At first, Willow feels the words crawling on her like insects, and she shudders.
Manuscripts in tight cramped gothic Latin skitter over her with the scratch of monks' quills. The weight of each pen stroke pushes back against her fingertips when she reaches into the books. Even the printed books are ancient, their words heavy with pointed scratching serifs, each letter impressed into the page, into her skin, carrying with it a palpable memory of printers' muscle.
Rag paper is old, worn soft, not at all brittle. It yields under her fingers. She feels herself sinking into soft folds, between sheets, the knowledge always advancing.
As the words swirl and advance in ranks, she comes to know them. As her power grows, she can feel underneath all of them the shape of her own name, a series of sharp jabs wrapped around a soft open "O", and she knows that she has become a part of this history.
Too breathless, she feels it all coming into her, no time to think, to process what this magic is. She just wants to suck in more and more and she can't stop. Blackness of ink on paper, ink on her flesh, marked by the knowledge inside her. She owns it; it owns her.
Manuscripts in tight cramped gothic Latin skitter over her with the scratch of monks' quills. The weight of each pen stroke pushes back against her fingertips when she reaches into the books. Even the printed books are ancient, their words heavy with pointed scratching serifs, each letter impressed into the page, into her skin, carrying with it a palpable memory of printers' muscle.
Rag paper is old, worn soft, not at all brittle. It yields under her fingers. She feels herself sinking into soft folds, between sheets, the knowledge always advancing.
As the words swirl and advance in ranks, she comes to know them. As her power grows, she can feel underneath all of them the shape of her own name, a series of sharp jabs wrapped around a soft open "O", and she knows that she has become a part of this history.
Too breathless, she feels it all coming into her, no time to think, to process what this magic is. She just wants to suck in more and more and she can't stop. Blackness of ink on paper, ink on her flesh, marked by the knowledge inside her. She owns it; it owns her.