Eulogy 1 v0

I took notice of the wafting scent of ink and paper hidden in leather-bound books
immediately upon entering the library, where I, much to the chagrin of my
indifference, saw my mother, a statue of resolution, looking into the forest of
cedars and ashes beyond the sun-streaked panes. I, looking away from my mother,
found myself in wonder at the preponderance of knowledge and skill held within
the beaten bindings as she continued her meditations, focusing only on the world
within the boundaries of the window frame.

"Have you come for more than a moment or will you be leaving in time?"

Her voice came out as hardly more than a whisper, almost impossible to make
out even in the deadened room.

"I came to see you."

My throat quivered, with the youth and abandon of a boy not more than
fourteen, his consciousness just starting to fully form, and I observed
the tepid movement of her shoulders in response to what I had done.

"No, I think not. You'll come for what you will and go back along the way you came."

The words punctuated the air with surprising force for their low register,
contracting the space to that of the eye of a needle.

I scurried to her side, with the fervor of a mole to its burrow after
being hit by the sun, attempting to grab her hand or the sleeve of her plum dress,
if she found the hand to be overly familiar. I brushed the silken arm of her
gown as she stole it away with a casual flick, that to the outside observer, would
seem entirely a trick of the eye. She remained rooted in the trees of which
she had become a member, her robes even matching the dark emeralds and oaks
outside, and didn't even acknowledge that I had made a motion by which to gain
her mind. Her glass-white eyes, refusing to land on any object but the trees,
returned not a note of contentment or ray of warmth, as I looked on with barely
a trace of revolusion in my own self-indulgent mind.

"Trul--"

Her quiet cool manner cut through my voice with contempt

"No."

The silver and white eyes didn't drift for even a moment as I retracted my pleas,
feeling a fool for even attempting to divert her, and my ears blushed crimson and
burned, in that way that they always do, as if I had committed some crime.
I brushed the hair from my cheek, savoring the feeling of some skin upon my face,
and looked up at her eyes once more, grown more glassy in only the long
moment, and they flicked pointedly and wounded me with their sharp
indistinction of my person from the surrounding couches. My gaze found the hard brown boards at my feet with ease where the grains and fine lines became readily apparent.

I attempted to wiggle my toes, my feet not feeling entirely my own, and found them
paralized in some ethereal grip from which I couldn't seem to free myself and instead,
failing to find that release, drew my eyes forward into those same trees.
Her glass eyes moved not even a fraction of the width of a page, by which she was
surrounded but had not the presence or mind to care, and her lips thinly pursed and
a whimper of a sound escaped.

"Do you see?"

Calmer than before she mouthed more words but they couldn't hold the air as I,
with my limited ability to percieve, strained to hear but could only get
the slight rustling of leaves. Those leaves whispered too but I, in my youthful
navite, couldn't quite translate them either so, with frustration and burning ears,
I let my gaze hit the floor once more welcoming it as friend.

"No, how could you."

Her words came out, without any suggestion of question, and hit me across my face
causing me to very joyfully break from my newly sprung roots. With the same zeal
as the mole, I retreated further into my burrow finding my place near an old rack
of novels whose bindings had faded so severly the titles had long ceased to be
more than suggestions. My hands reached for one of my favorites, sitting precariously
upon a shelf from which my short arm was only able to gain purchase while
on my tip-toes, and caressed the comparitively intact cover where a man stood
with crumbling posture stood against the long faces of mustachoed men.