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.

oh, this my weapon, this my loam. this my blood, this my bone.

Brigade wants to disappear into the forest floor.

He wants to fall into the leaves; he wants to feel them fall beneath his hooves until he is nothing but the dirt and the sky and the world that feels so very far from this one. He wants to be the sun-baked soil and the riverbed. He wants to be the wolves that chase the shadows underneath the moon’s milky light, and he wants to be the birds that fling themself into the wild abyss. He wants to be wild and free and uncaged.

But beneath her gaze, he is trapped and he stiffens, the muscles taut beneath his rich coat.

She gives her name, but he doesn’t reciprocate just yet. He doesn’t take it and tuck it close into his chest. He just holds it lightly, loosely, letting it rest on his palms and wondering at what he is meant to do with it. Part of him wants to put it somewhere for safekeeping. Part of it wants to reject it immediately. Instead he does nothing, the grey of his eyes growing stormier and cloudier, the rest of his face impassive.

The silence between them continues to stretch until it is nearly brittle, until he can feel the tension and the way that the fabric nearly rips and rends. He can hear her breathing, can feel his own swallow the space between them, and he fancies he can nearly hear her pulse pounding, thrumming, humming so lightly.

Finally, finally he straights slightly, his head coming up, the proud, twisting antlers sitting on his brow like a crown. “Brigade,” he offers, letting the name sit like a heavy stone on his tongue. The air feels warmer as she sneaks closer, but he brushes it off as an oddity and just stands still and quiet. Part of him knows he should say more, should try to ease the discomfort of the conversation, but he can’t.

He can’t, his throat closes up and so he just stands, the muscle in his jaw jumping.

oh, this my weapon, this my loam. this my blood, this my bone.

In the same way that her mind convinces herself that he must see something wrong with her, he does the same with his own. He is sure that she must see into his heart and see the failures. She must look into him and know that he has let his family down. That he lives within a land that attacked his father and mother and siblings. That he didn’t lift the sword toward either side and what a coward he must be for it.

It makes him defensive, makes him angry, and he scowls against the imagined attacks.

The shame and the judgment and—worst of all—the pity she would point in his direction.

He wants to push her away before she has the chance to push him away and he is only surprised when she pushes forward instead. Surprised and then furious when she pokes at his worst insecurities. His ears flip back to press into the tangles of his wine red head, lips peeling back from his blunt teeth. “I’m not hiding from anything,” he growls, his voice thick in his mouth, gravelly from where it comes from his chest.

His storm eyes narrow at her, studying her from behind the tangle of his forelock. “Maybe you’re the one who is hiding, Brinly.” He doesn’t step toward her, cannot bring himself to be so brave, but neither does he step away from her—even though he is certain that the air is now warmer. But that must certainly be his own mind playing tricks on him. “So what are you hiding from?”

Brigade studies her face, memorizing the lines of it and focusing on stoking the anger in his belly further if only because it is so much easier to be mad than it is to be hurt and confused and lost.

So very lost.

oh, this my weapon, this my loam. this my blood, this my bone.

It almost doesn’t feel fair that her body burns with anger while he remains so cold. He wishes that he could light on fire the way that she does; he wishes that he could give himself over to that kind of heat and just let it erupt in his chest. Instead he grows more and more sullen, encasing himself in an armor of his own self-loathing, turning prickly and mean and wishing he could be anyone but himself.

She continues to move toward him and the heat becomes unmistakable as the distance closes. Every inch of his prey mind tells himself to run away, to protect himself, but his stubborn streak is louder than his instinct of survival and he just grinds his heels down further, biting down so that the muscles in his jaw jump. “You’re not doing a very good job of hiding yourself then,” he retorts to her confession, and even if he couldn’t feel the very heat coming off of her in waves, he would believe her. He would believe her.

His lips pull back into a slight sneer as she pulls back, wondering why the distance that should feel like a victory rings so hollow in his bones. “The rest of us,” he repeats and the words taste bitter. “Do you not often deign to be around us lowly folk?” Something defiant flashes in his eyes and his wings shift at his sides, turning from their red feathers into black carbon, dark and dangerous and as heavy at his sides as his heart feels in his chest. “How lucky I must be to have earned the honor of your presence then.”

He hates himself for the harshness of his words.

He hates himself for the way that he lashes out at her, the way his own fury weaponizes when he knows that the only one who deserves it is himself. But he can’t stop. He can’t and he knows that he is far from the son that his parents raised. The shame burns worse than she ever could and his eyes flash away as he struggles to keep his composure. “I’m hiding from myself,” he finally admits because it’s only fair that he give her some kind of weapon to tear him apart with. “And I’m doing an even worse job than you.”

oh, this my weapon, this my loam. this my blood, this my bone.

It is amazing the way that they can slice at one another. They barely know each other and yet they seem to have already found all of their weak spots. Her words are daggers and they find their mark again and again; he can barely think around the way that the wounds open up beneath her touch, the way that they blossom and the blood flowers on his chest. If only he could staunch it. If only he could go back in time before they crossed paths and something about them exploded before they could contain it.

But he can’t, and they are here, and he can only deal with the fallout.

“You have no idea how low my self-esteem can be,” he says and even though he knows it’s a lame excuse for a comeback, he says it with venom anyway. He scrambles to find defenses because she pulls it away so deftly and he’s left raw and aching beneath the cold air. He’s left stinging beneath the truth because of course he hates himself. Of course he views the world through the lease of his own self-loathing.

Of course she saw that immediately.

Of course, of course.

But it only makes him want to double down and he stands his ground, hating the weakness that she has exposed in him like rot under the floorboards. “Does it matter?” he says, his ears lying flat against his skull amongst the mess of his mane and forelock. “Does it matter why I would choose to be myself?” He jerks his head to the side and his antlers sweep sharply as he looks to the horizon, his chest heaving as he tries to catch his breath. For a second, he is quiet, contemplative, the poison seeping in further.

“Could you blame me?” He glances back, quieter now.

“Can you blame me for trying to minimize the damage?”