#florent

scopOphilic_documentary_110 - scopOphilic1997 presents a new micro-messaging series: small, subtle, and often unintentional messages we send and receive verbally and non-verbally.

the story is a meta story taking place in the human domestication guide universe

The basic premise is that the entire fic is a book written by a concerned affini on things that terrans do and say that concern her.

I plan for the story to operate on a slight black comedy angle.

Working title: I am concerned about the terrans

names for chapters

chapter 1: "at least i'm not dead", and other concerning terran phrases.

chapter 2: dark souls and pain games. they are literally torturing themselves for fun.

chapter 3: A energy drink and a protean bar is not a meal. the concerning dietary habits of several terrans.

The ruin had been a church once, not so very long ago. Silvaineaux had just seen his thirtieth summer and he remembered when it had held pride of place in the small village, tall and intact and gleaming with bright-hued glass. It had not compared to Ishgard’s cathedral even then, of course, but it had been beautiful when he was a boy.

It was certainly not beautiful now. The gleaming tiles of the roof were scattered under the snow and the windows gaped like empty eye sockets in the broken remnants of the walls. He swung down from Joyeux almost reluctantly, the crunch of his boots meeting the snow loud in the emptiness that once had been a street. “Wait here, mon fidèle ami.”

Joyeux whistled a low response, quietly, as if the silence oppressed him too.

Silvaineaux reached up to scratch at his cheek. “I’ll be back in a moment.” He said, and left the reins draped over the pommel.

He crossed to what had been the door of the church in determined strides. No door hung in that empty and half broken frame, and the space within had been open to the sky for years. He could not see the flooring under the snow, nor the blood. Yet the dragon’s fire had left its mark on what remained of the walls. Its skull too remained,  empty of eyes and teeth alike.

Silvaineaux spared it one long look, but then turned away. He had not come here for the dragon. Nor only for the memories he had left in this place, though they crowded around him thick and fast until he could almost feel again the heat of the fire that had seared the altar and smell the reek of dragon and blood.  

He closed his eyes as though that might shut them out. The air was cold. He smelled neither blood nor scales even if the faint scent of charring lingered even now. Silvaineaux thought of the page in the book that had brought him here on this fool’s errand, imagining the old picture, counting the pillars, then he opened eyes and turned. He counted the pillars, found the stretch of wall he wanted. 

It still stood even if it was burned black. He tugged off his glove to run his bare fingers across it. It was cold enough to burn and his fingers  came away dark with soot, but he could feel the ridges of the carving he had expected beneath. It was the work of a few moments to tug out the paper he’d brought, to run the edge of a pencil over it until the marks beneath appeared on the sheet. The hawk with its rosary, beneath that the words. ‘In memory of Baron Aristide de Rosaire who gave his life in this place.’  

He had not noticed it on the day he almost lost his own life in this place. No one would notice it now, hidden as it was beneath the char on a ruined wall. Yet his forebear had left his stamp on this place, his blood in this land. 

Silvaineaux reached out again to set his own hand over the shape of the hawk on the wall and finally turned to look at the place nearer the door where the far fresher blood should have been. His breath left him in a sigh that was equal parts relief and grief. There was only snow, the blood hidden away beneath all the intervening years of it. The thing he had half feared was not there either. 

No youthful spirit lingered to rebuke him.

Rolling his paper he tucked it into his jacket and crossed to kneel in the snow there as he had knelt on that spot once before. The last time it had been to take something up. This time he had brought something to leave. He tugged a small metal plate from the pouch at his belt to tuck in against the stone of the wall. It had no family’s crest to ornament it, no embellishment, only a few carefully chosen words.