"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
“What have I become, my sweetest friend? Everyone I know goes away in the end."
There are few parts of Beqanna that are unknown to her. Deftly she steps along the well-worn path, hardly concentrating on where she places the next footstep. She simply walks, slipping easily amongst the trunks of trees, and her slender ears swiveling to catch the sounds of the wind rustling the verdant leaves — her cue to dip her head, avoiding the low-hanging branches. Her blindness — scarred sockets, dark and ugly against otherwise porcelain skin, the illusion of dephless holes against the stark white — was apart of her now, and how strange it was to think that she had now lived well over half of her life without eyes, rather than the way she had been born.
The forest had not been as popular back then. She remembers she would disappear into the shadows, when she was tired of the politics, tired of her heart hurting, tired of the faceless voices that surrounded her. But now she can hear them as she walks, the shifting of the wind bringing with it the notes of conversation, and it brings a soundless sigh across her lips. She was used to change. Nothing ever remained the same, not even her. Especially not her.
Immortality had kept her alive, but not ageless. The harrows of life had done that favor for her. A heart can only break so many times before it no longer pieces back together (there are pieces of her scattered everywhere, pieces of her carried by others that she will never get back), just as the vessel that was her body could only be abused so many times before it lost its luster. She was lovely, in her own tattered, worn-out kind of way. The soft curves of her body, the way her pearl-colored mane fell in cascading tendrils against the subtle arch of her neck. When the breeze draped her forelock at just the right angle across her face it hid the sightly scars, and maybe for a moment she was still timeless and beautiful.
Suddenly, she stops. Scrape. Scrape. Scrape. She tilts her head, testing the air around her. She had expected to find the scent of a deer, for the sound reminded her of antler's scratching against bark. Instead, she is met with the masculine scent of a stallion, and while many things about her have changed, some things have remained the same; she is curious. Curiosity has been known to get the better of her, but she steps forward anyway, feeling the warmth of the sun as it filters through the tops of the trees. "Hello?" The lyrics of her voice seem to hang in the midst of the warm summer air, and she takes another step forward, but finds it best to stop there. She enjoyed pushing her luck, but only so far. There are some things you can't take back once given.
Enter again the sweet forest
Enter the hot dream
Come with us
It is music to his ears – string quartets and grand symphonies – the sound of her ‘hello’ in this place. It mixes with a many;
Multitudes of whispers he had caught in secret as a young man, lewd and furtive, as he hid in the shadows like a worm in mud.
Orchestral ‘hellos’ spoken softly, searchingly. But never searching for him. He is a nasty surprise.
Discord – thunderous percussion – the kinds of noises that only come in the most intimate of moments; pleasure and pain.
Hallelujah choruses.
He turns to her, his horns pulling away from the wound he has furrowed in the soft birch skin, the silence filled with nothing but his deep breathing and her music. It is a horrible thing to interrupt; he knows his voice will be the thing that stuns the beauty from the air, like yelling at the top of your lungs into night air.
Pollock is no stranger to being the thing that puts quietude down.
He laps it up first. Sips deep of it and feasts until he is full, leaving her standing in the stains of his indulgence – give him but a moment – slipping, softly, closer to her, his cleft, dextrous toes hugging the earth here like an old friend. She is vulnerable. But, of course, she has the pleasure of meeting one of the deluded – one of the egotists. Everyone is prey, to him. Everyone is as senseless as newborn rabbits when they come to him – Pale Death; demi-god – naked and supine.
His.
“Hello,” he echos, gravelly and stern, his hard, black eyes examining that layer of grisly skin, puckered over where her eyes should be. Too easy. He need not even taste the invisibility – he does, anyway, flickering in and out, like old times, with each passing he steps closer. Closer, till he can better smell her, and doubtless, she him. She, smells like many winds and it is all the same to him. He smells, perhaps, most like old dust and brine.
He can see time’s heavy strokes on her. It annoys him, a little, to think of all the claws that might have sunk to these bones, before him; when he sees the scarring, peeking modestly from behind her hair, he wonders how different she will be from the soft kittens that have mewled him out from the darkness before.
Too easy.
He shifts his weight, leaning against an old, weather-worn tree, considering what he has found today;
“Is it scary, not being able to see?”
He runs his tongue over his crackling lips, the agitated soldiers of fear marching restlessly in his mind, baying for her blood.
“What have I become, my sweetest friend? Everyone I know goes away in the end."
Even in her age, she can still be foolish. She does not accredit her ability to read emotions to her blindness, for it is something she has always been empathetic towards. She has always been able to smell it on them — the arrogance, the ego, the need to taste fear. She can feel it as it lingers in the air between them, and despite all her wisdom, there will always be flickers of the old Ryatah that glimmer through the dusty window when the right situation presents itself. She can see the warning signals, like a lighthouse beacon. She is the ship being tossed aimlessly in the storm, and he is the rocky shore, and instead if changing course, instead of heeding the warning of that flashing light, she continues straight for him. She always wrecks herself against their shores, leaving herself tattered against the rocks, pieces of her floating on the waves, and somehow she always wants it again.
Sometimes their voices are oil-slick, but his is harsh and grating. She doesn't mind it, and her slender ears prick in his direction, listening to his footsteps, his breathing, the silence now that the scraping sound had stopped. She wonders what that was, but she doesn't ask. Instead it his him that asks a question.
Most are not shy about her lack of eyes. There weren't many in Beqanna bearing scars similar to hers, and probably even less that had had them ripped from their skulls by another's teeth. His question reminds her of the type that children often ask her, yet there was nothing childish about the way he asks. "Sometimes," she begins her reply. "But just because you can't see things doesn't make them any more or less scary. A wolf is still a wolf regardless of whether I see it or not." She laughs, such a mirthful sound for a statement that wasn't all that joyous. "I'm Ryatah." Once queen, once lover, but always a fool.
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