"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
To most, what happens is a violation, a stripping of their birthrights, their essences. He hears cries of dismay as they go down the mountain, watches their bodies morph and change as magic is taken back into Beqanna’s breast.
He, however, is thrilled.
He moves as quick as he can to the invisible threshold, does not know quite what to expect, but oh---
His body seems to solidify, his skin darkens from its once translucent state to a richer red color, the roaning more obvious now. He becomes heavier, denser, goes from glass to solid object. Even his wings – once delicate, paper-thin, with a small knot where the hollow bones had broken and healed – change, thicken, turn into lushly feathered things, the kind of wings that could bear heavy things aloft. He flexes them, tentatively, is awed by both their weight and his own ability to support them.
He has never dared to think of this, that perhaps he could change. That he could have the kind of body that does not live in fear of breaking.
(He wonders, too, if Adaline is on the mountain, if she will come down, if the same magic will be worked on her, and oh, his heart quickens at the thought even as he wonders if she would still want him if she is made whole.)
He walks, solid and winged, a smile blooming on his face like wildflowers. Beqanna can have his magic, he is freed.
come on in, we haven't slept for weeks; drink some of this, it'll put colour in your cheeks
What she can’t get over – what she cannot imagine, in her youth and inexperience, will ever fade – is the excitement, the newness, the freshness of Beqanna. And to cap that, it certainly seems the residents of her new home are as intrigued by its features, its layout and geography as she is. They flex their wings (their wings - horses do not have wings where she has come from, and whilst her mother mentioned them, she stopped believing as she grew older) and talk in hushed tones of mountains and magic – she has surely come to a land of great mystery.
(Of course, being a stranger, Winter remains ignorant of the tumult, the mists, the upheaval – she does not realise that even the longest resident of Beqanna is today as new as she is. She can only assume they are a curious, excitable race – and why wouldn’t they be, in a land with such curious habits, such capricious spirits and unusual horses?)
See this red stallion here, the one she is watching from the corner of her eye as she grazes. He’s smiling as he walks along, for no reason she can easily come up with. Before she met the filly with wings she might have thought it because he was blessed by some great spirit to carry the feathers across his shoulders, but she has learned that such things are commonplace here. Common or not she cannot help but keep up her one-eyed vigil, observing how he carries the wings, how they move as he does. So recently she would have thought he had stepped out of myth or legend, not walked across the same meadow as she did.
And still he is smiling, so she resolves to speak to him; what is the point in coming to a new place if just to eat and sleep the same as she did at home? He is not far away, and she picks up a gentle walk towards him. Nerves, as always, flutter – but she tells them this is what she must do. Her voice betrays her – ”Um,” - but she tries harder. “Hello. I – I’m new to Beqanna. Have you lived here a long time?” Perhaps he will help her to understand this strange and changeable place.
The wings are commonplace, compared to what he was:
A boy of glass, translucent skin, wings paper thin and unable to bear his weight. A boy who had died, and come back; impossible.
(He doesn’t remember dying. He remembers her screams. He remembers a cracking noise, like tree boughs breaking. He remembers waking up in the field, alone.)
Where others bemoan this new morality, he cherishes it, for glass was never a blessing, only a curse, only a weight set upon his shoulders, the reminder: you are ever so easy to break.
A mare nears him, dapple gray. He no way of knowing if she was once magic and has been stripped of it; or if she has always been this way.
(For she is the first to see him like this – see a stallion who is solid, a stallion who could be a warrior, a stallion who does not have to watch his every step lest he fall and shatter.)
“Hello,” he says, and dips his head slightly, “I’m Contagion. Welcome to Beqanna!”
That answers part of the question – she is new, she was not bred here as he was (and oh, he was bred in such odd circumstances, between a woman once dead and a man who took far too long to die).
“What’s your name?” he asks then, because it seems polite. On his back, the wings shift again, and he marvels once more at the strength of them.
