It was Saturday. It was February. It was cold.
It was not catch-your-death cold or even freeze-your-nuts-off cold. Just annoying cold. Or at least annoying to those who weren't properly equipped to deal with it. Sebastian himself always liked the cold, probably because he came with his own insulation. There was something he found fresh and invigorating about the thin, dry air of winter, whereas the spring and summer months represented something like oppression (though not exactly that).
Today he was indoors. He was indoors because he was waiting. Soon the doorbell would ring, and two figures would be standing there...one short and round much like Sebastian, one tall and thin like a flagpole. They would enter, axes and clubs in hand, and together the three of them would set out to conquer something uncertain. By the time the sun set, they would know both the sound and the fury. Billy-Boy had been right, though; in the end, it did signify nothing.
It's possible that if Sebastian had been able to look into the future, as some folks do, and see that more than a decade later he would pour out curses on the day he first held his axe aloft and released his full-throated roar into the ether and into the iron cell that was his memory, he might not have opened the door at all. The two figures, puzzled by the darkened windows and annoyed by the cold, would leave. And when they saw him in the halls on Monday, they would stare him down but say nothing, or at least that's the way Sebastian would have wanted it. A cleaner break than the world had yet seen, for nothing had been joined in the first place.
But he did open the door. And the band played on. And Sebastian's heart became glass.
It was not catch-your-death cold or even freeze-your-nuts-off cold. Just annoying cold. Or at least annoying to those who weren't properly equipped to deal with it. Sebastian himself always liked the cold, probably because he came with his own insulation. There was something he found fresh and invigorating about the thin, dry air of winter, whereas the spring and summer months represented something like oppression (though not exactly that).
Today he was indoors. He was indoors because he was waiting. Soon the doorbell would ring, and two figures would be standing there...one short and round much like Sebastian, one tall and thin like a flagpole. They would enter, axes and clubs in hand, and together the three of them would set out to conquer something uncertain. By the time the sun set, they would know both the sound and the fury. Billy-Boy had been right, though; in the end, it did signify nothing.
It's possible that if Sebastian had been able to look into the future, as some folks do, and see that more than a decade later he would pour out curses on the day he first held his axe aloft and released his full-throated roar into the ether and into the iron cell that was his memory, he might not have opened the door at all. The two figures, puzzled by the darkened windows and annoyed by the cold, would leave. And when they saw him in the halls on Monday, they would stare him down but say nothing, or at least that's the way Sebastian would have wanted it. A cleaner break than the world had yet seen, for nothing had been joined in the first place.
But he did open the door. And the band played on. And Sebastian's heart became glass.
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