"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
There is nothing remarkable about the dawn that finds her, nothing new about a sky enameled blue and pink, about a golden sun that sits heavy and impatient just below the horizon. The trees are as they have always been, tall and knotted and gnarled, a hundred sentinels gathered to a place that not even the Reckoning had managed to change. Maybe it is their spindled, reaching branches pushed aloft to hold the pieces of sky and cloud together, or the tangle of roots below that wrap like bony fingers around the heart of this quiet place. But it is safe and untouched, so same, so quiet, so ordinary when the watery yellow light kisses her small shoulders and she stirs with a soft oh of sound.
She is curled in the u-shape of roots beneath a particularly large old tree, sleeping with her back against the trunk and an impossibly delicate head resting on outstretched forelegs the color of bright gems. In the fingers of dawn that stretch across such strange skin, she is gleaming and beautiful, the reflection of morning in a bead of pooling dew. There are trees there, in that translucent teal, branches and leaves and birds and clouds, a mirror of the world around her in shades of blue-green while they are trapped inside her. She doesn’t notice though, doesn’t realize that that her skin should be soft and warm and supple, that it shouldn’t hurt to lay crumpled like this, that it should be of flesh and blood instead of this cold, twinkling glass.
She only knows the cold and the quiet and the hunger in her belly.
When she wakes to find just the shape of her sparkling shadow beside her, there is a whisper of worry that tangles in her stomach, an instinct that hums in such delicate, curving ears, this is wrong, this is wrong. There should be a mother curled beside her, milk damp around her mouth and on her whiskers. But there is only nothing, only no one. She jerks upwards and her legs slap together, up against her belly, and the still-soft glass groans and fissures and scolds her angrily. The shock of pain stills her, confines her, and she freezes soundlessly, wide-eyed and wounded in the growing light.
She waits a few seconds, waits until something long and narrow and fuzzy inches slowly over her foreleg and disappears into the nearest leaves, and then she moves again. So slowly this time, drawing trembling legs beneath her, she is up and standing and trying to curl against the tree for strength, for comfort – though there is none to find. An instinct tightens in her throat, forces a sound from her lips that is as sad and lonely as a sky full of stars, distant and beautiful and untouchable like her. It is not quite a word, not quite a voice. It is the quiet, confused keening of an impossible girl.
Stubbornly, or maybe just foolishly, she pushes away from the tree with the sound of a dozen chiming bells, of dropped porcelain and shattered ice. Already she is more graceful than she should be, so cautious and so deliberate, made careful by the lesson of pain. It is only when her hoof catches on a root and she stumbles forward that stops again, frozen and trembling, amber eyes wide and sad and dark with confusion.
though i never needed any proof to trust the heart that beats inside of you
He breathed through the burn in his limbs, the sting in his lungs. The white of his coat was slicked to a silver, soaked through and through like the rest of him. The purple dabs on his hide almost looked like the black they would normally have been, dampened and dark. More than sweat alone, the frost of his skin melted under the heat of his body, pushed to its limits time and again as he tried to run off the emotional tension that had freed his magic. Get it back under control again. So much turmoil. It had to give. Someday, it just had to give.
The season made it worse.
Breeding season.
The first without her.
He swore there was love and sex in the air everywhere he went. Maybe that was what he was trying to outrun. He wanted to be happy for them, all of them. But damn he just needed to be away.
He was panting hard when he caught sight of her, barely heard the forlorn cry of a lost and aching babe. It stabbed straight through his heart, that sound, but he began his way slowly closer. Steam from his mouth and nose clouded the immediate air with hollow and burning breaths. The loud huffs left him like a beast weary from fighting against its chains. Like the beast in his mind that had fallen eerily silent. He could still feel it, still sense it, knew it was there. But it lay in wait. For what?
With a deep breath, he tried to calm his racing heart, settle his thirsty lungs and breathe normal, quieter. His steps were careful, nearly silent, and the ice of his gaze never left her. She leaned against a tree for support, small and fragile. Far too young to be alone. Far too strange to be left behind. Everything around her reflected across her body in shadow blues, as though made from solid ice. She didn’t look cold though, didn’t chill the air, and when she carefully pushed herself from the tree, she jingled and twinkled like a living, quiet wind chime.
Her movements were so tentative and cautious as she tried to step away from the trunk that had held her up, so fluid and graceful with every dancing reflection gliding down her little body. He came into view and neared as she stumbled, locking her legs to keep from falling, eyes wide. That was when he reached her, in the quiet of the forest with his velvet black nose gently seeking the shine of hers. His breath fogged her surface, glacial eyes warm as a calm settled through him, turned his thoughts away from previous bothers.
With a sudden urge to be his wolf, he lowered himself to the ground and flattened to his side in playful submission, rolling to his back and twisting his head around to look up at her before turning to his side again with a quiet huff. He stilled for a moment, watching her. Then, as though making a wish, he blew out a slow breath of magic to her and frosted her to look like him: glassy blue points with a snow-white middle, peppered with empty places to allow her color to show through the leopard pattern.
He lay his head back down with a smile, rubbing his cheek into the dirt then settling to admire her.
04-27-2017, 06:44 PM (This post was last modified: 04-27-2017, 07:36 PM by polaris.)
Polaris
She does not notice him through the trees, does not hear him close the distance between them with the quiet of the creeping dawn. It is only after she stumbles and looks up from a ground knit through unevenly with knots of dark and winding root, wide-eyed and uncertain in the wake of new pain, that she discovers him watching. She makes a soft, surprised sound and reaches for the nose he stretches out to her, too new to know that she should be wary of a stranger like him.
He smells like damp earth and sunshine, like deep forests and she smiles because this is what she knows, what she must smell like too. Without the wariness she should have, a wariness she should’ve learned from her mother, she pushes her nose against his, further up to touch his jaw and his cheek, to lip at those dark ears and the impossible softness of the hair tangled between them. She loves that best, the softness, that which she lacks, and when she drops her nose to his again and huffs her quiet pleasure, those pale amber eyes are bright and trusting.
His breath fogs the surface of her skin, dims the reflections of the world in blue around them. She doesn’t notice though, is too busy watching the winter of those glacial blue eyes, his world in white and silver and pale blues. It is at once her favorite color, soft and steel, a strange kind of fragile strength and she clings to it instinctively, unable to blink until he does. Even then she wonders at them though, wonders at him, wonders if she is as soft and warm, if her eyes are the same kind of beautiful.
Without warning his legs fold beneath him and he drops to her height, his head appearing massive in contrast to her much smaller one. She reaches out to nose at his forehead once, then steps back delicately to give him room as he rolled first to his side and then to his broad back to peer up at her. With a growing smile on her twinkling lips, she peers back down at him, inching closer to lip at the foreleg that bends in the air near her nose. He twists again, so careful of her closeness, until he is once more on his side with a quiet huff.
She eases closer to his stillness again, each movement a chorus of tinkling bells, pausing only when he reaches out to her to breathe the coolness of winter against her strange skin. She turns to watch with him, twisting so she can see as much of herself as that short, delicate neck allows. He makes her white-silver in the middle, fogs the teal so that only the points and a spattering of coin sized spots still bleed brightly through. It takes a moment for her to understand, to see her new-white and new-spots, and turn to see his true-white and true-spots and realize that she is like him now.
But when she does realize, her face is soft and bright all at once, that glowing smile so painfully fragile in its innocence that it could melt iron. He lays his head back down again to watch her with his cheek against the earth, and she stumbles forward with a flick of that watery purple tail to follow. In the curve of his neck and against that damp, silvered chest she folds neatly, almost feline in her quiet grace, and tucks impossibly close to his growing warmth and soft. Her legs chime beneath the delicate weight of her body so she rolls into him and more on her side, letting them slide out from beneath her. Then, so quietly, she lays her head across his neck, breathing lightly into the curve of his ear and across the hollow of his jaw.
She is exhausted and hungry, but she is no longer uncertain tucked like this in the crook of his neck, pressed to the chest of the man who had somehow made her look so much like him – it is not a magic she understands, but it doesn’t bother her because it is safe and it is good and he stays when no one else had. Gently she shifts, rubbing the side of that gleaming face against the suppleness of his neck with a quiet, relieved sigh. When she stops it is only to wonder why his skin is soft when her legs are more like the smooth stones littered around them, worn and gleaming and cool to the touch. There is sudden worry when she lifts her face to him, when she wonders why he is like sunshine and she is so much more like the cold night. Her lips are hesitant now when they find his cheek, when they nuzzle hard instead of soft into the hollow near his jaw.
Am I wrong? Those eyes ask when they find his, pale amber like deep gold.
though i never needed any proof to trust the heart that beats inside of you
Her return touch was ready and eager, and he was immediately thankful that he had been the one to find her first without her having learned to be wary of others. He pulled and held his magic closed inside him as her little nose and lips explored his face, lowering his head to allow her further inspection with a soft smile of amusement. She soon returned to his nose and huffed sweetly, eyes bright like the shine of sunlight through honey. He was softened then, as though the sun behind her trusting gaze had shone through and warmed him, melted the piercing ice of his eyes to a clear blue.
The world had delivered to him exactly what he needed; a child in a time without love. A sparkling little gem to raise as his own when his children were all full-grown and no longer needed him. Not as a baby does. Not as she would. He hadn't realized how he craved that look of instant love and endless trust, needed it and the natural-born kindness in her to balance out the sharp and bitter barbed looks from his little girl that had always loved so easily, so brightly, but had since become something darker.
But this one. This one would hold to the light in her heart.
He would swear it.
He would teach her to love so completely, whole-heartedly, even when it meant the pain of it's end cuts so much deeper. A brave little heart.
She reached for him each time he shifted; touched his forehead, his leg, anywhere she could. When he rested again on his side, she eased closer, tinkling and twinkling with her grace and gliding movements. He watched her quietly as she studied the frosted pattern he'd dressed her with, waiting to see what she thought of it. As though he could see her thinking it through, he saw the light of recognition in those star-bright eyes as she warmed again and turned to him. She stumbled forward to him, folded and tucked herself into his neck and chest. The curve of him curled around her as her legs stretched out to her side too, settled a little tighter in a quiet embrace as her head rested on his neck to breathe in his ear.
Smitten. He was entirely smitten with this innocent child as she rubbed her face into him with a precious little sigh. Something made her stop and she looked thoughtful again. He listened to those thoughts as they tightened little brows and worried little eyes, listened to this language of body that he'd learned from the wolves of a home long-gone. When she touched him again, it was more careful, less sure. Puzzled and uncertain. But the touch was firm, because she was firm. The light, though shaded with doubt, was still there in her eyes when she looked to him again like a star encased in glass, glowing from the inside, protected and out of reach of those that would want it for themselves.
He curled closer and trailed his nose and lips along the young nicks and faint scratches in her legs, letting his breath fog her surface and make them stand out more clearly. He pulled back to look at them with a growing smile. Her imperfections were flawless in the way they made her so rare and beautiful, impossibly unique. No other creature would have these miniature constellations marked on them, following them everywhere, orbiting around the true star that hid safely within her. One day, she would see how very rare she was. Maybe she would despise it as children often do when they'd rather be like everyone else. But one day she would understand what made her stand out was so much more valuable than what made her fit in.
He reached for her face then, polished the side of her sweet face with the velvet of his mouth. You'll see one day, he thought. Until then, he would hope she would trust in the wonder and awe she must surely see in his dark face when he admired her. She was something to be loved and cherished, for exactly what and who she was. Never to wish for a change in it. To shine her little heart-star as bright as she could with its eternal light, never fading no matter how many new constellations get chiselled into her.
"Polaris," he named her in a whisper kissed to her cheek. The North star that guides, that never fades, never bows down to shift her place no matter how the other stars dance slowly around her.
He rose to his feet then, bent to rest another kiss to her forehead before pulling away and releasing his magic again, fatigued with holding it captive within him. It snapped into place around him, sucking the heat and moisture from the air and dropping the temperature instantly. Without a breath this time, he reapplied her frost-leopard coat to match him.
He hesitated, looking her over.
No, that wasn't at all what he wanted to teach her. She shouldn't wish to look like anyone but herself. He could claim her his in some other way. So, he melted it from her, making her shine and glimmer in the moisture as it ran from her back and sides and pooled in her little nicks. He thought of marking her with the wolf in some way or another. But he was no longer wolf, was he. Very well, then. His head tilted as he studied her, thinking, thinking. Ah yes, that would do.
A little bit of him, a little bit of her. He gave a quiet huff and a smile as rare as she was, then turned and began walking home. There was still wolf in his manner and always would be, and the pup would learn to follow or be left behind.
He hoped, though, that she liked the glittering ice-diamonds set into her pocks like little twinkling jewel-stars, emphasizing exactly who she was in the way they claimed the chips and imperfections already there that she could feel good for, show them off proudly, and not dislike for the way they marked her. Hoped, too, that she liked the threaded line of more ice-diamonds along her spine like the stars in the sky and in her surface that would always follow her, their North Star.
A little bit of him. A little bit of her.
But every bit his.
In another world, dark finds her first. Someone who spies her fragile sort of beauty with hungry eyes and an unnamable greed – someone who would rather taste her innocence than see it protected. In that world, she is ruined. She is not a star, not guiding light, but rather a supernova; bright and catastrophic even in her death throes. In that world, she is made to be undone, made to be sinister and ruinous and defined by the dark who made her. In that world, she is a shadow-self.
But in this one, it is light that finds her first, a radiance she reflects back as easily as any gleaming surface, an echo of the soul who found her. It will be this light that defines her, his light and his bright even though he cannot see it himself. It will always be him at her core, him in her heart, he who found her and loved her and lit that flickering bright inside her chest with strong, steady hands.
This will always be her first memory, the first piece of Polaris.
Polaris.
She lifts her small, twinkling face to the sound of his voice, soft-eyed and smiling when his lips brush a kiss across the smooth of her cheek. Polaris. She isn’t entirely certain what he means, what the word means, but it is clear enough that he gives it to her. That it means something to him even if it means nothing to her, yet. She flicks an ear at him curiously and those pale amber eyes never drift far from the quiet calm of his dark face. Polaris.
He rises, careful when he disentangles from the smooth teal of her gleaming body, and leans down to press a second kiss to the fogged whorl of paler color near the center of her forehead. She accepts it quietly, still curious, not understanding the weight these gestures hold so much as she is starting to understand the softening of his stoic face. She rises beside him with round-eyed trust, struggling for a moment to keep those tired, wobbling legs beneath her. But she steadies and steps closer, pushing her nose against his belly as if to ask, now what?
Except he feels different now, even the air around him feels different, and she tilts her head up at him in that quiet, imploring way. He is cold like she is, more than she is, but it is hard for her to distinguish the difference, hard to feel the bite of such deep ice through the glass of her delicate nose. Still, the likeness warms her just as the spots had, like a hand over hers and pulling her closer. She lifts her face again to him, so quietly pleased, and is startled at the intent with which he watches her.
Her skin – is it fair to call that skin – cools suddenly and she remembers the sensation from earlier, smiles, and twists to look back across her shoulder again. Just as before, she is him in teal, spotted and frost and glacial; beautiful. She reaches to push her nose against his shoulder but before she can, he has changed her again. The ice melts, he melts from her skin in sad, damp rivulets, leaving dark tracks of moisture like the tracks of tears down cheeks. There is worry in her heart at once, a broken kind of uncertainty that comes from having already been left behind once and she totters forward to reach for his chin, lipping uncertainly at the whiskers there.
But then he turns and he smiles – the radiance that gave light to the star in her chest – and she twists again with an uncertain kind of curiosity, of trust, to trace the new changes he had enameled into the teal. In the broken places, the places carved hollow and uneven with the echo of her mistakes, he placed jewels of gleaming ice, pieces of himself to fill them. To him, they remind her to love herself, all of herself, even the parts that make her different. But to her it is something more. It is the promise of I am with you, always - when you are broken, I will fix you; when forget who you are, remember you are mine. It is the promise of a father, it is what it means to be loved.
When she bounds forward, not unlike a doe in her quiet, easy grace, it is to tuck against his cold shoulder and press that small, smiling face to him. She has not seen the horizon of ice-stars he buried in the ridge of her small back, cannot turn so tightly with such a fragile body. But when she discovers those later, beneath someone elses lips or in the reflection of a pond, she will soften and shine and feel pride for the family she has joined, for the man who dared to love her when even her own mother could not.
though i never needed any proof to trust the heart that beats inside of you
