If he is the wild, then she is the gentle that tempers him.
She blinks in the light that settles against her delicate face, marvels at the air and the breeze and the way her damp mane tries to lift from the crest of her neck. Sensation is so different in this place, entirely new and entirely wonderful. She pulls in air through her nose, those little pink nostrils flared wide and searching. There are no names for the smells that find her, no words she can apply to the sharp odor of volcanic ash clinging to everything. To sulfur and brimstone and the way they make her nose wrinkle and sneeze.
But there is something sweeter beneath that smell, something fresh and green and covered in dew, and though she has no appetite for it, she finds herself dropping that delicate pink nose against the ground with such quiet curiosity. She would’ve explored it longer, snuffling softly at the grass beneath her and the dirt below that, but a nose touches her face and she is suddenly too busy smiling up at the boy who had always been there.
She is so pleased when he curls around her, his body large enough to conceal hers in the bend of his stomach as she burrows closer into him, pushing her face against the soft affections he so readily offers. It is so familiar to lay like this, to feel the beat of his heart pounding through his skin, that she nearly falls asleep. It is safe here, so safe, and her chestnut head sags a little, coming to rest against the hard slope of his shoulder.
But another nose touches her side, not her brothers because his is still nuzzled to the damp hairs on her soft, white cheek. She makes a little sound, a little huff, lifts her head to find a much larger version of themselves watching with lips curled so fondly. His voice is familiar, a sound she can remember as if from a dream. But the words are meaningless, shapeless, and so her attention drifts from him when Brigade nudges her neck and clambors to his feet. She is slower to rise, watching her brother with eyes like green oceans, tropic and swirling, too bright to belong to anything but gemstones.
It looks difficult, and her knees give an empathetic jolt when he tumbles to the ground, but then she’s climbing to her feet, too, stumbling once, twice, three times until she is braced wide-legged and little sides heaving. She has to stand there for a moment, let her lungs remember themselves, let her body learn her legs and the weight of gravity settled across her back. But then she is stumbling gracelessly forward, nudging in beside Brigade to reach for the teat on the far side. It would be easier to move around their mother, move to the other side where she doesn’t have to reach so far. But she finds she does not want to leave her brothers side, gives up after a few awkward suckles with milk beaded on her whiskers and her chin, and leans quietly into him.
i am brambles but i am tangled in your love