#||relevant||

//I don’t normally post art on here, but...  //Based off this post. Enjoy. <3

//Waaaaaa I'm really thankful to u/Drakengarded for sharing this huge discovery!! If anything, thankful wouldn't even begin to describe how I feel <3 I've been watching this nonstop, and have picked work back up on several projects specifically because of the inspiration this has given me!! I hope everyone else has found it as interesting as I have, and thanks so much to u/Drakengarded again for allowing me to share this with everyone here!! I'm so happy <3

He had dragged me from my crafts, introduced me to friends who would soon become my own, and had not once ceased for a day after to visit me in my practice there. Father was pleased at first, until he wasn’t, as I had gone from smithing and not speaking to speaking and not smithing, and following his harsh, booming rebuke towards the shaken lad as I could only offer my embarrassed gaze lowered towards the dirt, and bits of green with hints of metal in-between, he would come every other day instead. When we went out, with others or by ourselves as we later had, it had always been Orbas there to lead the way, the conversation, to give directions and warnings unless I knew better in my caution, to where I would try to speak — But I was merely a follower. I have always been, a fact with no shame in admitting and a fate I would think to show no more than indifferent contentment towards. “Why me?” I had asked. Another walk. “We never spoke before.” “Can you keep a secret?” I nodded. Something in my heart fluttered and leapt with those words. “Well… Haven’t you seen yourself?” Something must have been spoken in my silence as confusion or hurt in a way he didn’t need to look over his shoulder to see, prompting him to explain. “You never spoke to the adults or children your age, but only the animals and infants lost by their mothers. You panicked, but always found them home. We saw it. We all did, then, you know.” “...” “When you saw a fly being eaten by a spider, you would take a stick to it and try to ward it off. If you couldn’t reach, you’d find somewhere else to go that you didn’t have to hear it. Your father yelled at you because you had trouble baiting a fish hook. Other children… Normal boys, at least, we saw it and laughed. You, already bigger than the rest of us and yet hardly able to look anyone in the eyes. The girls fancied it, though, called you a gentleman and all, and so one day I thought, ‘I wonder if there’s someone he’s trying to impress with all this?’ and I began to get curious.” “No. I… I’m not trying to impress anyone.” “Well you certainly are when you follow every stupid order I give you.” I stared at the back of his head. A few more steps, and he peered over his shoulder at me, whatever look I wore causing those soft lips to curl up into a laugh. “There has to be someone.” “... There isn’t, honest.” “Say who. We can help you, Leonard, and you’re set to be wed before any of us. Haven’t you always spoken about wanting children? Yours and mine can be friends, and your sons will be older and teach my sons all about everything, just like us!” Something in those words had risen and tightened the back of my throat, and I spoke as I did back then, before I met him — Unable to look him in the eye, look at him at all, and my voice had grown so faint the sound had barely reached my own ears. “It is a secret. That is all.” … And as the years passed, that secret and I grew up and spent our years together, the “Secret” got married at fifteen, and I was sixteen, except he had grown out of being a “Secret”, and once I did, I thought to myself, “I am free” —  But I never did find a wife. When the friends of my childhood pointed them out, “That one’s pretty”, “I spoke to her, she is interested in you”, I only could only ever offer another soulless nod along to the increasingly agitated and growing band of married men, all who later had their sons I loved and adored just as I would have my own, and some had daughters, too. In that same year Orbas had gotten married, I moved on to another secret picking berries in the woods, another fixation skinning their knee on the ground, but after him, I never knew it as I did then — “Such a thing would be impossible,” I always told myself — And I continued life as a blacksmith’s son, a follower, and a coward to the war that brought itself to our town in search of new hands for slaughter. “Security” had been the word spoken to me that day, who chose to stay behind (The child incapable of baiting a fish hook or accepting nature in near all its form), in contrast to him, whose bravery sought the peace of the world, the heads of red-eyed monsters, all the glory and fame reflected back the small village of Atheren, even at risk of his own family, foraged and built. A family, one woman and her four year-old son, unable to fend for themselves. Once again he acted in a way that any madman might, entrusting his sole unmarried friend to care for a wife and son in his absence, and then again, perhaps not mad — Explicitly had he stated his trust with a laugh in that I had come “This far” without any luck, and furthermore went to cite our own, personal trust we had built in each other — He knew they would be fine because he simply knew me. Always the protector, and where I never did find a wife, I made my home among the children of the village. And as the cart started away through the woods with a forward jerk, and Obros, the sweetness grown out of his face, looked over his shoulder at me, his tiny son held in my arms, and smiled with that worried look, I smiled back. I gave him a nod in reassurance, and he slipped through that canopy of pine and birch and away towards war beyond. It’s alright now. Now, I am fine. He’ll be alright. He’ll be alright. It’s okay, because now, I’ve finally found someone. Someone I love, just as I loved you. It was a secret.

//I keep thinking about this one convo I had on Twitter about Leonard where the other guy said “Everyone else in the cast (Seere is kind-of an exception as Some Kid) is like. Traumatised and wilfully chooses evil, whereas the one person evil by nature is the most humane and caring and it compels him TO do good to make up for it and. Man. /MAN./”  //And like that hits so fucking hard i literally could not have said it better myself. i just,,,, needed y’all to see that bc i am crying in the club rn

I tag: uhhhhh.... Who hasn't been tagged? @kingdomofbellows , @venusphacelia , @booksofthelibrary and you!