"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
11-29-2018, 05:31 PM (This post was last modified: 11-29-2018, 05:38 PM by luster.)
She waited too long to go and talk to him, waited too long to ask him why he hadn’t cared when Heartfire told him these were his children. He’d only glared at her sister harder, had only left with her like those words meant absolutely nothing to him. Like he didn’t care at all what they had created together. Maybe he didn’t, maybe he was so happy with his new family that he didn’t want anything that could ruin that, so happy with someone far better than Luster could ever be.
Someone too close to her for this to ever stop hurting, for her heart to ever stop breaking.
But that isn’t the man she remembers from the cave, the one who had held her and loved her so gently. Pressed kisses to her face and her neck like she mattered to him, like she meant something. Like he didn’t want to live without her. She remembers all of it now, she thinks. All those slippery details that had been so set on falling away like sand between grasping fingers. She remembers how much she loved him in that moment, how it had been so easy to promise him her whole heart, her everything. Just for him, always for him.
It is hard to know how much of that she still feels for him when she hides behind walls constructed to keep her safe, protect her from a heart that almost absolutely loves him still in that same way. A heart that will only find loss and rejection if it doesn’t let go of such foolishness. It is good that he is happy now - and he must be, so selfishly she needs him to be, because if he isn’t it will be a pain so much harder to bear. This incredible loss for nothing at all.
Except, it isn’t nothing, because nothing is not what dampens her neck and her flanks with sweat. It doesn’t tighten in her belly and make her groan with pain, this discomfort so out of her own control.
Something so beautiful, so perfect, does that to her.
Something they did together.
Something they would do together.
She regrets that it took her so long to understand this, that even if he doesn’t still love her in that same way anymore, he will love them. That whatever she saw in him those many days ago must be something beyond her understanding, because he is not that man. He would want to be here just as much as she would if the roles were reversed, and she will not keep them from a father who wants to love them.
But they’re coming now, coming soon, and he isn’t here with her. Is likely with Heartfire and their brood. She tries not to wonder if their children will look alike, the children of the man she loves, the children of her sister. It is an oddly painful thing to wonder about, a thing that reaches for feelings of being replaced with someone better, someone more, no matter how hard she tries to turn her back to it. But it is easier now, easier to let go of it when there is so much else going on. She has to find him, has to find Dovev, has to do it quickly before they come.
She is already exhausted when she pulls on the dregs of her magic, should be finding a quiet place to bring their children into this world. But instead she struggles on, pausing only when the contractions force her to, ears pinned and vanished into the currents of a dark, wild mane. She can feel the magic nestled against him, has been aware if it ever since she saw it go to him, cling to his skin. There to keep him safe when she cannot be. He is close, somewhere on the island still because the pull of it is less, doesn’t make her feel so stretched thin. She focuses on sending more to him. Stars and fireflies and dandelion puffs of soft light in the deepening dusk, all of it to him as she makes her way back to the place where she had last seen him.
“Please, Dovev. Please.”
The words come in a groan, and she bites back a soft cry when another contraction cripples her where she stands, dropping her too far from where she was meant to be. She heaves where she falls, stretching her body with a groan like it might ease some of this pressure, this pain building inside her. The grass is cool beneath her cheek, the trees she had been aiming for still a line of darkening green across an empty meadow. She watches them dimly, wills that familiar silhouette to appear from out of the dark. Wills him to know what he can’t possibly know. Then in one last exhausted effort, she asks too much of her magic, shapes the remaining light that isn’t with him into a pillar of twinkling bright above her in the darkening dusk.
A beacon.
Please, find me, she thinks as she closes her eyes, the first shadows of fear creeping in to settle in her bones.
The babies were nursing again, and he'd left Heartfire to care for them and tuck them in for the night. He'd be back soon to hold them.
He loved their smell clinging to him. Like he could take them everywhere he went.
Everything should feel at peace tonight in this place of safety, his family all gathered up and cradled here where he could look after them. He still needed to return to Ischia, but he'd see to his babies first. He'd almost woken Briella to come with him on his walk, a patrol because he wasn't used to doing nothing. No threats were here and he should feel at peace.
That dream was nagging at him though, knuckling at his chest and making him sore. It was just a dream, no matter how real it had seemed so long ago. He'd been training too damn hard that day, was all. The magician worked him damn hard again, was all. Just a dream.
Heartfire had said Luster's baby was his, but that was ridiculous. Just an attempt to distract him away from her so he wouldn't follow. Well, it hadn't worked. There was no way her kids were from him. He hadn't actually slept with her, and even if he had, that was years ago. She had obviously gotten knocked up by someone else, and he was vehemently ignoring the flare of something iron hot burning inside him at the thought.
She was HIS.
No. Just a dream.
Every part of his life was kept sorted and locked away and he'd always avoided the place in his mind where Luster was hidden away. That damn dream tore him up, made his heart bleed fresh with the yearning for something he could never have. It was a glow of perfection, divine and so far above him, handed out to him in an open palm and he wanted it so bad he could just die. What he'd had with Luster was impossible, and he squinted from the brightness of it in his memories, turned his face away with so much pain at how deeply he wanted it but could never have it.
He could never have it.
His jaw tensed and his heart clutched, pulling open the tattered seams of his chest as those familiar lights floated to him so slowly. No. He couldn't. It hadn't been real. He should stay away from her. Her magic was so damn relentless, though, always burying itself in his hair and calling to him. Then that damn light shot to the sky and he froze in fear, knowing he had been so uneasy for a damn good reason and realizing it was for Luster.
He burst from his standstill, flying through the quiet night with a streak of stars at his feet as he navigated his way through the trees as quick as he could. It was so strange to think the last time he'd seen her she'd been protecting him from Heartfire. Well, before he'd just seen her hours ago as Heartfire stumbled away from the crowd.
She was there on the ground and he slowed, gradually forming from the night's shadows as he stepped silently closer, his black eyes trained on her. He held no expression as he watched her, sweat dampening her blue and white skin and her breaths coming shorter. The lights were a quiet aura around him, floating orbs of varying intensity, collected as he'd followed their trail to her.
He said nothing as he looked down at her, coming to a stop nearby and tracing the crescent scar of his teeth on her neck with a quiet gaze. Why was she here alone? Where was the father to her children? He didn't deserve her, whoever he was. Just as that jerk didn't deserve Leliana. That scar probably shouldn't be so attractive, a mark of his wild violence. It made him want to leave another, make her eyes pop wide as they had when he'd first thrust so sharply inside her.
Except that he hadn't.
She would not do this alone, though. He wouldn't let her. She was still his even if it hadn't been real. He'd marked her his so many years ago. His face didn't soften as he took another deliberate step closer, lowering his head to hover over her neck, lingering too long at his scar in her otherwise perfect skin. He blew a soft breath over it, kissed gently, then met her eyes as he dragged his muzzle to her jaw for a brief nudge of encouragement. He was here. He wouldn't let her do this alone.
She is too exhausted to feel him moving closer, arcing like a star across the meadow, drenched in those pale, twinkling lights. Her sides heave so hard, her pulse a drumbeat in her ears, an ache against her sternum. But it is fear that steals her breath now, fear that if something happens, if something goes wrong and she can’t be there to protect her children, what would happen to them? She groans, scrapes her forelegs across the grass to draw long furrows of dark soil in the soft ground below like she’s trying to sit up - trying to stand and find Dovev or Kharon or Heartfire, trying to find someone who can keep them safe if she can’t.
But it’s just fear, just this isolation and dark and those cold, silver stars staring down at her making her feel this way.
She can’t rise anyway, can’t do anything but try not to push yet - except even that is failing her now. There is pressure where there hadn’t been before, pain unlike anything she has ever known and it drags shadows across her vision as her body contracts again, nose stretching out before her in the grass with another low groan.
And a nose, lips, pressed suddenly to the scar on her neck.
There is only one someone who would ever touch her there so fondly, only one man who would lay a kiss across that patch of bare, ruined skin. She lifts her head to find him, straining in the dark and with fear still bright in the edges of those wild brown eyes. “Dovev,” she says, some broken kind of whisper that is stolen away in another groan, “you made it.” She tries to reach up and touch those pale, perfect lips to the bone mask of his beautiful face. Notices the trickle of blood at the seam where it disappears into his skin, tries to draw her tongue over it to clean and soothe the brokenness like she had so many other times. So easy to fall into these old habits.
But he is too far away or she is too exhausted, and her head drops tiredly back to the ground, the mottled blue of her cheek finding relief in the coolness of the soft, dewey grass. The pillar of light falls apart above them, millions of swirling little firefly lights turned to dust and falling in a whirl down to where they are. They settle in a dome around them, settle against Dovev because they love him so - hide in his hair and slip into the porous surface of that beautiful bone armor. Less to maintain as she finally stops fighting and gives into the contractions tearing apart her insides.
She pushes, her hooves digging into the grass until it unearths the dark soil below, closes her eyes and grinds her cheek, too. Her sides are so dark with sweat, that perfect skin a blue so deep it is bruised, almost black. She isn’t sure how long this goes on, isn’t sure how much longer she can do this, but then suddenly the pain changes, the pressure easing as a small figure lands in the grass behind her.
She tries to stand, tries to move so she can curl around their girl, but she is so tired, so exhausted and there are still contractions rippling through her stomach. Still another perfect child to come. She manages to twist enough that she can just barely reach her, fights a little more until she is close enough to clean the birth from her delicate blue body. Her tongue is warm, moving in long sweeping strokes across a body that starts to fuss now, across little muscles that want to move and do and be. She is so perfect, so perfect, and Luster feels an ache in her chest when she sees the blue and white patterns stretched across her skin as the sac comes off.
But there is more, too. Dark eyes like her father, black and beautiful like velvet, like an endless night sky with all these lights reflected there. She tips her unsteady face up at mom first, blinks like she isn’t entirely sure how to make sense of all this. Of this sudden new world. Then she’s lifting her face up to find her father, getting a little steadier where she lays, blinking less with those beautiful eyes. She is transfixed though, watching him with an air of impossible curiosity. Then the light around them seems to coalesce against her skin, drawing seamlessly together until the shapes they create across her body are undeniably like the bone plates on Dovev. A face plate appears and then fades, same with her shoulders and her ribs, the top of her slender spine. And then she is just dark again, attention shifting to look up at the flickering lights around them as Luster continues to clean and warm her and draw her as close as she can between contractions that are already trying to lay her flat on the ground. “It would seem that she takes after you.” Luster says so softly, pausing only for a moment to lift her beautiful, love-filled face to Dov. Then she tenses, huffs hard as another contraction rolls her from her belly to her side again, so careful to fight her way back from their beautiful daughter so she doesn’t accidentally strike her with a hoof. “Keep her warm, Dovev, keep our girl safe.” A groaned murmur as she closes her eyes again, body rigid and wanting to push.
and in the end, i will seek you out amongst the stars the space dust of me will whisper “i love you”
The first thing she notices is the absence of her brother where he should be tucked so close against her side, curled around her body in the dark and quiet of their small world. She misses him immediately, an ache in her chest, unease that unfurls in her stomach and spreads out through the pathway of nerves that spiderweb out across her small body. He has been her forever since the beginning of time, always there and always with her. It feels wrong to be without him.
But then she opens her eyes, so dark and velvet, so beautiful and endless. There are lights flickering around them in the dark, a night sky fallen to earth just to hold them safe together, protect them. It makes the world so much smaller for her, only as big as these lights reach. Makes it easier to adjust when her world before had been so much smaller, so much darker. She blinks, blinks again and again until her eyes want to stay open, until they land first on a face that is so like hers, and then again on a face that looks back at her with her own eyes.
She knows mother by her touch, by her smell, by the way the little blue mare shifts to hold her daughter so close. By the tongue she sweeps across Dark’s skin, the patterns of white she uncovers, large shapes with smatterings of freckles at the edges like the lights that dance around them. Lights up faces she knows she already loves. She nuzzles into mom, huffs softly when Luster cleans her face and her nose and her little ears, resettles that tiny curl of damp forelock back against the blue of such an impossibly delicate forehead.
But she wants to see that other face, too. The one she doesn’t know by touch or by smell, not by sound. The one who would be a stranger except that he reminds her so much of her brother, somehow. Of a boy she’d lain with in the dark her whole life. She blinks up at him with such love, that same love she feels for the boy who needs to hurry up and join her, for the woman fussing so sweetly as she cleans her and keeps her warm. She flicks her little tail, lets her eyes wander to the ridges of white along his thin body, to the lights buried there and making him glow.
She wants to glow too, just like him, whoever he is.
Wants it so bad that for a moment she feels different, feels her skin tingle and tickle and something elastic stretching in her mind. Then there is light just exactly like his, on her face and blinding her for a moment in a gentle sort of way, making it impossible to see out into the world beyond anymore. More light on her legs and her shoulders, along her back like a blanket of cool despite the tongue working to keep her warm. It makes her as beautiful as he is, and then in the next instant it is gone again. But she doesn’t mind, can still feel it sitting there inside her, waiting.
Mom says something, and her voice sounds like home, makes her sick with wanting her brother. But the voice is also beautiful, like a song she’s heard her whole life, a melody she knows by heart. She wants her to keep talking, keep making these sounds that are nothing more than sounds to her, such good sounds. Except she groans and leans away again, suddenly gone, and Dark can feel her her expression change. Little muscles that pull a confused frown to her lips, ears that would disappear entirely into her mane if there were anything more to it than silk and down. She bleats softly, bleats again because the night is creeping in to touch her skin and trace lonely little kisses down the length of her spine, and it is so, so cold.
He remained quiet, only giving her a subtle nod. These were not his kids, couldn't possibly be, but he would still have done anything to protect her. He would stay here at her side where she needed him, beneath the dome of her lights as the beam shattered to shower and float around them.
She gave birth to a girl and immediately began cleaning her. He watched from where he was, quiet and still pushing away the emotions that came with knowing she'd slept with someone. She'd had someone's kid. Blue and white like her mom though, the white a bit different. Kind of like his. But she wasn't his, she couldn't be.
The babe took an interest in him, rounding dark eyes on him. Like his. But she wasn't his, couldn't be. It was literally impossible. It had been years, it had been a dream. She was there though, studying him and then pulling the light around her to mimic his armor. His heart pinched. She was so beautiful. It made him wish she really was his. His and Luster's.
"It would seem that she takes after you," Luster said softly then, and he frowned at the girl. Luster couldn't possibly have believed Heartfire. It didn't make any sense. Obviously, her baby was someone else's. Was he meant to be a stand-in? Without even talking to him about it? Take over, be the Daddy to someone else's kid? He'd done it for Briella, but that was different.
"Keep her warm, Dovev, keep our girl safe."
He was tense, his nostrils flaring and expression stern. He swallowed down what he could, though, and obeyed her, taking purposeful steps to her daughter and testing her scent with an outstretched nose. He snorted it out sharply, glancing at Luster who started struggling to birth the twin. Heartfire had said there were two.
The baby frowned and bleated and shivered. His warmth was given to her as he arched over her and tugged her in against him firmly. He would warm her, this stranger's child with Luster's light. He would do it for Luster. And he'd try not to love her.
She catches him frowning at their daughter sometime between contractions, starts to wonder if maybe he would have rather she kept this from him. Kept the secret of their children to herself so that he could be happy with her sister, could belong wholly to his family without this mess on the side. He’s even stern when he approaches the small blue filly, breathing the scent of her skin in and then exhaling it hard like it’s burned his nose on it. But he curls with her anyway, settles his beautiful body down beside her so that she can be protected and warm, tugs her in close so that their girl burrows into him, exploring his body with a soft kind of wonder.
Her nose pokes at the ridges of bone, snuffles softly at the bitter, metallic tang of blood she’s surely discovered against the night and white of his skin. Then she finds the patch of stars buried against the corner of his mouth and she nuzzles it so insistently, that tiny dark tail flapping softly behind her.
Luster wishes she could watch them forever, even in these strange little fragments she’s stealing between contractions, but so soon she finds she must push again, finds their second is ready to join them. She groans, the sweat dappling her body so dark and deep it is like oceans have opened up across the softer blue. Her legs kick, rigid and reaching and drawing little furrows in the grass as her muscles contract and she pushes with everything she has left. She tries not to pant, tries not to cry out among these grunted efforts, but she is so exhausted, so spent.
She doesn’t make a conscious decision to do so, in fact had quietly told herself to leave the man alone, to let him love from a distance if that was what he preferred - and to just love them, not her, never her anymore. But she is so weak with wanting him, with loving him, and even with those quiet brown eyes pinched shut, she knows she is reaching for him as her head stretches rigidly in the grass, braced against a contraction that has brought her to the pinnacle of pain and so much pressure again. She heaves another groan, pushes hard, and is rewarded as a second damp bundle slides into the grass beside them.
There’s a beat where she can’t move, where her eyes don’t want to open and her muscles won’t respond to the urging of her mind, and she feels like she might sleep forever until all those dead stars have flung themselves from the sky. But it’s only a beat, only a second, and then she’s forcing her body to obey the heart that is so ready to meet their second child. She curls around him, the motion bringing her closer to Dovev and their beautiful little girl who at some point must’ve half-fallen asleep against the warmth of her father. But Luster only minds them for the briefest instant, only basks in that warmth for a fraction of a second, and then she’s cleaning the damp and birth from the emerging body of a small colt.
She is in love at once, crooning softly at the near-black shade of blue that stretches across his skin, dark like steel and so beautiful. The color is interrupted here and there with irregular shapes of white and spatterings of the celestial markings he must have inherited from his father. She cleans his ears and his face, washes around eyes that are so unmistakably brown and beautiful like her own, and it feels as though her heart has never ached so deeply in her chest. “I love you, baby.” She murmurs so softly against his ear, memorizing the way he feels so soft and warm beneath the white of her wandering lips.
She stays like that as long as she can, curled in a stardust dark with part of her family, wishing Merry were here too to share in this with her. He was her first, after all, hers in every way that mattered. But eventually she has to stand, has to use those weary legs so that their children can nurse, take what they need to be so strong and healthy. She kisses the boy again, drags her nose along his neck to breathe in that amazing smell, and then she’s rising with a soft, pained groan, closing her eyes beneath a furrowed brow until she feels steady enough to open them again. Her lips drop to the boys back, leave a trail of soft kisses along each vertebrae of that impossibly small spine. “Come on, baby, let’s try out those beautiful legs.” It doesn’t matter to her that the words hold no meaning to them yet, that all they will understand is the soft crooning of her gentle tone. It is enough to speak to them anyway, love them aloud, finally, forever.
Her lips move to his legs, stroke the soft, clean skin with a sweep of her nose, lingering with a smile over the stars that creep up over him. “He looks so much like you.” She breathes, aches, realizes a second later she’s said it aloud. Her eyes lift to find Dovev’s face, her expression suddenly quieter, a subtle ache that maybe he won’t remember how to recognize after so long. And then, hesitantly. “I’m glad it was you.” She whispers, pauses, looks from their son to their daughter who is now busy trying to untangle her legs and stand, leaned in so safely against her daddy. “I don’t understand why it happened, or how it’s even possible, but i’m glad it was you.”
She took to his rough care as if she were made for it. The tiny velvet nose exploring his ripped skin and solid bone was a persistent heat determined to thaw the ice in his stern expression. And it was working. Even her tickling little snuffles at discovering his rusted blood were melting him gradually, watching how she didn't balk or turn away and instead how she took so much interest in this monster she should hate.
He was completely won over to her by the time she found his stars settled in the corner of his mouth. She pushed at it, nuzzling so insistently as her little tail flipped happily. She liked them and somehow that was deeply pleasing to him. The soft smile that stretched that spot of star-flecked blue was hesitant and helpless until it ended as an involuntary grin and he nuzzled her back, nudging the hollow between her nostril and cheek almost playfully in his rough way, huffing a smiling breath over her.
Luster groaned again and his attention snapped to her, black eyes sharp and watchful as her legs made their paths into the earth, tensed with all her beautiful strength as her belly squeezed and she pushed. It must have hurt so bad. He couldn't even imagine. He knew what it felt like for bone shards to thrust forcefully out of his body, but nothing comparable to bringing new life into the world.
He only knew how to take it.
Her struggle upset him and he quickly shifted closer, reaching over the small, dark girl to drag her helplessly with him, tucking her in close with a firm touch. Luster reached for him blindly and he met her with the side of his nose, brushing against her in reassurance and hating that he couldn't protect her from this, couldn't strike down this pain as swiftly and easily as he had so many lives.
"I'm here," he whispered, his voice soft and tight with concern. "You're alright, you're almost done. I've got you, love."
Love. He'd always called her that and it slipped as easily from his lips now as it always had. He pulled back, subtly more guarded because he shouldn't speak to her that way. She belonged to someone else, it would seem, and perhaps so did he. Her youngest spilled with a last powerful heave then, Dovev's eyes still on her weary, beautiful face. She must have been exhausted but she pushed herself up anyway, turned to the little colt to clean him as attentively as she had for the girl.
The crooning sound of Luster's voice demanded his attention though. After sneaking a quiet nuzzle to the sleeping girl against him he settled black eyes on the child winning her pleasure that way.
He froze.
And he couldn't look away. Couldn't breathe.
The boy was a dark, steel blue over his hips and shoulders where his baby fur couldn't completely disguise the roan underneath, damp and nearly as black as his father. And there was no denying that anymore, not with the soft galaxy blending in with pitch black, outlined in a gradient of white slivers where some edges of his secret tobiano lit brightly and faded into a smattering of celestial stars.
"I love you, baby," she told their baby boy. God, how was that even possible? Their kids. His. How could it not be though with his daughter's endless velvety black eyes and hidden armor of light, the boy's darkness and stars and that wicked little glint in brown eyes that finally turned to him as if his gaze held a natural dare in them.
Each of them was a perfect melding of their parents. The best pieces of Luster and the best pieces of him shared between the two newborn foals. His eyes on this one, her eyes on that one. His color here, her color there, mixing all together into a beautiful, impossible family from a dream.
"They're gorgeous," he murmured in contented awe. How could this even be real? The only time he'd slept with her was... not even real, right? But it must have been somehow. He frowned. But... If that actually happened?
He watched in tense silence as she coaxed the babies to their feet. Theirs. His mind was reeling, replaying the familiar dream he'd relived in his mind a number of times - never while he was with Violence in case she might see too much, and not since he'd gone too far with Heartfire.
But he'd asked her to marry him. Luster.
Fucking crazy, right? Him, married?
He tried so hard to push it back and bury it down deep as he stood, reaching down to assist his dark little daughter. He didn't want to hate himself even more, but he already knew he had every reason to. Even more reason now. He'd abandoned her as if she'd been a damn dream, a goddamn fantasy as if all his aching for her was nothing more than his stupidity for falling in love with someone that probably didn't even exist.
Now she was here, he was here, everything was real. And he wasn't able to step back into that fantasy. He belonged to her sister, he thought. Possibly. He never really knew with Heartfire, but at least on his end, he was trying. But it was mixed up and confused, because if this was the reality, then he belonged to Luster. Really belonged to her as he never had. But he couldn't.
He sharpened his focus onto the here and now, onto their precious babies and their gorgeous momma. He would think it through later. His other twins had barely been born too, and he would need to return to them soon. To Heartfire. To try and hopefully catch even a little bit of sleep before what would certainly be a long, confusing day.
"I don't understand why it happened, or how it's even possible, but I'm glad it was you."
He nodded silently, stiffly, his face still tight with confusion and a racing mind, processing everything slowly and frantically, every little thing between them he'd so unknowingly fucked up as if she didn't matter to him when she did. She mattered so much. But he had nothing to show for it. Only mistakes and poor outcomes, everything that showed her the opposite, and he had no way to set it right.
Once again he was trapped by his cataclysmic existence into harming those closest to him as deeply as possible.
For what felt like an eternity, there was darkness and emptiness. The other that had been here with him, his twin sister, was now stolen from him and he was mildly irritated at her sudden disappearance. Where did she think she was going without him?
Then he forgot everything, his mind resetting in his true birth into the world, fussing softly a moment until his nose was cleaned by a gentle tongue and he could gasp in a breath. He tapped and nudged at the touch in thanks, in eagerness for more that it might have to offer him. He needed more of her.
She cleaned his eyes too, and he was able to open them, brown gaze bright on her face with innocent delight. He loved that look in her face. The way she beamed over him like he was beautiful, and of course he was just as beautiful as his sister. He glanced around for her, found her nestled in and resting against someone else.
There was hard, white bone and rivulets of dried blood around the edges on top of black and blue and stars. He peeked at his own skin, nearly as black with the same stars glittering across him in uneven patterns, with faded bits just as Momma and his sister had. So they all belonged together, he figured. He hadn't heard the man's voice as he had the soothing tone of his mother while in her belly, but he could see now that they belonged nonetheless. His brown eyes lifted to his dad's face with a sharp, mischievous glint, grinning in a way his mouth hadn't learned how to mimic just yet.
But it was time to get up now, and Mom ushered him in her gentle way. Overly eager and feeling a burst of energy, he stumbled quickly to his feet, tripping forward a few steps and falling back to the ground. He just beamed up at her though, completely unfazed. Then with a small, determined snort, he shot to his feet again and bounded forward with a confident little buck, pride and accomplishment gleaming in his eyes even as he fell to the ground again.
He'd still done it though! And he was good at it, even briefly.
He glanced at Dad and his sister for a reaction, expecting to see their pride too because he was awesome. But his attention didn't last long as he lugged his galaxy-adorned body right back up to chase after Momma and her glorious milk, digging his little face beside her thigh until he found a teet and latched on so greedily and demanding. He had to take what he could before his beautiful sister came to crowd him and take her fill too.
He calls her love, and she is comet, beautiful and burning, trapped on a path of brilliant destruction. For a moment the world shrinks to just them, to a night in a cave with his lips on her skin, her heart in his hands. She wants to cling to it like it is still something safe, still something she can rely on, still something she can put all her trust into. But she knows better, knows that it is nothing more than a reflex that makes her chest feel heavy and dark with aching, with wondering what could have been. It’s just a word, just a weapon, just a blade he doesn’t mean to lay across her heart like this.
But even as she tries to wall herself off from it, to protect what little of herself that hasn’t already been destroyed, she finds she cannot. It is still too easy (and hard, so hard) to love him, too many years of missing him and searching for him, of trying to piece those broken memories back together until she was finally able understand the depth of what she had lost. Of what they had lost. The love had always been there, hints of it in her heart, in her skin, in the way her light always left to find him, guide him, guard him. It had survived in her even when the memories had not, when they had not.
It’s good that he pulls back from her, else she would have pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth, to that soft place where night gathers on his skin in impossible, shining galaxies. She would not have been strong enough to pretend apathy, not even for him, not in that moment, not when he uses that word against her.
Not even to protect his heart in a way hers had not been.
Love.
Their boy is a welcome distraction, a balm against the wound in her throbbing chest as she watches him climb to his feet with all the stubborn determination of his beautiful father. She smiles, eyes bright, then swallows a gasp when he tumbles back down again. It is reflex to catch him, throw a soft net of twilight out to slow the fall, soften the landing on such soft, new bones. She knows she doesn’t need to, knows he will do just fine without her intervention, but it is impossible not to reach for him, not to try and keep him safe. He rises, bucks - and she laughs something soft and light, feeling a pressure in her heart ease for the first time in so long. It doesn’t even fade when he falls for a second time and she casts her net to catch him again, soften the landing.
He pauses to look over to where his father and sister stand together, the filly leaned into Dovev on wobbly, unsure legs, and Luster turns too with such soft affection bare on her face. In this moment, the only piece missing is her beautiful boy, her Merry, and it is so easy to pretend that this is her family. That they are what she had always wanted. Together, whole. Like her parents. But it is a lie that burns her, a lie brighter than the sun and she must look away or be blinded by it.
There is no together, no family.
There is only this beautiful, accidental mess.
“Come here, beautiful.” She murmurs softly to the boy, his fire and fight so strong that it drags a smile back to her lips again. He is so much like his father, so much of what she loves in that dark and bone man. The boy finds his place beside her, nosing in along her thigh until his lips discover her teat and latch on so greedy. The sensation is new and unfamiliar, beautiful, intimate in a way she cannot name but makes her heart feel fuller in her chest.
Though Merry was her first, she had never nursed him, never experienced this kind of a moment before. She surrenders to it, lets go of all that hurt and ache and confusion, all the pain that clings quietly to her like a second shadow, that quiet dread of watching Dovev leave in such a short while to return to his family, his children with her sister. She forces it back, forces it to wait and not taint this moment. Let it come later once he has left her again and the children sleep curled against the warmth of her belly.
Her eyes find the filly where she steadies herself against her father, and she recognizes the look of soft worry in those dark eyes, the hesitance in the way she stretches only as far as she can reach without leaving his side. She nearly reaches out to her, wraps her up so safe in shadow to draw her nearer, but maybe it is a moment not meant for her. Maybe it is just for them, for a father and his girl. So though she calls to her gently, she leaves the rest to Dovev, using her twilight instead to brush quiet fingers of light through the strands of his wild mane.
and in the end, i will seek you out amongst the stars the space dust of me will whisper “i love you”
She loves the attention he lavishes on her, the way he doesn’t shy away from her wandering explorations of the ridges of his skin, of the bright bone and rust that clings to him. All these things that make him different from momma and different from brother, all these things that make him daddy. She nuzzles him, leaning into the stars beside his lips, and he does the same to her, pressing his lips to the little hollow at the side of her nose in a gesture that makes her little tag wag frantically. She loves him so much - doesn’t know the feeling by name, just by the glowing warmth that radiates from within her beautiful little chest.
But then momma groans and daddy goes still, unmoving until he pulls them suddenly closer. She doesn’t object because she loves her momma too, and daddy kept her tucked all safe and cozy against his side, but the sounds momma makes now are nothing like the soft music from before and she flattens her worried little ears back against her dark silky mane. But daddy must know what to do because he’s reaching out and murmuring words that she can barely keep up with before one replaces the next and is jumbled in her spying ears. All except the last one which she clings to triumphantly with another flick of her dark, curly tail.
Love.
It doesn’t matter that she has no clue or context for what this particular sound might mean, except that daddy said it to momma and for a split second her face looked so soft and beautiful. That must mean it’s a good sound, and now it’s hers because she caught it before it disappeared like the other ones.
Her little tail flaps softly again.
And ohhh, she watches in the hazy dark as momma heaves one last time and her brother finally joins them. It took him long enough! Which she reminds him with a soft little whicker she pushes all the way out from her little belly when he lifts his perfect face to find her. She watches momma fuss over him, feeling sleepy as she lays back against daddy, sprawled haphazardly across his forelegs and directly beneath his nose just in case he wants to fuss over her. But her eyes are already closing again, her breathing evening out with a sigh.
Ugh, or at least she was going to sleep until momma started rumbling at them in her soft, musical way to come eat. Her little tummy growls an answer that makes it absolutely impossible for her to pretend to not have heard her and stay asleep flopped so happily across daddy’s strong legs. With a huff she half-rises, pausing in small increments when her body starts to sway away from her control, until she is standing on trembling legs and leaning so hard against daddy while they watch her brother scramble to his feet. She gasps when he manages it, takes one single brave step in his direction until he tumbles back down again in a heap of long, tangled legs.
She makes a soft sound at him, a sound with worry etched into the edges, but he leaps back up again, bucks like nothing happened, falls again. Her delicate white face lifts to look up at daddy so she can try and gauge his expression, because her chest feels tight, her little bones wary at such abuse, but her brother is grinning, already climbing to his feet for a third time and pushing his nose against mommy’s belly. Her stomach growls again, those steely black ears flicking back and forth as she takes another trembling step forward and freezes uncertainly.
