and all of us, we’re meant for the fire, but we keep rising up and walking the wires

 
This is not home. 

It doesn’t call to her. It does not wind around her icy heart. It does not dig into her—does not lay claim to a soul that is utterly and entirely her own. Despite the parents that live here or, rather, lived here (ghosts that wisp around the edges of her vision and mind, barely real), despite the twin that still stalks the borders, she does not find herself drawn here. In fact, her returning is merely happenstance, a wrong turn, a few days of not paying attention—several forgotten shifts in direction and suddenly, here she is.

It would be irritating if it made her feel anything all.

She finds herself in one of the common spaces throughout Beqanna, the crowds too large, too boisterous for her liking. Their thoughts are clouded and thick, simple minds thinking simple thoughts, and her upper lip curls in distaste, annoyance flashing in her unnaturally dual-colored eyes. It is not surprising to know that the caliber of resident has not risen during her absence, but she finds it disheartening all the same.

One would think that they would either evolve or simply cease to exist.

Their durability is a shame.

She sniffs and then pulls back from the sticky masses, retreating into the shadows of trees that line the meadow, welcoming the cool air and the silence. She can still feel their thoughts, fluttering in the peripheral of her mind, but they are no longer so loud, no longer boisterous and demanding, and thus she can finally breathe—taking large gulps of cool air. Part of her wants to seek out the company of her brother, wondering what he has made of his life since she left. Another part of her wants to find perhaps the only other soul she even remotely considered a friend (although the very thought makes her stomach curl in annoyance). But, for the most part, she is content in the silence, in the alone.

Where she can hear her own thoughts. Where she does not sacrifice her sanity for another’s grievances.

Let them bicker and mourn and laugh—

She did not owe them residence in her own mind. 

lynx

and all of us, we’re meant for the fire, but we keep rising up and walking the wires

She hears his thoughts before she sees him—the particular pitch and cheeriness of them cutting through the noise. It elicits a groan from her, the patchwork mare closing her eyes and dropping her head in defeat. She had wondered when (never if, with him) he would find her and she is not surprised at how quickly her luck turns sour. She doesn’t move when he makes his way toward her, doesn't move when his voice finally rings out in the air between them and not just playing out in the privacy of her mind.

Instead she groans again, the sound rumbling in her thin chest.

“You again?” She doesn’t admit that there is part of her that’s pleased to see him. Part of her that had been hoping she’d run across the red stallion—his joy so different than the bitterness that so often resides within her. “I’ve avoided you for several years now,” she sniffs, finally turning her head and meeting his gaze with her dual-colored red and blue eyes. “It has been a lovely few years, come to think of it.”

She watches as he pulls himself to his feet, distaste clear in his expression.

He was such a silly, informal boy with no sense of proprietary.

It really was so improper.

She sniffs again and shakes her head. “You’ve not changed a bit, Fox,” her voice is cool and were it not for the deepening of her voice, the feminine edge maturing it, it could still be the thin girly voice that she had admonished him with all of those years ago. “Your thoughts are as whimsical and foolish as they were when I first met you. Have you not grown up at all since then?”

She doesn’t tell him that she’s glad he hasn’t.

lynx

and all of us, we’re meant for the fire, but we keep rising up and walking the wires

Heavens, he was insufferable.

Hearing his thoughts, endlessly chipper and joyous, and knowing that he seemed to see straight through her sullen exterior does nothing but infuriate her, deepening the scowl that tugs are her pretty lips. “I will have you know that I am not happy to see you,” she quips coldly, wrinkling her nose. “I wish you would stop thinking such lies to yourself. It’s annoying to no end to have to listen to them.”

At his next thought, her jaw opens, dual-colored eyes widening in disbelief. “A thing for you?” Her voice is incredulous as she watches him. “Please tell me that you’re joking.” She searches his face, trying to find some sort of clue, some hidden piece of dishonesty, but she can’t. So she gathers together the rags of her dignity and sniffs. “As if I would ever entertain such thoughts.” A graceful shrug.

“After all, we both know that you’re the one who’s always had a thing for me.”

As if she would have a crush on the boyish red stallion.

A crush.

He gets closer and she almost blushes and then dances backward, uncomfortable and uncertain and loathing every second of it. Her face turns stony. Of course he would make her feel like a filly all over again. She’s back home for barely a minute and he’s treating her like she’s a child, laughing and teasing as if they were close friends. As if he had the right to even talk to her, let alone joke with, at, at her.

But then there is ice growing, and she feels the dreadful edges of humor beginning to curl. She does everything she can to keep a straight face, pressing her lips together, but he grows more and more ridiculous by the second and then he wiggles his eyebrows and she breaks. Her laugh is loud and bright, the sound of a girl who never let herself laugh, and her eyes pop in surprise as she quickly contains it.

“Damn it, Fox. Stop making me laugh.”

lynx

and all of us, we’re meant for the fire, but we keep rising up and walking the wires

He is impossible, infuriating, incredibly annoying.

He is a child. 

He is insufferable.

These adjectives chase themselves around in her head as she scowls at him, her pretty face pulled into the frown, the annoyance reaching her icy eyes. As she flips through his thoughts, entirely too pleased with himself, she feels a headache beginning to form in her temples. She never should have come back. She should have been grateful for the space and the loneliness that really just meant she was alone.

Alone and without the headache of his laughing eyes.

She hates that his touch causes her to recoil, control slipping from her grasp as she dances away from him, her neck still warm from where his breath had rolled over it but moments before. “You are disgusting,” she exhales, her voice tight with her irritation and underlined with suppressed thoughts.

“And I will have you know that I don’t care for a second about your pleasure.”

Her voice drips with disdain, but her stomach twists as she purposefully avoids the handsome angles of his face, the familiar, laughing curves of his mouth. She should have known that he would have grown up to be as annoyingly good looking as he has. That he would grow up to be charming and stubbornly happy.

Not for the first time, she finds that she is grateful she is the mind reader and he is not.

“Do you have to think such perverted thoughts so loudly?” she whines. Of course, his thoughts are not nearly as perverted as she makes them out to be, but they were at the very least a welcome distraction from the girlish butterflies that flutter in her throat, tying her nerves entirely too tight. She wants to laugh again with him, so instead she scowls, hardening her expression and pulling her nose into the air.

lynx

and all of us, we’re meant for the fire, but we keep rising up and walking the wires

It was difficult, at first, to be constantly battered with the thoughts of others.

She could feel them pressing into her mind, sticky fingers who cared little about her privacy and her need for quiet. It was difficult to grow up in that roar of thought—constantly intruded and constantly forced to bear witness to the often worst in others. So perhaps it is not surprising that she is as cynical as she is. That she is as distrusting when she has seen how often the thoughts of others contradict their words.

And perhaps why she is so afraid of Fox whose thoughts clearly align with his words.

He is the first, if not the only, soul she has ever met who is so clearly good through and through. Even her father, who she had idolized as a child, had eventually disappointed her—turning from the love of her mother and finding it elsewhere, fathering children who were not her full blood.

No, it’s not a surprise that Lynx is the way that she is.

However, it is surprising how she tolerates his closeness, warmed by his humor and draw in by the gravity of his goodness. She aches for it, in a way she didn’t expect or understand. She aches for a simple life, something that she can almost imagine. Her, kind and gentle. Hime, jovial and endlessly patient. Children running amok—she hisses in a breath, throwing the brakes on the thought.

Children.

Children?

It was a damn good thing that he couldn’t read her thoughts.

The fear of being discovered causes her to stiffen. “I can find my own pleasure,” she says, voice tight, although she’s not sure she’s ever found anything remotely pleasurable before. “Beside, pleasure is vastly overrated.” Again, something that wasn’t quite the whole truth. After all, what did she have to compare?

“No secrets,” a surprisingly harsh whisper. “No one should need to keep secrets.”

Her eyes flash dangerously but before she’s able to stop him, he’s at her side, lips finding the ticklish spot on her ribs. A girlish laugh escapes her, the ice of her face dissolving into something soft and nearly unrecognizable. She skitters to the side, swinging around to face him. For a second, the light remains in her face, something like affection warming her features before she quickly snaps the mask back on.

lynx