"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
09-23-2018, 03:32 PM (This post was last modified: 09-23-2018, 03:32 PM by Levi.)
Levi is so inexperienced in happiness that the state of it is intoxicating. His spring days pass in an Eden-like haze, and the nights are even sweeter. He drowns himself in her on Tephra's shores. Willing crushed below her wave, he lets everything else go. And for the first time in his life, he lets himself simply be.
And then, she vanishes.
A week (or two?) that was how his paradise could sustain itself before imploding. A blissful string of days that he should have known wouldn't last.
With a darkened brow the heavy stallion roves the damp forest. Just like the last time those closest to him had vanished, he searches tirelessly. The storm of his mind does not let him rest, not that he had tried too hard, and his legs seem to move on their own accord.
Nearly black from the rain the stallion would be hard to spot, despite his size, if it weren't for the flames lashing against his crest. His tail too is wrapped in flame, the long tendrils of orange and yellow heat trailing behind him as he walks. He is a beacon in the woods, a turbulent mass of anger and disappointment. The persistent plop, plop of raindrops along his back do nothing to lighten his mood, even if they are the only thing preventing The Forest from burning. Steam rolls of the heat of his body in humid waves as he wanders, aimless now that he has lost Rapture's trail.
But there is no sign of her, no sign of anyone.
Just wet earth, and rotting bark.
Fuck spring, fuck rain.
He should have known he couldn't find her.
and all of us, we’re meant for the fire, but we keep rising up and walking the wires
She is not surprised to find him as volatile as ever.
She hears his thoughts before she sees him, able to pick them out from the dull roar of everyone who inhabited the forest today. They are of a particular pitch and volume and she couldn’t ignore them even if she tried. So she doesn’t. She is almost amused to see how worked up he is, how easily he lost himself in the heat of his emotions. It wasn’t any different from when he was a young boy—always vulnerable to it.
Still, she doesn’t revel in her brother’s pain, especially when it was induced by someone else, and she frowns slightly. Rapture? The name doesn’t mean anything to her and she isn’t able to get a clear enough picture from his thoughts to piece everything together. So, finally, she picks herself up and begins to make her way toward him, gracefully navigating the complex paths through the forest.
When she is close enough that he could feasibly see the obsidian and ivory of her, she stops. “I don’t think that the spring and the rain are the cause of your current problems, Levi.” His name is sweet on her tongue despite herself and although she would never admit it, she is glad to be in his presence again. Still, she keeps her distance, her beautifully cold face tilting to the side to consider him, studying his features.
“I see you haven’t lose your flair for the dramatic,” she teases harshly, never quite able to keep herself from giving into the desire to poke at him. He always made it so easy. Especially when she was armed with the ammo that she had so easily at her disposable. “Good to see you again, brother.”
fuck mind readers
He adds mentally as his sister approaches, still cool and collected, but far more beautiful than he remembered. His own features remain a muted version of his inner storm, almost placid. But of course that is not enough to fool her - never had been.
The tall stallion shrugs at her quip, he never could match her and he didn't expect anything had changed. And anyway, he is ready to step away from the topic of his current problem before she has a chance to extract something he would rather keep private. But already his mood is lightening.
"You're not who I was looking for, but I'll take it."
Levi steps forward, the flames along his crest and tail trailing behind him as he does, coming to halt where he can see this adult version of his twin plainly. His mismatched eyes of fire and ink float across her frame briefly, lingering just long enough to see that she is well before returning to meet her cool gaze.
It's good to see you again, brother
He nods, she will know he feels the same way if she is still reaching her all-too-curious fingers into his mind. He had never been one for unnecessary words. His thoughts were untamed; he had fallen out of practice when it came to managing his mental life for others. He had no reason to curate his thoughts, the way he did his outward image, after she left. So he doesn't try, not yet, allowing his mind to take whichever path it pleased.
Where have you been, what brought you back, do you know that father is gone?
But finally the mass of the boil down to one line "Are you coming home?"
and all of us, we’re meant for the fire, but we keep rising up and walking the wires
Her lips spread wide at his cursing, able to pull apart the disdain and relishing in it. She has never cared that he found her intrusive, never cared that she dipped her fingers into the currents of his mind, flipping through the pages of it languidly like one might peruse a novel. He is, quite literally, an open book to her and she has never once apologized for it. They are born of the same flesh and she feels as much right to his thoughts as to her own. “You should not use such unsavory language,” she chides, although it is an empty threat. They both know that she does not care whatever language he wishes to curse her.
At his next words, this time actually spoken aloud, she just rolls her eyes.
“You know I don’t care if you want me here or not.”
She’s never cared. She comes and goes as she pleases, living life on her own terms. In many ways, it is the only way she can protect herself. It is the only way she can shield herself from the pain of the world. When you have been left as vulnerable as she has to the truth of the world, the ugliness of it spilled open before her, you have to resurrect a wall. You have to tell yourself you don’t care. You have to force it.
She hears his next thoughts, chaotic and jumbled as they are and she stiffens, mismatched eyes growing a little harder, a little cooler. “I know,” she says, her voice clipped. “I don’t care. He has his family and his other children so let him have them.” If they were not good enough for him, she wasn’t going to rip open her chest and bleed her heart out for him. If he didn’t want her then she wouldn’t let herself care.
“I don’t even know what home is,” she finds his gaze. “Do you?”
There had always been a reluctant comfort in the way she flipped through his thoughts with such ease. Despite the years of separation, he is at hoe in her presence. She was the only one he never had to work to express himself to, he didn't have to string together words and decide which emotions to show and which to hide - she just knew. He had been her first test subject, after all, even in the womb he had felt her presence in his mind.
Her next words should sting, but he had already known this for years. When she had left it had simmered, for weeks and months. There had been a vacancy in his mind when she had withdrawn, and he had no way of expressing what it meant to lose her.
But that was a long, long time ago.
The last decade had molded him into a different creature.
When her powerful gaze finally rises again to meet his own he holds it steadily, but it is not easy. She is all you pretend to be, he realizes. Her wall was genuine and his was a weak facade which hides his perpetual anger. They left him one by one, and each time had been more bitter than the last. But despite the inconsistency of the world around him, there had always been one constant.
Yes.
He answers without words, feeling the truth of it in the way his heart pulls towards the volcano as he pictures it now. Tephra would always be home.
Then he thinks of the way Tephra is floating and aimless now, the way he has carved out a small space of it for himself to avoid the others. He thinks of the power vacuum and pushes the thought towards her with doubtful hope.
It was always meant to be yours, too.
Maybe she will mock him for the sentiment, but he had to say it.
At least once.
