"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
you taught me the courage of the stars before you left
how light carries on endlessly, even after death
There was dissonance in her heart as she stood at the edge of the Chamber. This place had never been home, had never tethered itself to her soul as it had to some. But impossibly, irrevocably, she always returned to it. But it was Straia that brought her back each time, the promise of family, of something solid. And it was Straia to which she felt any loyalty, not to the kingdom. But for now that was enough, they were one in the same.
But with each new weight that settled like a stain of snow over her shoulders, it became harder to return. It was Chamber magic that fed life back into Makai when his bones crumbled and his skin wilted. It was his fathers’ heart that thump-thump-thumped in the dirt beneath her feet. But as the lie she had built her life on had unraveled before her in the wake of Makai’s sneering face and anything of substance had turned to sand sifting between gaping cracks, only Straia had remained.
Her wings unfurled at her shoulders, large and leather and the same shade of copper as her gleaming skin. With a breath as deep as the chasms dug across her heart, she stepped back into the Chamber. A thought flickered past her eyes, darkening the green.
Perhaps the Chamber had managed to tether her soul after all.
Almost immediately she takes to the sky, launching herself effortlessly into the blue with just a few bounding strides. With the trees shrinking beneath her and the sky yawning before her, she can feel the tension in her chest loosen. And as she dropped her chin to trace the shapes meandering like mice across the trails below, there was one bay and white mare in particular for which she waited.
The ravens caw. From the trees, from the sky. They know this one, the chestnut mare with the changing wings, is important to their Queen. They know who she is. Perhaps not by name, but by affiliation. They don’t even know Lu, so far estranged is Straia from her blood sister. But Oksana is her heart sister. Oksana is the one Straia always welcomes with open arms.
Straia scans the sky, looking for something that isn’t raven, as her own black raven wings grow at her sides. She prefers the full shift, becoming entirely raven and anonymous in that form. Just another solider in the army. But today, she is not looking for anonymity. She is looking for her sister.
She spots a brown spec, larger than the black ones in the sky, and she flaps her own wings. She may usually be raven, but she has practiced enough in this form as well that flying comes at least somewhat easily now, and she ascends with ease. “Oksana,” she says, when she is close enough to be heard. Though the birds echo her word. Oksana, Oksana, they caw, just in case Straia had not been heard.
“It is good to see you.” She says, meaning it. Only with Oksana is there a soft spot in her heart. She would not say such words even to her son, to Weed. Only to Oksana. To the girl she had once hated, been jealous of. Rodrik had coddled her and kicked Straia. But in the end, that jealousy had gone away. In the end, Oksana was the closest thing to family Straia ever got to keep.
you taught me the courage of the stars before you left
how light carries on endlessly, even after death
The birds are oddly unnerving, though no winged thing has ever felt strange to her before, comfortable as she is with the things that call the endless blue sky home. But they group and they caw and they darken the sky over the Chamber like fleas infesting the trees, and Oksana can feel her own skin crawl - though she vows to say nothing to her heart sister.
She isn’t left waiting long, not with the ravens and their hundreds of flat beady eyes tracing her progress across the Chamber’s sky, and suddenly Straia is beside her with a pair of gleaming black wings unfurled at her shoulders. “So the rumors are true, then?” Oksana says with a laugh that changes her face, turns those dark hollows shallow and the sharp angles soft. “My sister the raven queen.”
Her coppery leather wings unfurl impossibly wider as she lets the wind currents and updrafts of warm air carry her higher, knowing without a doubt that Straia will mirror her. The air feels decidedly cooler up here, damp as they pull apart low clouds with the flapping of their wings. “It’s always good to see you, Straia.” Oksana says, and her words wrap around the moisture clinging to them like fog. “I should visit more.”
There is a touch of heaviness to her voice now, a shadow that darkens that aching emerald of her eyes. Straia was the permanence in her life, the only constant she had not ruined, had not broken. She was the first family Oksana had ever known, the first family that, although it had been chosen for her, she chose back. And each time she left Straia, disappeared for months and years, it was a weight she felt in her heart, a loneliness that reminded her of what it meant to have family.
Her wings flap once and she steadies, her face turned to Straia and those large black wings, “Tell me everything I’ve missed, sister.”
The birds unnerve most everyone. She knows this. Of course she does. In truth, that’s part of what she loves about them. Anyone with half a brain should be unnerved around her to some slight degree. Not that she isn’t trustworthy, but she is the product of a monster with a family history of violence and destruction. And when you boil all the finer details of her away, she is the same as the rest of her family. She’s just more careful about trying not to burn the Chamber down with her.
She laughs at the title. “Indeed,” and it only takes a moment before her crown of raven feather’s materializes on her head. She hadn’t felt the need to wear it, not with Oksana, but of course it does serve as a useful tool to confirm the title. She would not be Queen of the Chamber forever, but she would be Queen of the Ravens till the day she died. If she died, that is.
She’ll probably just retire to the mountains and pester Atrox for eternity. Won’t he be thrilled?
“You should. You know the Chamber is always open to you, so long as I’m here.” It would never really be Oksana’s home, and so Straia doesn’t use the word. Oksana didn’t live and breathe for this kingdom the way Straia did. Didn’t really live and breathe for any kingdom. Oksana was simply Oksana, thrust on a throne once that she never wanted and now simply capable of going where the wind took her. Quite literally as they fly upward, the breeze tugging them over the heart of the Chamber. Though from here, she cannot see the burning tree or hear the beating of the heart.
Here, it is just Oksana and Straia. Even the ravens have disappeared now, back to their perches in the trees or their jobs spying on all the other kingdoms. They knew better than to disturb Straia right now.
“Oh, nothing worth worrying about, really. I’ve possibly started a war, but I doubt this will surprise you.” She laughs, because everyone who knows Straia knows she’s terribly capable of starting fights. “Stole the Gates Queen, destroyed their home. Not that this is news or much of a secret.” There’s no remorse in her voice. It’s a wonder, in this moment, that Oksana and Straia love each other so. Oksana would never condone what Straia has done, what she will still do, to bring the Chamber to greatness. Oksana would never steal a helpless Queen either, though if nothing else, Straia made sure Fiasko’s stay was comfortable.
They level out in the clouds, and the air is cool and brisk and invigorating. For a moment, Straia passes the time in silence, her overlarge raven wings pumping now and again to keep her aloft. But she is content in the silence, just the presence of her sister enough to remind her that she has not given everything for the Chamber. She gave up Rodrik (no great loss, but still, her only remaining parent), she gave up Lu. One day, she’d probably have to give up Weed should the Chamber no longer suit his plans.
But Oksana always came back. Perhaps not as much as either of them would like. But still, she came back.
Finally though, she knows she needs to ask, because the heaviness in her sister’s voice and the sorrow in her eyes is hard to miss. They grew up together. Secrets weren’t something they could easily keep. “Why do you seem so sad?”
straia
the raven queen of the chamber
Use of mild power playing is allowed; no injuries without permission
