write too much? I usually used sponges for support.”
He stared at my right hand.
“I'm afraid I've forgotten what it means to write a lot. All I remember is that I often got stuck, ran out of ideas, until I ended up burning many manuscripts, and afterwards regretted it.”
My soul literally crumpled, as did my facial expression.
“Ouch. Burning. Just hearing that hurts.”
He chuckled softly, took a sip of his coffee, and I did the same.
Black coffee with cinnamon. Simple. Anyone could make it. But Davian’s didn’t just warm my body.
“I can imagine you write so much that you're already so skilled that everything you write is high quality and you don't have to destroy anything.”
That would be a lie. What was he thinking? He should know that if he described himself as miles away from perfect, I was somewhere, in another universe, far away from perfection, rotting.
“I have other writing flaws. Many unfinished series that I don't know if I'll ever finish.
Drawer projects that I'll probably have to bury at some point because I change too much, or I just can't find the time for all these ideas.
I have books that I start with passion, but then I lose connection to a main character or to the concept, and those moments are painful.
Those are the days when I feel erratic and unreliable, when I doubt whether I'll ever be able to publish a series without disappointing the reader at some point because I haven't made any progress.”
“Oh, yes. That feeling will haunt you in your sleep.”
I looked up in surprise.
So he knew it?
“Still, I'm not giving up.” I raised an eyebrow, looked at him judgmentally, and he looked up without raising his head, like a guilty puppy. “What writing gives me... I'd be an idiot to label it a hobby and let what you all call reason win.”
“I know I'm an idiot.”
“You're not.” I pushed my fountain pen toward him. “Just write, and everything else will be irrelevant in a few seconds.”
He didn't respond, just watched me lay out paper for both of us until he broke out of his stupor, and I nervously placed my fingers on the two sheets with the three written pages.
You don't have to do this.
“What are we writing about today?”
i’m yours
Isabel LaRosa
With trembling fingers, I let my irrationality take over and pushed my pages across the table to him. Pages marked with the date 08-27-1995.
What was I doing?
With heightened senses, I tried not to miss his reaction as he reached for the papers, visibly confused.
The knot in my stomach tightened even more as he began to read.
Suddenly, his jaw shifted. He clutched the sheet until the paper crumpled. His head mechanically twitched away from the pages, his stiffened gaze clinging to the edge of the table, his jaw in a war I had feared.
But there was no turning back. Not for me.
He looked up. And his gaze? It got under my skin so deeply that goose bumps mercilessly crept over me.
“It's not possible...”
His voice was hoarse. Weak. Not what it should be. Just as ghostly as that evening when I had kissed him.
A glassy film settled over his eyes as he opened his mouth slightly to say something. But he couldn't get the words out. He closed his mouth again, stared back at the sheet of paper, swallowed. Then he looked up. And our eyes locked.
“I can't read it. I'm sorry, Quill. I can't...”
“It's just fiction, Davian.”
Tears of denial burned in my eyes. Because I was fighting hard against the pain in my chest. Against his rejection.
“Words on paper.”
He swallowed again, his eyes also filled with tears waiting for a reason to roll.
I didn't want to give him that reason, so I looked down at my hands and leaned back, ashamed of my irrationality, which ruined everything good I touched.
“You don't have to read it.”
“The problem is, I want to read it.”
Overwhelmed, I looked up at the tear on his right cheek, against which his jaw ground uncontrollably.
Davian pushed the papers toward me, pushed his chair back, and stood up abruptly.
Something burned in his gaze. Turmoil? Torn? Remorse?
All I knew was that it hurt. So damn much.
More abruptly than I was used to from him, he turned and disappeared from the study.
Something inside me contracted, like a knot that would destroy itself through pressure and friction. Through the weights pulling on both sides.
The blue thread that wrapped around our bodies. Every time life tore Davian away from me, it cut into my skin. Mercilessly. Dependent on Davian not going too far, on him returning at some point and tending to my wounds.
That's why it was blue.
Not even the restless rain was able to drown out my loud thoughts, let alone the burning in my chest.
At first I hesitated, with growing anger at myself, staring at the paper in front of me. I quickly grabbed it, wrote something on it that I would also regret – but it was too late anyway – and put it in one of Davian's drawers.
I couldn't keep it. If he wanted to burn it, he could. It was better off as ashes.
Every reminder of our almost was a reminder of our never.
It took me a while to realize
that there had never been two blue threads.
There had always been just one.
One that someone had severed a long time ago.
And now that the ends have found each other again,
they cling to each other even more desperately,
merging back into one.
Can we stop them before it's too late?
– Blue