"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
A WHITE BLANK PAGE AND A SWELLING RAGE, RAGE
YOU DID NOT THINK WHEN YOU SENT ME TO THE BRINK, TO THE BRINK
For millions of years he sat undisturbed.
He uplifted and he eroded.
He lived in a spine, with his brothers, as long as the Great Blank Continent itself, splitting it into two, jagged halves. On one side he cast a mighty rain shadow and the lands to his lee were drier than to his windward, where the prevailing winds brought bounties of moisture.
He made lands grow lush; he made lands grow sparse.
He did so quietly and undisturbed, for millions of years.
Industrious rodents, mottle-feathered birds and quick-footed goats made homes on his shoulders. Men, too, lived there. They settled down and built their villages—brightly coloured homes of timber and the things they could trade with his brothers’ people. They made their families and they tamed the animals—they dug picks into his flesh and carved weapons from the harvest.
He did not love them or hate them.
He simply was and they simply were.
‘Move, Hoarfrost.’
He had no legs then, of course, so when he was summoned he could only quake. Awaken!’
He shook and threw great sheets of snow down his slopes, ripping ancient trees from their roots; he shook loose the animals from their homes—eggs from their nests and woolen cats from their caves. (Innocent casualties—he feels sorry for them, now that he can.) The villages were buried in his avalanches—men, women and children, all. He moaned and cracked as his bones, those made of stone and ice, fractured and pulled apart from each other.
The agony stretched on for days. Weeks, perhaps.
His brothers watched silently and uncaring;
his brothers’ people celebrated or wept (depending) when they heard the news.
From the rubble and the snow, he emerged, scarred and heavy-hearted. Fleshed and blooded—his skin was wet (and he could feel it, too, down to his bones… those made of collagen) and his hair (black and rough) was long and dirty. “Why?” he asked, with his new voice. It sounded many-tongued—like a thousand voices whispered into a northern wind, captured and caught in his throat. Low, vaporous and sad.
‘Your people were trouble makers, Hoarfrost. They had been warned… But, you were so a part of them that you had to go, too. This is the body I have given you to live in, now.’ It did not sound sorry, the Great God. But it was, in a way.
He nodded, slow and solemn. For the first and last time, he looked upon his brothers.
How mighty they were.
****
Hoarfrost moves slowly, with the contemplative nature of a mountain. With long, drawn-out strides; it is as if each hoof is made of stone and each join is tight with ice. He is large—much larger than any horse. His ears pass over some young trees; those older guards, however, still tower over his square and crude head. He wears a long coat, shaggy and unkempt—it hangs long from his belly; great feathers swish and sway as he lifts and sinks each foot into the snow; on the underside of his head, from chin to jaw, a beard tangles and grabs onto evergreen arms, taking some with him as he goes. His coat is like winter, except it is overgrown and it never sheds and on each strand of hair, frost glistens and bunches in crystals.
The Great God had made him fit for his brothers’ peaks, but Hoarfrost had found he could not bear to stay there.
His righteye is dark, peeking from the thick flow of his forelock. His left is bright and strange—frosted over and frozen through. It had been irreparably damaged by his agonies. It had felt cold, at first, burning his eyelid every time he closed it over. But he has gotten used to its weight and blankness.
The ground thumps dully with each step, and his girth rustles the trees, dropping their gift of snow onto the ground as he moves from them and into the open. Like so many around him, he wanders. He has wandered for a long time, across continents and bodies of water, stringing together long, comforting periods of isolation with terrible and beautiful encounters. He moves as far away as he can from his brothers—and from the wreckage of his body. He had lingered for a few days, cried (a strange sensation) and yelled, but in the end, he found he could not will himself back into stone. He could not will his peak to rise or his animals to stir.
He felt, for the first time, the anguish of nothing. Not like the eternal nothing before it, but nothing where once there was something. Something important and beloved. His heart beats, slow and loud in his chest. (It can be heard in the quietest moments, even by the naked ear.) It is broken, mortals might say, as a turn of speech.
He is nimble and quick, so very much like his namesake, darting easily amongst the trees and the brush. So much of this land has been explored, but there is always more. There is always something to entertain.
When he grows bored of the trickling streams of lava, of steam and mountains, he moves on to the forest, or the meadow. He longs to explore the other lands in much the same way, but he has yet to devise a clever enough scheme to do so that will not get him caught. So, today, it is the meadow.
Truly, he has found something of interest here every time he has visited. He should be a familiar sight by now, a boy of ruddy roan with the bold white stripe and stockings. He has grown since his first visit, less gangling child and more lithe youngster. His red mane has begun to flop to one side, the strands thick and ticklish against his neck. His tail now reaches his hocks and might now actually serve some purpose in warding against flies come summer.
Not that he is eager for summer. No, winter is his season, ice and snow his element. It floods his veins and gives life, gives him joy just as he can so easily give to others. It should come as no surprise then, that he is attracted to a creature who wears ice upon his skin like armor.
Of course, he is not hard to spot. One would have to be blind to miss him. Even then, it would be hard. His steps practically shake the ground.
Fox has never been a shy colt, and now is no different. A few easy, loping steps carry him across the meadow from the trees, bringing him to the giant’s side.
”You,” he says without preamble, ”are the most impressive horse I have ever seen.” He tilts his head, doing his best to take in the entirety of the massive stallion, amber eyes bright and curious. ”I'm Fox, by the way.”
A WHITE BLANK PAGE AND A SWELLING RAGE, RAGE
YOU DID NOT THINK WHEN YOU SENT ME TO THE BRINK, TO THE BRINK
Each breath he takes sounds labored—his lungs are true and hardy, but still they seems to be made of stone, so his breath is like the whistle of air over rocky peaks. Not laboured, but reminiscent. Reminiscent of eons; a life that had no definitive beginning, but perhaps for the moment when the earth cracked two of its plates together, sending him and his brother forth in the fault. Millions of years of growing from that tremendous force; millions more spent eroding in the wind that battered his side and rain that drew shapes and fissures in his skin.
So to them, it might sound labored.
To him, it is what he has always sounded like.
It would be easy not to notice the boy when he comes, swift and nimble, like that things that dug burrows in the soil that sat at his lower altitudes. He is just getting used to his sight, limited as it is; the nuance of sound; and the way smells receive in his nostrils—pleasant, like the smell of water from icy heights, and odious, like the first time he encountered flesh left too long in the sun. (He thought, of course, of the animals. And it made him sad—that uncomfortable and clinging embrace.)
Besides, he is so small and the giant is obstinate about shaking loose the numbness he is so used to. But as his heart beats, slow and steady—pumping warm blood to his cold skin—so does he begin to know the creature callings of contact—he begins to understand the herd nature of his new, brute impulses. His ears flick and swerve on his head, capturing bits of conversations—there are words he does not yet understand. Language was not given to him freely by the Great God, but it builds as he wanders.
It would also have been easy to ignore the boy, as many might have anyway. But Hoarfrost is not accustomed to the unkind way old ones might treat their young, as if they haven’t much to say. He shifts, carefully, mindful of the way his hooves move like an uprooted boulder by the boy’s slight outline. He groans as he does, his company would test the patience of any youngster. Unhurried and deliberate, he drops his great head and turns to look at him with his working eye.
“Hmmmmmmmm,” it seems to hang on his tongue forever, contemplative and rumbling from deep in his core, “hello, small one. Fox.” Each word draws out and in between his lung heave like great bellows; his voice is old and complicated. He considers his words—knows he was once something much mightier; something much less feeling. “I am, just an animal. Like you. Small one. I am Hoarfrost.” This, strangely enough, has always been his name, for mountains have names, too.
He is absolutely fascinated by the creature before him, and his curiosity knowing no bounds. He is not quite sure what to call him. He has picked up a few of the words his father likes to so freely share, but he has nothing for what Hoarfrost could be. Nothing to define him by.
Instead, he observes. Listening to the way his breaths heave like bellows, a slow draw in, a slow release out, heavy and labored but somehow appropriate. The way his limbs shift almost lethargically, as though the energy it takes to move them is immense and takes time to build. The way the frost dangling upon his shaggy coat glitters in the light, a drop of moisture occasionally escaping to fall upon the ground. The slight tinkling of ice crystals jangling together, a gentle, almost inaudible music to accompany the great sighs of his breathing.
At the giant’s acknowledgment, Fox smiles. A broad grin that turns a bit roguish as his floppy forelock falls over one eye in response to the movement of his tilted head. He steps back to better consider him, long, slender limbs doing a prancing little jig as he shifts. So very much the opposite of the hulking, deliberate movements of the stallion before him.
”Well, of course you are,” Fox responds in that decidedly chipper manner of his. ”We’re all just animals underneath it all, aren’t we?” For all his youth, the colt could be quite wise in his own way. Still, he is quite young. And he proves it all too readily. ”But that doesn’t mean you can’t be impressive.”
He shifts, his grin turning a bit impish as his amber gaze considers the frost coated strands of his new friend’s shaggy coat. ”And you’re covered in frost,” he says, his voice bright with delight. ”And that’s just the coolest ever!”
Realizing the pun he had just inadvertently made, he chuckles before continuing simply ”I like winter.” The words are accompanied by a swirl of snow that settles over them into a fine dusting of white.
A WHITE BLANK PAGE AND A SWELLING RAGE, RAGE
YOU DID NOT THINK WHEN YOU SENT ME TO THE BRINK, TO THE BRINK
This little animal is wise.
Hoarfrost had been formation—mouthless, eyeless, senseless; numb to the nature of hearts and souls, for his was hard and cold and it did not beat but sat still for an aeon, unresponsive—far, far longer than he has been animal. “Hmmmmmmmmmm,” he rumbles, again, blinking slowly, head nodding heavy and somber, “you are right... small Fox,” the giant considers his words, having never spoken of his former self because it had taken so long to begin to gain a concept of that separation for himself; because he hasn’t the words to describe it accurately, but fumbles as ponderously as he walks the earth now.
“Not always,” the woolly horse says, reverberant and thoughtful, “but… now. Yes.”
The frost giant watches the boy move, to him it is as quick as a hawk descending for prey. To him, everyone moves in hyper-speed, passing by and around him, synapses firing of like lightening licking earth—as he rambles up beaten paths, considering all manner of flower and woven nests as he goes. His animation and awareness are nascent, so much like a newborn.
“More… impressive, I say, to be small.” He has found being large to be a great burden—social and practical—thus far. “I knock things over,” he frowns, shaking his roughly hewn head. “They look at me,” this hurts the most. The giant was made by a cruel but fair God—he was made into a social creature, when he could have been made bear or lynx; he was made frightening and strange to his fellow equines.
But not this little animal. He is brave.
When Fox remarks on his frost, he tilts his head, having not ever considered the feature. It has been a constancy to him. He has always been cold. At least at his peak, which had been perpetually snow-capped for as long as it was high enough to freeze. “Frost. Winter,” he repeats, a childish kind of mimicking—the boy may not realize it, but he is teaching the giant.
He has experienced warmer climates in his wanderings. The frost would melt and drip from his hair, unnoticed by him. But it always reformed in a snap on his frigid skin. It did not effect the low temperature of his core, the slow and deliberate beating of his heart; it did not thaw out his glimmering, heavy eyeball. “Always cold. Always winter... see?” he moves to reach out and touch the boy, unaccustomed to the social boundaries unspoken, but he is stilled in his path.
He blinks at the sudden, renegade snow, not knowing to connect the magic to the boy.
Not knowing magic at all, but for the one that toppled him to the ground.
He has never considered himself particularly brave. Nor impressive. Nor anything special, truly. He has the gift of Christmas, but that is not unique. He shares it with his father. With a few of his siblings. To him, it simply is. Otherwise, he is merely a young colt with a rather bland coat of reddish roan. He is neither large nor particularly small, neither weak nor brawny. He currently displays the slender gangliness of youth, but in time his frame would fill out into a decidedly average build.
No, definitely nothing unique or singular about him, as far as he is concerned.
Certainly that has never stopped him however. He is a gregarious creature, and while his looks are nothing out of the ordinary, he is handsome enough. He would mature into his body, mature into that slightly devilish smile and fine features.
And so, in that particular way Fox has, he shrugs of the giant’s concerns with a grin. ”It is only because you have not been small. Were you small like me, I’m certain that you would consider it less than impressive. And there’s no shame in knocking things over.” At least, as far as he is concerned, there isn’t. Offering a lopsided grin, he amends. ”I mean, I knock things over all the time, so I’m pretty sure that has nothing to do with being big.”
Pursing his lips, he considers Hoarfrost’s last statement, gaze roaming the meadow, the horses dotting the expanse before tossing his head a bit as he prances along to keep up with his newest friend. Decisively, he responds, ”And if they look at you, it’s because they’re jealous,” with an abrupt nod of his head.
Perhaps that’s not strictly true, but semantics really. Even a giant needs a little confidence.
The conversation turning to winter, a favorite subject of his, Fox tilts his head jauntily as he eyes the frost covered horse he finds himself liking rather a lot. He doesn’t flinch or shy away from Hoarfrost’s touch, though his skin shivers a bit at the cool touch of his skin. Not from any true cold (no, he’s quite immune to cold), but because it is rather ticklish. A faint giggle escapes him as he dances forward, returning the touch in kind. Though he cannot reach terribly high, he noses the dangling hair of his barrel, feeling the chill of frost, the stiffness of frozen locks.
Withdrawing abruptly, he grins as the giant eyes the snow in confusion. With only a thought, he calls more snow, a miniature whirling dervish that coats the ground in glittering, beautiful patterns of melting ice.
