"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
I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin
I called you to wish you well, to glory in self like a new monster
And now I call you to pray
As dawn breaks through the overhang of limbs, soft leaves and needles, the gift giver growls curses like something feral and runs a great, curved horn down the side of a tree, skinning it down to the bone.
He did not sleep soundly. But he rarely does these days. A Norwegian cold nipped at his face and ears… and hands. Strange, fleshy hands and his smooth, pink cheeks were bitten by the rough friction of arctic wind. He was surrounded by strange little men and he thought he may know them by name, but he couldn’t remember – thought that he may have done wrong by them, but the price he had paid had been worth it in the end… It had been him. It had been him as he had been.
Then he had fallen. The steel, cogs and ice below his feet fell through and he plummeted.
—But he had it. Clutched in his long fingers.
When he blinked open his eyes, his head was overburdened and his chest ached deeply.
All around him, like rocks in a witch’s circle – he in their center – were perfect mounds of fresh earth. He thought he could name a few but the others were yet strangers to him. Later things.
Things to look forward to.
When he woke up he could remember none of it.
He moves as if wrapped up in cobwebs, slowly and stiffly, through the familiar tracts of lichen covered stones and thin birch trees. (Near where he knows her bones are drying out and cracking. Far away from where the other one is wriggling and still very meaty.) Somewhere nearby, she skulks in between her world and the one she refuses to vacate. He lets her roam in peace. She is attached to him by something neither of them understands and neither of them can cleave.
Not that he is sure that is what she wants, to be free of him and this.
Maybe she fears what she can only stave off for so long.
He leaves the choke of moss and rot and shade. The Forest is his greathall, but his hall is crawling with maggots and every so often, he needs to leave it.
He goes to the Beach, to dip his feet in the saltwater and imagine her there, where she had been so long ago. He goes, under his cloak of invisibility, to the glittering crags of his little brother’s humble little home and watches the boy frolic with the girl and he wonders which would break first.
He goes to the Meadow this time. Pollock watches, from afar, birds picks around her clean ribs and eye sockets and her skin like gold (like his, in more ways than one) fall off in strips. He still feels nothing.
He had returned to stand by her once Chessur had cleared out that little rat from her dead teat and he had waited. Waited for it to come to him but it never did. She grew stiff and cold, but never sympathetic. Never meaningful.
She has been aloof; caught up on the nostalgia of a life she never got to truly live. Her heart has spent days, weeks, maybe months aching over the fact she has done nothing but wallow in the shadows and hide amongst the stars. Exemplary, our beautiful agile doe, has spent a large amount of her life being adequate.
She weaves around the tall evergreens that block the animal paved trail, only worn enough to leave a very thinly lined indent in the forest floor. Her black frame is elegant and ghost like, hauntingly floating along like a misguided ballet dancer. Her fragile body is sleek from her morning wade in the lake only north of the meadow, still drying from having been soaked for so long.
Sometimes, when things feel unbearable and her body feels numb, Exemplary finds herself wafting so deep in the water that her neck needs to stretch to keep herself above the waterline. It’s a feeling not easily explained, like her soul is cleansed after every inch of her body is washed with fresh water. It is the only thing right now that gets her through the day… like a child needs their morning snack to make it past noon.
She finds herself entering the border of the meadow, clearly subconsciously needing a change of scenery. Lately her happiest place had been deep within the brush and forestry, unseen or heard of and happily off the map. Her normal self, introverted and quiet, had flourished in that sort of environment.
But here she is, off gallivanting beyond emerald trees and a musky pine scent. Replacing the familiar with the daunting smell of fresh blooming flowers and an odd scent of masculinity.
She had seldom associated with men. The one time she did it was Tarnished, one whom had treated her with an eerie sense of respect but he was all too reserved for her to get much more. Her meetings had been brief and their conversations short, probably for the better anyway. He was far beyond her, so much more capable in comparison.
And so her awkwardness filled the air when she found herself crossing trails with a strange male.
He had an odd aura, a very uncategorised energy. She could not place a finger on his character, this man was undeniably unreadable. It made her feel out of place, and even a little lost in his presence. Exemplary didn’t feel threatened, no. She just felt like the air to his body had an intriguing smell.
Our little doe always came off ordinary. Beautiful, dainty, elegant, feminine; all the flags for your classic Black Beauty. Her air was thick with fairies and pixie dust, and her eyes a crystal glaze of hazel. Yes she came off quite the typical character to every horse lover’s dream novel, but she doesn’t escape reality in the centre of a lake because she is perfect.
And maybe that is her biggest flaw of all; false advertisement. Those who don’t care to learn about her don’t meet her. And those who do care, the few who do, are the few who don’t want to sign up on the insanity train. Her issues are less, her drama is bare, but her heart isn’t full even if her frame appears healthy. She is stalked by the monster they call depression, and he rides on her back like a skilled bronc champion.
Exemplary is an intriguing mystery without any clues left for those few detectives to follow.
She sees his eyes, so focused on something beyond her vantage point, and finds her body floating to his side. She arrives shoulder to shoulder, a fair distance away but not too fair to be out of reach. If he tried he could brush her lightly with the very tip of his muzzle, but not close enough to put her within harms reach.
She doesn’t dance with the devil, often.
“Hello,” her voice is silvery and thin, so suiting to her feminine aura. She doesn’t meet his eyes, unsure of if he was even searching for them. Instead, she follows his distant gaze. A distant gored body assists in flourishing insects and feeding scavengers, her stomach does the slightest of turns; so slight that he wouldn’t be able to pick up on her true discomfort, but might sense her hesitation in stance.
“Quite the sight,” though she felt he had seen it before. In her peripherals she saw his dullness, his lack of spark. It made her think of herself, behind closed doors and drawn shades. He wasn’t afraid to show emotion, to show darkness. But she was. She was petrified of what she was slowly becoming. Or not becoming.
She was terrified she was just being and not living.
Exemplary
I will be yours, and only yours, until the day I fade to black
I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin
I called you to wish you well, to glory in self like a new monster
And now I call you to pray
He finds fragility like hers elicits a reaction like a savage hydra in him.
Many-headed. Many-toothed. Lust by many names, for many things.
If she is a windflower in the forest (soft, supple, delicate and dainty – yawning open for some sun), he is the one that spills guts at her feet and expects thanks for the feast. He does not wield flesh gently. He was never taught how to. He was taught how to appraise every nook and cranny for its susceptibility to bruises. He was taught rough touches and mistakes them all for violence’s foreplay.
It gets the blood pumping.
(—hips are like altars for his sin, he has found. Each thrust a flagellation. Atonement. But it weighs heavy on him, it reminds him that he is a seed from a bad apple. He carries it with him and rives skulls with it.
If he could cleanse like she could, he might. But the salt water has never been a baptism. It had taken their blood and asked for more of the same.
The cold had not cleansed him, either. He had proven himself plainly profaned. He had purged any goodness in him that day.)
So, when she speaks her words sparks a chain of electric pulses up his back. They whisper to one another, messengers playing telephone until he is sure he wants nothing more than to dirty his horns again. He smiles, shifting his weight away from her (hips are altars, but everything else betrays the female body for what it has always be to him – flesh sworn to carelessness and lechery; cruelty), “isn’t it.”
“Horrible.” He looks at her, examining those dancer’s lines.
More and more, he finds he can appreciate beauty. Only he appreciates it for what it could be. What they could make it, together.
He wouldn’t even need to break her, if he thought she’d look best bent.
He can separate the flesh from the woman (literally and figuratively), make peace with the thing that gnashes for them inside of him if it suited his needs, but he cannot help when he is presented with such fine things.
Dark dancers. Blue mysteries. Teal lips. Green ferocity.
“Such is life.” He might have been elated, if she choose she share with him her fear of showing emotions. He is nothing if not a giver. He could help her with that.
There is time to discover.
The gooey sound of flesh being ripped is what fills the duo’s hanging silence. Scavengers diverge themselves in the wake of death, indulging in copious mounds of organs and blood. Birds that sit heavily on the skull of the dead begin to sink with the softening skin, a beautiful merigold shimmer being tainted with burgundy red liquid and unidentifiable sources.
She feels him appreciate her physically, and part of her is disappointed. Exemplary is comparable to the intelligent science wiz in high school that was more nutorious for her robust body than her mental capacity. She is most definitely the beautiful reader that hides herself in the cushion of her bed, ignoring numerous calls from those who only see B&B. A thick feeling of frustration waves over her, as if she almost expected more from him.
The body of someone he most likely new was still shredding in the background—rather, foreground—and he is enticed by her onyx spread.
Their surrounding is almost as dead as the woman ahead. Trees are just now beginning to rebirth their leaf-like children, and flowers only now blossom. Had she known he had compared her to a flower, she would have up and left. In her eyes, she is the trunk of a tree. Dark, unappreciated and somewhat overlooked. Yet, the trunk is the source of nutrition and life.
The trunk is the reason the leaves can grow.
Exemplary has always been in some aspect, the support. It can be viewed as a fault or a beneficial trait. She has a knack for always seeing the best in those around her, for always finding the beauty in God’s ugliest creations. Her heart is open for anything, sometimes too much but never too little. It is why she forgives her parent’s for never wanting her, why she forgives the Desert’s for not suiting her, and why she forgives this man—here, now—for watching the horrendous scene of a carcass be mauled to nonexistence.
She doesn’t see the monster behind the curtain, but rather the character he must be when the curtain has fallen.
His voice is smooth like butter and cooled from practice. Unlike her warm and light tone, he adds depth and weight. His tone sends a slight chill so faint he would have to be staring to notice, a chill that tickles the bridge of her wither and the end of her spine. A chill that is instantly replaced by the warmth of her own curiosity.
“Pollock.” She mimics as a statement rather than question. Her tone lifts into the air like an empty ballad, with soft harmonies and a pretty chorus.
Hazel eyes for a second—and perhaps for the first time during this entire meet— flicker to him. A dainty wing looking damaged and torn, goat horns sprouting from his sandcastle gold head. He, for a moment, looked incredibly daring.
And while perhaps she should be frightened, Exemplary just isn’t the type to run.
“Exemplary,” her name is long and foolish sounding. It is a name she wishes she didn’t have to announce profusely however she also isn’t a liar, and therefore cannot just up and change the title altogether. Instead, she just says it once and leaves it there.
If he forgets, then he forgets.
She will just be “that mare” in his eyes if it comes to.
Exemplary
I will be yours, and only yours, until the day I fade to black
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