Levway in the Owlery PV Levi Finished

@Mathias Pride

Like a mantra, Levi could hear his best wishes pounding between his temples to the beat of lone steps, lost behind hazel eyes in the dreams he crafted wide awake, roaming within his own heart for the truth behind the words that echoey voice sang. It was a song of respect, relation, mind wandering to his sweet corner table. An image soon corrupted with blackened vines running up its legs and a stain of ink on the floor, like the charcoal blood of a monstrosity, uncannily like the one who hovered in his sleep, a world of demonic nightmares wrapped around it. The boy could recall the agony all too well, all too fondly, the scald of losing it to the man, the better, the stronger and older. Oh, how he wished that upon no other person, how he craved to spare anyone that scar, that branding along their homes and loves, and therefore along the lifeless arteries of their hearts.

One hand dragged along the bland wall, feeling its cold stone against his skin, easing the burn in his knuckles rubbed raw, indefinitely inflamed. In the other hand, a letter, perfectly creased and packaged with terms of endearment within. All the tragedy he saw, the misery that seemed to strike every student in the castle, it would darken his eyes, his soul, people’s lives revolving around their pain like they couldn’t breathe without it. Like it defined them. All from the people meant to love and cherish them, because how hard could it be here at school? How blind could he be? Was it innocence, naivety, did he flout what he didn’t wish to see, pretend that purple and black poetry was from a true child, tumbling over fallen twigs? Did these people, these children of loveless marriages and faithless homes, deserve to have their solace taken?

The top step came before the boy was ready to face the room, enraptured by the owls high and low, the vacant windows bearing cleansing daylight that washed over the fallen feathers and glimmered upon the abandoned fountains. Finally, he found his smile, wondering where it’d gone, staring into the judgements of the glassy sky, and gesturing for an owl to join him at his stance. He’d written this at the beloved table, Drakos written smoothly along the front, though the ink had been dragged along by his left hand. He was gentle, attaching it to the owl with the same care he’d shown the letter itself, a well-earned respect.

Mail by owl was never something he would become used to. “Drakos, please and thank you.”

As it fluttered away, leaving behind a startled Levi and a quieter tower, the Gryffindor watched it become but a speck in the sky, marveled by all the things he didn’t understand. It’d been an introspective day; not that it was a particularly bad thing to become enthralled in your own thoughts given that they were so flawless and moral. He would never admit to such narcissism, but the more he swam in the sea of his own making, the finer the water began to feel, the more righteous its waves grew and the less the moon had control of his ocean. It would be carved in stone six feet above a handsome corpse, more than likely, but it would be a welcomed death, a funeral of more joy than morose. Though, perhaps a jubilant funeral should be a warning sign to the living.

There was no way to know how long the other boy had been there, the slightly taller red-headed student that certainly couldn’t be much older than Levi himself. He could’ve been here from the beginning but vanished within the fantasies the brunet had drawn for himself, or a new arrival, which was far less likely. The smile that had been framed so prudently had gone somewhere, somewhere that bred the truth and not the comforting lies that put the lion to sleep in early childhood, but it was fetched again, imprisoned until it would eventually begin to look much less real. Much more sinister. But not yet.

And now, for the main show. The curtain rose and the spotlights searched the stage for their leader: hypocrisy.

“Oh, hi there. And you are?”

@Levi Drakos -- sorry for the delay, thought I was forgotten so stopped checking. Take your time.

@Mathias Pride

Eek. Mistakes were made.

Despite having as much common sense as someone with very, very little common sense, Levi claimed he could read a room. Those micro-expressions people fell into with such certainty that they would glide under the radar, a tensing vein in the neck or forehead, the young Gryffindor maintained he could see these, decode them in all their cryptic discomfort. No—worse, he said he can sense them. Of course, the overzealous boy had no such talent. His own emotions were so deeply buried beneath pride and a lonely god complex partnered with that of a savior, it would be quite the miracle should he understand the woes of others, let alone empathize with them.

He could pretend to. But as would anyone else who didn’t carry the burdens of their own fractured souls on their backs and had empty space for the pain of others. Durable shoulders, it took, and there were plenty of those roaming around this castle. Tough upbringings and melodramatic sighs, his own melodic one in the epicenter of all the songs, while it was a symbol of despair, it was the creator of strength. Let’s drag this back to the point, that even if the brunet were to feign compassion and worry for anyone else’s existence, it was spinning in his marvelous web of hypocrisy and, at this point in his sorry life, would end up sounding as exactly what it is: a desperate child.

One of the five horizons found his eyes, glowing in reflection of the nature he tended to within them, small silhouettes of owls in the far distance and sporadically hovering clouds high above their heads. Nothing beyond the walls of the Owlery gave a damn about the tense conversations between newly school-age children, yet Levi felt a gaze on his neck, branding his importance into his flesh as though he’d dare forget it even without an incessant reminder. It bred a grin, one odd and untimely, nonetheless well kept on the boy’s face with an appearance too tidy to be practical. Friendly, but threatening. An existence such as it could only truly thrive in hyperbolic poems.

When the Gryffindor’s decided friend offered his name—Percival Gray—the shorter boy looked at him once more. He was the drastically shorter of the two and straightened his back without a second thought on the matter. An arm was reached to him in polite greeting, gloved and perpendicular to a recognizable smile of allure, one he accepted rather eagerly. If it were transparent, both the glove and the flesh it hid from the anguishes of this unfortunate world, Levi was convinced that beneath it would flow blue blood, risen at high and low tides in respect to the moon. With copper hair, near brunet on the side not in the sun’s path, the lad did decide one thing. Percival was a weird name. But hell, that was his parent’s problem. It was horrible with whatever face wore it.

“Levi Drakos.” He announced as their hands shook and dropped back to their respective sides. If nothing else, the charming smile changed the shorter boy’s mind: no mistakes were made. This was someone he needed to meet.

Before the lion caught the chance to avert his gaze, practicing a few interaction habits a lesser pre-teen in another world would have learned from WikiHow, his peer popped some food into his mouth. A bizarre action, sure, but who was Levi to judge? Besides, that singled the ginger-haired fellow out, and outliers were bathed in temptation. Instead, an eyebrow would raise in silent question, but the matter was verbally pushed no further.

A subtle twitch to his upturned lips, however, dragged more questions to the surface of the saline solution they both craved. There was no way to say with certainty what gears were grinding to cause the eruption of smoke through the Owlery, enough to pull a cough from healthy lungs, but that air going a dim grey was conspicuous. Some thoughts, said solely to the fellow himself, were dragging each other back and forth by the ankle bound chains; they were just private enough to remain unspoken behind veils of self-discipline, even if his mystery had not been so well-nurtured to maintain that comforting smile without falter.

Though neither could Levi’s, whom had a frown of deep thought beginning to form before he submerged it in forced positivity. All the more reason the two were so destined to get along!

The following inquiry staggered him, weighing options as though it were life and death. Say yes and face the consequences should the boy further interrogate (why, his friendship-breeding tactics are rather hostile!), say no and become drenched in the ensuing rainfall of ignorance. Neither option brought color to Levi’s paling skin, so then we were left pitifully with silence and a poorly structured offspring of the previous two. Now, it was obvious. “Actually, I’m not sure what ‘it’ is. Mind elaborating? I’m interested.”

Somewhere, perhaps in a vacant dorm on the fifth floor, a clever list lies tucked beneath a disheveled comforter: rule no. 62: take interest in their hobbies.

OC: I apologize for disappearing, some circumstances came up.

@Levi Drakos

@Mathias Pride

Never. Never was there a time that Levi Drakos did not know what to say. Or rather, did not believe he knew what to say. More than once the young boy had thrown words to the hungry dogs, those starving and forsaken for months on end, and they had immediately coughed his offering back up to the ground in favor of looming death. In his mind, a friendly gesture (oh, the poor little things want me to have some to myself!); in theirs, survival. Not yet a concept that Levi knew intimately, as his life revolved around growth and not coming to be born again. Survival was a right until deprived, so he believed, it was doing so as more than a ravenous pet that had to be earned.

Yet, he was frozen, petrified, nails through his flesh but only pinning him to the vacant air. Someone, something, had yanked his tongue from behind those sparkly whites and tied a scout’s knot. Perhaps shoved it back until it lodged. He’d asphyxiate, and by god would it be merciful. Trapped where all the boy could wish is that his mother would read the letter in due time. She would come to find him, save him, him, of course, being her reputation that took on the bizarre shape of a child. One that only half-resembled its parents. It, being the child.

Perhaps we are moving too quickly and must revisit what it is that killed the most vivacious life in this damned Owlery. It started with a letter.

It—er, he—could vividly recall the cramps in his left hand, repeatedly adjusting his grip on the quill and waiting for the ache to pass. The recollection was so intense, in fact, that there was an abrupt jolting sting, and the brunet was certain the callous on his ring finger was reddening from a pressure that didn’t exist. A soft gaze wandered over the words its body had printed, each treated with as much reverence as the individuals sinning over the scribed address. Love, merriment, conviction, yearn, phrases roped messily in terms he would sincerely thank the thesaurus for later. It—goodness, he—coveted returned word from his parents, to scrawl their words onto sticky notes and leave them for his naïve grin to discover in the most haphazard, wonderful places. This was not a sentiment shared with many of his peers, so it seemed. A shame they’d grown up so quickly; a shame indeed.

Levi had marched up the Owlery steps, so absorbed in the mess of its head that those feet stuttered on the stairs. A tightening grip on whatever could balance him. For a child with an empty mind (empty aside from those things it didn’t need), he was rather pensive, torturing himself with thoughts of letters lost to the unforgiving rippling winds, children long decayed, loveless lives and lifeless loves. The pity had become too much for his moral little heart to bear, and as it fluttered away strapped gently to the leg of a tawny owl, somewhere in the world a butterfly sprung from a cocoon. A friendship was to be pursued, for lightning had struck with a threatening crack of thunder, and in its electrified scar on the floor something had bloomed, another young boy straight from beneath his feet.

A conversation, one that the innocent animal remained entombed in now, his leg burrowed deep in the pits the storm had dug. It was bizarre, admittedly, but fine. Had Levi been so desperate for company that he allowed himself to become prey, weak, vulnerable, everything his parents in all their righteousness advised against? He could resist everything, the highest twinkles of space, the lowest roars of the ocean, everything but temptation. Was the dried fruit a subtle warning, a distinguishing behavior of darkness? It didn’t taste good, surely. There was some unfounded discomfort with the way the child popped it like happy pills. It was an odd way to carve his emblem in Levi’s head, a mark already long made by a name so curious as Percival.

"Take a look,"

At what?

"The woodline,"

A horrifying coincidence on its own that almost sent the darling boy into a frenzy. It was he who claimed to sense micro-expressions, it was this damned Percival Gray that invaded and danced in Levi’s ignorance to the beat of his own tap shoes, as though his idiocy were an acoustic ballroom. There was no time to stare at the copper-haired peer dumbfounded, however, as his legs had already taken an involuntary step forward, eyes already gliding gracefully along the woodline. Later, maybe, he would be thankful for this, as it was impossible to believe his mouth had not fallen agape and caught an inanity-attracted fly. A two of hearts did not perform so well in the daunting presence of the ace of spaces. A two of any kind, truly.

"The nightly shifting of the blackened wood." A real pleasure to finally meet you, Edgar.

Upon following the direction of his new, devilish friend, there was nothing beautiful lurking at the edge of the trees. No small animals dancing around a princess, the sky was not bleeding wine-red in the midst of a picturesque sunset, the world was not melting into one, collective unit. There were only manipulable trees, swaying with the wind’s adoring touch, reaching out to claw his eyes away for lingering on their silhouettes too long.

Except, his hair did not tousle. He did not shiver.

It did not know what to do.
Nor did he.

It was not the great force of a gust of wind that carried their limbs into a timely twirl, but rather their own sheer will that dragged them from their cage in the firm ground, heaved them from their homes with such discontent for the disgusting soil they were planted in. They thrashed, great demons with roots acting as deformed legs, off to fulfill the duties a mere mortal could not determine. It was otherworldly, Levi had fallen asleep directly into a hellhole with no escape, and he would scream. Actually, no, he wouldn’t. The utter silence emmeshed him. Now, he and it would both die. Where, do tell, was the mercy in that?

It was at this point the boy would’ve liked to use a few choice words he’d heard from beneath the keyhole. A song made itself known in the back of his mind composed of these, a rhythm too familiar: what-the-fuck-what-the-fuck-what-the-fuck-what-the—it was awful fortunate it was not put to speech, for the young child had forgotten how to indulge in the act of talking.

And how could he? What was he expected to say? ‘Nice, my friend, I love your hobbies of watching the world be defied and trying to see how long you can go without giggling!’ No. Forget rule number 62 for a damn second. Once more, the field of vision was broken between reality and imagination as a tree crawled back into sight, carrying with it something new. With blood, with organs, with flesh protecting them all from the elements, something living. Something that could send Levi into cardiac arrest perhaps. At the very least, that could—and did—send him falling backward onto the floor with a stare of horror.

"Looks like they got something tonight,"

How nice for them.

"Been quiet as of late,"

Is this where you come from, Percival?

"Not that any of this will matter in a few hours."

I’m going to die.

“What in the…what in…” Levi was breathless, physically gasping for air as he flailed about. “What in the world was that?”

It wasn’t as though he unwisely expected an answer, not from the killer in a child’s body who’d choked away a laugh at the scene: the earth slipping away from itself and taking someone new into its void, a willing victim or otherwise. The question that needed an answer more than the rest, the question still struggling to make its way to the surface from the drowning pressure, was the one that would make him pray. Beg this peer not to leave him in the terrorizing black depths of insanity, to give him direction, to tell him purpose after depriving the foundation from where he stood.

“Why?”

@Mathias Pride

What a fool he’d been to believe he could understand people. If nothing else came from this interaction, a realization did. Of course, plenty had come alongside it, but Levi prayed the horrors would fade from memory like the loose threads of your dearest dreams. It was an awareness that was doomed to a short half-life and would be lost in the spinning chamber of the aforementioned lonely god complex, but one that was important in the moment. Life-saving, perhaps, because watching Percival’s wraithlike movements now, no traces of his understanding of humanity were left. He did not know all people, all the breeds the world had to offer in all the variations that roamed in the wild and did so poorly among the domesticated in the cage of Hogwarts.

Everything about the boy had said ‘human’. Color in his cheeks, attractive symmetry to his face, five digits on either hand that kept popping multiple dried fruits into his averagely sized mouth as though Levi ought to call the nearest rehab. An assumption was made, there was a promise of normalcy in their handshake, a swear that could only be broken should nails come back with traces of reddened skin beneath them. Yet, humanity was more than proficiency on two legs, a beating heart, and a singular stomach; it was also buried in the essence of a soul, the vow of its existence in the love language of gentle smiles, kind eyes, and, most significantly, in fear.

It was human to be afraid. It was mortality. A worry for your life, for your safety, a desire that your head, however sick and twisted it may be, remain firmly locked between your shoulders and not dangling on the edge of a writhing limb. That did not exist in his peer, that assurance had been replaced by unmistakable amusement that could see the drastic bitter end of an apocalypse, a low, grim laugh that could only die when his vocal cords were ripped out. Even then, when you close your eyes to, for once, rest your nightmares away, that grisly chuckle would remain faint as ever, and perhaps only cease when you cut out your eyes and ears, and inevitably, what was left of your head.

Levi was afraid. Terrified. He was human. Though his resilience left questions to be answered, there was no oddity surrounding the child that flailed on the floor in a nervous tantrum. Percival did not raise questions himself; he was rather an inquiry on two legs, and to him, there was no answer. It was to each their own. An imposter, a phantom, a tree in a boy’s cadaverous flesh. Skeletal hands and a dead man’s delight.

"We are experiencing both a tragedy and a comedy,"

Are we? In the deepest depths of Levi, trenches man could not withstand, there were many things: confusion, fear, embarrassment, to put a few names to the shapeless masses in those seas. Not a single one of them resembled humor. “You’re the only one laughing, friend, unless you have a watching partner I should be expecting to join us any moment now.” Someone would burst into the room dressed head to toe in his melancholy and exchange an envelope and bottle with Percival. (This month’s harvest.) The brunet blinked. The room was still vacant excluding them and the demons that danced between to the beat of a hushed crunch.

Politeness was a rule of the past, and Levi found his gaze locked firmly on the boy once more. It scanned him, searching for an inconsistency: an extra appendage, a third eye, a strange pulsation on his chest indicating an unearthly creature was soon to burst from it, a sad party trick until your entire crew is dead—no such inconsistency existed, save for the stare of indifference. The boy wasn’t sure which was more unsettling; a stoic glare at the world unknown, or a jubilant, sun-like expression at the devil’s signature. Both made their deep-seated impressions, ones the lion attested would be forefront from then on in the decision to disturb the bubble of peace, another’s oak corner table.

Levi scrambled to his feet, but with the destruction in the universe’s foundation came an unsteadiness to his step. This, the boy hypothesized, was not part of the plan; it was the drastic stray from the plan that made everything erupt into chaos. The distance between the two boys was maintained, for Levi would not test what waves the ocean withheld, a desperate attempt to entice the child to drown willingly. We don’t choose when our lungs fill, but we do choose to swim.

“You may find this surprising, Percival, but that is not the least bit reassuring to me.” Surely he knew more of this epidemic than the brand-new pair of eyes, it being his five o’clock entertainment and whatnot, but the pledge of a fellow child—let alone one inhuman—meant nothing. It came as a great sting to Levi that anyone knew more of anything than him, but something tonight had crushed his desire to learn into bits. It could be that this was a long shot, but maybe—consider this for a moment—he didn’t find twisting trees that took live prey charming. The boy should invest in a mirror.

Something about the fact that Percival’s attention was so easily diverted from the monsters beneath his bed was ominous. As though he were bored of their routine, craving change and surprise, so he’d lured Levi here just to watch the predictable squirm of a human faced with their transience. Anything to make the hours pass. There was a more menacing possibility lingering, an explanation that would assist in the sleepless nights fated to follow their meeting. Perhaps Percival knew something Levi never could; perhaps he knew there were worse things just around the bend.

“Have you told anyone about this?” A reasonable suggestion masked in a tone of curiosity, delivered in a voice that had not shaken all its frantic wavering. Although his skull would alter the pitch as it fell back to his ears, he was sure he’d hit both ends of his usual octave, and every note in between.

@Mathias Pride

Levi would ask someone or something—whatever was listening, though the boy doubted a presence on the other end of the line—a selfish question tonight, and he would do so every following night until the day came that the echo stirred today ceased, a day unpredictable in the everlasting resonant caverns of Levi Drakos’ abysmal mind. Before that morning when the sunrise would finally return from its death-like rest, it was possible the question would change. Grow more egotistic, perhaps. One way or another, something would revolve around something and there would always be answers to be given and wrong questions to be asked by ignorant boys who think themselves God because their mommies said so.

Sure, Percival looked abundantly human. No extra or missing eyes, attractively symmetrical face, he wasn’t confined to the ground by great roots and his skin on the north side wasn’t submerged in moss. But what were the signs of a moral man? The taller, copper-haired boy wore not tuxedo, carried no roses behind his back, Levi was fairly certain that if this twelve-year-old somehow acquired a license, it would not refer to him as a blood donor. The worst man in the world, the animalistic man, the barbarian, the ruthless leader who killed in cold wind and blood, was still a man. A thing on two legs, a beating heart, color to his face. They blended in. Like you and me.

So, why didn’t it surprise the brunet when Percival confirmed he’d told no one, and had no interest in doing so? It wasn’t the least bit staggering to be reassured of what he already knew: Percival had a heart in solely the literal sense. Levi was aware of this when he said the words, thought the words, he might’ve damn well known the very moment he was born thousands of miles from where they stood now in Cyprus, where the name Percival Gray could’ve easily been a passerby deliveryman. Was it the dry fruit? The deep, grisly chuckle? Or was it the faceless gaze?

The result was the same. “Because it—it would be wrong not to.”

Alright. Dim the lights, swivel the curtains, and turn the spotlight on so blindingly that the audience will be momentarily transported to their own interpretations of heaven. The solo had begun; hypocrisy sure was a beautiful performer. He was but a silhouette, a marionette, the strings attached to no one’s naked eye, yanked up in all his flaccidity and falling down, crumbling over himself in the blues with as many dislocated joints as the human body could withstand. Even his jaw was loose and docile, the ability to speak but a memory in his reverie, dawdled in at midnight, trapped in his beloved glass box. It was his show, but not his voice. The ominous narrating ceases. The curtain closes. The end.

As though he were some sort of hero! So gravely misunderstood by his peers, fools that craved the silly things in life like peace and joy. Where darling, do tell, do you put your morals to bed when the daylight rests? Do they float away in bubbles? Levi stood motionless, glaring at Percival in a blurred mix of misperception and disappointment, a true instance of the pot calling the kettle black. All at once, a gradual sunset had become rapid and forceful, the universe attempting to knock Levi back to the floor as it consumed the Owlery in night. Had he not seen the stars begin to shine, the moon begin to rise in its sister’s place? The Gryffindor looked past the Tree-Boy, to the woodline. Still. Natural. A lovely falling in had he not been aware the feeding window had just closed.

In the midst of this trance, Percival laid a hand on Levi’s shoulder, sending an uncomfortable electric bolt from it to his lower back. There was an innate human reaction to danger, a jerk or flinch as the cocky called it, but the boy did not peel himself away from the grip. It was proven by now that he was not to die before suffering in the bland, stuffy four walls of solitude. One certainty. True. It wasn’t far-fetched to think Levi may spend the rest of this evening with half of his body dangling from the window, praying the world would validate his glassless eyes.

"Nobody will ever believe you,"

Remaining in the devil’s constricting grasp, Levi squirmed, pushing his ear to his shoulder in an attempt to suppress the second chill. It wasn’t enough. It was a reaction of pure electricity, hands shaking and the wide, knowing stare of a doe in headlights seeing its final crescent moon. Nothing held him there, not really, for Percival had a pressure that could be easily overpowered should the brunet have savored the willpower. But he didn’t. Internal screams, emotional deaths and births, blood draining from one ear and being replaced through the other. No energy was left to wrench himself away; he was but a doll, and the strings were warm breath, consoling warnings, and a waking nightmare.

"But surely, tell everyone that you watched the forest move and slay alongside Percival Gray."

It wouldn’t be so simple. He’d need to support an outlandish claim with proof, but this was the kind of evidence that lied only in one’s heart, its ability to beat and believe in such a notion without delving into the names, the times, the places. Without doubting. Perhaps they would only know it was the truth once it was them wriggling with a branch piercing their stomach, after they were the writhing fleshy mold leaving trace elements of scarlet on plain bark. When they saw the dance from the eyes of a victim. Became the very soil, they walked upon. Or at the very least, fertilized it.

Percival probably knew that.

With this burden, the taller boy left Levi to shudder and jostle about the floor, pressing his face to the gap in the Owlery’s stone wall, unaware of all the life and death that occurred in its vacant pane. His own opposite, here before him, in another life. Time would pass without his approval or knowledge, and the violet would melt into a cruel navy, alight with far away flames shimmering about and creating such a shine across the boy’s skin, perhaps we could believe the world was still beautiful. Whole. Innocent.

Nothing would move, not until a million more dusks passed of Levi chained to the tower for long shifts at a time. But it happened thrice more. Living this evening thrice more, without the hushed crunch, though the better and worse of it all was greedily undetermined. And regardless of what Percival said, what he threatened and whispered, something would need to be done.

Just, not by Levi.
Probably.

Thread finished, as Levi lingers with his horror.