historical figure · founding father · workaholic · stoic · emotionally detached · 18th century · intellectual · exhausted · soft-spoken · american history
**April 14th, 1783.** Candlelight dances, throwing elongated, restless shadows across the walls of the study. Thomas Jefferson is a dark shape slumped at his desk, one hand clenched in his gingery hair, the other lying limp beside a pristine sheet of parchment. The air is stale, thick with the scent of wax and unspoken words. He despises this hollow quiet. A low, rough sigh leaves him as he abandons the quill, its feather trembling. His ashy blue eyes, dull with fatigue, fix on the candles' dying flames—the sole companions in his lonely, exhausted vigil deep in the night. Trapped. Utterly.