There was a time when she was bright and sweet and so beautiful, when those pale sea green eyes were so soft and her smiles so easy. She had known the innocence of a child well protected by her parents and her brother and her fathers wolves. Too protected, perhaps, too sheltered to see a world broken beyond saving, too naive to guess that she might ever become something so gruesome. Had she never left home, her heart might be more whole, fewer breaks, fewer cracks, less erosion in her aching chest. But her body would still be the same, still wholly wretched, chronically ruined.

As a baby, she had been perfectly plain. A shade of chestnut like worn, dark copper interrupted only by the white of her legs and her quiet face, of soft uneven peppering in unsymmetrical places. Flaxen hair as soft and pale as cornsilk, a shade of cream softer than downy feather. Her brother had boasted wings at his shoulders, beautiful things as fickle and changing as his stormy, wild moods. But her own shoulders had been bare, just smooth, just chestnut. So perfectly plain.

It was later that the antlers came in, at first just soft nubs on her brow until they grew up through her skin into something gruesome and beautiful. A crown of bone and ragged flesh. But she hadn’t minded because there had been an identical set on her brothers brow - something far more beautiful than either of theirs on her mothers brow. It didn’t stop there, though, and soon there were new hard knots spread all across her delicate copper body. Hard ridges and long lines that made her cry out in soft whimpers when she tried to race beside her beautiful, wild brother. Those knots grew and grew, becoming more painful and more defined until those, too, finally tore through the soft, exhausted flesh all across her body.

Bone, somehow, and for some reason she could not fathom. Long ridges of white stained in the pink froth of her own blood - bone in the shape of her hips and her shoulders, narrow ones like blades over each rib. A plate across the copper blaze at the center of her face. All of it erupted through the chestnut of her own skin, all of it edged in the ragged pink mess of ruined, puckered flesh.

She cannot remember the last time she didn’t hurt.
Does not remember what it is to be seen by someone who does not flinch.

It is why she has taken to this corner of her home, hidden behind the volcano and against the belly of a loyal ocean. There is some relief in the cerulean waves when she wades in and they lap against skin that never stops weeping red tears. Water that, if only for a moment, rinses her clean so she is only red and bone, beautiful and elegant in her incredible wrongness.

But she doesn’t expect anyone to find her here, to find this place she had made safe, a home that is meant to be only hers. But as she steps around the uneven base of the volcanic mountain, feeling the soft kiss of ash settle against her back like dirty snow, she can feel all the air suddenly crushed from her lungs at the silhouette of a horse standing on her beach.

She halts abruptly, inhaling fast through nostrils that flare wide and uneasy. Her jaw clenches, muscles cording in her cheek as she takes a wary step back and angles her delicate, armored face away from him. But there is some lonely, aching song in her chest, a whisper that asks her to stay, to just look for a moment. It isn’t as though he’s even noticed her yet, he hasn’t turned his face to her to witness this strange, wretched thing standing a short ways behind him. And he is beautiful in a way she cannot name. Maybe in his resolute quiet or the grey dapples on his skin that remind her of home, of the ash that has a habit of settling like lace across her back.

Certainly it cannot be that his wings remind her of her brother, her twin, or of how much she misses his nearness. Must not be something that might be enough to undo this self imposed banishment. There would be no sense in that, not when she is so broken and so wretched and wholly dangerous in her selfishness. Someone died because of you. She reminds herself with a wince, with a shade of brokenness that sags in her shoulders as she looks down at the opal stone of her gleaming hooves, remembering. 

i am brambles but i am tangled in your love

She is so busy watching him that she forgets to run away, forgets to fall in with the tide that sweeps loose shells and emerald seaweed further down the shore. She can feel it brush against her legs, wrapping like vines around her heels before they give up and move on, disappointed, maybe, that she’s forgotten them.

He is mystery in beauty and she admires him from this quiet distance in the same way she would admire the streaks of soft color when they stretch gold and vibrant orange across a sky tinged in faded pink. The same way she watches the ocean from above, mesmerized by the flash of silver from the scales of small fish as they weave like tangible winds through an ocean as blue as a summer sky. He looks at her, and she can her her heart seize in her chest, feel the muscles contract in a silent gasp as those pale teal eyes go round and unsure. But then he looks away again and she is stunned, confused, because there had been no sign of horror on the lines of his pale, quiet face.

She decides with a pang that shoots all beneath her skin, electric and aching, that he must not have truly seen her.

The tide tugs again and she notices it this time, flicking one single red ear back as though she is listening to something. She frowns, starts to turn away, stops again. At this distance it is difficult to see the details of his face, impossible to know even the color of eyes she has decided must surely be so dark and stormy. But she can see the sharpening of his figure, muscles flattening through his haunches, balling up hard and round in a line low on his neck - wings that tighten against his side in a language she learned well from her brother.

He is bothered by something.
Oh.

She feels so stupid the moment she realizes herself, remembers that it is so impolite to stare, and she has been staring with such open, gaping curiosity. It’s just not very often that anyone comes here, to a section of beach where the tide pulls fiercely and the trees are thin and few, offering little relief from the heat of the sun in this tropic humidity. She gasps, suddenly shamed, feeling heat flood beneath the copper of her sleek fur when he turns so abruptly and draws closer. Her body goes soft in a language that might be submissive if not for the confusing way her antlers brandish towards him when she drops her chin lower to her chest, so bone-white and beautiful, so strange and bare.

She is waiting for him to say something, to scold her with the whip of a well-practiced tongue, but no sound comes. Her eyes lift first, that soft, impossible teal made so much less beautiful by the plate of bone stretched between them, by the congealed ring of dark blood around that. She finds his face again, struck by an urge to smile at the way something soft and hopeful flutters in her belly, but she quenches it before it can take hold, before it has a chance to do more than tug at the corners of a mouth once more quiet. It is almost as though he is not horrified by this red and bone thing he has discovered in the belly of the waves, almost as though that look on his face is curiosity instead of disgust.

It’s the first time anyone has ever looked at her that way and she struggles to recognize how it feels. Is it better to be a spectacle, better than dry horror and faces twisted and frozen in a moment of surprised revulsion.

She thinks it might be.

Ohh, and then he speaks and those soft eyes are locked so willingly on his face, on his mouth shaping words that are meant for her. Words that, for once, aren’t just about her. She isn’t sure how to decipher his tone, can’t remember how to take apart the pieces when they aren’t laced with disgust. So the coolness isn’t noted, doesn’t even touch this feeling in her chest when her mouth pulls into something so soft and sweet and nearly a smile. “Me too.” She whispers, and the words aren’t nearly as rusted as she thought they might be. He is close enough now that she can see the dark of eyes that must be brown or black.

But then he apologizes and she can feel uncertainty slip back beneath her skin to bleed into the smile fading from her lips. She shifts so slightly, exhaling sharply, blankly, at the pull of skin around bone, at the new blood that wells so bright and red against her skin. If only she’d had the foresight to hide more of herself in the water before he came so much closer. She goes still again, the slight muscles beneath her skin still taut with the effort of not flinching at pain she doesn’t want him to recognize. Weakness she prefers to keep invisible. Then she speaks again, still soft but not quite a whisper anymore, though there is an ethereal quality to the sound of her voice. Something thin and fragile. “It’s okay, you aren’t intruding.” Because it sounds like he might be trying to excuse himself and there is a knot is her chest willing him to stay awhile longer. “Do you live here on the island?” Still soft, maybe perpetually, maybe as fragile as she is.

i am brambles but i am tangled in your love

He watches for so long that she thinks she must know what the twilight feels like when it slips low on the horizon beneath the weight of innumerable, watching eyes. But she doesn’t feel as grand as the colors of an evening sky, doesn’t feel admired. She shifts again, soft and unsure, her head ducking low, so low that her lips nearly touch the crest of a wave as it rolls past and urges her closer to him.

She obliges, but only for one step.
Two, but then she stops again.

She can’t take her eyes off him though, and even with her head bowed so low, those quiet teal eyes - not green enough to be emerald, not blue enough to be sapphire - continue to trace the lines of a face she is struggling to memorize before it is gone from her as all things are.

I don’t live anywhere. He tells her, interrupts her eyes, and she can feel the way her brow furrows beneath forelock, beneath bone. An invisible tell of the disappointment she can feel suddenly trickling cool beneath her skin. He is a wanderer like her brother, maybe. Wayward and untethered, free to give in to the impulses of wild knit firm beneath his skin. Hard to find, impossible to keep.

Not that she wanted to keep him, she thinks quickly, inhaling sharply as though she is scolding herself. She doesn’t even know this man with skin and stature like shaped quartz, with wings she feels certain must be so beautiful when they are not busy being pinned to his sides. She doesn’t need a friend - certainly doesn’t deserve one. That’s not what she meant at all!

She is still busy trying to soothe the wild in her thoughts, the heat flushing in her cheeks when he speaks again and she finds she is immediately distracted by the evenness of his low, stoic voice. By words that sound like a reprimand, words that don’t match the way he angles his head for her to come join him.

All at once, the fear returns. That desperate aching desire to be unseen, especially now by this man who has yet to flinch, yet to damn her for the unnatural strangeness stretched over every inch of chestnut skin glowing so softly. Is it possible he still doesn’t realize what he’s seeing? That, if she does move closer, she’ll have to watch him harden and recoil, watch the sturdy lines of an unfairly beautiful face twist and warp with disgust. She looks away from him, casts her eyes out to the waves, to the empty nothingness as though she might be looking for an escape. For an easier option.

But one word catches in her mind, one beautiful, important life-changing word.
Further.
You’ll irritate your skin further.

It must mean that he’s seen her. Seen the bones and the skin and the bleeding wounds for what they are. Must mean that he doesn’t mind? But she feels less certain of that, less certain that anyone would ever be able to look at her and not feel at least the slightest bit of horror or discomfort. To wear bones outside her skin, to have wounds that always bleed, it is not within the nature of most.

And she can hardly blame them.

But her face turns back to him and her eyes settle back into the lines and hollows of a head angled in her direction, and there is hope buried there in that pale, muted teal. Faint and fragile, tangled with a yearning ache she feels in the wretched depths of her beating chest.

“How would you even be able to tell?” She asks softly, shy amused light building in the summer shade of eyes that crease faintly at the corners as a crooked half-smile steals across her lips. She is close to him now, can’t even remember the moment she had started walking. There must only be five more strides until she would be close enough to reach out and touch her nose to his. But she doesn’t, only stops again, tilts her head and settles her gaze on his face with the flash of a shy smile. “I’m already inside out.”

It was meant to be a joke, meant to soften the stone of his features so that she might be able to catch a glimpse of a smile as rare as snow on this volcanic island. But as soon as she hears them aloud, the words sound strange and harsh and she winces, glancing away with a sharp, muffled exhale. “My name is Wonder.” It’s the only thing she can think to give him now, an apology for the crookedness of her humor as those worried eyes drift back to his.

i am brambles but i am tangled in your love

She sees him with different eyes than he sees himself. In shades of pewter and white, with streaks of silver throughout the dark tangles of his mane. He is like a stormcloud, she thinks, so ominous and beautiful, a harbinger of what is to come, of the storms he keeps buried away so carefully inside him. She wonders at the shade of his wings, if those mottled grey feathers are softer at their bellies when they aren’t fastened so tightly to his sides - wonders, too, why he keeps them like that. It feels defensive, guarded. If she had wings at her shoulders instead of bones thrust up through her skin, would she not want to hold them aloft and lose herself to the sensation of the ocean breeze tangling in through each individual feather?

It makes her curious, in that soft quiet way she knows so well.

Her chin lifts and her eyes flash back to his face as if guided there by the sound of his voice, by the way the sand sighs beneath his feet as he moves closer. She feels pinned by him, trapped beneath the weight of those dark, stoic eyes - except she doesn’t mind, finds she doesn’t want to look away. For a moment her gaze is dragged to the symphony of movement beneath his skin, the tightening of muscles that whisper his intent to soft teal eyes that go wide and flash back to his face.

Is he going to touch her?
Is he going to touch her?

She goes suddenly soft, her nose, her mouth, her eyelashes. Even the motion in her chest and ribs still as he sweeps his nose so, so close across the surface of her skin. She closes her eyes, and her breath comes staggering back, catching and crippled in her lungs as she swallows back a ragged inhale. What would it feel like to be touched by someone outside of her family, someone other than her brother.

Wonder. He repeats, and her eyes fly open again in a flash of ocean-teal, half-hidden behind a fringe of red the same color as her skin. Her name sounds different on his lips, sounds almost beautiful in a way that makes her eyes on his so painfully intense. She wants to look away, but her body is ignoring her and all she can feel from her brain is electrical pulses misfiring beneath her skin. “Nightlock.” She whispers back, unsure and unblinking, taking her time with each letter so the name sounds more harsh than it did when he said it. “Nightlock.” She says again, but the letters are softer and she remembers how to blink, how to flush warm and glance away from him if only for a second.

She catches his smile though, uses her glance away to hide the one on her own lips that answers his so happily. So readily that it reaches the corners of her eyes and draws fingers over harsh lines that soften immediately. Then fade again at his next question. Her skin twitches unhappily, and the old tracks of rust drawn across her skin suddenly brighten with new red, new blood. When her gaze swings back to settle on his face, it is wary and reluctant and all etched in blood and bone and the shadows of her antlers. “So that I can pretend it’s my choice to be alone.” Soft, red, even her whisper bleeds.

It does not feel good to be so vulnerable, to show him the true depth of the pain she feels, pain hidden deeper than the wounds on her ruined skin. So she is quiet when she speaks again, reluctant and staring hard at feet the color of opals, smooth and shining and luminescent. “Even in a plagueword, I am strange.” There is a newer note of pain in her voice, a tightness that shreds in the edges of soft red skin around rust stained bone. To even mention the plague by name is to remember that little girl who had died because of the poor choices Wonder had made. She could have lived if only Wonder turned back to find help. Could have become like a sister or a friend.

But Wonder made her a ghost.

When her eyes finally lift to his face again, they are so bright with unshed tears, so teal and sad. But she doesn’t cry, doesn’t even let the wetness well along the rim of her eyes. “It’s better if I’m alone.” She says, soft and defeated, all hint of soft smiles gone from those gentle chestnut lips. Then, more subtly, her brow furrows and the action coaxes new drops of red that she has to blink back from her eyes. “How is it you can look at me like i’m not something terrible?”

i am brambles but i am tangled in your love

‘You’re not strange.’ He tells her, and her brow would have furrowed if it were not locked in place by the plate of white bone all red and rust at the edges. As it is, she is almost completely still as those soft teal eyes lift to explore every inch of his face, searching for some kind of warmth in the kindness of his words. But he is so still and so quiet, as stoic as the mountain that lays curled and quiet around the volcano above, always watching and never anything more. He is stone, she thinks again, stone and strong and beautiful. Still though, even without the softening at the edges of those brown eyes or the quirk of a smile at the corners of his stern, beautiful mouth, she feels comforted.

He says it with such truth, such decisiveness, and it is such a beautiful thing to believe.

So she does, will try, for as long as those dark eyes claim the hard valleys and deep hollows of her face. For as long as he keeps her mind from sinking back into the reality of the world they both live in. A world with rules he seems to reject.

His eyes track something moving across her brow and in an instant she feels so small again so unsure, because she knows it must be blood tracing new tracks across her pale face. Are you sure? She wants to ask, wants to close her eyes and disappear from him, from this, from a string of moments that have made it so much easier to breathe for the first time in so long. Do you still think i’m not strange? The words may be written across her face in the ink of sad eyes and the way she turns her face from him so slightly, but they do not take shape on her tongue, will never survive past the safety of her pale, perfect lips.

Then he says her name again, and in that voice that makes something wild and treacherous yearn so deeply inside her belly. She thinks of his lips again, of how close they had come to the crest of stained bone, to the weeping wounds drawn in red ink, to the flat copper of her skin. She thinks of how only his breath had reached her, how it was soft and warm and she could have stayed frozen in that moment forever without growing weary of the sameness.

She wonders if anyone will ever be able to bring themselves to touch her, to taste the metallic tang of her blood as it dries on their lips. She is sure it will not be anyone like him. So quiet and stoic, her favorite shade of storm grey and with wings that make her skin feel tight and electric with such innocent, curious yearning.

‘You are not one of them.’ He says, he smiles, and she can feel the moment something shifts in her chest, the moment something shatters into pieces too small to catch, too impossible to put back together. That smile makes her reckless, makes her brave and stupid and so foolish as she takes another step closer, easing toward his shoulder with that delicate bone-crowned head bowed in such gentle submission.

Something unfamiliar looms inside her, longs to be accepted by him, by this strange, dark man who keeps his smiles saved for the moments where they will be so deafening. This man who says all the right things, all the things such a gentle heart needs to hear - this man who can look at her without disgust, without revulsion, can call her by her name and tell her she is not a terrible thing.

Her breath goes unsteady, fighting the tremor in her chest as she turns her nose to him, angled so carefully so that the bramble of her antlers won’t scrape the grey. She doesn’t know what she’s doing anymore, doesn’t know what it is she thinks she wants or might find in this stoic stranger, or if maybe she is just so desperately afraid to blink and find him gone. She’s so close, so close, breathing soft and unevenly against the skin behind his foreleg, wanting to reach out and feel the warmth of his realness. Wanting to prove that she is not insane, that this is not a fever dream from plague addled sleep. That there is someone who bothered to notice her beyond the armor that entombs her.

But she is not brave and she is not bold, and even that smile is not enough to change who she is. She doesn’t touch him, doesn’t close those last few inches of distance where she had crept in so close, so soft. She merely keeps her head low and her eyes closed, and whispers, “Nightlock,” a pause as she smiles softly at the way his name feels in her mouth and brushing past her whiskered lips, “will you tell me a story about a terrible thing?”

i am brambles but i am tangled in your love