oh, this my weapon, this my loam. this my blood, this my bone.
Brigade cannot decide what he feels so he chooses to feel nothing.
Underneath it all, buried somewhere within him, perhaps he feels rage at what Loess did to his home, perhaps he feels fear at what has become of his family, perhaps he feels grief and self-loathing and more. Perhaps he drowns in it while he sleeps. Perhaps he wakes in a cold sweat knowing that fire rained down on Tephra and he was not there to protect her and his family. He did not join in the bloodbath for his new kingdom but neither did he rise against her and he cannot decide if that is worse.
Perhaps he feels all of these things but he decides not to—not now.
He locks it away, shoves it into the abyss and walks into the forest with his antlered head swinging. His light grey eyes are hard as stone and fierce as storm clouds and his mouth is a bitter slash. It doesn’t matter that it is night and he can still see the smoke in the air from Tephra. It doesn’t matter that he still doesn’t know where his family ended up. It doesn’t matter that he remains in the land that led the charge.
All that matters is he can’t breathe and when he wakes from his feverish dreams, he turns his head toward the forest. It is dark and quiet and he is alone. He is alone and when his hooves fall into the bramble and the leaves beneath him, he can find the knot in his chest loosening even just a little.
When he feels the tell-tale sign of someone’s eyes on him, he freezes, muscles hard beneath the rich red of his coat. His head shoots upward, face carved from rock as he finally finds her dark brown eyes. He doesn’t move, narrowed gaze instead studying her intently, feeling nothing but the distant crash of his fear and agony slamming against the cliffs of his heart. But it dulls in the face of something new.
It dulls and he doesn’t move, afraid that any disturbance would bring it all rushing back.
@[Brinly]