"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
Time has been a strange thing for the past year, something Beyza has not been able to follow very well, but not anymore. Her body is tracking the time with the changes that occur to it and though she had been excited at first - the pale mare cannot help but wonder if she should be happier. She’d gotten what she wanted, hadn’t she? The attention of someone who had spurned her?
But should the creation of new life have been inspired by more than a chance to flex her magic and see what would happen when she and Jamie combined?
She had been created in much the same way, she tries to reason with herself as she leaves Pangea. Though she had been loved by Agetta and Plume as their daughter she had just been an experiment in magic. Pieced together from two friends without their consent and incubated beside a sister who had always seemed so much more real. Beyza always had thought Caledonia burned brighter and maybe that had something to do with how her twin had been created.
Would her children feel the same way? Would they walk through life thinking they were something separate, something not quite right? Just shadows of the other foals who are brimming with life?
It is so tempting to claw the three of them out. To craft a way for them to finish growing somewhere outside of her body. She’s no longer finding it easy to box away her emotions, to seal them somewhere that they cannot bother her until she is ready to deal with them. It is easy to blame these troubling thoughts on the little lives growing inside of her
Yet, if she would let herself think about it, she’d know it started before. Know it began a year ago when she had claimed the second sacrifice and felt her heart break instead of feeling righteous power. How the pain was fostered further when she met Ryatah and Este and saw the way the eclipse had weakened that newest sister.
If she allowed herself to think about it, she wouldn’t feel so sure that bringing darkness and death for the sake of one being was the right thing to do.
Without consciously planning it, Beyza finds herself standing in the same spot where that filly had died. There is no sunlight now to brush against the forest floor where the bones no longer rest. The light that flickers across the trees comes from the pale mare who stares at the needle and leaf covered ground. Though her gaze is fixed and unblinking, her glow is anything but stable - it shifts and changes like white firelight in the consuming darkness.
It is strange that this darkness had been somewhat of a revelation of sorts for Livinia. She had never really known who she was or where she belonged. In her early years she had struggled so with simply figuring out how to exist in this world. It was more difficult than she imagined - trying to figure out how to live in a world when she wasn’t truly alive. That had lead her to bargain with the mountain - being caught in a strange paradox of life and death.
But it was Beyza who had shown her that first kindness - who had first bestowed upon her the ability to hunt. It was Beyza who had supported her when she had first grappled with the bloodlust that first time.
Even after the mountain, Livinia had struggled to find her place in a world where she didn’t quite fit. It was only when she embraced this that she finally found some semblance of peace. For so long she had fought to be something she wasn’t when she had always been both. Dead and alive. Empty and overflowing. She was a creature who wanted and a creature who was nothing but hollow, empty insides. When she’d finally accepted this, she’d finally mastered the small bits of magic that she did possess - becoming one with the smoke and fog that lived in her blood. She was smoke and she was shadows and the darkness breathed life into her bones.
So she thrived in this darkness, moving uninhibited in the shadows. The creatures that lurked in the darkness paid her no heed, wanting little to do with one who was not truly living. She steps from the smoke and fog that curls around her, letting her body become corporeal once again as she makes her way through the trees.
Then she sees it.
The light.
She resists the temptation to turn away, the sight so foreign in this strange new world. But she can’t turn away. Because she recognizes that pure white light immediately and it causes something inside her to twist and lurch uncomfortably.
“Beyza,” she says, aloud, and as soon as the name leaves her lips the guilt of not seeking her out sooner comes crashing over Livinia. It has been too long since she’s seen her. Has she been avoiding her or had she just been too busy trying to figure out her own mind? It unsettles her that she does not have the answer. But her legs are already moving.
”Bey,” she says, closer now, slipping back into her pet name for her closest friend. Something churns in Livinia’s stomach at the sight of her friend so clearly so unsettled. Livinia goes to her immediately, pressing her nose to where Bey’s neck met her shoulder before speaking again. But the touch was enough to reassure Livinia that she was here - real - for she could feel the heat rolling of her very much living body.
”Are you alright?” she asks, though she is confident that she knows the answer. She can see plain as day that Beyza is not alright. The guilt churns again - hot and bright. There’s so much she could have - should have done differently. But she had been weak then - equal parts afraid of who she was and who she wasn’t. Not now.
She’s quiet for a moment, before deciding whether or not to reveal to Beyza what Jamie has already told her the news. Because it is her suspicion that it has something to do with Beyza’s current...situation. Though Livinia doesn’t presume to know about the nature of the relationship between Beyza and her twin. She knows better than that. She did, however, suppress the sick pulse of jealousy that had settled in her chest. That was her own issue to deal with later, not something that she would put on Beyza now. Not when she was like this.
”He told me,” she breathes, softly, hoping that her knowledge of the triplets doesn’t make the situation worse.
At first, the pale magician is so lost in her own thoughts she does not notice an approach. It’s only when Liv speaks the shortened form of her name that Beyza’s glow evens out and her white eyes look up to see her friend. She stirs from her thoughts slowly, like waking from a deep sleep, and instinct alone inspires the smile and the quiet “Hello Liv” she offers when the fanged mare touches her shoulder. She’s not sure how to answer the question posed next - she should be alright, shouldn’t she? She should be on top of the moon.
Beyza is still sorting out her thoughts and how to share them when Liv speaks again. He told me. Shame and guilt churn through the white mare and she looks away - off into the dark woods. The source of these feelings coming from too many directions to name them all. She should have thought about what it would be like to speak of the situation with Liv, should have weighed that as a reason not to… But she hadn’t. In the moment she had only thought of him, how perfect everything seemed.
It did not seem that way anymore. So much has changed.
She does not answer the question directly and instead shares a piece of what’s on her mind when she looks back to Liv - trying to read the other's expression in what light her glow gives. “Do you think he’ll love them?” She asks in a hollow voice, and even though she cannot speak the rest of the question she shares the image of the sick patchwork filly that had died here. Even if they’re frail like he had once been, even if they’re powerless?
Beyza thought she would care but the first time she sensed life, the first time she caught one of their shapeless dreams, she knew it would not matter to her. Even that knowledge that she would have given Jamie whatever he asked for is dwarfed by the instinct and compulsion to love these girls. She wants more for their children than to be puppets or pieces in someone else’s dream. She wants them to grow up whole, loved, and filled with life.
She’s not sure she could ever bring herself to ask Jamie these questions but Liv is different. That has always been true. There’s an ease here with this twin that does not exist with the other. A sense that she does not have to offer to change the world in order to be worthy of attention.
