"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 isn’t particularly fond of winter, she has decided. She doesn’t like the way it makes her glass feel like ice; cold and impersonal, unforgiving to someone else’s touch. Sometimes in the early morning, there were frosted designs etched into her skin, and that was really the only delight she found in this time of year. The designs didn’t last though, often faded away by mid-morning, leaving behind smooth, copper-colored glass. If the sun was unobstructed by clouds long enough she could bask in the rays until her glass skin grew warm, like a reptile on a rock. She would close her eyes and pretend it was spring, and sometimes she was so good at pretending that she was surprised to open her eyes to snow and not wildflowers.
The setting sun is a glare against that glass, and she looks bright and burning walking through the snow – a red and yellow-glinting flame on a blanket of white.
She glances up at the sinking sun, and already she can feel the warmth her skin had gathered over the course of the day slowly begin to fade away. “Can’t you stay just a little longer?” She asks it, her voice a whispered longing, but there is a smile on her face. She knows the sun cannot stay, and she knows that the cold night will not last forever. She will survive it, as she always has, and knows that every frigid night brings her closer to spring.
When she brings her gaze back to ground level she does not look at the watercolors streaked across the sky, but instead to the young stallion standing beneath a tree. He reminds her of summer; pale like prairie grass and red like a setting sun. She wants to curl against him because he looks warm, and she stops just short of doing that. “Hi,” she says, and though she speaks softly her voice still sounds clear and lilting in her glass mouth, her lilac eyes bright. “Mind some company?”
I don’t believe that anybody
feels the way I do about you now
She thinks he looks warm but he hardly remembers the sensation. There are summer memories and a midday winter sun, but to understand the golden light as it lights up his iridescent stripes--he lives too far away, in a land of make-believe, followed by a red boy and his whimsical dreams.
Elio would think Hourglass so terribly beautiful if he had seen her approaching, if he had heard her little pleading to the sky. Glassy, made of the dreams Lannister spins him and just as bright, his heart would race as the sweet questioning plays on repeat in his ears. He loves that which makes his heart pound for it brings him to earth for just a moment--one fleeting moment before reality becomes too much and the steep walls of coping are thrown back up in the form of semi-glazed eyes and and half-interested flickering ears.
Still, when she calls to him, he slowly turns to peer at her from the wavering branches. What he finds the dream previously described, but one muted by his foggy mind and blinking, bleary eyes. She glitters like the ice and snow, reflecting the slipping sun a way no horse's fur could.
"Hi," Elio whispers, mostly shocked by the chestnut and galaxy glass Hourglass wears as she offers her company so freely. "Come on in," he murmurs, brushing some of the willow branches to the side with a gentlemanly sweep of his muzzle. He is curious--almost buzzing, almost alive.
"It's cold," he quietly adds after a few silent beats. His eyes shyly stray to her lilac ones as his head turns.
"I have to admit that I wasn't expecting to find someone out so late on a winter night like this, so I may not be the best company to keep." Elio's voice is hesitant and soft, offering an apology where one was never needed.
i don't think i could stand to bewhere you don't see me
He reminds her of secrets; something too bright to keep, and yet she wants to try anyway. She wants to tuck him away alongside that glass heart of hers, because he looks soft and maybe even almost sad. Like he has just awoken from a dream he did not wish to end, and he has opened his eyes to find reality is disappointing in comparison.
She has had dreams like that. When she dreams that she is not made of glass, but is instead hard muscle and thick skin, smooth-coated unbreakable. In her dreams her bones are made of iron and she does not have to pretend to be unafraid of shattering apart.
Her dreams never seem to last long enough.
Her red lips lift into a smile at his gesture, and she ducks her delicate head just slightly as she steps beneath the snow-laced branches. “It is cold,” she says in agreement, her breath curling like thin tendrils of smoke from her mouth when she speaks. “It’s why I didn’t want to be alone,” her light colored eyes flick to his face, ignoring what he says about possibly not being the best company. She doesn’t think she has ever had bad company. “My name is Hourglass.”
I don’t believe that anybody
feels the way I do about you now
Elio reminds her of secrets but--oh!--does Hourglass remind him of a clear sky above an open plain. Glittering with stars, endless, inspiring in beauty. Envious and shy, Lio doesn't know what to say in his admiration. Uncertainty ties his tongue in knots and simply peering at her is almost too much. He feels as a child would in the face of a confident, playful stranger.
But Elio is an adult and a father. Within the center of his tongue's knot hides bitter darkness. The secrets Hourglass dreams of.
"Hourglass," the man finally says, golden face barely glowing in the last remnants of daylight. "You must be kind to want to keep a stranger warm. I'm Elio," he adds with a mouth curling into a sweet, small smile. He wonders if she wants to keep him warm because the glint of her skin is so, so cold. And he wonders if he brushes his nose against her fragile side, will his lips come away with frost? He doesn't dare venture a touch, no--though he wants to, he certainly, seriously wants to. Elio will tuck her frost away like their secrets and perhaps he'll think of her on another cold, burdening winter's night.
"Are you cold?" Lio finally asks, turning his head ever-so-slightly to glance at Hourglass. "I mean, with your glass?" this he adds as the quietest murmur.
"You can come closer if you are."
Perhaps he'll venture into that wide, star-spangled plain.
i don't think i could stand to bewhere you don't see me
@[Hourglass] grammarly called this anxious but he's just trying to be nice >
![[Image: elio-by-dozymare-ddo34i6.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/Hn9wnYb7/elio-by-dozymare-ddo34i6.png)
