"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
BY THE PRICKING OF MY THUMBS
SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES
She is lighter without the burden of the child.
And the child is no burden at all now. She has made no attempt to nurture it, not in the way she had made an effort with the twins. The first of her children. As if seeing to it that they were warm and fed would make any difference at all.
This child, Spectra, is more ghost than equine, it seems. With her soft edges and her gaping mouth. She is fanged, as her mother is fanged, but this does not soften Gospel to her. She had looked at the girl and felt no stirring of any measure of maternal instinct. She had felt no impulse to care for her and had instead left her where she lay.
If the child was worth anything at all, she would know how to survive on her own.
And Gospel has not returned to check on the child and the child has made no effort to seek Gospel out either.
So the bay mare stands now where she always stands, raking the tongue across the surface of a fanged tooth so that the venom seeps into her bloodstream and soothes whatever nerves might be troubled. She exhales and turns her gaze this way and that, as if searching for anything that might seem out of place.
Ghaul had made a mistake in naming her the caretaker of the Cove. She knows this now and she had known it then. But she had made a vow, promised him that she would take care of it to the best of her ability. She wonders, in some distant way, if he would be proud of what she has done or if he would be just as disappointed in her as she is in herself.
12-22-2020, 07:12 PM (This post was last modified: 12-22-2020, 07:14 PM by Tirza.)
If there’s something that stirs within Tirza at the sight of her mother, she cannot name it. Not quite love - perhaps a shadow of fondness? Her parents felt like a separate entity from her and Gravy. As though they did not share blood at all. And yet she’s stayed within the Cove, the place she was born. Stayed near them. But that’s more or less just because she’s indifferent to where she lives. One land is just as good as another when it comes to hunting.
When she steals the life of others to rejuvenate herself and her twin.
But even though there’s no love, there’s no hatred either and so Tirza drifts closer.
She notes but does not ask about the missing foal, the one who had made the venomous mare heavy and fat over the winter (much to Tirza’s enjoyment - that is not a state she ever desires to be in). Her sharp grey eyes take in the elder mare slowly, as though to let Gospel know that she notices the lack of a foal.
“Hello, Gospel.” Comes her cool voice instead, a small quirk of a smile tugging just a little at the corner of her mouth, exposing the fangs there as she comes to stand several paces away.
BY THE PRICKING OF MY THUMBS
SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES
She hears the daughter approach, though she does not immediately turn her head to look. She does not know, in that moment, that it is the daughter at all. In that moment there is only the quiet unease of knowing that someone was coming to disturb her solitude.
And certainly, she should expect it, because there is no reason a leader should exist so thoroughly out of reach. The viper is not approachable by any stretch of the imagination, but there must exist a certain understanding that she is available to those living in the Cove should they need her. (They seldom do, though, as they tend to be a self-reliant breed who live there).
She does not turn her head until the daughter speaks. Tirza, the firstborn daughter. Grown now, a self-possessed girl for whom she had once wanted such greatness. It is the reason she had asked the magicians for eternal life for the daughter. She wonders idly if it is too late now. Gospel has never wanted greatness for herself but she had wanted for her children to be greater than she was.
“Hello, Tirza,” she says, not unkindly, though there is nothing overtly warm or maternal in her tone either. “Your sister is a ghost,” she tells the daughter, though does not elaborate further. She had not caught the way Tirza’s gaze lingered, but she knows the question had likely sprung into her mind.
The information given is met with a slow blink and a small frown. It stings more than she expected to think of the child as a sister - all the more so because she takes her mother's words literally.
A ghost. Dead then, before she even got to live.
"Did you take care of it yourself or did you make him do it?" She asks, feigning a cool curiosity as her grey eyes lay intent upon Gospel. There's anger pooling in the pit of her stomach, a scaled and venomous thing much like she is, much like they both are. It is a poison that will spread through and consume her.
If she and Gravitas were a separate family and entity from their mother, their father was several more degrees removed. The only reason that Tirza wishes her path would cross with the necromancer's again is so she could steal pieces of his life for herself. Gospel had kept them alive as foals, it seemed appropriate that it would be his turn now that they were adults.
All the better that it would be without his consent.
Though she carried his stars on her points, it had been a comforting thought to see so many other decorated with such markings. If she wanted one, it would not be hard to believe her real father was any of them.
It was a fun fantasy, whenever she shifted from apathy to bitterness.
BY THE PRICKING OF MY THUMBS
SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES
A better mother might have smiled patiently and explained to the daughter that there was nothing she could make the father do. But there is some thrill in letting Tirza believe that she has any influence over Stave at all and the corners of her mouth do not stir with even the rumor of a smile.
Instead, she studies her star-strewn daughter and thinks about the new child, how she had emerged doused in galaxies, too. The curse of her children to look like their father, she thinks, and to suffer the knowledge that neither of their parents particularly wanted them.
“She was born that way,” she says, off-handed. The child had been born solid, certainly, but it had not taken long at all for her to dissolve. A defense mechanism, Gospel thinks, easier to be a ghost than a viper. “She was a viper, too.” She turns to face the daughter now, studying the face, the fangs. “Fanged, like you and me.” She could not have nurtured the child even if she had wanted to.
There is a beat of silence then and Gospel lets loose a long breath, her brow faintly furrowed in concentration.
“I wanted better for you than this,” she says, tells the daughter, though she does not know why. “For you and your brother both.”
Tirza finds herself mourning for this sister, a viper like them. How can it be possible to care for someone she had never met? And she wonders if she could have raised her, could have saved her by stealing the life from someone else and giving it to that sister. Then they could have been a trio - the snake, the viper, and the ghost. She and Gravy could have raised her if only they had a chance.
Tirza does not understand why she aches for that lost opportunity. The baby had been a viper, maybe, but dead before she could even use her fangs.
When Gospel continues, when she uses the same manner to speak of Tirza and her twin as she had the ghost-daughter, the star-pointed mare curls a lip back over her fangs in annoyance. That feigned coolness breaks when she snaps out her next words. “Why do you talk in the past tense? We’re not dead, Gravy and I.” They never would die, if Tirza had anything to do with it. They were still so young but she would give herself and her brother as many years as they pleased.
They still had time, plenty of it, to be whatever they wished to be.
“Or have you convinced yourself that we’re ghosts too?”
BY THE PRICKING OF MY THUMBS
SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES
It is not that she thinks them ghosts, it is simply that she has stopped wanting anything for them at all. It does not matter what she had once thought they would be because their futures no longer meant anything to her.
How fiercely she had hated them when they’d occupied her womb, making her tired and heavy. How desperately she hated wanted to tear them from her swollen barrel with her teeth. She would have killed the both of them and herself, too, if it meant being rid of the pain and the gravity.
And she had named the son Gravitas.
And she had thought that the suffering would have been worth it if they became something bigger than she was. Something more powerful.
And they are, she thinks, but they have done nothing with it and she cannot bring herself to care much one way or the other anymore.
“It’s not that I think you’re ghosts, it’s just that I’ve stopped caring.” There is no reason for her to be so honest with the daughter but she cannot find any reason to lie either. She has never known how to preserve anyone’s feelings, not even her children’s. “You and your brother are free to become as great or as mediocre as you like, it no longer makes any difference to me.”
She rolls her shoulders and turns her gaze to the horizon. “Your sister, too. Wherever she has ended up.”
Tirza’s dark grey eyes roll at the answer she’s given, and she’s not sure why she had been expecting anything else. These last few years had hardly been brimming with attention from Gospel - and for the most part Tirza hadn’t noticed. Sometimes it bothered her but those feelings were easy to squash as they are now.
Her life hadn’t exactly amounted to much yet - but she didn’t mind. She and her brother had the rest of time to do whatever they wanted. She’d steal days and years and decades for as long as they wished it. These last few years were barely a drop in the ocean of all that they could achieve.
But she does not share her aspirations with her mother, she knows there’s no point. Any disappointment she feels dissipates before it can register on her scaled face.
The comments about her sister now being in the present tense are confusing, but Tirza expects asking for answers will be more annoying than it’s worth.
So she dismisses the response she’s given with an “Oh well, that’s fine.” And then - because there’s nothing else to say Tirza begins to move on, as though this little mother-daughter chat had been just a mild interruption in her day. Like having to step around a tree that had fallen across a trail.
