"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 wild man of the brush, huh?” He grins, cocked and wily. His life has never been wholly uncomplicated. Life barely allows for it, nature certainly does not. Everything underlying is driven to equilibrium, but chaos and loss and the nature of imperfection are the conditions of the process. They are inevitable and unavoidable. Eventually, they each find a foothold. But Viera's absence had been a loss, perhaps, in the same way the absence of his father had been. Only revealing its full scope when faced with it head-on. Otherwise, the secluded way he was raised makes it easy to find comfort in solitude. A wild man of the brush. Because he hadn't thought of her in a while. *****Because he couldn't figure out whether or not he yearned for her all that much. But unlike Cerva, he never shared a womb with Viera. Nourished on the same stuff, but at different times, and under different circumstances. In that moment of uncertainly he is sad, and shameful. He thinks he can see the longing in her own face, and worries for the vacancy in his. (Viera looks like Vineine, splashed with white — a gif from the father they do not share. Trystane looks like his father.) His mother would be disappointed.
*****“You got it,” He chuckles past his own self-doubt, pushing it down. It is unwelcome here, tonight. Her second question stumps him, but truly, it should not. He plays with how he can say I saw you and I knew I needed to say hello, without sounding strange. It is so simple. Utterly uncomplicated. Beating around the bush is an immense effort; being so coy exhausting, in the same way upholding the integrity of a complete lie is. A weighty endeavour, they are trying to convince one another of something that neither wants to be true — that the distance between their ribs is manageable and sustainable. “I,” He takes great pains not to stutter, “I saw you... and I thought you,” That isn't right at all, “looked like someone I had to get to know.” He flushes. *****The delivery isn't perfect...
*****He grasps for recovery. “Must be hard, to be away.” It occurs to him that he hasn't seen his mother in some time. Not so long as to be a great strain, but long enough. He knows where to find her now, if need be. It will be easier, now that she is rooted (so it seems), as opposed to pollen in the air; he is still aimless, though. “They just, went their own ways, huh? Not to pry...” He watches the singularly large and bright star, the Guide. “I should. I'm afarid I wouldn't know where to start.” He wouldn't judge her, he wants to know more. “It's just too easy to do. To part ways.” His mother hadn't found it so terribly hard. “Maybe it's in us, to want to find ourselves on our own. For a time.” She wouldn't be her, here, without her family...
*****Or without this separation from them.
Trystane.
It is steep, it is stone. Such Recovery. From the daily press, the deepest nest, the keeper's keep.
If only Cerva could look at herself through his eyes then maybe she could agree that there is something worthwhile about her. When she compares herself with her family she is the underdog, the forgotten daughter that ran away from responsibility. To Trystane, however, she was enough to pull him from his solitude. There was something about her that drew him forward and incited courage into his heart. There is a spark inside her that Cerva doesn't see herself that the world does.
And Trystane, he who finds himself plain with no thrilling adventures to date, is an excitement to Cerva. He is a comfort to her, a blanket that she never wants to release. The coolness of his voice and the heat of his skin lull her into an easiness that she has never before felt, but also a joy that she almost forgot existed. It would be a fairy tale if they could just know what they see in each other, but their limitations hold them back. Her fear of being a nobody could be eradicated.
A smile glides easily across her pretty face when she hears his hesitant reply. There is a sweetness embedded in his voice as he hesitates briefly then finishes. She wants to touch him then, to bury her face into his neck, but she freezes with that honeyed smile. "Well, I hope your thoughts were correct," she wants them to be, but she refuses to outwardly admit it. She can't bring herself to speak quite so easily to males as mother had. Cerva doesn't have it in her to nestle against Trystane and whisper into his neck, wanting to be his only one to hold. They're acquaintances (maybe more now) but deep down she finds herself connecting to him more than she ever has with anyone else.
But unlike mother, she can't bring herself to admit or accept it.
A longing expression almost creases her face, but she stops herself when he diverts the conversation. A frown takes the place of his admiring grin as she mulls over her siblings. "Yeah. Last I heard, one brother was in the Valley and the other went to the Tundra." Their names haven't been spoken on the tongues of gossipers and so she hopes that they are remaining out of trouble. "I'll find them again one day," it's on her future agenda, but she isn't in a rush. Each day will be taken slowly so that she may take enjoyment in the things she has always missed. "Maybe we can help each other find our family," her smile returns as a hot breath fans across his shoulder.
*****He reflects back to her the stardust above, her soft frame, and the envelope of darkness that holds them all together. But the magnitude of his tenderness is not translated. It remains foreign to her, behind the shield of his pupils; under his skin, where his blood pumps red and he imagines this is what it must be like to stand in the eye of a storm. Calm and perilous, with everything that goes with affection threatening to storm around them.
*****Be it loss, or loneliness in absence. Or overwhelming passion, and euphoria. The trappings of love, and this is like what he thinks early love is meant to feel like. The seed and sapling of it, anyway. Otherwise it is young fervor in its naked hastiness; they are indiscernible to his unfledged heart, having experienced neither in any meaningful measure before. If he could transcribe to her what he sees, he would write it in the grass and flowers and guiding stars. He would make it so she could feel, without any language barrier, exactly how he feels. But he can’t. He could tell her.
*****But he can’t even do that.
*****“I was, I am sure of it,” A falling leaf had made her bright. Like someone entirely unencumbered by perception, not compelled by age, light in homour and character – and there is beauty in all of those things; and that is why, despite his tiredness, he was drawn to her. “I was never raised to be a hermit, anyway.” Not true, technically. Vineine had never intentionally isolated him, but her intentions made no matter. Her boy had grown up alone, but mercifully, without feeling like it.
*****“I think Viera might be gone,” He mutters, a bit absent as he searches his brain for what he remembers of her. But it is nothing. Or close enough, and so is regressed deep where all the other seemingly irrelevant information hides. “Not forever, probably. My mother likes to think she’ll come back to visit at least. But who knows.” He feels he is spread thin by their coyness, and she must be too, because there is something expectant in the air. He shifts, and in a moment of courage, reaches out slowly and gently, so as not to spook her and touches her neck just, then draws a deliberate line with his muzzle to the largest star adorning the highest peak of the sky. “I’ve always been told to take that as a guide. It’s always there, in that same direction.” He clears his throat, “All the other little ones around it, too. We could pick a formation and follow it.” A silly idea, of course. But he likes the poetry of it. “And if we don't find anything, we only need to turn our backs to it.”
*****He shrugs a bit, looking back at her, “Well, at least with your brothers, we have places to start.”
Trystane.
It is steep, it is stone. Such Recovery. From the daily press, the deepest nest, the keeper's keep.
