Between the Night and Morning

Duncan Todd sat in chapel one fine morning and felt that he was the only one paying the least bit of attention. That wasn't quite true, of course. There were the dolts, for whom religion was the only thing that would fit in their rigidly inflexible minds. Duncan was quite contented to say that they did not count. For how could one consider oneself a truly religious person without having to sacrifice something in return. Their lives were little more than garnishing for religion and therefore there could be no sacrifice in their taking time out for chapel.

Duncan supposed the others were hardly less excusable. They couldn't be bothered to give a wit about religion because they hadn't a wit to give. They surreptitiously read for classes, which they should have done long ago, or they dressed for outings under their formal attire. Duncan was certain the latter could not be comfortable but he didn't spare the idiots any pity, either.

Duncan was just a touch distracted, himself. He had just received a letter from his younger brother, detailing the insanity of the family he'd left.

His grandfather was still happily working on his memoir, a book that would ruin Duncan's life were it ever to be published. His grandfather had already nearly done so already, leaving a legacy ridiculous enough to send even the sanest man to a mad house. Still, the man had been revered enough as an intellectual to have spent some time as a professor at Edinburgh, though he'd resigned years before Duncan was born. Poor Duncan had not even been aware of his grandfather's legacy for the old man had openly regarded his time at university to have been time wasted and he never elaborated on where he'd gone. Duncan had refused to attend Edinburgh, which was much closer to his family's Scottish home, in order to escape the insanity of his grandfather's claim about the existence of elves. Instead, the reminder was often brought unwillingly to his attention by professor and student alike.

Duncan's grandmother was hardly better than his grandfather. While she wasn't nearly as vocal about his grandfather's belief elves, she agreed with them. She'd recently been caught taking weeds from the neighbour's garden in order to make some potion. She was always making potions. The town where Duncan's family lived was so superstitious that, were they not so fond of Duncan's grandmother, they would have accused her of witchcraft long ago.

Duncan's mother was frazzled as usual, when his brother wrote him. She had been a normal English girl from London area, who had fallen in love with a dashing young Scottish fellow. Thankfully, she'd had three older brothers and her family's status was not high enough to make marrying the son of a Scottish scholar a disgrace. Now, Lizzy Todd was a nervous woman, as prone to fits of rage as she was to fainting spells. If she knew what life at Oxford was really like for her eldest son, she probably would be driven to fetch him home for he was the most normal in the family and therefore her favourite.

Finlay's letter only touched briefly on the subject of the family's oddity because he knew how it distressed his older brother. He spent most of the letter, instead, gossiping like an old woman. He discussed how their sister Abigail had just informed them that she was with child. Their Uncle William had visited, which was never a good thing. Uncle William hated their father and grandmother, the latter was because William was a happy bachelor and their grandmother insisted on trying to pair him with each of the girls in town on his every visit.

Because of its recent arrival, the letter was unfortunately taking up more of Duncan's attention than he would have liked. Paying attention to the sermon, condescending on the intellects of his fellow students, and analysing the letter proved more than he could handle. The former two suffered for it. Chapel was finishing up by the time Duncan realized that he'd been no better than the others. Humiliated with himself, he tried to rationalize that the sermon was rarely any good regardless. It was easier simply to run.

Duncan forewent his usual leisurely and thoughtful stroll between chapel and his classes and sequestered himself in his room instead. The time usually spent enjoying nature was instead put to use for the self-punishment of reading a particularly dull text on botany. Botany was one of Duncan's least favourite subjects because it was difficult for him to grasp. By the time he was reminded that he needed to attend class, he was scowling down at the book, fingers thrust into his naturally unruly red hair.

Duncan straightened his appearance only minimally before going to class. He was therefore quite a sight in class, careful in all his mannerisms but scruffy in appearance. This was, of course, partially due to his relative poverty, juxtaposed against the famous gentleman-commoners who flaunted their wealth without shame.

Still feeling guilty for his earlier lapse, Duncan kept his eyes riveted on the professor and tried to keep a tight reign on his roving thoughts. Rather than returning to his room after class, so as not to be tempted to write his brother back and reinforce his lack of self-control, Duncan went to the library. He found himself a seat by a window and settled down to read, this time something more enjoyable than botany.

Like most of the other students sitting in the chapel, Lucius was bored out of his mind. He always was whenever he actually bothered to come to the services, which was why he rarely ever bothered to come. Lucius knew that not showing up at the chapel negatively impacted his reputation, but he couldn't care less. He didn't even have particularly strict religious beliefs, unlike most of the people he knew, and actually didn't even fully believe that God existed. There was really only one reason why Lucius was here today: fear.

The male shuddered as he recalled what he had seen; the image of the ghastly creatures that appeared to walk the line between life and death was burned into his mind. At first, he hadn't even believed that his own eyes were telling the truth. He had just put it off as him being tired, as hallucinations. It made perfect sense, after all, for it to just be a trick of his mind. He had been working so much recently, and had been spending much of his time working with chemicals that had odors so strong it wouldn't have been difficult to believe that he was hallucinating. But then he had seen the creature again.

At first, it had looked like a beautiful woman; the type that everyone was telling Lucius he should love, the type in which he could never seem to find any sort of interest. But as he approached, a stench of death and decay had filled the air, drowning him in its sickly-sweet odor. And then he had seen its back.

Lucius still couldn't quite understand how something so, so horrifying could exist. The creature's back had nothing in common with anything even remotely human. The translucent cloth of its dress that was covering its skin didn't give the clearest image of its back, but even Lucian was able to see the writhing maggots squirming in the mass of rotten meat. Upon seeing the chilling glare the creature had given him, Lucius as quite positive that he would have been killed then and there were it not for the few random people who happened to walk past him at the time.

Just yesterday, he had seen the creature - he wasn't quite sure why he couldn't call it a female, but he just couldn't - on the campus of his school. He just couldn't think up a rational explanation for seeing it again, other than that it was following him, which is why he was here today. A friend of his had once told him that evil creatures could not step on sacred grounds, and Lucius had decided to put that knowledge to the test.

The sudden movement of all the people in the chapel jerked Lucius out of his mind. He suddenly realized that the sermon had ended, and that everyone was leaving the chapel, heading towards their rooms or classes. Reluctantly, he rose to his feet, his joints stiff and aching from the hard bench he had been sitting on. Walking as if he had all the time in the world, Lucius hesitantly left the chapel. His pace quickly change the moment he was outside, quickly becoming frantic and rushed.

Lucius just wanted to get to his class as quickly as possible. He still had a fair amount of time before it, time he used to stop by his room in the dorms and quickly tidy up his appearance. His green waistcoat was slightly wrinkled from sitting down, and he wasn't even going to begin on the state of his frock coat. Not to mention, his hair was absolutely hideous right now. He grabbed a hair brush from a drawer by his sink, beginning to comb the brown strands. Lucius kept his hair longer than socially accepted, purely because he was too lazy to go to a barber often enough to keep his quickly growing hair at a decent length. Currently, his hair reached his neck in length; not obscenely long, but still long enough for him to be able to tie it back, which was exactly what he usually did. Lucius hated to have anything hanging in his face, so he almost always tied back his hair.

A thin stubble grew on his jaw, nothing more. Lucius was always trying to grow a beard, and just couldn't accept the fact that he was too young for his facial hair to actually look decent rather than scruffy. He just refused to accept that beards just wouldn't work for him.

The male quickly smoothed out any wrinkles in his clothes; or, at least, he attempted to. Most of the wrinkles in his clothes refused to leave, but Lucius ignored that. He could be quite lazy when he wanted to be, and tended to just pretend that things turned out the way he wanted them to turn out, even if they actually didn't. This sort of approach generally didn't work all that well, but, it made him feel better to just imagine things were perfect, and his own happiness was really the main thing Lucius cared about.

Walking out of his small room, Lucius began to walk quickly once again. He felt so nervous when out in public. What if there were more of the creatures? What if they were following him? He was both terrified of being around people and being alone. Both posed equal threats. If he was alone, there would be no witnesses to stop the creatures from attacking him, but if he was around other people, he would have no clue who on earth was one of the creatures, and who wasn't.

His morning classes passed like a blur, mainly because Lucius was barely paying attention. He just couldn't get the creatures off of his mind.

He strolled across campus once his classes had ended, not the tiniest bit more knowledgeable about the topics they covered but rather terrified of the creatures. Sitting in class had allowed his mind to wander free, and it had absolutely terrified him. But it had also given him an idea. Perhaps there would be books about the creatures, any sort of information at all, in the library. That was where he was headed now.

There were quite a few people in the library, more than he had expected to be there. Lucius tried to avoid becoming overly fearful as he strolled between the long shelves, trying to ignore everyone. His eyes scanned the titles, and, finally, he found a book that could possibly be useful. It was a heavy novel that appeared to be about creatures found in mythology. Lucius couldn't help but give a thin smile at this. It was almost a sort of way for him to assure himself that the creatures were part of his mind. After all, if he found them in an encyclopedia of fantasy creatures, they certainly couldn't be real, right?

He walked into the main section of the library, looking for somewhere to sit. Just about every table had one or two people sitting at it, sometimes even more. Finally, he spotted a table by the window with only one person sitting at it. He recognized the man sitting there, although he didn't know his name. Lucius was quite sure it was something common, he just didn't know what it was. He headed over to the table. "Do you mind if I sit there?" he asked, nodding towards the empty seat.

Duncan was very nearly lost to the real world when a very real voice came crashing into the midst of the book's world. His whole body jolted at the sound and his book dropped from his hands to fall closed without a marker.

“Oh, yes, of course, certainly,” he stammered in the posh London accent his mother had taught him, in anticipation of his going to England, where a London accent would be far more popular than a Scottish one. Of course, he still reverted back to the broad Scottish brogue when he was alone or, occasionally, when he was upset. He certainly tried not to find any more reasons to stand out than he already had.

Duncan glanced up briefly at the young man who had spoken to nod as further statement of allowing him to sit at the table. Then, he ducked his head back down to search for his lost page. Slowly, he stopped looking for his page. His thoughts turned to those of suspicion. He’d not made any friends while at university and he didn’t think anyone would be so foolish as to choose a seat by the nutcase from the insane family of elf people. It wasn’t that he was conceited enough to think that his legend had spread across the entire school or that everyone who heard of it cared, but enough had happened to make him automatically suspicious of anyone and everyone.

Carefully, so as not to appear rude, Duncan looked up from his book to observe the other man. When he did so, his eyes fell on the title of the book he had. Could he not escape his grandfather’s legacy? The fellow was holding an encyclopaedia for fantasy creatures. Only slightly less specific than the elves his grandfather had ranted about.

With shaking hands, Duncan snapped his book shut. He stood and marched out of the library at a clipped pace. The only thing that kept him from running was his acute awareness of his already warped reputation. He didn’t need to add anything worse to it.

Alistair Thompson, an upperclassman, came over to the table in order to chide his juniors about their noise level in the library, but only arrived in time to see Duncan’s retreating back. Alistair wasn’t a bad fellow, and he felt bad for poor Duncan’s situation, but he didn’t dare help. He was only a scholarship student, at just about the bottom of the school’s social scale and he didn’t want to become fodder for more trouble. He caught the title of the other student’s book and sighed.

“Todd doesn’t like talking about things like that,” he said, misunderstanding and thinking that the other student had been asking Duncan about elves. It wasn’t such a stretch of the imagination. There had been times where Duncan had been swarmed by other students all with mocking and irreverent questions about elves. “He’s very discreet about his expertise. Regardless, I think both of you should turn your attention to more useful studies. Magic and faeries aren’t real and it will do you no good to study them.”

Meanwhile, Duncan kept his pace up until he locked the door of his room behind him and leaned on it, as if he were expecting an assault to come from the other side.

“Och, Duncan,” he said to himself. “What do ye think yer doin’? Runnin’ ‘way like ye was chased by a bogle.” He laughed then at his own ridiculousness and shook his head. He let go of the door and stepped away from it.

Not willing to return to the library after his abrupt departure, Duncan decided instead to write back to his family. He’d been putting it off all day but there was no point to doing so. Perhaps it was his continual thoughts on his family’s insanity that lead these things to happen. He knew he was only making excuses for now, but really the whole thing was just a trifle and why not simply get it done now?

He sat down at purposefully began writing in his neatest hand, so as to take up as much time as possible. He wrote in a dialect that was a mix of proper English and the Scottish dialect used where he’d grown up. It wasn’t very thoroughly mixed, as his thoughts tended to swing from complete Scots, to complete English. He didn’t make an effort to write in one or the other because his brother wrote in much the same manner. They understood each other and found no reason to change. This was why he wrote to his brother and not his mother or father, who would demand either one dialect or the other.

The letter had his brother giving Duncan’s congratulations to their sister on the upcoming arrival of the new bairn. He gave consolation to his mother and her frayed wits while also feeding her white lies about his life at Oxford to keep her from panic. He sent commiseration to his brother, who was increasingly embarrassed by their family, though Finn had never disagreed with the family’s ideals before now.

All in all, it was a fairly dull letter. It didn’t really convey much of what Duncan really was thinking or feeling, but then again, letters never really did. There was no substitute for personal interaction and, despite his disagreements with them, Duncan found himself missing his crazy family. There was safety in numbers, after all, and he looked like the sanest of the lot.

Carefully, he re-read the letter to make sure it held all of the skin-deep sentiment he intended, then leaned back to let the ink dry slowly. He could have sped the process along but his intend was time wasting. He wanted to take up as much time as he could until supper, so that he could eat and then retire for the night to hope that the next day would be more pleasant.