[ P ] cornelia street

all ended with her eyes

"Always a pleasure, Provost," Drusilla murmurs in parting, tipping her muzzle towards the earthen path through the garden as she leaves the professor to her herb gathering. Whatever they do, she hasn't much of any idea, though she can identify them from memories of pictures sketched into the pages of books that line the shelves of the Arboretum's library. It is a gift from her father—a leather-bound tome that outlines constellations in the night sky and their bearing on navigation—that had brought her to Melrose. Carefully wrapped and bound in some hide and soft old rope, the book now dangles from her jaws as she makes her way underneath the sweeping arches that lead into the stone hallways of the school.

Her nails make a satisfying, soft click with each step further in; Drusilla would know every turn in this maze blind by now, and there’s a minuscule sense of nostalgia to know that she no longer calls this place home. She had never intended permanence here like many of the others, but nor had she expected to become quite so enamored with the college as she had. She feels that there is enough knowledge here for many lifetimes over—she hopes that she comes back in the next one.

Naturally, the library is Drusilla’s favorite room.

Nowhere else in Rionnach holds such a display, and she carefully bestows her parcel upon a scribe for processing before she vanishes down the dimly sky-lit rows of shelves. There is a sense of calmness here that she can sink into—a rightness and sense of belonging that she has never quite felt amongst her elder sisters. It is her keen intelligence that sets her so vastly apart; Drusilla thirsts for knowledge, lives for the pursuit of it, and her siblings can scarcely be bothered to consider such a trivial waste of their time.

Venturing quietly into the next dark alley of books, she peers up at a twinkling shaft of sunlight through the rafters, and her eye catches on an out-of-place scroll perched precariously at the top of one of the shelves. "Careless," the linguist mutters under her breath, approaching the shelf and pressing up onto her hind paws, one fore delicately braced on the worn wood for balance, and the other straining upwards for the wayward scroll, which is just out of her reach.

Naturally, her greatest adversary would be her own height—or lack thereof.

hell purgatory paradise

code & art

@Dantès