Blade and Poetry

Since that day, I have seen Karajan more often in the castle.Once I took a reference book and went to the top terrace to study how to make an umbrella. It happened that he also came to the high place to release the wind.He joined in halfway with great interest, watched with me for a while, and suddenly asked me if I needed any materials.

"I might need wood," I told him.

He suggested going to the wooden shed outside to pick some for me.

I heard his footsteps all the way down, jumped up from the ground, lay on the edge of the terrace and waited for his figure to appear.

It is very high here, and half of the garden can be seen from the terrace.As far as the eye can see, the garden is full of the same deep green leaves, which have not yet bloomed. They seem to be vines, entwined and growing on clusters of low shrubs.I stared at it for a moment, and thought it seemed to be a clematis.

"Shouldn't the clematis be hanging by the door," I thought to myself. "Who would fill half his garden with clematis? They don't bloom very long—and the flowers aren't exactly pretty."

I thought so, and then I saw Karajan walk out of the shadow of the castle and appear in the green garden.He seemed to have guessed that I would look from above, and looked towards me from a distance, his eyes were half-closed due to the direct sunlight above his head, and his hair color was highlighted and bright by the light.

"Well," I thought, "for whatever reason, the garden doesn't look too bad on the whole."

He came back with several logs of different sizes, called out his own knife, and worked with me to carve out umbrella ribs.His knife skills are very delicate, and the strength of his grasp is not bad.I noticed that it was a short golden knife with flowers engraved on the hilt.

"What's your knife called?" I asked him.

"Melting roses," he said, following my line of sight, "roses are engravings."

"It's a pity that this flower is not common now," I said, "I read that it was a symbol of love long ago."

"Some things die hard," he said, "harder than you think. The meaning behind it outlasts it..."

"I also want to know the meaning behind the name of my knife," I said to him with the tip of the knife slowly chiseling out a rose on the umbrella hat, "but I have forgotten its name."

He stopped and continued to peel.I found that my long knife was not cutting as fast as his short knife, and I thought it must be something external.

"Is the wound on my right hand all right, Karajan?" I asked him. "I woke up with a bandage on a week ago, and it doesn't hurt much now."

"Probably," he said, "the knife heals faster than the average person."

While pulling one end of the bandage, I muttered, "It seems like the bandage should be changed every three or four days..."

He said on the side: "It's okay, I replaced it for you halfway."

I thanked him and tore off the bandage.The painful wound on my hand was not as hideous as I imagined, only a few deep red marks were left, and the shape was quite artistic.I watched it for a while, recalling Karajan's words, and suddenly realized that I had no impression of what he mentioned. When I looked up at him again, his eyes were wandering aimlessly, and his face was a little flushed.

I changed my mind, took an umbrella bone in my hand, and made a menacing gesture to assassinate him:

"Mr. Karajan, to be honest, on which day did you sneak into my room in the middle of the night?"

The sawdust we had chipped covered both of us—plus we had another little fight—and it was like a thin snowfall on the ground in front of us.

Our umbrella has taken shape after that day.We spliced ​​every joint together and added a couple of cheating stabilization spells, but didn't have the right material for the canopy.The umbrella stand of the wooden umbrella was opened by us and placed in the corner of the long table restaurant.

I never dreamed since I came to him, or had only dim impressions, which I could not remember when I awoke the next day; but for the first time that night I had a dream of unrivaled clarity.In the dream, Karajan was sitting under a tree, looking towards me.As soon as the scene changed, it turned to another place, like a corridor, and he was walking towards me, asking me what I wanted.

"Hello," he said, "can you do me a favor?"

He asked me for a club list, and I told him I had it in my locker.I walked him all the way to the closet and he watched me open it.

"Maybe a little messy." I said seriously, and unlocked the cabinet.

However, it was worse than I imagined. It seemed that a few friends stuffed something into it. There were a few more boxes of snacks and a pile of notes.Another note flew out immediately.

"Well, it's very messy." I touched my nose and said to the people behind me.

He seemed to be smiling, looking at me with deep eyes, and only thanked me when he took the list.Then everything receded like a tide, and the dreamland whirled and disappeared.

I woke up from this dream in a good mood - which I think is a good sign.Every detail in it was very real, I don't think it was just a dream, maybe it was an intersection with Karajan that I had forgotten in the back of my mind, and it flew back to me.

Because I saw Karajan call out the knife the day before, I asked him to spar with me in a training room.I lost the first game and fell against the wall, so I was unconvinced and had another date with him.We played like this five times, and I lost every time.In the end, he either strangled my legs and put a knife against my back when I couldn't move; he twisted my wrist and knocked my weapon off; On the ground, the blade was cold against my cheek, and I could not move the knife in my hand.

I get inspiration from every match I play against him, and I get a new way of fighting, but they all fall short in front of him-I am shocked by the understanding and mastery of this man's knife skills .

"Why," I said sadly, "you are obviously only five years older than me!"

"I know you very well." He smiled, his loose hair almost brushing my face.

"A few games from here?" I asked.

"From—gut feeling," he said, "and I've had terrible training before."

"I have doubts about my own life." I murmured, "...that's amazing!"

"You're a good swordsman too," he said, letting me stand up.

"That's always been my default," I said, "until today..."

He stood by and kept laughing, and I did some muscle-relaxing exercises and fought him.In the end, perhaps because we were all tired, I managed to win against him once, and he would turn defeat into victory even if the trajectory of swinging the knife was higher.He praised my swing, and carefully simulated my movement to swing his Molten.We were sweating and lying on the floor of the training room, both gasping for breath.

"You may surpass me someday," he said.

"Of course I will," I said. "Maybe someday I'll make you [-] out of [-]—I'll have to figure out what to say then. Might be short of an acceptance speech."

He laughed and said, "But that's in the future."

"It's in the future," I admitted.

There was wind blowing in through the crack of the window, and Karajan turned his head towards me.Looking into his gray-blue eyes, I suddenly remembered the dream last night.

"Do you remember?" I asked, "When did you first meet me?"

"One summer," he said.

He didn't say anything more.The weather gradually turned colder in the following days. Many days in November were rainy and rainy, and snow began to fall in December.I am much more interested in swordsmanship than magic, and I often pester Karajan to fight with me for a long time. As a result, my swordsmanship has improved by leaps and bounds, and the winning rate of duels is no longer too ugly.

I still dream regularly, and the most common scene in my dreams is that we are sitting opposite each other in a room, half of the room is dark and half is bright, and there are piles of paper on the ground like waves.But Karajan was always sure that he didn't know about my past, so my inquiries often ended in nothing.

I sometimes question the nature of those dreams—my imagination, or real memory fragments, why only Karajan is always present.They are like a narrated story, only missing a clear thread to connect them from the beginning.

But I couldn't see the line; I had only this fort around me, and only Karajan, its owner, in front of me.

Karajan and I put together the runes in the library fireplace, made a levitating fireball, and he brought another thin blanket so we could tuck our legs in it and sit side by side when it was cold reading a book.I recently read a thick "Encyclopedia of Magic and Spells" before going to bed, and I can quickly fall asleep after reading a dozen pages; and my new choice for reading time in the library is "Sara's Notes".

"Sara's Notes" describes a period of the Puguo War that she experienced in the voice of a nine-year-old girl, Sarah.It is written in the preface that she died unfortunately at the end of the war, and the notes left by her were edited by her family and finally published.

"In 1464, many people evacuated the East Bank, but we did not," Sarah began. "Papa said he hated the land we were farming. Mama thought that as long as the grain in the city was still sold, Nothing major will happen. I also like to go to the nearby Liucang River to get water, but Amy and Annie have moved. They say that the 'army of those people' is coming, and they look very scared.

"I asked my mom: 'What is the army of those people?'

"She said: 'A flock of vultures who want to take food, water, air and homes from us.'

"Dad used to be very happy. At the end of the month, he would bring back half a bag of unsold over-ripe apples for Mom to make jam or bake into pies. When the harvest was good, they would pour two apples out of the wine bottle. Small cups of rum, swapped. I've licked the rum from a spoon, it kind of tastes like cough syrup. But I haven't licked the rum since some of the friends we knew were evacuated from the city. wine.

"Dad is always frowning. Yesterday I stayed in the room and heard him arguing with an uncle in the living room: 'Don't we also have an army? We have things developed in laboratories, and our technology has always attracted them to spy on— Why can't they be punched out!'

"'Their soldiers have experienced many battles and have won many battles. This is the first time for us.' said the uncle. An army of swordsmen or sorcerers."

"I found my father and mother started arguing behind closed doors. I put my ear to the door, but I couldn't understand what they were saying. Finally, my mother came out with red eyes, hugged me, and said He wants to take me and leave together. I asked her, what about Dad? She said, Dad will wait for a while, he has to pack up some belongings on the east bank, and then he will bring them to me and her. "

I turned to the content below and found that Sara and her mother did not successfully evacuate, and were blocked in the city by the advancing invading army.They hid in Tibet, trying to smuggle out.The war came to an end two years later, and many precious scientific and technological achievements were destroyed by the flames of war. Most of the laboratories mentioned by Sara's father were also destroyed. signed.

Sarah wrote on the last page of her notes: "I have seen the dawn of peace, but I am about to die of an incurable disease. I lie on the ground, and my mother holds my hand and keeps crying. She Asked what I wanted, but I knew it was going to be hard to buy anything at this point, like my medicine. So I just said to her, I want this world to never have wars."

I closed the book and sighed, trying to ease my mind.I turned my neck around and saw Karajan next to me smiling at the book in his hand, so I asked:

"What are you laughing at?"

"The names in this book are so long." He pointed out to me.

"What's so funny about this..."

I said something casually, and walked over with a spirit of doubt.He turned a few pages for me. I looked down and found that it was full of aria-like dialogues, and I couldn't help being amused.

"The dialogue is too exaggerated——" I felt emotional, "This is a brilliant product of which era."

"Want to get a paragraph right? It must be interesting to read it."

"What, right play?"

"Yes," he picked out a few words in a decent manner, "it's here. You can lend me your knife."

"This part seems to really need a long knife," I confirmed, calling out my own knife, "Do you still want the scabbard?"

"Be safe." He stood up.

I called out the scabbard again to wrap the blade.In short, this short passage is actually a duel between a woman and her rival.Her rival in love lost to her after a duel, and had to pay with her life for fighting for her lover's wish.

I stood face to face with Karajan, our eyes met.Realizing that it was time to begin, I faithfully followed the description of the novel and fell backward on the carpet with a cry.

"I lost to you!" I said.

"Ah, it's a preordained thing!" he said.

I realized right away that this line sounded worse than it looked, but knowing that I was about to step into the "long name" part, I bit the bullet and went ahead.

"Epifanovna Lily Vikendyeva!" I said, startled and annoyed. "You've beaten me, aren't you satisfied?"

I feel like I'm either about to have a belly laugh, or I just want to follow the urge and jump up.

"Of course I'm not satisfied, Kuplyanovna Xiangmeritan Venedikovich!" His expression was quite stable, with a rather haughty smile on the corner of his mouth, and he stepped on the ground condescendingly. One step later, the tip of the long knife touched my heart, "—give me your heart!"

I said "ah, my God", closed my eyes, and signaled that I was dead, and at the same time breathed a sigh of relief.I began to reflect on why I agreed to him to play this dialogue, and I couldn't help but think back to his poised performance, thinking that it was indeed the beauty of being five years older.

I didn't wait for the call to stop, so I had to raise one eyelid to peek up, only to find that Karajan was still looking at me with indescribable eyes—gentle and contradictory.I can't believe it, and I can't decipher it: it seems to be full of poetic incomprehensible sadness, mixed with revived joy fluctuations; Survival after a catastrophe.

There is a lot of fire in the library, which is very different from the deserted situation here more than two months ago.The four corners of the house melted with warm and dim orange, and silently melted away the sticky white snow on the window frame.This temperature made my face slightly hot.

Under such a gaze, I suddenly felt my heartbeat intensify in my chest.It pulsated vigorously one after another, urging me to get up in a slightly flustered manner.I took the knife returned by Karajan in one hand.

"I've given you my heart," I said hastily, staring at the knife in my hand, "Why hasn't everything ended early?"

"It's over," what kept echoing in my heart was, "I seem to have fallen in love with him."