Eternal Spring, pt.2
From Greenthings
Everything hurts.
No, scratch that. His head hurt worse than the rest. And his back. And something else-
The young man awoke to two great eyes staring at him through golden bars, and he screamed.
"Just me! Don't worry," the eyes said. After a moment he recognized the face- the very large face- of the man from the park. "I'm told you'll be just ducky in a few days, and then we can start!"
He lay his face back down onto his arms and tried to breathe evenly. He didn't remember coming here, or what had happened after taking the man's hand. After an indeterminate amount of time, the sharpness of the pain began to recede, and his surroundings became clearer.
The man was humming off in the distance. He was laying on a smooth metal floor with just his pants on, and there were spots of something stuck to the floor around him that he instinctively flinched away from. Something was laying over him that felt like it was tied to the middle of his back. This was very wrong, whatever it was.
Peeking out with one eye over his folded arms, he saw that the bars were long and curved, and the whole... thing was gold. He was in a little cage, hanging in one corner of a small room that was covered in shelves stacked with books and pencils and inkwells and rocks and thimbles and boxes of clothing and photographs and things he couldn't identify, so much of it his eyes wavered as his brain refused to believe it could all fit within the angles he was seeing. It didn't help that the cage seemed to double as the sole light-source; his head was starting to throb again. There was a desk in the near corner, also covered with nonsense, and the man was sitting there, watching him with a soft guileless smile.
They watched each other for a minute.
"Wh... what ha..." the young man's voice shook. "Where the hell am I?"
"Well, you were brought here."
"Where is here? Why? What are you?" he squeaked and shivered. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw dark feathers hanging in the air, and felt dizzy.
"I'm the Author," the man grinned, "and you're going to be my Muse. I told you, this should help."
He couldn't make any sense of that, so he turned his head towards the feathers. There was a wing folded up and flopped over his right shoulder, where he had been feeling something covering him. He poked it gingerly, and it shifted.
"Like them? I hope you like them. The other one wasn't much help, so I thought you might do with them," he said wistfully, still watching.
"Other one?" he blinked. The little stuck spots were dark and spattered over the floor and down his side. Things were starting to make sense.
He decided the safest thing to do would be to faint.
When he woke up the second time, most of the aching had stopped, but the real world was still gone. He looked back over to the desk, and... thought to himself that "man" probably wasn't a good description for something that was now very much bigger than he was, and for that matter had at some point become impossibly gaunt, but it was still there.
Slowly, he pushed himself up to his knees. There was still a raw, bloody feeling somewhere inside his chest, but more importantly, he wanted to know what was going on (and was very, very thirsty).
"Oh, are you awake again? Good!" it smiled.
"...What are you?" he asked quietly. The wings unfolded and slid off his back as he sat up, and he shuddered again.
"I am the Author," it spoke slowly, "and you are the Muse. I think I'm going to call you Tzadkiel; nice angelic name."
He curled his lip in disgust. "You can't do that. I have a name."
"Of course you do, it's Tzadkiel," it waved his hand at the young man. He opened his mouth again to respond, and stopped.
He couldn't quite remember what his name had been. This shook him less than he felt it should have, but he supposed it was just one more damned thing.
He sighed and slowly brought himself to his feet. "Could I have some water, please?"
"Water?" the Author looked at him oddly.
God, what is this thing? "Water?" I'm prisoner of a mad beast. "Ye... es. Could I have some water?" he pleaded.
"Oh," it looked back down at the paper it had under its hand. "I suppose if you can give me a suitable idea, I could get you some water. You're not supposed to be well until the next day, though."
The... Tzadkiel (I might as well get used to it for now, he thought) considered what to say carefully. "I need water every so often, or I won't ever be well to give you ideas."
"Oh. I'm new at this," it scratched its chin. "I will gather you water, and by the time I get back, you have an idea. Or..." he looked at the little white-haired angel with an utter blandness, "or I suppose I'll have to hurt you."
It got up and left. He sat back down hard, and tried to gather his mind together enough to think.
