"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
"I CAN'T PULL YOU CLOSER THAN THIS
IT'S JUST YOU AND THE MOON ON MY SKIN."
Vela had though being mortal would be more difficult. A strange concept, perhaps, to consider living easy. But Vela had always assumed that there was more effort involved. She assumed, incorrectly, that breathing and walking and keeping her heart beating would require conscious thought. She reveled in the fact that this body did these things effortlessly and without thought. Sometimes, it surprised her. Reflexes were a new sensation - both amusing and useful to one who had never had the experience before. Every day brought with it new wonders - simple things that perhaps those who had always lived here had overlooked.
Much like her departed sister, Vela was very much a nocturnal creature. At nighttime, she didn’t feel so alone in the world because her star-sisters cast their light down upon her. However, her curiosity about the day often had her wandering long before dusk. That’s what lead her to the forest today. The labyrinth of trees was a whole different world in the light of day. Sunlight trickled through thick branches in the strangest of patterns. So many animals darted through the underbrush and scaled the towering trees. A whole different variety of birds twisted through the branches than those who came out at night. Vela was so absorbed in the sheer newness of it all that she didn’t even notice that the sun had already slipped below the horizon.
Since her rebirth here, she hadn’t spent a single night shielded from the stars. Realizing that night had indeed come, she turned her gaze skyward - looking for her sisters. Only she was met with an impenetrable canopy of branches. A canopy so thick that the light from the stars was completely masked. Panic settled into her belly, hot and fierce, as adrenaline poured through her veins. She didn’t understand what was happening to her body, but she was too consumed in her thoughts to even register the experience. She pulled her wings tighter to her starry sides and whirled around, trying to retrace her steps back towards the edge of the forest, but as time progressed she realized she was hopelessly and endlessly lost, with not even her sisters to guide her.
bethlehem
sometimes i wonder, will god ever forgive us for what we've done to each other?
then i look around and realize, god left this place a long time ago.
It does not matter where he goes, he always ends up here.
He has traveled to the ends of the earth and beyond them.
And yet, like clockwork, he returns.
He is perhaps more like his grandfather than he realizes.
Like all of the men who came before him, he is built to wander and wander he does. Even after seeking residence in a land not unlike this one, he cannot satisfy the hum of kinetic energy in his limbs. Despite his want to grow roots, he lacks the inherent ability to just stay still and so he comes and he goes, buoyed by the wind and that cold, dark thing in him that tells him to just go.
He makes for the river because it is where he feels most at home. Because there is something in the roar of the water that quiets all the noise in his head and the static in the cavern of his chest where perhaps a heart should be. He is accustomed to the dark, having spent the majority of his life in it, but he does not see her until she is nearly upon him.
Here, the stars. For the breath of a moment, he thinks that these are the same stars he found at the edge of the river some months before. But these stars have not oriented themselves into a constellation and they’re moving so quickly that he’s not certain he’s seen them at all. They nearly collide and he skirts out of her way, gritting his teeth and sucking in a sharp, hissing breath. It is the smell of her panic, the electric current it puts in the air around her, that has him swallowing his neatly coiled irritation.
It sways him to something softer. His gait falters. He turns to watch her, blinks at this piece of the sky that has joined him here on earth. “Are you all right?” he asks, as if he has any hope at all of helping.
"I CAN'T PULL YOU CLOSER THAN THIS
IT'S JUST YOU AND THE MOON ON MY SKIN."
She doesn’t notice him at all, too wrapped up in the hot, fierce panic that consumes her. She can hardly pull her gaze away from the thick branches above - hoping for a flicker of light, of hope. But she finds none.
She does, however, find him. She whirls after their near-collision, pulling her wings tighter to her sides. “I’m so sorry!” she mutters, her voice laced with anxiety. Her silver eyes watch him warily.
He was the first creature of this world she had interacted with directly. What an impression she must have made. But she can hardly register the thoughts in the stew of emotions sloshing in her mind. She glitters, faintly, like the stars above the trees. She dips her head, abashed, before she speaks again - offering him some semblance of explanation. But how to explain this to a mortal?
“I - I’m lost. I need to get out of this place,” she murmured, looking around for some discernible path in the dark that would lead her out. Or at the very least, a break in the trees.
Vela had never known any sort of confinement, so now she was dealing with the claustrophobia of being earthbound. She’d never known that being enclosed would affect her in such a way - how could she? “Do you know the way out or at least anywhere I can see the stars?”
Panic was a new emotion, and the anxiety turned her blood to flames beneath her skin. Perhaps this was a mistake, perhaps she should have never answered her sister’s call. Her sister had spoken of such an incredible life and Vela had craved all that came with it. So she swallowed her pride and tried her best to hold herself together, quivering somewhat before the stranger.
I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
She moves so quickly that, if not for the blanket of stars, he might not have seen her at all.
She spins around to face him, armed with an apology he does not expect, and he grits his teeth.
Were he anyone else he might have smiled at her, reached out to touch her shoulder, offered her some semblance of comfort. He might have told her it was all right, she need not apologize. But he is not built for this specific kind of tenderness, so he merely shakes his head in response to her apology.
She stills just long enough to eye him warily and he goes on steadily looking back at her, the brow faintly furrowed. There is not much that surprises him anymore. In all of his traveling, he has encountered almost every kind of soul there is – tortured, cruel, shattered. But there is something peculiar in her panic. He wonders if she’s unhinged.
He glances over his shoulder into the absolute darkness at his back. He thinks he should leave her be, but there is another something that plagues him, something in her voice that suggests she’s not crazy at all. Strange, perhaps, but not crazy.
So, he reacts to her question with a nod. He drags his focus back to her face, only able to make out the shape of it thanks to the glow of her skin. “Yes,” he says and then turns back the way he came, “follow me.”
He knows this forest better than any other swath of land in Beqanna. Save for, perhaps, the earth at the edge of the river where he has spent years of his time ruminating on all of the things he’s lost and never had. He leads her to a clearing – a small meadow only a fraction of the size of the larger, neighboring meadow – and pauses to turn his face up to the sky.
“There they are,” he murmurs and there is a twinge of amusement in his tone. “I can’t say for sure, but I suspect they’re there even when you can’t see them.”
BETHLEHEM
I'm just tryin' to do what's right. oh, a man ain't a man unless he's fought the fight.
