Post by sylvie on Apr 15, 2010 18:44:20 GMT -6
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-- jonah scott abrams. seventeen. senior. photography.
Night was a strange thing. It was perhaps the one time, where all people were vulnerable, regardless of their differences. Night provided obliviousness to everything going on outside. Tyler experienced that very obliviousness. She hadn't even an inkling that somewhere in the house, another person was staring into the fire, watching the wood burn, the same way she was. There was no way she could've known how enchanting the wind's howls were or see the peacocks, in all their glory, fighting against the storm. The library, with no windows at all, provided protection against those very things. Yet, it drove her crazy, not knowing. Just as it infuriated her to no end that even if there was a window, providing a slight glance to the outside, that she would never be able to go out, to feel the wind pressure her body, challenge her to break.
With night, came darkness. People could spend their whole lives, fearing the night. Tyler observed the fire as it enveloped the wood and danced, celebrating. The fire was the exact opposite of darkness, and yet it's twin, it's partner. Fire consumed, while the darkness enveloped. They fit together perfectly.
Darkness was one of those things that one could spend their whole life analyzing and observing, and yet never know the truth. As a little girl, Tyler had been afraid of the dark, as most children were. Yet it struck her now, that maybe it wasn't actually the dark she feared. Maybe it was the things that were considered dark. Her father was darkness, with the mark on his left forearm to prove it. This house was darkness. The wind could have thrashed through it, attempting to destroy everything in it's path, and yet the strength of the dark would fight it. She wondered how the Malfoys could live in this house as though nothing had ever happened there. As if the darkness had become of it, had always been there. While that might have been true, but the torture and murder that had occurred there had made it impossible for light to ever shine through. And yet, perhaps it was for that very reason that the Malfoys continued to live there. They were proud of the events that had occurred there, and they displayed it by living there.
A soft thud, like the creak she had heard earlier, echoed through the house, as if it was a scream. She looked up at the high ceiling. To her the carvings in the dark wood resembled the back of a person, each vertebrae in the spine creeping it's way around the flat wasteland. She shuddered at the thought, half convinced that she was imagining the carvings on the ceiling.
Tyler felt another person's presence nearby, accompanied by the soft sound of footsteps, imitating a person's heart beat. Although usually goosebumps would have formed on her body by now, she remained calm, her breathing steady. The soft sound of the door opening rang through out the huge library from a reasonable distance away, but she didn't tear her eyes away from the fire. Maybe it was out of fear, or maybe it was her showing the person, whoever they were, that she wasn't frightened, that she didn't need to show weakness by turning around. Even though she was in the ring of light, and the other person was in the dark, she still felt susceptible to the slightest thing.
From the voice, she already knew who it was, and she tore her eyes away from the fire to look at him as he entered the light. The normal regal air that accompanied him was gone. It was comforting to her to know that he, like her, was unguarded. The sight of him would usually cause girls to swoon, but at that moment, while he looked the same as he always did, there was something different about him, perhaps it was the vulnerability that accompanied the night. "Insomnia tends to prohibit the possibility of sleeping." She told him as he sat down next to her. He was close enough that she could feel the warmth of his body.
She looked over at her sketch book and closed it, not wanting him to see any of her drawings. Her drawings weren't worth anyone's eyes but her own at the moment. He was the closest he'd ever been to her in a while. Sure, they were close friends, but they never sat next to each other like this. Close up, he was even more startlingly handsome then he was far away. However, the intensity and storm that usually clouded his grey eyes was not there, the tenseness and harshness of his face was gone. For the first time in fourteen years, she was able to study his face. It was symmetrical, but not too perfect. She looked over at her sketch pad, the one she had just closed mere moments ago, and opened it again. She flipped to a new page, and without warning, she started sketching him.
Tyler worked quickly, not wanting her inspiration to fade. She intently looked up from her sketch pad every few moments to examine the fine lines of his face. She shaded in some places and left it raw in others. She gazed at his face on the paper, for the first time, the page staring back at her held emotion. She had missed something in his eyes though. The eyes were almost a signature of the Malfoy family, it defined them, almost as much as the word 'pure blood'. His eyes held history. She realized what the picture was missing and began to add it. Behind him, in the drawing, was Draco and Lucius. They were mere shadows drawn from memory, ghostly. They were the constant presence in Scorpius. He looked like them, but there was something different in his face, there was depth and feeling in his face, while in his father and grandfather, there was emptiness.
After studying her work for another mere seconds, she looked back up at Scorpius, realizing her mistake. "I'm sorry, I should have asked your permission to sketch you. I had a surge of inspiration and I didn't want to let it die." She bit her lip, feeling like a little girl who had used the wrong spoon for her soup. Tyler had been invasive, sketching him without his consent, without any warning.
sylvie. fourteen. eastern.