"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
06-19-2019, 10:12 PM (This post was last modified: 06-19-2019, 10:12 PM by Sabrael.)
Sabrael
Beqanna holds nothing for him.
Like a negative image pressed firmly in his mind’s eye, he sees the land as it will always appear to him now: dark, hollow, the opposite of what it should be. He comes without nostalgia, without pretense. He comes, not as a man returning home after many, many moons away (proud and eager, sick of the road and sick for home), but as a surveyor of all he’s lost. He comes without hope.
He comes as the monstrosity he is, a sleek beast that cuts through the autumnal chill in the air above the meadow. His broad wings leave shadows to race below him, touching the ground that he himself has neglected to touch for years. I’ve missed it, he tells himself, watching the familiar hills undulate and roll beneath him. But the thought is dull and doesn’t resonate like it perhaps should. I’ve missed - Sabrael shakes his head to clear it before any truths can rise to the surface and complete his thought. There is no use. There is no turning back, either.
He’s come too far.
The rust-colored dragon finds an open clearing and lands squarely in the center of it. He slams his tail down, upsetting a flock of starlings roosting in the trees surrounding him, before slowly shedding his reptilian skin. The same feeling of vulnerability snakes over him instead without the comfort of his other form. He can’t imagine how the others feel, those without the Beast rumbling beneath their fur. It’s unnerving and sets him on edge as he surveys the place he’s landed in. There isn’t the smell of sickness and death that had wafted over everything before. There is only the scent of fall and the accompanying decay of the earth.
There is only quiet.
Because of this newfound serenity, Sabrael hears the approach of another rather quickly. He turns his angular, speckled face to the sound and whoever is making it, sure that it won’t be anybody he knows (not this time, lightning doesn’t strike the same spot twice). He sees the ravine his tail had raked into the earth and the Beast purrs its’ pleasure.
and if you're still breathing, you're the lucky ones ‘cause most of us are heaving through corrupted lungs
Adna does not seek out company often.
She has begun to see the truth of what she is—the reality that coils dangerously beneath the surface. She knows that the poison that drips from her fangs is not nearly as insidious as that which runs through her veins and spills from her tongue. She knows that for all of the redemption arc of her father and the overall loveliness of her mother that she will never be able to live up to the picture perfect life they have built.
Even her children—so perfect and beautiful in every way—cannot soothe the constant ache of her heart. Not even her sister—as angry and frustrated as she—can truly temper the rage that sets her aflame each morning like dry kindling. It takes everything she has to keep it at bay, to stem the endless hunger.
She stays in Loess, although she is not sure why.
Perhaps because she likes to torment herself by being on the outside of a land that was once her home. The land that she once scamped up and down like a billy goat at her father’s side. Now she is nothing but a specter; she haunts the edges of it, watching the only boy she has ever had any semblance of feelings for with the woman who truly captures his heart. Him and his perfect family, so happy together.
It cuts at her until she finally breaks from Loess for the day. She is nearly blind with it, her sage green eyes bright as she cuts through the common lands until she finds the meadows. She does her best to stick to what she believes is an empty field only to feel the vibrations of something massive settling down.
It should frighten her—but it only thrills her.
It cuts through the fog of pain so that she tears through the brushes and the bramble until she finds the clearing, her fangs only barely showing against her lip. But when she gets there, there is but a man.
She pauses, the branches scraping against her scaled sides, eyes narrowing in thought.
Her vision flickers between normal and thermal, studying him as prey might predator, before her gaze finally settles onto his own. She is disheveled and unruly and has just crashed into the place where he has stood, but she offers no introduction or apology. Instead she merely straightens and stares boldly.
adna
we're setting fire to our insides for fun collecting pictures from a flood that wrecked our home
He, too, has struggled with the truth of all that lives inside of him.
There was a time where he hadn’t understood any of it: the building and blinding rage, the lava that ran hot under his skin, or the release that came solely with the spilling of blood. He had fought to keep the Beast contained and caged within his breast. Wanting the world to be safe of the murderous whims of his counterpart, Sabrael had discovered the lengths he would go to protect everyone from himself. He had fled, time and time again, only to come home with unknown gristle between his teeth and his snout stained crimson.
Fighting the dragon hadn’t worked.
Caging the dragon hadn’t worked.
It was only when he realized what he should have known all along – that he was the Beast, that they were one and the same – that everything fell into place.
There is still a sea of guilt he treads in for all the sins he committed before. He still climbs a mountain of bones built from names he’ll never know. He tries not to think about it. He’d kept them safe, at least. All the faces that he cared about hadn’t melted by his unwitting fire. Sabrael is thinking of one of them when he sees the girl lingering against the treeline. It’s not her, of course. Those luminous green eyes have never connected with his gold-flecked ones, he’s sure (sure, too, that they haven’t sparked with the same secret longing and desire). It’s not her, but it’s somebody. And he’s tired of being alone.
The bay roan ambles towards her, in no rush. There is an easy grace to the way he moves, like the soft flicker of a flame. He gives no indication of the predator poised beneath his horseflesh, only reveals the confidence of one who thinks he holds all the cards. She’s a wild thing seemingly born from the forest itself. He instantly likes how they mirror each other. She seems of a similar mind the way she squares against his approach, defiant, almost. Well, two can play at that.
Silent still, Sabrael tilts his head to get a better look at her. Even in the lowlight of the woods, he sees the scales that make a mosaic out of her. He sees, too, the slight lifting of her upper lip that suggests there might be more going on, that he might not want to be so quick to piss her off. There is always a level of tension when two predators sense and meet each other. There has to be sizing up, a jockeying of positions. One has to come to terms that they are the weaker of the two. After an uncomfortable (not to him) stretch of time, he breathes smoke out of his nostrils into the air between them. “Come here often?” He quips, the corner of one lip quirking ever so slightly.
and if you're still breathing, you're the lucky ones ‘cause most of us are heaving through corrupted lungs
If only she knew the magnitude of the man before her.
If only she knew he was one of the dragons who had come to roost in Beqanna—one of the originals in so many ways. Perhaps she would not imagine sinking her fangs into his throat so easily. Perhaps she would not dream of what he must taste like beneath the surface; would not feel herself hunger for the way that his flesh might split beneath the touch of tooth and the way his blood would spill over her tongue.
She would not be so greedy for violence if she knew how outmatched she is.
(Perhaps she would be drunk on the idea of her own death instead.)
But such things don’t reach the surface of her sage eyes. Instead, she remains guarded, illusive, slipping in and out as she watches him approach, studying the confidence in his step and the strength that seems to simmer there, just out of reach. She doesn’t cower before him, doesn’t simper, doesn’t do anything but watch him with the stony silence of her predatory ancestor. He is sizing her up, she knows in some piece of her, and she straightens, defiant, the loose curls of her forelock falling off to reveal her clear gaze.
When he finally does speak, she doesn’t react at all.
Instead she lengthens the silence, unblinking, as if she has no intention to respond at all. But, eventually, she does. Eventually she lifts her head just slightly, tilting it to the side. “No,” is the only syllable that comes to her and she says it almost dismissively, trying to grab onto any sense of control in the moment.
Then she lets the silence stretch, not bothering to hide the way that she studies him.
When her serpentine eyes finally meet his own again, they are alive with everything that rages within her, all of the emotions she cannot bury, all of the rage and the grief and the confusion that she wrestles with.
“I’m Adna,” she offers but doesn’t ask for his own.
adna
we're setting fire to our insides for fun collecting pictures from a flood that wrecked our home
