"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
She has left the child behind.
The child she had been.
She has grown, she has softened, she has become something else altogether. She has matured into the thing her mother had imagined she would be when she’d planted her in the roots of that tree.
If she’d had her own way, she would have sprung up from the earth fully formed, just as she is now. She had been a clumsy, excitable child, bright-eyed and eager. And now? She has eased into a better-suited skin. Porcelain and gold, soft as the spring she has come to love so fiercely.
Spring, the rebirth. The fragrance of flowers blooming as the earth thaws. And she dutifully finds the trees that belong to her, those that bear the sweet cherries. She tends to them as her mother had tended to the daughters, diligently. She calls forth their blossoms, watches them unfurl in the warm light of day. And she laughs, a sound like wind in leaves.
So, too, do the flowers in her mane and tail bloom as spring crawls across Beqanna. But it never lasts long enough before it gives way to summer and she moves through the meadow, touching her golden nose into the flowers that have sprung up from the ground, encouraging these to unfold their petals, too.
She finds the ones who suffer and breathes life back into them and they turn their faces to the sun, grateful.
And she smiles and turns her pale pink eye to a stranger nearby, smiling still, asks, “don’t you just love the summer?”
"No." He growled, gruff and guttural as he regarded her with his pupil-less orange eyes. Her spring and summer smile one he did not return. Instead she would find the opposite of those flowers threaded through the strands of mane and tail. He was their end. A gaunt equinoid figure of dried up sticks and leaves. There was no life left in the leaves that clung to his body, they were shrivelled things, waiting to turn into dust.
Etojo wondered if she could sense the emotion behind his eyes even though he stared at her blankly giving nothing outwardly away. Lately he'd felt more than he'd felt in many years, but what that was, well, it felt too complicated to name. Nonetheless, he'd watched her fawn upon the plants of this meadow, the sunshine bouncing ripples of light off her skin. With a touch, those that suffered did so no more, she skewed the balance of things. Not all those given life should flourish, he knew that well enough. Too well. Perhaps a lesson worth sharing.
The flowers around her began to bend away from the sun, their petals falling away from the centre, becoming old before their natural time. The vibrant colour of life fading sullen, their stems wilting down into the soil from whence they had come. A flash of a smirk marked his face and he laughed with a laugh opposite of hers, harsh and raspy. "That's better." He said to himself more than her. Perhaps if she retraced her path, she'd find other plants she had coaxed life into had found a similar fate, as Etojo restored the balance.
She has never seen anything like him.
Not even her mother, with the thick, wood vines trailing down her neck and spine, always blooming.
A tendril of fear snakes through her when he lands her with that strange orange eye, when his response sinks its teeth into the meat of her heart.
(The lesson to be learned here is this: think before you speak, Crania. And something else, too, but she cannot identify the other lesson he teaches her: that some things are not meant to be brought back to life.)
He stands there, seemingly carved out of autumn leaves, and she wonders if he grew from the roots of a tree the same way she had. Had his own mother lovingly tended to him as he’d unfurled beneath the surface of the earth?
He is constructed from the death of all of the things she loves, she recognizes that, but he is beautiful all the same. (Beautiful in the way that all things in nature are beautiful, regardless of what he represents.)
And there is a sharp stab of mourning when he commands the flowers to wilt again, but she thinks she understands. It is not personal, she understands, because his loyalty lies with the autumn while hers lies with all things.
His laugh had burst forth from his mouth like something mocking, but she smiles all the same. “You love the autumn,” she says, an observation rather than a question. Bold of her to assume anything about this stranger, certainly, but there is a certain amount of naivete that comes along with loving things. “The autumn can be so beautiful, too.” Even for her, she who prefers to see things flourish.
There was a twinkle to her smile, a light trill to her voice, the naivety of youth. He'd been there once too, long ago, when his whole world was one big silly adventure, damn the consequences. All ancient memories now, tinged with bitterness he couldn't shake, much like his own shadow.
'You love the autumn,' she says. Far from it... he thought, his sickening smirk twisting into a scowl. Autumn brought death, or the promise of it. He hadn't always been this way, but it was his way now. By his own making, Etojo had nurtured himself into a foul creature. Perhaps others found a sick beauty in this, as she seemed to. But not him.
"No." He repeats. His haunted eyes falling on the blossoms snagged in her hair and he wonders if he'd mastered his hold on killing plants stronger than she could give them life. Let's see. He wills them dead too. "Autumn is a cursed life." He says simply, bitterly.
She knew not of his insatiable hunger. Or of how he scavenged off dead things already killed and half eaten by predators far more skilled than he. Nor did she know how his memories haunted him, twisting into moments full of such sorrow they could not possibly be true. But it was his truth now. Whatever he was, what he'd become, the magic had twisted him.
Perhaps if she knew, she would understand he acted with destruction because it gave him respite away from his thoughts. That it felt good to feel something other than sadness. To cause chaos, to see hurt and pain plastered on the face of another so even if only momentarily, he needn't feel so alone.
But she didn't show pain, nor hurt, nor suffering. Not outwardly. And somehow that made him feel something else too. The tiniest peck of curiosity.
She wonders if, should she touch him, she might be able to breathe life back into the leaves, the fragile fingers of those branches.
(No, of course she could not. Her magic pales in comparison to the magic that has made him what he is. No matter how she willed them to spring forth anew, they would remain just as they are. Dead, dying, brittle. The magic that can turn someone into a season is, perhaps, even beyond her comprehension.)
He corrects her without hesitation. No, he does not love the autumn. He bears it like a burden instead. And she tilts her fine head, briefly searching his face, her pale pink gaze lingering briefly on the depthless orange eyes staring back at her.
Perhaps she should feel some sense of trepidation. Perhaps she should be afraid.
But her curiosity is insatiable, it always has been. It is the same curiosity now that it had been when she’d ventured closer to the thing of summer. The heat had wilted the blossoms in her hair then, too. (She mourns them now just as she had then, a sharp stab of sorrow spiraling through her chest, cannibalizing every inch of her sweetness.)
In the short time they have faced each other, she has learned this: it does not do well to assume anything at all. So, instead, as she continues to him, she asks something rather than making any further declarations about someone she knows absolutely nothing about.
“Have you always been this way?” she asks, the pale gaze skirting down across his shoulder where the leaves rustle softly. She does not try to call life into the blossoms in her hair. For the moment, she lets him rule the landscape, the flora, no matter how fiercely she wants to coax them back to life.
