Work Text:
At ten summers old, handwriting should flow easy and naturally across the page, easing in to a stylet hat will last them throughout the rest of their lives. At ten summers old, Antlia was chasing hints that led to nothing but dead ends. A member of the Tumet tribe, the ceremonial tree binding was supposed to be nothing more than a formality: although family couldn't tell the children explicitly how to trace in their footsteps, enough hints are supposed to be provided that the young would not be separated for too long. Even as the Au Ra had traced and re-treaded the steps that had been laid out before him, the only civilisation he found at the end of the path had long been abandoned. Houses weathered by storms no-one had protected them from, campfires as cold as the earth the ashes had been blown across, and fields that had once provided for all left to wither and return to nature.
Light flickers across the page as the candlelight chasing away the depths of the late hour dwindles, shadows swallowing the scribbled out mistakes in the short passage. Whilst it was legible, the consistency of the words and individual letters were less than desirable: a d occasionally flipped into a b, capital e's had one too many strokes or turned into a capital f instead, and if he didn't focus hard enough full sentences turned into a tumultuous ocean with how they rose and fell from the invisible line he tried to picture across the otherwise blank paper.
Black and blue eyes followed a lone fingertip as it traced underneath the words that had taken him the best part of a bell to complete, his free hand pulling back the right-side framing fringe that would both not pull back to fit in to the rough ponytail and try to block his intense gaze. He was never expecting perfection, but when a whole line was either incorrect or had been lost under the scratches of ink trying to hide corrections even he knew that it was time to start over. Despite his palm covering the page, tension building in his fingertips to crumple up and add the resulting ball to the pile of others that scattered at his feet, this time he was either too tired or too disillusioned by the exercise as a hole that he instead pushes it to one side.
Antlia blinks at the fresh page underneath, scanning back to the set aside attempt before picking up the pen once more. How he'd not come to this conclusion before set his short tail twitching, the birthmark speared scales between his brows furrowing, whilst the resulting sigh almost blew out the already struggling flame. In order to start learning how to write in the first place, he had copied numerous examples: at first single letters over and over, building them into words, short phrases, and eventually full sentences. The building blocks were there, and in his efforts to try and pen down his own thoughts instead of echoing the statements of others, he'd forgotten the basics.
A glint of a fang settles into the dimming light of his room as ink sinks into parchment once more. Even if it took him until his very last breath, Antlia could do this. One stroke at a time. One step back into the past at a time. One memory to take into the future.