Old Friend(Willow/Silver)

[Silver Blackwood]

Silver felt heat streak up the back of his neck at Willow's compliment, and his lips curved. It took a moment before he recalled himself enough to go on. He glanced away and cleared his throat before pulling his attention back to the conversation; it was too interesting to let go.

"Dic.kinson was a recluse who refused to leave her bedroom," he said. "And aside from being female in a heavily patriarchal society, her poetry didn't follow any of the writing rules that were in style then. Some women have printed under male names, but the few things she sent in got changed anyway. She didn't want it published, she asked her sister to burn all her papers when she died."

Silver caught himself and stopped, the heat rising in his neck as he looked away again. "I read a biography once," he said, reflexively trying to excuse himself. He also had a thing for Dic.kinson's poetry now and then, but that was neither here nor there.

[Willow Wenlock]

Willow's eyes widened she couldn't think of destroying something born of an intellectual moment. Even if she was tempted she would want that part of her to live on after she died. "I can't imagine. I know poets and writers pour as much of their hearts and souls into creation as I might in trying to find the story of an artifact." She tried to put her mind in that frame set, but it just wasn't working, "if something were to happen to me, I would want everyone to know the stories behind the piece. I couldn't imagine asking someone to burn it." She had read a few of D.ickinson's works in the past, they were gorgeous pieces of work, but then again in creativity did rules need to be followed?

[Silver Blackwood]

"She talked to people through doors for years. She wrote it for herself, not for anyone else," Silver pointed out. "She made her sister promise to burn her papers, and she burned all her letters, but was obsessed with getting her books of something like eighteen hundred poems published. Took her fifty years to get some out and they still edited them to be in style. Maybe she wanted to keep it to herself, or maybe she knew that would happen." He gave a light shrug of his broad shoulders. "I want to be published some day, but I can see wanting to keep private writing private."

[Willow Wenlock]

It was easier to put herself in that place when Silver said it, to have your work edited, become something different than you had intended, would be terrible. "That would be like the Catholic Church printing a retraction of an archeological dig, because it conflicted with religious tales." People could be inflexible, want things only their way, and she certainly hoped that she didn't turn into someone so isolated that she was unable to talk to anyone other than through a door.

She wondered what the true intention behind many of the poems she had read then. Where they the originally intended versions, or the edited published versions. "So do you think it's a violation for her sister to have worked so hard to have those published?" It seemed to her that perhaps it was a way for her to actually be able to touch and talk to a sister that had been isolated for so many years away from her, a way to connect after her sister's death.

[Silver Blackwood]

Silver shook his head. "I mean, I should probably say yes, but her sister would have been one of the people who knew her best. Sometimes people get so caught up in the moment, in their current fears and emotions, that they can't see the long run. Maybe her sister saw past the fear. Either way, we get to read it and learn from it. Maybe it's selfish, but violation or not there are countless generations of people who are benefiting from that decision."

[Willow Wenlock]

He really liked the work, Willow thought. She supposed that there were thousands of accounts of people through the ages that had been pilfered through the indiscreet actions of others. Manuscripts, epitaphs, burial rights and even sex acts had been recovered from tombs, translated, and fed to the general public. These personal things were meant to stay sacred, but now they were no longer the secrets of a dead culture.

She was happy for him, that these works existed outside of the vacuum where literary works could go by the wayside. It intrigued her more because he had related his works to D.ickenson's. "So, is your writing risque or rule breaking then?"

[Silver Blackwood]

Instantaneous heat flared in Silver's cheeks, and he looked away from Willow, letting his hair swing forward to hide what it would. "Um, no," he said. "My writing's just... writing." But he wrote whatever he felt like, and no one took that much interest in what filled the pages of his notebooks. Once in a while he wrote something he'd rather not have anyone else see. Sometimes he tore the pages out, but he could never bear to part with them. Most of his writing was just writing, though. As far as anyone knew, he wasn't bending the truth.

[Willow Wenlock]

Willow looked over towards Silver at his return to small sentences. She wished he would talk to her about his writing, if he wanted to do that for a living she was fascinated by the thought of having a book to read written by someone she actually knew. "I don't think I believe that for a second." She closed her eyes as she imagined, tilting her head up again as she was wont to when she was deep in thought.

"I bet someday I'll be reading a nice thick volume with your name on it." She imagined the smell of the fresh paper, and the excitement of reading something by someone her own age not someone for hundreds of years ago. She opened her eyes with a smile, and that dancing merriment again, "do I have to imagine my own title for it? Maybe... the Wizard's guide to verbifying nouns?" It was silly and a complete butchering of the English language but she couldn't help it.

[Silver Blackwood]

"That's not risqué," Silver pointed out, forgetting his embarrassment for just a moment to smile at at Willow's joke. He sneaked a glance aside at her from around his hair. "The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say," he quoted softly. It felt like a stark and personal admission, and he hoped she wouldn't be able to tell. He suddenly wished he hadn't said it and looked away again, clearing his throat. "Anaïs Nin," he said.

[Willow Wenlock]

She thought about it for a moment, reflecting the things that she couldn't say out loud and thinking that writing it might be cathartic, but she couldn't see herself doing that. "It must take a lot of courage to write things like that down on paper. Even if you just keep it for personal uses, you're looking into the smallest corners of your soul and admitting things to yourself. I'm not sure I could do it. Feet of essays sure, but writing the things about myself I don't want other people to see, let alone myself..." Kudos she thought.

[Silver Blackwood]

"It has to get out somehow," Silver said. "It's not just admitting things, but putting it down in a way that makes it easier to look at and figure out. Easier to see what part is really important. Write enough, and you find out that the things in the smallest corners are the ones that want out the most. Memories are imprecise, they're colored by time and how you see how you think you saw. When you write it down, it stays the same. You see what was. It's not about bravery, it's about endless curiosity. What better subject to study than one that's always available?"

[Willow Wenlock]

Willow had to think through that, understand the logic behind it, the way Silver said it made sense in an intellectual pursuit of knowledge. She took a deep breath and looked up to the sky wondering about the unknowable in the world. "Normally I'd say that I didn't understand, but putting it that way appeals to the logic in a girl." She looked over at him, her eyes dancing again, "Every man's memory is his private literature, right?" Willow was deciding that the sparring quotes was rather entertaining for her, as most people didn't let her get beyond one or two before they rolled their eyes and got bored. That specific quote was from a well known English poet of more recent times, Aldous Huxley.

[Silver Blackwood]

"Huxley," Silver said, his lips curving at both the quote and the source. He nodded and unconsciously straightened a bit, his nerves easing. "I should probably fake modesty, but I really enjoy reading some of the stuff I've written. I mean, there's stuff that makes me wince, but I guess I meant it when I wrote it. Or maybe I was trying to get something out and didn't word it right. It happens." Which was why so many lines were scratched out and rewritten over and over.

[Willow Wenlock]

A small chuckle passed through her lips, "no fake modesty necessary, I swear." She held up her hands in a truthful gesture, her thin fingers tipped with clear, slightly grown out nails. "I have on occasion been known to be less than modest myself." She tilted her head again, trying to see behind the long veil of hair to those multi-hued eyes she'd gotten a glimpse of earlier. "If you like reading them so much, I wouldn't mind hearing a few." She thought about how that might sound, "I mean, only if you're comfortable with that." She'd only just met him, and asking to read something that revealed such intimate things as thoughts might be considered intruding.

[Silver Blackwood]

"Oh," Silver said, flushing again. "Um, no, that'd be fine." He'd given up on that dream with Dru, but Willow seemed like she might appreciate some of the poems he'd written. "I could like, find something for you. Whenever," Silver said. "No rush or anything." Yes, it was intensely personal, but even through the holy terror of watching someone read his work, there was a thrill of adrenaline and pride when they liked it.