A Total Eclipse

Original post; prompts 01 and 52

There's a new scent in the room when Rezo wakes. Mild, and wooded. No hint of sap remaining, and in small quantities. It isn't a raw smell, but there's no varnish, either, other than the old, familiar stuff on the desk. He does catch just a touch of the liquid-stone of ink. The sun's warm on his face: it's daylight, and he's overslept. Therefore, he's alone, with no infuriating morning people about to jostle him into a grouchful wakefulness.

Damn.

Feeling inclined to grumble anyway, but without the full-blooded contentment that would make it perfect, he levers himself out of bed without making some token attempt at matins his Lord would just smack him for on account of not feeling them properly. The wood of the floor is cold on his feet, despite the sun, and he considers a rug, for the thousandth time. A rug, though, would soften the echos, damp down any of the vibrations that aren't as effective as sonar, but still tell his feet a thing or two. Others wear imposing boots, but they don't need the feel, and he doesn't need the height. Outside, his soles keep his feet dry, but tell him every pebble.

Now, he doesn't bother with the very comfortable plush slippers he's been given. Crimson, with that rich scent of crushed-insect dye, and his fingers traced a stunningly complex pattern of embroidery in a thread that crackled with its gold-leafed wrap when he was first given them, and more than once afterwards. At least, he assumes it was gold-leaf; they say few would use silver with red. He prefers to envelop himself the silver and pale blue of his novitiate--the colors of his Order, and only flowers died for those colors--but somehow he's gotten stuck with red.

He takes a step towards the desk. The sun's warmth intensifies on his eyelids as he gets closer to the window, but the scent retreats a little. Come to think of it, it must be in the shade, or he'd smell it more strongly. Slipped under the door, then, which is a more reassuring thought, given that he's fairly sure said door ought to be locked. To the door, then: twelve easy-stride steps inclusive of a detour around the reading nook, and remember as he bends that this doorknob is, unlike most, closer to his hip than his knee.

The paper is much bigger than the words on it require, when he passes his hand over the line of text, so he assumes an answer is desired. Printed in some way, not written. He's finally convinced the spell to treat symbols as symbols, however they were impressed to the paper, but it can give him no sense of the voice or intent behind printing-press words. He hates modern books. The hands of copyists often sound bored, droning, sometimes whining as their fingers cramp and their backs scream, but they carry flickers of daydreams, and their drone is the mindlessly dedicated chant of devout repetition, not the soulless abruptness that plagues even the imprints of lovingly woodcarved engravings.

The moment the indifferent, mechanical voice has finished, thin eyebrows clang together in instant annoyance. He's back at the desk in four strides, pulling a quill at random from their cup and stabbing it into the ink. One flowing line, formed shapelier than many hands by years of often literally painful overapplication (quills are sharp, and penknives sharper), and he shoves it back under the door with prejudice.

Only to see it.