"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
Shadows as dark as the summer day is long wrap eager arms around their master. He doesn't quite look like he belongs with darkness, Litotes, even after all these years of wielding it. He was never truly blackened by evil, even when he shrouded himself enough to take actions he thinks unforgivable.
There was always that light--that little, timid light. It blazed at the end of a cave when he was lost as a lion and it blazes now, as bright as a wildfire, as strong as the fairies that bear Beqanna on their shoulders.
And rarely does he stray, so rarely, from the light he followed from the cave that kept him trapped. The moon and her sweet creature, the girl of gemstone and white, persistent light. It isn't restlessness that takes him from her, tonight--no unbearable weight or nasty loneliness. No, there is a memory, one that Litotes collected on a night that solitude did so plague him.
A flower. Bright and white and glowing like Lilt. Tendrils of blue and purple dye the white petals, nearly as if a careless painter had blotted them just in time for Lie to see. He remembers them, blooming beneath the moon and dying as the sun rose. Dark green vines wrapping delicately around a pale tree trunk, the sound of a springtime river rushing in the background. The cremello strays in that direction now, mimicking the flowers' quiet beauty. He looks somber but peaceful, stoic and sweet.
The shadows crawl to him, obey, but they do not overrun.
and let the cool air in, feel the night slip in as it softly glides across your back and i hope you leave right before the sun comes up so i can watch it alone
come to me in the night hours, i will wait for you
Perhaps they are drawn together like the way shadows grow long in the night, collecting and pooling until there is only dark, only evernight. It is not unusual for her to be about at this hour, it seems that restlessness is an ichor in her veins that flows beside the blood, and it seldom allows her any rest. There are dreams in the dark, and nightmares behind the eyelids of those that give in to weariness. She has no use for either. In dream there is memory, and in memory there is more pain than she knows where to keep. Certainly not inside a chest so full of holes.
She does not look for company - there is no one she could imagine worth knowing, no one worth being vulnerable with. There is so little of her still intact to give, these days, and what’s left is for her daughter and son, though she sees them less and less often now. She doesn’t blame the way they come and go like the tides of the ocean, because just like those same tides she knows they will always return. Maybe their father is the same way, but she is most certainly not the shore he washes up on anymore.
Old pain flares in her chest, and though she is not crippled by it as she once was, she can feel the poison of it spill through her and she wonders at what point the corrosion will be too much.
Soon, she thinks, from the weary shade of the world around her. It will be soon.
She would’ve ignored the cremello stallion in the same way she ignores everything. He is handsome to be sure, and there is a lingering dark in the backs of his eyes that delights her in their familiarity. But both things make him dangerous to her, like a moth to flame. She knows this better, now - it is a knowledge her very wounds still bleed.
Still, her stride slows as her face turns to him in the shadows, light flickering beneath her skin like strange bioluminescence in the heavy dark. She notes the way the moonlight catches and reflects in those cremello hairs as though he is little more than a ghost. There is an odd, unnameable impulse to reach out and touch him, a curiosity as to whether or not she has truly lost her mind, or if there will be warm skin beneath her lips.
She does not reach out though.
Instead she pulls on his shadows - she can feel them there beneath his skin and does not realize that his are almost certainly stronger than hers. She wonders if he will even notice when they leave him - if they leave him - and if it will anger him to have a stranger take from him in such an intimate way. It is more than not caring, it is the recklessness of brokenness, the desire to face fury and feel it reflected inside herself.
Fury is easier than this pain she holds inside her chest, she is sure of it.
Luster
i can't help but love you even though i try not to
He has never been a particularly generous man, no. Litotes is selfish with all but his love, which he gave so freely in the past even as he seemed to learn lesson after lesson. Controlling and doting to his shadows, possessive of the children he keeps close, demanding of the lovers he takes. But the very nature of humanity without madness is to learn even as one repeats that which does not work, and little bits of knowledge have stuck in the boxed away, spider-crept corners of Lie's brain.
And so when Luster takes from the shadows he wraps so tightly around himself, Litotes merely turns a curious face in her direction and gives them away. He calls more to his side, bidding them whispered goodbyes as he sends the darkness to further cloak her. What remains of his own take the forms of little wolf pups, tails wiggling as their excited, yellow eyes watch the stranger. Lie smiles as the shadow creatures yip at his hooves, tussling and tumbling when they grow bored of the shadow-loving woman.
"I felt you take them," Lie says by way of greeting, wandering closer. "Do you control shadows, as well?" he asks, and wonders why she wouldn't take them all from him. Greedy, so greedy--the pale man remembers when he stole the darkness from the sky and brought it down to Tephra. He was always so hungry then, so short-sighted. Perhaps a gift of his power to Luster will help make up for such grievances.
The pups suddenly morph into four fully grown wolves. They peer up at their master, then cautiously creep toward Luster. Sharp, black teeth glint as they sniff at her, deciding she is no enemy. They attempt to rub themselves lovingly against her legs, drawn to protect her like the camouflage magic she possesses beckons. Lie smiles at their doting, golden eyes slowly straying from their pitch black coats to the glowing tear-tracks on Luster's eyes. The blue glow and symbolic placement reminds him of his own secrets, the selfish, greedy man he has always been--his own tears and the tears that shed because of him.
"My name is Litotes," he says softly, daring to step closer. "What's yours?"
and let the cool air in, feel the night slip in as it softly glides across your back and i hope you leave right before the sun comes up so i can watch it alone
