#i might open commissions for stained glass art tho because it was kind of fun

[alnilam-fr]

@jollyroger-fr @hellkite-fr @fr-owlistuff @puffins-and-bears @tirnaillclan @ianlestraud-fr @starongie @jadedragons @fr-mar@majestyrising @almaren-fr @intergalacticsock

"The peachtrees are budding,” announced Gwydion, ducking under the door of the library. Souhayla turned halfway to look at him, her lips parting into a smile as warm as summer. “Why were you staring at the wall?” he asked.

“I think we should put a window here. It’s so dark you can scarce see the bookshelves, but with a great broad window the light would come through, and we could move a chair here, and here,” she said. 

Gwydion nodded, halfway listening. “Window,” he said, sagely.  Her voice left a flavor of sourwood honey in the air, and she moved like a mote of dust in the light. 

“Meridian says she thinks stained glass would be nice here,” she continued. “But Sabiyya said she thinks it would be too flashy. There are stained-glass windows in the upper floor of the library, but none down here.”

With a shrug, Gwydion stepped up to the wall and ran his hand along it. “Either way, we could use some light here,” he said. He flashed Souhayla a smile over his shoulder and added, “I saw Soloist in the kitchen baking cookies- care to join me in bothering him for some?”

There is a golden window in the library of the House of Alnilam. Sometimes, the bone-weary travelers who come to the House to rest wander into the labyrinth of bookshelves and come to a place where two chairs are set side by side, and a window of gold and blue glass between them.

“This looks like you,” says a young Skydancer, to the Nocturne woman who keeps the House. “But there’s been no glass made this way for- Shade, a hundred years. Did you find a special artisan to do it?” He looks at the other figure in the window, and his antennae twitch at the gunpowder smell of sadness in the air.

She hands him a cup of tea and turns away. “It’s someone else,” she says, whisper-soft. Before he can say another word, the woman walks into the shafts of sunlight filtering between the bookshelves and melts away in the light.

“Oh,” says the Skydancer. He checks his pack and readies himself to be on his way.