OUR FOREST OF THORNS | tbosas ✔️

003 || Nocturnal Animals

CHAPTER THREE —    Nocturnal Animals ..

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          Night-time was the time of the thinkers. At least according to Daphne's many lectures read in that library of the Academy that would have otherwise not been touched or looked aupon in decades. She had long since demanded a set of keys of her own to this place and it was, all year round, one of their preferred spots to meet up. However, not just then, not for him. Coriolanus' mouth opened through a long yawn in an attempt to remind himself that nights were supposed to be to him for resting, not vigil. Sooner rather than later, he would melt on that table until his hand reached for her papers and his arm became a good enough pillow.

"En haut, en bas, partout, la profondeur, la grève," Daphne slowly exhaled through her mutters of the verses stuck in her mind, nowhere near close to the numbers she was staring at on the paper she scribbled all over for the past hour since they sat down.

French, Coriolanus recognized the gentle sounds of a foregin language; he never quite understood why she was so deeply disturbed by the idea of letting languages die that she dedicated so much of her time to learning them, but he guessed it had something to do with her historian vision that some meanings are lost to translations. French, however, was one of the languages she spoke so often thanks to her favorite poet that Coriolanus made it his mission last summer to get the basics of it too. So, in his mind, he started slowly putting together a translation for her words — Around, above, below, on shore and hill.

"Le silence, l'espace affreux et captivant." She lifted her gaze with a final puff, "Baudelaire was describing Hell. It has to be one of my favorite poems of his. No one has ever come that close to capturing how this makes me feel before."

Daphne's lips had curved into a masochistic smile full to the brim with admiration as she studied her calculations one last time before allowing her pen to slip from her grip. She pressed her palm flat over it to still it, a brief gesture that had to culminate in one final motion: she lifted her hands up and interlocked her fingers underneath her nose.

"What's troubling you?" As she spoke, her lips brushed upon the length of her thumbs.

In the meantime, lost in his translations, Coriolanus had given in to the exhaustion of yet another long day at the Academy, sprawling himself onto his arm, as he sensed he would in search for a pillow to rest his head upon. From the way he rested his head, he only had to look upward to meet Daphne's deadly assessment of him anyhow. She must think I look awful, he thought, aware of his disheveled state, but too tired to be ashamed by it, too tired to phantom fixing his posture or his hair.

By all means, had it not been for her, he would have been home by then, gaining his good strengths from a proper sleep, so that he may make a stellar first impression tomorrow, when the tributes arrived in the Capitol and he would meet his Lucy Gray. But there he was instead, answering Daphne's call, as always; she had overwritten all of his instincts and though lucidity made him aware of it every once in a while, he did not oppose the change for a second. She was, after all, not an ally he could ever afford to lose. Save for his mother's powder box and the Academy uniform itself, both items that weren't even really his, she was perhaps the most valuable asset in his life, the truest linking bridge to his goals and the lifestyle he missed in principle.

"Ever since the lunch break after the Reaping, you've been sulking about, looking like you carry the weight of the world upon your shoulders," Daphne continued her observation, given that Coriolanus decided simply staring at her was worth the risk of avoiding a reply.