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Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2017 7:26 pm
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Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2017 7:47 pm
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Ezra was at the library. He still smelled like burning, like something old and charred, but the man sitting at one of the study carrels looked... alarmingly human. He had hair.
Granted, his eyes were sort of... firey: high-saturated red bleeding into yellow closer to his pupil. (It looked like he'd popped a blood vessel, too.) And there was an ugly burn scar creeping up from beneath his collared shirt. His dark hair looked clean and well-kempt, and he kept rubbing the heavy paper of the encyclopedia he was reading between his fingers as if he had never felt anything quite so divine. Ezra smelled like a campfire (to people not Eve) and looked like an Oxford scholar.
"So it would seem," said Ezra. "Although I gather it's been both a long time and about three weeks." He closed the book, leaving his fingers between the pages to hold his place. His gaze flicked from Leila to Eve and back again. Without the flames in the way, the similarities in his face to Leila's--cheekbones, chin--were much clearer. "How are you settling in?"
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Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2017 10:17 pm
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Ezra made a face. "It wasn't that simple," he said. "In essence what you said is true. But in practice, it's wrong. I was given a choice, and I chose wrong."
He opened the encyclopedia just to touch it.
He really was into this touching thing. It made sense after a bit of thought: he'd been on fire for a long time. A very long time. How much touching could he have done?
"I knew that, given time, the cycle would reset. I couldn't wait." He frowned at the desk. "I should have, could have, but I didn't. I traded my friendship with Sunny for..."
Ezra glanced up at Leila. His eyes, a brilliant red, flicked to Eve next.
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