[ Something glints in Jonathan's eyes, somewhere along the thread of Stephen's elaboration. It might have gotten past some – those who had never felt drawn by whispers of knowledge, who had never followed its promises like a sailor to a siren, into darkness and over the edge of the Earth. Maybe that's the true curse here, and the common link between them.
Are there any in particular you are thinking of?
Stephen remembers his time in darkness, cloistered from cycles of night and day, so fixated that even centuries passed by with little notice. He remembers faces and feathers, tongues and scales, feels them twist within wet muscle under his skin. Glimpses of sense-memory – a red-eyed bat in a deep lava cave, hordes of blue birds across the surface of a sun. A dragon worshipped by men draped in silver and gold, a shark swimming fathoms deep, leaving clouds of shimmering blood in the sand. Flashes of others, a thousand, thousand strong, points of color like paint on canvas, distorted, smeared together to something ugly and dark. ]
A few. [ Stephen knows he's being evasive to the point of frustration – but also that Jonathan's appetite is the kind better left hungry. ] Some were "fairies," though that covers a pretty broad spectrum – and not all of them pretty. Though I'm guessing you already know that, judging from the whole "cursed" thing – unless you really pissed off someone at the local... [ he pauses, smiles at the guy's earlier reference, ] gentlemen's club.
oh my god why are stranges liKE THIS
Are there any in particular you are thinking of?
Stephen remembers his time in darkness, cloistered from cycles of night and day, so fixated that even centuries passed by with little notice. He remembers faces and feathers, tongues and scales, feels them twist within wet muscle under his skin. Glimpses of sense-memory – a red-eyed bat in a deep lava cave, hordes of blue birds across the surface of a sun. A dragon worshipped by men draped in silver and gold, a shark swimming fathoms deep, leaving clouds of shimmering blood in the sand. Flashes of others, a thousand, thousand strong, points of color like paint on canvas, distorted, smeared together to something ugly and dark. ]
A few. [ Stephen knows he's being evasive to the point of frustration – but also that Jonathan's appetite is the kind better left hungry. ] Some were "fairies," though that covers a pretty broad spectrum – and not all of them pretty. Though I'm guessing you already know that, judging from the whole "cursed" thing – unless you really pissed off someone at the local... [ he pauses, smiles at the guy's earlier reference, ] gentlemen's club.