"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
(Everything is different, but it will always be the same.)
Eilidh thinks about that day in the meadow often. She thinks about him, about those ten words in particular and how true they had become for her — because in spite of all of her best efforts she is still here, breathing in contagion when she knows better. Choosing death, again and again and again, rather than to leave this place behind.
Today, around the bend, and between two ancient oak trees Eilidh is laying at the foot of the bulge of earth that hides her mother’s bones. In the summer, the wheat grass had grown wild. It had taken years, undoubtedly, but it had claimed the land inch by inch until the grave was lost beneath it, and here and there was dotted with lilac cranesbill and yellow toadflax. Now, the wildflowers have died. They are nothing more than withered stalks, a ropey, earthy reminder of what once had been and now was no more.
If only the rest of Beqanna could do the same.
Because it isn’t fair that winter comes, and it looks no different than the winter before it. The ground is hard, and frosted. A thin layer of snow coats the long grass, but every-so-often a stalk breaks free into the open air. The sky is still cold, and bright gray, and it isn’t fair because everything left alive should be screaming — everything should be tinted a raw, and angry red. Because there should be warning when a world is this broken, when it is this diseased. Not peaceful like this. Not with the frail warmth of clouded sunlight on her skin, and the winter birds chirping deeper in the thicket.
The snow makes everything seem pure.
“I can’t leave you,” she says into the snow, with the side of her face resting gently against the frosted earth where the mound begins to slope up to house Moselle, or rather, what’s left of her.
It lingered disembodied in the air as he vanished, darting away with the inhuman speed of a vampire. He was only a flash, a blur, a random blink of indigo blue in anyone's peripheral. It wasn't entirely an unfair game, either. The girl he raced was his twin sister, a ghost.
The sky was cloudy, but even still, he could feel the pull on his energy from the damn Winter sun. It hadn't bothered him before, not until he'd gained his power. Now it drained him, weakened him. It was thanks to the cloud coverage that he could be out in it at all, and to boost his chances of winning, he kept to the shadiest parts as best he could.
He thrilled at the rush of wind, at the speed in which he could go from one place to another no matter the distance. It wasn't teleportation. It was a hell of a lot more fun. He still had to show his mom, too. He only hadn't decided if her healing would keep her alive or if he'd be the death of her, carrying his father's contagion. In a way, it would be a happy ending. She would be giving her life for him. It was what any mother would do, wasn't it? She'd be proud to die for him.
A dead thing caught his attention though, and he halted. He sniffed at the air, but couldn't find the stench of death. It pulled a twisted smile to his young lips, glinted in his eyes. Not dead, then. Perfect.
He appeared suddenly, a blue boy with sparkling constellations over his face and legs, golden-green eyes and dark, baby-short hair. The only warning she had was a cough, a wet rattle in his little chest. She'd be taller than he had she been standing, but instead, she lay on the ground as though sleeping. Or mourning. Or basically dead.
She would be, soon. By this plague that he spreads.
Or by his hand.
Maybe she’ll just stay here, with her head resting on her mother’s grave, until the contagion finds her and makes bones out of her flesh. How sweet they would look, mother and daughter, curled together in one final embrace when a thousand years from today some poor, wretched soul stumbles on a femur and unearths them purely by chance. And if she did go, tonight or any other night, would it be home to the stars? Would they get to look down together as constellations, and see their bodies here on earth, hand-in-hand?
“Hello, Darling.”
Eilidh doesn’t lift her head, though there are parts of her that want to. There are parts she has forgotten that beg her to find her feet in these moments, some sick instinct that wants her to survive even if she is happier dead, some sick instinct that decides this voice is a threat even though she had thought she had abandoned her fear long ago. A knot of dread almost tangles in her belly at just the sound of him; he has their father’s voice (a voice that she will remember until the day that she dies), or rather, something in it that had belonged to Him first.
And suddenly, it’s all flooding back to her. She remembers the rain, and how her tears were lost in it. She remembers how the mud sucked at her legs, and how heavy it was to lift the earth when all it wanted was to meld together and congeal. She remembers the weight of her mother’s body, and how it had killed her in more ways than just one to lower it into the hole that she had dug.
“Who are you?”
She asks him, even though she doesn’t want to know.
She groans when he darts off, the words i’ll race you coaxing a scowl to that indigo and starlight face an instant before she sighs and fades almost completely from view. It is as though all of the color, all of the dimension, is pulled right out of her being. Even the snowflakes that had settled in a soft white blanket across narrow hips and thin shoulders fall abruptly to the ground in a spiral of pale, dizzying dust.
It is harder to track him while he’s in motion, so she traces him in bursts, waits for moments where the sun burns through the cloud cover and her brother is just a little slower, a little bluer. But it isn’t until he draws to a halt that she truly begins her chase in earnest, impatient ears buried in the deep, gemstone blue of her indigo mane. She knows him well, can read the pleasure in his body language even at this distance, and she is sure it means nothing good.
The illusion of normalcy comes second-nature to her as she pushes that slender little body into a run - but there is no cloud of white snow flinging from her heels, no crescent stamp dug into the mantle of snow and glazed ice. It is like watching the memory of a girl run past, so faded and translucent and perhaps not at all real.
But she is.
She memorizes the strides it takes to be at his side, the curve of her trajectory so slightly to one side as she dives beneath the snow, beneath the solid ground. Five, four, three, two - she finds a heap of bones where there should be dirt, is puzzled and curious as she reaches out to drag a ghostly nose through them. Then she rises, up, up through the ground to stand with Deci and a girl who seems as broken as the body she’s made a nest above.
Her eyes find those of her brothers first, and hers are so blue and disappointed, scolding when she says, “Oh Deci, you’ll get her sick.” Knows without knowing that he probably already has. That it is probably too late for her, as it is for everyone, now. Then her gaze shifts to the girl, softens and changes to something so kind, so patient. So unbefitting the question that falls like snow from such translucent, shimmering lips. “Do you know you’re sleeping on someones bones?”
@[The Plague] - hello angel of death, can you also roll for atria who was in the pangea thread via auric's post? <3
For once, he was glad when his twin showed up, smirking at her as she rose up from beneath the mound the woman was snuggling. She scolded him, and he found he liked that too, flashing a wicked grin. And her voice was so sweet and kind, so patient as she asked the girl if she knew she was sleeping on someone's bones.
"She isn't asleep, Atria," he told her helpfully because he knew far more than she did. "I bet she'd love to play with you in the afterlife though."
That wicked smile turned darker, then he launched himself at the stranger, throwing his small weight down and extending his fangs with a hiss. It was his first time, unfortunately. Clumsily, probably a bit painfully, they sank into flesh. He didn't even have baby teeth in yet to practice with, but he was trusting instinct as he closed his eyes and bit down hard.
After he got a good hold, he tore his mouth away, tasting the blood on his lips as he licked them, rising to his feet to stand again. His eyes opened, gold and glittering and delighted. He would absolutely be doing more of that.
can the killer in me tame the fire in you?
I am sick of the chase but I'm hungry for blood
so he's awful D; if you dont want her bitten, jenny said atria could've stepped in front of her and turned solid to take the bite instead. <3
The question lingers between their bodies, unanswered.
She can feel the silence that settles like ash on their skin, but only for a moment. It’s a moment that feels like there are oceans between it, when she can hear the thrum of her heart violent against her chest as it goes mad. She thought she had forgotten fear, but his honeyed voice (peppered with that drawl that’s too familiar) draws it out of her soul as though it were only charming a snake when there is nothing charming about this moment. She thought she had forgotten fear, but it glazes her eyes, settling in the fractures of her irises like snow.
Because in the next moment there is something new.
From out of the thinly veiled earth she comes, as transparent and cold as these winter moments. “Oh, Deci,” the apparition says, as soft as an angel Eilidh thinks. “You’ll get her sick.” Alone Eilidh might have smiled for her, because she seems so small and the lines of her face are kind when she forgets the fact that the male with her has a hunger in his eyes that she wishes she didn’t recognize but does. Better than words, his eyes tell her that sickness might be a mercy.
“Do you know you’re sleeping on someone’s bones?” Says the ghost.
Eilidh wonders if she’ll ever stop knowing.
And then it happens; with just a few words and the cruel twist of his mouth he is on her, sunk into her flesh with fangs he shouldn’t have tasting blood he shouldn’t want to taste. For a few seconds she fights it, a cruel twist of instinctive irony when all she wants to do is settle into this grave and build a home beside Moselle’s bones — but the struggle is difficult, and she feels his body everywhere, and half of her is wild while they other half just doesn’t care to keep going. She doesn’t know if she is the one who is screaming, but she thinks that she can hear it in the cold, empty air.
And she can almost feel it, the sickness as it oozes down off his fangs to mingle in her veins between her blood cells.
Then everything is quiet as red tangles with white in the snow. She feels the pressure leave her bones, and sees them both standing above her.
She doesn’t find her feet. She doesn’t run.
She was dead before they ever found her, wasn’t she?
