Work Text:
Syden set aside the charcoal piece he had been drawing with, and took a moment to shake out his parchment paper, watching the loose, ashen flakes fall to the ground, before setting it back on the desk and continuing. He was sitting at his desk facing the windows, the dark curtains open to the storm. Despite the raging weather outside, inside his room it was strangely calm.
Charcoal sticks and ink pens were his two favourite tools to work with.
Making sketches was his regular hobby, and, on a rainy, downcast day such as this, it was often his activity of choice to pass the time.
Back at the art shop, where he worked a few days a week, he had been advised to watch what he drew in order to avoid offending the refined sensibilities of ‘normal’ people. Sometimes he wondered why he tolerated the censorship (it was not as if he needed the money that badly).
Perhaps it was because it gave him a break between other, more physically strenuous activities. He needed something to do in the lazy evenings between school days, lest he die of boredom in their quiet woodland home, and their suffocatingly decorous small town.
Whatever was the reason, it was when he was alone that he created his best work. It was when he was alone that he could truly express his ideas without restraint, really let go, and take a deep dive into his true heart and soul.
Evil winged spirits, horned black wolves, skulls and black demons were some of the beings that emerged from his pen as through the gates of hell. He loved the dark things. He was every bit as guilty of drawing violence, and gore, as the concerned mothers at the art shop accused him of. He liked to tell little stories sometimes, through drawings, and write dark lyrics to accompany the visuals.
_
He had always been different. But somewhere along the way, it so happened that he had experienced something that changed the way he saw himself and the world.
He didn’t know what else to call it but a kind of… ‘awakening’.
It didn’t come all at once. It snuck up on him in little ways.
First it was the visions that he saw through the glass, that no one else could see. Then it happened on its own, without contact with external objects.
And when the powers were unlocked, other veils opened too. He saw glimpses of visions, indistinguishable in their vividness from real memories. And he knew, as instinctively as one knew how to breathe, that these weren’t just dreams.
It opened his mind to the idea that their world was not the only one, that there existed other dimensions beyond what the eye could see, and with them, other ways of being.
_
The few people he had told had listened like as to any other person recounting strange dreams. Most did not believe they could be more than that.
He heard thunder outside his window, and looked up to see a rain-splattered pane. The color of the outer world reflected the gloomy mood of his inky outlines. In the near distance, the wind tossed the dark masses of the tall forest trees like it was shaking whole masses of people.
He began lightly shading his sketch. He didn’t like to overdo it. Though he was capable of producing more refined lines, when he drew for himself, the rough look was his preference. The black lines were of an elegant and simple beauty, made up of flourishes of jagged vines, or strokes of serrated shadows.
These drawings had sharp teeth and claws, that would sink into the souls that beheld them, leaving marks on their minds. Just how he would have it.
_
He always thought, that if he could find others like him, he wouldn’t feel so alone.
But of all those he associated with thus far in life, he did not yet feel he had found that level of understanding. They just couldn’t see what he saw. It was beyond their grasp, and existed outside their range of sight entirely.
He had no choice but to accept his isolation in this matter. And that meant he spent a lot of time in his head, thinking, and dreaming.
He used to believe he was human, like anyone else, but after all that, when once he’d had that glimpse beyond the veil, he saw that was an illusion. He felt he was a spirit from another place, a being not of this world, believed it wholeheartedly, despite any argument imposed by skeptics.
Yes, he needed his private time, for he wasn’t always present in spirit, though he was physically present for all to see. Yes, he spent a lot of time in his head. How else could one reconcile the reality of living in two worlds?