#but i want to HIGHLIGHT and UNDERLINE and CIRCLE and add my SILLY little NOTES about those MASTERFUL lyrics

[chronicowboy]

kind of want to print out the lyrics to every hozier song and turn them into a book like a poetry anthology so i can annotate them until there isn't a blank space left on the page

[confusionism]

fiiingertrap​

He spoke, and Cora drank every little bit of word in, full interested – if not borderline fascinated by his process. It wasn’t something everyone did. Most people read a book and that was that, ya know? Cover to cover and then it was put aside. A lot of people didn’t bother with further thoughts or analytics. By the time he was done speaking, you guessed it, she had a smile a mile wide on her face, and her hand on his arm gave a gentle squeeze.  “Lemme see this…” Cora tugged the book from Rhys, flipping through, running a long, pink nail over the markings on some of the pages. Handing it back, she told him seriously, her tone a little full of awe, “You’re real smart, y’know that? I never woulda thought of the doodling, but that’s clever.” Caleb was visual too, so she had to wonder if he’d ever considered… Cora tucked the mental note away for when she called home to check in.  It felt weirdly… intimate… sharing her tracking process with him, but he’d just done the same, so she wouldn’t be shy. Give as good as you get, another Warren Family Rule. “I do the same thing you do with words I don’t know. I underline those. That way if I can’t look ‘em up then and there, I remember to do it later.”  Opening her own book, she flipped to a page where an entire paragraph was circled in highlighter. “I circle or highlight quotes, words, or phrases that I enjoy so I can revisit them later.” Typically she would add those to her journal entries at night, but she didn’t think that was awful relevant. A bit of an overshare maybe. “Then we’ve got the notes in the margins - either thoughts, ideas, questions I have while I’m readin’.”  Her cheeks flared a little, and Cora felt her heart thumping a bit in her chest, cause it was… wild to her, like fully wild to her, that he had remembered Caleb’s name. And he’d have no way of knowing how much that one little thing meant to her. “Caleb, yeah.” Spoken with pure affection and a slight nod. “He uh… he actually reads more than me. So those notes help when I’m revisiting stuff with him or Hollis – he’s like my other brother, they’ve been buds their whole lives. Anyway – we three really bond over the written word, so we pass around books and try to talk about ‘em. My notes help me remember what was goin’ on in my head. Cause really I only read as much as I do to keep up with Cal. He’s like a machine.”  Not wanting to overshare – home, her brother, they were special to her, so she held those things close. Mention him? Sure. Dive into what exactly he meant to her? Nah. Too much space for rejection between those words. So she was happy to pivot back to the book. “It’s funny you say that, about there being more than one type. Cause at the start of this there’s two schools of thoughts about magic in the beginning – Theoretical magicians, who believe that magic died out several hundred years ago. Then there’s Mr. Norrell who is a practical magician. He proves to them that magic still exists by making statues speak, and he wants to revive practical magic in England. But yeah, it’s really good so far, if you ever wanna borrow it.” 

An air pocket made for a shake in their surroundings— a reminder that he should’ve been breathing. Somewhere in between Cora reaching over and slipping the book out of his hands, Rhys had forgotten to, stunned by a sensation he hadn’t completely felt in years. Her flipping the pages and scanning through his scrawl reminded him of the tutors his parents had hired when he was growing up. A silly thought? Yeah, probably, but he couldn’t help it; other than those kinds of evaluations, most people hardly paid attention to the little details that sprouted out from his mind. 

In another life Rhys Powell might’ve been a comic creator, turning fantastical dreams into something concrete and colorful. He could still get a small sense of that vision with every line that she traced. Out the tips of her fingers, however, spilled something different, this strange kind of feeling that — he hadn’t yet found the best word for but — he’d been following since the day that they met. Maybe it was another reminder, this time that reality was still pretty good in spite of those dreams falling through. 

Maybe it was the fact that Cora Warren could be dreamlike herself. 

And then she called him ‘real smart’ and it was like hitting an air pocket all over again. His shoulders rose, his cheeks warmed, and his gaze fell to his lap. “I, uh— doin’ my best,” he chuckled, accepting the book in one hand and feeling a corner of it with the other. Clearing his throat quietly, he stretched his shoulders and shifted his attention to her turn at their little ‘show and tell.’ 

“Do you do this for every single book you read?” She was thorough. Maybe he was too, but he didn’t read even half as much as she did, and so the thought was yet another detail about her that impressed him to no end. He craned his head forward to get a better look at her handwriting, at least two times neater than his own and probably three times as sensible, then tilted his chin up at her confirmation. He was silent again. There was no urge to pry, and he was perfectly content with watching the way that the words flowed out of her lips. He simply nodded and committed more to his memory. 

“I think I could be into that,” Rhys finally answered, “but only if it’d be okay for me to keep it for, uh...” He tilted his head, took note of the book’s thickness. “Maybe for a year-ish?” Another chuckle left him as he leaned back into his seat. “I have a super important question about all of this, though. Theoretical magicians and practical magicians. Which one are you?”