Excerpt from A Jaunt
Damian Clark was a miraculous man- but not in the sense that he was exceptionally gifted, or indeed inherently impressive in any way at all. In many aspects, Damian was very normal. Almost painfully normal, it would seem. Damian was still young and had managed to retain some of his innocence into early adulthood, with all of the purity, trust, and sheer idiocy that brings. He was universally friendly, studying to become an engineer, and had large, round, perpetually askew spectacles that- contrary to his own opinion- did nothing to make him appear smarter. His teachers, when asked to describe him, would hesitate for a long moment to gather their thoughts, before hesitantly asserting something along the lines of “Well… he’s diligent, at least.” No, Damian Clark was almost a completely normal man. He was miraculous in the sense that, when one looked at him, one was left with a distinct impression that he had not spent much time on planet earth- surely not for his entire life, not for the full twenty-something years that his birth certificate claimed? In a way, he had not. Damian Clark had stumbled through his life with a head full of sunlight, songbirds, and puffs of clouds. He was an incurable daydreamer, and he was miraculous only in that he had made it thus far.
This, at least, was what the elder god saw as he descended. Damian had potential- if only he could wrench his head from the clouds and focus his ambition. It was possible that this man could lose him his game with the younger god. He was too trusting, too naïve, absentminded, unreliable, useless. Despite all of this, however, the god found something strangely fascinating about Damian. It would necessitate further scrutiny.
That day, the air was crisp, hard, and cold. The sky was a pale shade of blue that looked as if it had been beaten thin and brittle, but Damian thought that the snow from last night looked lovely in the sunlight as he walked to the local library. Back in his apartment, his books and studies were waiting- but some mornings, Damian had concluded as he pulled on his jacket, it’s nigh-impossible to get any work done. You’d get agitated at the gorgeous sunlight outside, and begin knocking your head violently against your desk. And so, in the interest of keeping his forehead unbruised, and his brain cells relatively unrattled, Damian went to the library.
Their local library was very respectable, verging on grand. It had spiraling staircases and warm orange lights and shelves so tall that they had installed sliding ladders. And, of course, there were books. Rows and rows of ink and paper, ancient hardbound books with pages that had turned creamy yellow from age, and brand-new paperback books with glossy, bright covers. Damian wondered how long it would take to read each word of every shelf, and how much wiser it would make someone. He marveled at all of the knowledge condensed into these rectangular prisms of paper, and at all of the life and effort that must have been poured into each individual volume. He wondered if, by reading a book, you could be said to catch a glimpse of the writer’s soul. Was it even possible to write and not put a portion of yourself into the prose? He wondered and speculated as he wandered through the shelves, when suddenly he noticed her out of the corner of his eye, and his train of thought stopped and shattered at his feet.
