"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
He carries the memory with him as he travels, the image of the viper standing alone on that same outcropping. He imagines her miserable as he goes, lets the thought sustain him. Because they have all changed, the viper’s children. There is no trace of the serpent left in any of them, though they are all still draped in their father’s galaxies, and the only son is still all full of bitterness.
And in the darkness he lets the weight of his bitterness drag him into that nondescript lake where they had agreed to meet. He sinks. Sinks until all that remains above the surface is the mouth, drawing breath. And the water is warm despite the lack of seasons, the lack of sunlight.
He thinks about how they’d had fun once, when they were children, he and Tirza. How they’d laughed and splashed in the water in the Cove. How they had chased each other down the length of the beach. Before. Before the Father had found them. Before the viper had slid backwards into whatever darkness had consumed her. And he thinks of the promise that sits like a stone in his chest, the promise he’d made himself and his sisters. He will see to it that they have revenge. He will see to it that the viper never harms another child.
He swims slow circles in that lake, waiting for his sisters, unbothered by what dark things might be watching him from beneath the surface. Nothing can touch him here. Nothing can hurt him here. He draws in a long breath and swims slowly back to the lake’s edge, dripping water into the soft dirt there. He stands and he listens for the girls, waiting.
It is the ghost he hears first, more talkative than Tirza. There is a dreamy, spectral quality to the voice and there is a twinge in his chest when he wonders (not unlike his twin had) how things might have been different if they could have intervened sooner. If they’d had the opportunity to provide her with a family before the viper had had the opportunity to discard her. Because she is a strange thing, the ghost, flickering in and out of focus like she cannot help it and Gravitas does not always know what to make of her.
He turns to face them as they arrive, tries to smile for their benefit. Tries to be kind for the ghost who has never known kindness, not really, though it’s fair to say that neither he nor Tirza ever really have either. But they are a family now, he thinks, or they can be.
“You’re late,” he announces with a kind of sideways smirk, sliding back into the water and out of reach before either of the girls can retaliate.
@[Tirza] i stuck this here because it's the only logical place i could find that had a lake lmao
Coming here almost felt like coming home. What should have been a home - where she and Gravy should have had a long foalhood filled with games, where Spectra should have known at least a glimmer of love instead of being left to be a ghost. The crimes her parents had committed on behalf of the younger sister always threatened to turn Tirza’s carefully managed anger into an inferno. She tried very hard to not let the existence of her parents influence in her in any shape or form - did her best to believe that they were ghosts the way that Spectra seemed to see everyone else.
She was not always successful in these attempts and it had become more and more difficult when she thought about Spectra abandoned as a filly.
Tirza knew she had a protective side, she just didn’t ever expect it to extend to anyone other than her twin brother.
While there is a chance that their mother might be around, Tirza thinks the viper will be either too cowardly or too indifferent to approach all three of her children. Whether she knows it or not, the talkative Spectra is likely giving them an armour - keeping any snakes in the area to the shadows.
It will likely not happen, but the new beast that is coiled in Tirza's heart - the one that replaced the viper - is ready to strike if that mother dares to approach the filly she had abandoned.
The youngest sibling makes sure their travel is not spent in silence and Tirza finds that the smile that she wears for the girl’s benefit is not forced. It had been instinct to attach herself to the filly and make sure she was never alone (or mostly never, anyway - Tirza made herself a port that Spectra could return to whenever she wished). Some of the ice chipped away from the former viper's heart in the process and she really did enjoy being with her sister - and was looking forward to this meeting with Gravy.
His greeting elicits an eye roll of eyes that are no longer reptilian and Tirza nudges her sister, not lowering her voice one bit as she says "Come on, sister. Let's teach our brother some manners." before trotting into the lake without hesitation - making as big of a splash as she can, making her arrival as large as she can possibly make it.
The ghost does not remember much of this place. She remembers the Memory and how the Memory had touched her once and seen the viper in her and then sent her away. But the Memory had been a viper, too. And the ghost, who had not been a ghost then but simply a child, had not understood why a viper should not want a viper and she had lingered just long enough for the Memory to make it clear that she would kill the child if given the chance.
The child had become a ghost sometime along the way. When the hunger had become too much. Sometime after all the world had dropped dead.
And then she had found Tirza sister or Tirza sister had found her and then there was Gravy brother who did not seem to like being called Gravy brother but let them call him that anyway and the ghost loved them both so fiercely that it made her ache in a new way. It was not just the pain of hunger anymore but the pain of something else, too. The pain of what it meant to understand that the Memory should have loved her, too.
There is no connection to this place for the ghost, not like there is for Tirza sister and Gravy brother. The ghost was born here, like they were, and the Memory cursed her here, too. She did not die here, though. That did not happen until later, not until the hunger became too much.
This is how she is able to chat happily as she and Tirza sister make the journey back to the Cove where all three of them started their lives. Tirza sister does not talk much, though this does little to deter the ghost. Because she is so grateful to finally have someone to talk to. Someone who is not dead. Someone who has not been reduced to sun-bleached bone. Because Tirza sister had told her that she would stay and she has and the ghost finally knows what family means and Gravy brother is waiting for them exactly where he’d said he would be.
He tells them that they’re late when they arrive and the ghost does not know what it means to be late, so she looks to Tirza sister. Gravy brother is already dripping wet with water and she wonders if this is what late means, if it means they should have been here before he had a chance to get in the water. But Tirza sister nudges her - or tries to - and says they should teach Gravy brother something and then surges into the water and the ghost makes herself solid, though she is not a viper anymore. She is only a horse whose throat burns when she swallows and whose gut aches with hunger. So she opens her mouth to let water in as soon as she’s in to soothe her throat, to fill her belly and she is happy because she is alive and her family is alive and there are dark, angry things that lurk in the shadows but they cannot touch her when she is with the things she loves.
ALL I WANT IS BEACHES FULL OF DEAD BIRDS. A FLOOD OF LIMBS
WASHED UP ONSHORE. SEASCAPES SPARKLING BRIGHT WITH BONE
Tirza plunges into the water with her trademark reckless abandon and it calls to mind the memory of the day they’d stood shoulder-to-shoulder when their father had found them in the forest looking for their mother. Why had they felt any urge to protect their mother? (Had that been their intention or had they simply been testing the limits of their rebellion?) He remembers how, together, they had surged into the fray of that army of bones and fought for their lives. He remembers it so fondly that it distracts him from his annoyance and he almost laughs as he follows the two of them into the water.
Will he ever get used to watching the ghost turn into something real? He doubts it with the way his stomach somersaults violently as she solidifies before their eyes. He glances at Tirza to see if she has noticed, if she is affected by it at all but he cannot make her out through the darkness.
The water ripples outward as they move through it, splashing in the darkness, and he cannot tell which sister is which as they swim. It is a taste of normalcy in a world gone strange (though their world has always been strange, he knows, the three of them have never known a normal world). And somewhere out there, not far from where they swim together as a family, is the mother who gave them up. Who gave up on them. And he thinks again of the promise he’d himself, the promise he’d made his sister and a sense of peace slithers through him.
He is on the verge of seeking Tirza out, to splash her with a fresh wave of water, when it happens. When the eclipse finally splinters and breaks apart and the Cove and the lake and the three siblings swimming there are bathed in brilliant light. Stunned, Gravitas forgets to continue to tread water and sinks beneath the surface.
Gripped by panic, he swims hard for the light and emerges again.
What is it that spurs him back to the shore?
He does not know what it is that seizes him but he goes. He does not wait for his sisters, he just goes. And he leaves the stars in his wake. And the sun is so warm, warmer than he remembers even and he is gasping by the time he makes it to the shore and the stars are left in the water behind him. As is whatever color he’d inherited from their mother. By the time he reaches the shore, he is red like fire. Red like a phoenix. Red like rebirth.
By the time he reaches the shore there is nothing left tethering him to the viper. There is nothing left tethering him to the Father. There is nothing left that speaks of the parents. He turns abruptly, heart pounding. It is not fear, exactly, but it’s not anything else either. His chest heaves with adrenaline as he turns to face the water again, electrified by the change as his forelock drips down into his eyes. And it glows so vibrantly that he thinks it must be a trick of the light.
“Tirza?” he calls to his twin, his voice strained.
04-27-2021, 08:37 AM (This post was last modified: 04-27-2021, 02:21 PM by Tirza.)
Tirza charges in and her ears twist to catch the sound of Spectra behind her - the girl turning solid and there is a smile that comes to this mare’s face. Despite the darkness, despite how they all began their lives, she is happy in this moment and that does not feel like a small thing. She is glad that they came here, to where they had been born. Can they reclaim the memories they were given? Shift and change them into something shiny and new? She wants them gone, wants to erase all traces of a galaxy father and a viper mother from her life, as if it were as easy as washing away mud from her coat.
They swim and the rest of the world falls away - it is just Tirza and her siblings and the peace they’ve managed to find together.
She is angry still, somewhere in the pit of her stomach, that it had not always been like this. Their parents had no right to bring any of them into this world - no right to discard them once they had, as though it was somehow their fault for being born. It is difficult for Tirza to imagine being a mother and she knows she never will - not unless she wants it with all of her heart. Not until she is prepared to love a foal with all that she can, with what parts of her heart are not either poisoned or reserved for the brother and the sister swimming with her now in the darkness.
There’s little distraction for her thoughts out here where water is indistinguishable from the sky and she is about to ask Spectra something just so the girl can fill her head and ears with something else other than inky blackness when the world shifts.
When it brightens.
Tirza forgets to move her legs for a moment at the flash of brightness and she slips beneath the surface of the now-bright water but she is quick to emerge again. Where there had been too little to see a moment ago now there is too much. There is far too much. She cannot decide where to look first but she sees something red moving towards the shore and she follows it like it has a gravitational pull on her heart. She calls out to Spectra as she swims - knowing there is little that will harm the girl but feeling a flutter of fear in her heart all the same.
Her attention shifts and in the brightness of day, someone bright as a phoenix stands on the shore. "Gravitas?" She asks as she emerges from the shallows, shock working his full name out of her instead of the affectionate and teasing nickname. Legs that are no longer a dull brown but instead blaze with bright purple, pink, and orange carry her onto the sand and eyes that are not grey but now shining with red flame take in her brother rewewed. Her gaze drops and she sees the colours that had skated across the surface of the water with the renewed sun reflected there as well and a small, shocked laugh escapes her.
No more stars. No more viper. They are their own family and it is more perfect than she could have ever hoped. No longer identical, but matched in the colours of their new start.
She moves to her brother, touching his bright coat with her muzzle - reassuring herself that he is real and solid, that he will not burn her as he stands there painted in the colour of fire. And then she turns to look for their sister - eager to see if even the ghost has been freed from their parents.
"Spectra!"
TIRZA
@[spectra]
(summary for autoquest purposes - they went swimming when the sun came up and got 'stained' by the water)
The equine is happy. The happiness fills up all of the empty space between her bones. She is weightless in a new way as the water pushes and pulls and lifts and laughter swells in the cage of her chest and she is whole for the first time in such a horribly long time. And it doesn’t matter that everything in her burns, that she is toxic even to herself. Because this is family, Tirza sister and Gravy brother and this is all she needs. Nothing can touch them here. Not the dark things and not the Memory. She is safe from the bad things even if she is not safe from herself.
When the light comes she thinks she’s dying again. She thinks it’s the light that’s killing her. So blinding, brilliant white that she loses her edges and dissolves and the water passes through her. She does not sink as her siblings sink. She looks up at the sky as the darkness breaks apart and this burns, too. She does not sink, she plunges beneath the surface on purpose. Dives to escape the pain of it. (Always so much pain, even for a ghost.)
When she surfaces again, Gravy brother is on the shore. With her back turned to him, she does not see him, only hears him. He calls to Tirza sister and the ghost instinctively turns to face them. They are not Gravy brother and Tirza sister, not anymore. They are something else entirely. They, too, have been reborn something brilliant. They have left her. How the ghost’s heart aches when Tirza sister turns back to the water and calls for her.
No, the ghost will not go. She will live forever in these waters with her shame. She will never show her face again. (No, she cannot stomach the thought of never seeing her family again! The silly ghost! So, she swims back toward the shore! To her family she goes!) And when she emerges from the water, she too has changed. The change in her is obvious, though she is still a ghost.
She cranes her neck to peer at her chest and gasps aloud when she finds that it is no longer the same pitch black it has always been but a deep orange. “Me, too!” she cries, red eyes blazing with relief. “Look at us!” Reborn, all three of them. Though she never met the Father and does not know what it means to no longer bear his stars. She pulls her edges back into focus so they can get a better look at the equine, how her colors compare to theirs. And how brilliantly the mane and tail glow, the same as Gravy brother’s, as if they are on fire. (The starlight wings remain, though, a lasting connection to the darkness that birthed them.)
“We’re beautiful,” she sighs, grinning, as her edges fade again. Though they had always been beautiful, the three of them. Made even more so by their infallible will to survive.
ALL I WANT IS BEACHES FULL OF DEAD BIRDS. A FLOOD OF LIMBS
WASHED UP ONSHORE. SEASCAPES SPARKLING BRIGHT WITH BONE
