"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
01-25-2020, 06:52 PM (This post was last modified: 01-25-2020, 07:06 PM by greta.)
GRETA
I once held your soldier heart between my war teeth; shook it like a dog with a bone until it knew the fear of good love.
" Do you remember? "
It had been too long - and not long enough. A night of never ending darkness - the way he had welcomed her so easily in the darkness of the night. Assured, safety, a cocoon of horns and hardness (but so soft! So gentle! So kind!). And then He had rent her away again -- to a cocoon of galaxies and stars and nothingness. Always stealing the light that she had found, forever deigning to take what she had built. A curse, a cacophony of pain and purgatory; something He would never let her escape.
“Still here.” The last murmur of words she had heard in her ears, as the dark encased them and her trembling form stilled to something quieter. Still here - a promise, a reassurance, a light to guide her to morning. Something she had never had (will never have). He had stood beside her, swearing himself to a stranger of the night, and she had been forced to flee.
How can you ask for forgiveness, when you do not deserve it? How could she come trembling up to the same lands she did before, when she had already wronged him? How do you explain that it was not her, but Him? How to put in words the hold that a magician can have? “Ghaul?” And it is hardly a whisper. Is it her fear of asking louder - her shame in declaring herself again, of asking for help from him after she had fled so far? She is soft, and quiet. Would he even remember her? It had been years, and yet she had not changed in the least bit. The glass galaxy that He forced to hold her had forbid her from growing, from aging, from moving on (forever His little porcelain doll). “I’m sorry, Ghaul.” the wind sweeping away an apology that would never be heard.
01-27-2020, 10:37 PM (This post was last modified: 01-27-2020, 10:37 PM by ghaul.)
GHAUL
i can take you there, but baby, you won't make it back
Greta had been the first to leave. No, that’s not quite right, is it? Bible had been the first and he has picked that day apart a thousand times over. Greta had been second, followed by Father and Dawn. He has learned to swallow these aches and pains whole so that he no longer chokes on the way it feels to wake up without them again. The lump is still there in his throat, but he can breathe around it now. These confessions of weakness only come in the dead of night as he lies next to Clarissa. It is the only place he feels safe enough to whisper them to her so that she might kiss his tired head.
She was not the first to leave, but she is the first to return to him, and he does not recognize the blur of her warmth at first. When she calls his name, he tilts his head curiously and approaches until he can see her better. Time has passed and he has grown so tall. The boy she knew was all ribs and fearful teeth. He strains his ears for what she says next but her mumbling apology does not reach him. Still, the memory clicks into place and he closes the distance that remains.
A leathery wing extends and he curls it gently over her tiny body in a soft embrace. Ghaul lowers his head and chuffs lightly into her forelock as he memorizes her face once more, tracing it with his nose as lightly as he can. “Still here,” he mumbles softly as he bumps her chin with his nose.
All the baby teeth he had before have been traded in for sizable fangs now, though they align crooked in the smile that forms for her. His wings fold against his back once he’s certain that he has held her for long enough. The gesture had been half rejoicing in her return and half uncertainty that she was real after all this time.
“Did I make you leave?”
The question had echoed across his thoughts for each of them. He was the only common factor in all the relationships that withered to nothing, all the people who had left him for some place else. Ghaul has tried so hard to be a worthy son and friend. What is so hard to love about him, he wonders?
I once held your soldier heart between my war teeth; shook it like a dog with a bone until it knew the fear of good love.
" Do you remember? "
There is a phenomenon of time that may control and bend everything. Time heals all wounds they whisper - but they do not tell you that time can also crack them open. Stretching time of loneliness and loss - of not knowing why something (someone) had walked away. How must it feel to have everyone leave you? (Greta does not know - for she was raised alone, a glass snowglobe of a girl). How must it feel to have them return? Does time away rent up the feeling of anger and fury and grief? Or does the relief of seeing their face wash over it all?
She is a prisoner to time. Or, more to say, of her Father. Of his whims and follies and delights and deviations. She bears this alone, she bears this quietly, she will bear this until he tires and finds something new to play with - another puppet for his pleasure.
He is no longer what she knew. No, back then he was fearsome, yes, but he was small. He was something formidable, but innocent (in some way, somehow). And now? Now the Ghaul that greets her is a man - not a slight little serpent. He looms over, all porcelain fang and leatherbound wing, up up up she has to look. Her head is bowed, a demure and grieving look, and she almost fears what she will ascend her gaze to. She may be naive, but she is not stupid. She knows what he carries on his body could tear her whole. She knows she has stepped into the dragon's lair, a test of time.
Except - it is not a grimace or snarl, but a smile. A delicate embrace that she closes her eyes and harks back to so many years ago. The dusky smell of his leather wing collapsing around her, a safer globe to sleep in. And just as much, the embrace is gone. A silent acceptance, but perhaps not assurance. Her eyes stutter open as his voice breaks the silence, and her body tenses and jolts back as a physical response of protest.
“No! It is almost a shout, an unintended visceral reaction. She could not have him think as much - he, the only soul she knew in this world. He, the one who cloaked her from the cold and the vast violence of Pangea when she first arrived. “No.” Quieter this time, as to not come off as brazen and brash. “I did not want to go.” And it was true. How furious she was at Him. How angry she was that he saw her have something real, and sweep her away in the blink of an eye. How she crashed her slight body against the glass globe of her world, until blood created a crystal painting across the sky. “ I… I didn’t have a choice.” And she did not. Come he says. And she goes.
“I’m sorry. Truly. I could not say no when He called. I can not fight that thing in his veins.” His magic, His fury, His eons old power. Her head lowers unconsciously, her eyes glazing in sorrow. “But - how are you? How have the years been?” She upwardly inflects, a falsity of hope and cheer in her voice. Ghaul, her cloak of protection. This time, she would not leave.
