"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
little do you know how I'm breaking while you fall asleep, little do you know I'm still haunted by the memories, little do you know I'm trying to pick myself up piece by piece
When the day she had been dreading finally came, she found herself pacing the forest that flanked the Nerine and Taiga border. Nerine itself was too rocky and barren; everything about it made her feel exposed and vulnerable. The darkness of the trees, and the shadows that they draped across her shoulders like some sort of shield, was the only thing she had right now. A part of her was fine with that. She was used to being alone, and had given birth to Chryseis on her own. But the fear that tingled at the back of her mind, the never ending anxiety that Tunnel was going to appear, was impossible to push aside.
As time wore on, however, she could no longer think about that. As the pain that gripped her sides increased, it drove all thoughts of the stallion that had put her in this situation far, far from her mind. The only thing that still sat settled like a stone in her chest was the fear that she wouldn’t be able to love this child, knowing how he was created.
She doesn’t know if it is the lingering emotional pain that she has been harboring that intensifies everything about this experience, but it is somehow far worse than with her first child. The shadows had long since disappeared into the abyss of the night, and the faint ribbons of moonlight illuminated the sheen of sweat across her neck and flanks, her soft groans from her place on the ground one of the few sounds that interrupted the silence around her. It takes longer than it should have; her body and her mind are screaming with the agony of it, but she bites back every sound that risked being too loud, until, finally, there is relief.
With her black mane plastered to her neck she lays there for a long moment, her eyes still closed. She was terrified to look at it. Terrified to look into a face that might look like his, that might be blue-tinged, that might have those same haunting eyes. But her instinct wins over when she can feel movement, when she remembers how small and helpless Chryseis had been. With gritted teeth she forces herself to sit up, and slowly, cautiously, she positions herself to look at him.
There is something mechanical to her movements at first, when she begins to clean him. Cleaning his face because she has to, working her way down his small neck. She notices the blue line down his back, and his blue mane. It makes her throat tighten, but she ignores it — pushes it away.
But then, she really looks at him, her quiet brown eyes meeting his. They are staring up at her with that same confused wonder as Chryseis had when she was born — because right now, as far as he is concerned, she is the only thing in this strange new world that exists.
His eyes trigger something in her.
Once the tears begin to fall — those same tears she has been holding in for so long, the same ones she has been tasting on her tongue for the last several months — there is nothing she can do to stop them. They stream down her face uncontrollably, as she arcs her neck over his small, trembling body, and pulls him into her chest. She knows her tears are wetting the fur she had just dried, as they fall from her face and onto his neck, but all she can do is pull him closer. Her body shudders with the anguish finally being released, a few broken fragments of her heart trying to put themselves back into place. Her lips gently caress against his cheek, her warm breath fanning against his skin as she whispers tremulously, ”I love you. ”Because he needs to know. He needs to know that, even though she has spent all the months leading up to this being terrified of being unable to love him, she realized she was wrong. Extremely wrong.
Reluctantly, she releases him from her tight embrace, cautious not to bump him as she rises up. With her muzzle lowered, she gently nudges his hip, before letting her touch linger over the top of his head, gently lipping at his blue forelock. ”Time to stand up, baby boy,” she whispers in her quiet voice, unable to look at anything else around her except for him.
BRISEIS
underneath it all I'm held captive by the hole inside, I've been holding back for the fear that you might change your mind
01-19-2019, 11:24 PM (This post was last modified: 01-19-2019, 11:53 PM by Misfit.)
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The trauma of birth from the first moments of eviction through to the last moments before cold and first breaths will never be recalled by the boy. He will not remember being stretched and pushed and forced out into the world. There will be no psychic pain lingering in him forever because Briseis didn’t reach for him right away when the cold hard ground was pressing up against his tender new body.
His first memory of her will be of tears.
His eyes, the clear earnest things she stares into before the tears start to fall are blue. Not the blue of the creature in the forest but bright and dark all at once, like the rich navy of his soft and slowly drying infant curls. The boy watches his mother shed her tears and marvels at her large beautiful face and shining brown eyes. Every bump of her muzzle and caress to clean his fresh little hide tells him what love is and though he is small and quavering (he has worked hard to get strong in his dark warm world but moving around out here is harder, foreign) he watches her every move with drunken devotion. She clutches him to her breast and the first words that his mother gives him are of affection. He should have been born expecting a cold world that could not love him or want him, but Briseis dread had not passed through the placenta to her infant, or if it had it had taught him only to be eager for her love.
When his mother rises he shakes his head a little, each minute that passes is full of surprises for the child. She bumps his hip and he shifts trying to get his back legs beneath him. It’s an action that only leaves him leaning on his opposite side. A squeak of confusion accompanies his next attempt, but he is silent for the next after that and the grullo boy (drying, growing lighter in color) finds his feet in a weaving stumbling way. He reaches for the mother then, hopeful, his little blue muzzle angling up toward her midnight one. He makes a small meaningless sound and stumbles close to Briseis, pressing into her side. He finds his way to nurse, and when he has finished leaves a trail of milky slobber along her side as he traces his way back to her face and warm eyes. The boy smiles at his mother, it is her smile, it must be, and he wears it well.
little do you know how I'm breaking while you fall asleep, little do you know I'm still haunted by the memories, little do you know I'm trying to pick myself up piece by piece
When Chryseis had been born, she hadn’t been sure how she would feel about her, either. Briseis is not like most, in several ways. She did not grow up fantasizing about love, and children, and family – she had focused only on surviving. For someone that disliked being alone, it had somehow become her only source of comfort. She had grown used to lingering on the outskirts, in the shadows, with minimal contact. Having Chryseis had unsettled the balance that she had found, and the bold little girl had drug her into the light when she would have often preferred to still be in the dark, but she didn’t regret it.
Her newborn son was different.
He had stirred alive another part of her that she still hadn’t known existed. Somehow, there was love blossoming in a garden that had been cultivated with pain and despair, and it blooms throughout her entire chest when she looks at him. She doesn’t see Tunnel anymore when she looks at him; she sees a handsome grullo boy, with blue in his mane and blue down his back and blue in his eyes. He looks at her, and every fragment of her tattered heart is his.
The little sounds that he makes as he tries to get his feet beneath him stirs a smile to her face, pressing her muzzle into his side to help him balance as he stands. Her lips continue to caress and inspect him as he nurses, as though afraid that somehow, between the moments in which he had been born and to right now, that something could have possibly happened. She doesn’t mind the feel of his milky mouth against her side, and as he comes back to the front of her she reaches for him again, unable to keep herself from cradling him against her chest. Her lips pull gently at his forelock, then trail down his face, as she murmurs into his poll, ”My little misfit,” Because he was. He wasn’t supposed to happen, and she had been so intent on avoiding his very existence – as if she possibly could – that she hadn’t even thought of names. She doesn’t worry about it right now, though, and instead she basks in the feeling of holding his precious body, of still caressing her lips down his neck and over his small back. ”I’ll never let anything happen to you. I promise.”
BRISEIS
underneath it all I'm held captive by the hole inside, I've been holding back for the fear that you might change your mind
01-27-2019, 10:59 PM (This post was last modified: 01-27-2019, 11:01 PM by Misfit.)
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This first hour of his life passes rapidly and in the ephemeral bounds of this golden hour he is as perfect and clean as he will ever be. His father would not love him if he walked out of the trees right now to claim him, but the boy doesn’t know that. Fathers do not exist for him, nor do pain or fear.
He lets himself be tucked into his mother’s chest and he bobs his head a little, his movements still all infant drunkenness. He belly is full and her embrace and caress lulls him into a warm contentment. His little ears-lined in blue- twitch to catch all her gentle words though they don’t make much sense to him yet he knows her voice and tone. Still he tips his head to look at her quizzically as she finishes speaking, blinking round blue eyes twice before trying out a single word that he’d picked out of the muddle. ”Misfit.” A stream of giggles chases the word away into the air and the grullo babe wiggles away to tromp, tromp, tromp on his long awkward legs a long way away from Mom. A whole eight feet away, in fact. He turns back towards her with a pleased grin. “Mis-fit.”
Pleased with himself he looks openly at Briseis for her approval, switching his tail about. Then, yawning, he takes two weaving steps back towards his dam. “Momma…” another yawn, a shake of his head. This world is awfully heavy and big.
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