starter for @piousolus
The leather was worn and frayed---the pages, mottled with water stains, and portions of the ink---a scrunched, purposeful cursive---blurred. The corners of some of the parchment had been bent, tattered, torn.
Yet, despite its weathered state, it was still nonetheless readable---a piece of history.
A piece of his history.
Xigbar considered disposing of it as soon as he found it in Bluebird's secret library---shoved behind several hefty historical texts, as though buried underneath so many other tomes to keep this particular one a secret. How it could have come to be here was certainly mystery, but all he could really focus on was the present---the fact he had found it at all.
Maybe he would simply steal it away, tear it apart---burn it.
These parts of him he considered long gone.
But, somehow, he found himself actually opening it---the pages fluttering, his gaze lingering, despite his subconscious protests.
Reading it.
Remembering it.
I've met a man named Milo Thatch during my latest arrival to a new world, a timid yet incredibly intelligent man enamoured with this strange land he calls "Atlantis." He has this diverse--and, admittedly, somewhat eccentric---team of experts to aid him in his endeavors, seeking out this land, in the hopes of finding a long-forgotten culture submerged there. After a series of creatures I've come to learn are called "Heartless" arrived to seemingly stop their progress tunnelling into the earth and I managed to stave them off, they insisted I could be an asset to their journey. My Master told me that I should allow my heart should guide me, and I realize that there must be something here, amidst these people, that could
He stopped reading.
Flipped several more pages in.
We've decided to take a breather, and there is something about Rourke that deeply troubles me. I'm not sure exactly how to articulate it fully, but I sense a Darkness in him. His intentions do not seem like Milo's, whose interest is from such a pure standpoint---one that seeks knowledge, to understand the past so as to assure the future. No---even though he seems like he seeks to hide it, I can see it: Rourke's intentions seem like they are rooted in cruelty, his own self-interest above all else in his mind. Darkness of the Heart---how it infects people with such malice, steeps them in desires so foul. Turning them against others around them, even if those others are innocent. I still don't understand it, when the Darkness
A sound pricked his ear, and the book snapped closed within his grasp. He had been so deeply focused on his own ancient scrawl that he'd, for once, not honed in on the arrival of another person into the library.
The only other person there would ever be, of course.
"Don't be sneakin' up on me like that, Blue. You're likely to gimme a heart attack."
