"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
how can we wake without question when all of the world is burning?
Had she spent more time around others, perhaps she would know. Perhaps she would be able to feel the way that she sends her emotions to him so directly, such a clean gut punch to the ice angel who had been so ill-fortuned to find her not once, but twice. But she doesn’t know. Has been by herself for so long that having her emotions spill around her feels natural—there’s just never been a recipient on the other side.
So she cannot tell that her mind is an open book through these messy emotions.
And she cannot possibly hope to shut it down.
She just walks alongside him, feeling emotions of spring and budding excitement, doing her best to focus on acting normal and not stealing glances to his stern, handsome profile. It is enough to drown out the sorrow that would otherwise consume her—that had consume her for so long after their last meeting.
She smiles to herself as they walk, forcing herself to look forward and on the path before them.
“I appreciate that,” she says, because she’s not certain she has the words for it—not sure how she can explain what she doesn’t even fully understand. “But I would like to talk,” this is quieter, less assured, and a frown ripples across her face at the self-consciousness that settles into her bones. The unease that perhaps he doesn’t want to talk to her. That she is uninteresting company. Unfit to carry a conversation.
She clears her throat, sniffing lightly. “Tell me something about yourself,” she asks, not realizing how close it sounds to a demand before she softens her tone. “Please.” A thread of desperation.
It is easy to tell the difference between his feelings and hers.
Because he has never felt anything quite so sweet.
He has never known this kind of quiet excitement, something that borders on hope.
He has never had the opportunity.
But they settle in his chest all the same and he clings to them, because they dampen the panic that surges through him. Because he can still smell death in the air around them, even as they walk, because it comes from her. And he wants to know, even still, but he will not ask again.
He is content to succumb to silence because it is enough simply to walk beside her and feel these things he has never felt before. He catches a glimpse of her smile out of the corner of his eye and thinks, though it is slight, it is the sweetest thing that has ever been meant for him.
She wants to talk, she says, but she wants to talk about him. His heart twinges and he grimaces, looking away. Because he can’t help it. Because there is nothing that he can tell her that won’t cast a pall over this quiet walk through the forest where he had spent so much of his youth.
He shakes his head, summoning up a slanted, rueful smile. “My name is Selaphiel,” he tells her, which feels like the safest thing to share. Though there are certain connotations, even still. Because he is Selaphiel and a name has never been just a name, it has always been the things connected to it. He is Selaphiel and he has never known a waking moment not tinted with worry, panic, dread. Because he can smell death on each and every one of them, whether it be theirs or someone else’s. Someone they love.
He swallows, exhales a shuddering breath. “What’s your name?” he asks in hopes that they might share the burden of being known.
how can we wake without question when all of the world is burning?
Had they not exchanged names before?
It feels impossible to consider. He had found her in the first cresting wave of her grief. He had been the harbinger of the mourning to come. He had seen her so cleanly that her only respond had been to run, and run, and run, until there was nothing around her and no one to see the screams that cut through the silence. The ugly, angry way that she had raged at the death of her father and the absence of another.
He had seen the beginning of that, and now the aftermath.
And yet he didn’t know her name?
Shock ripples from her, followed by shyness, and other feelings she cannot name but that spear for him regardless. Her lips tip upward in the corner and she holds onto his name, warmth blossoming in her chest as he shares it. “Selaphiel,” she repeats, marveling at the intimacy of being able to name him. Of having something of him to hold onto as they walk together, side by side and yet held apart.
“I like that,” she admits, feeling a curl in her belly, and when he asks for hers, she smiles yet again. “My name is Keyna,” her voice is still quiet, and she wonders why sharing this feels like a secret. She has never had any reason to withhold her name before, and she certainly doesn’t feel like it’s something worth hiding now, but that doesn’t stop her from feeling like it’s a gift that she is giving him.
Suddenly, she stops, drawing herself up and looking at him more fully.
“Will you promise me something,” she pauses before adding, “Selaphiel?”
It sounds like something altogether different when she says it.
But he cannot let it mean any more than what it is: only a name, no matter how sweetly she says it.
And it is his name and everything that entails. It is his name and though it is a name for an angel, it is also a name tinged by certain darkness. Because his mother is kind and vibrant but his father is something else.
He exhales a shuddering sigh and conjures up a lopsided smile, a thing fueled by the thing that curls in her belly and thus his in turn. He does not thank her because he had not chosen the name and if he had, in fact, been given a choice he might have chosen something else.
Worthless, maybe.
(Isn’t that what Mazikeen had called the angels?)
Pathetic.
Coward.
There is some faint flicker in the glacial blue gaze as he turns it away from her to better absorb the gravity of her name.
Keyna.
But he does not have her courage, he cannot bring himself to echo it in his own voice. Not when it feels like something sacred. Something that he will undoubtedly carve into the walls of his chest alongside every other name that ever meant anything to him.
They fall into silence then and he tries to think of anything else he might tell her, anything else that will not pollute the air around them with sadness or worry or grief. But she stops then and he does, too, turning to look at her when she asks for a promise.
And she says his name again and he thinks this must mean something but he does not know what.
He swallows thickly, painfully, and hesitates only half a second before he breathes, “okay.”
(And the heart quivers with trepidation because he does not know what he’ll do if she asks him to promise something that he can’t, if he has to disappoint her, too.)
how can we wake without question when all of the world is burning?
Keyna knows disappointment. It has been carved into her bones. It has been writ on her heart. She has known a childhood of love, cocooned in safety and sheltered. She had been raised by fathers who had loved her so deeply, cared for her so completely, and then that had been ripped away. Disappointment is a welcome friend, even if the word is perhaps too shallow to convey the full depths of what she truly feels.
Lost. Abandoned. Forsaken.
The sweetness on her tongue is a promise long ago shattered, and she can only smile at him softly, radiating her hope at a future she knows she does not deserve. For her to have faith at all is a miracle and yet she does. She walks quietly alongside the ice angel and feels hope, feels the warmth of it blossoming.
(It is a trap, she thinks.)
And fear follows.
(Let yourself enjoy the moment, she reasons.)
And fear is shattered by possibility.
All of it swelling in her and pouring over until her cup runneth over. The boundaries she is not aware of needing to guard dissolving. But he agrees and her smile is radiant in response.
“Promise that you’ll remember my name,” if there are tears that gather in the corners of her eyes, she blinks them away and gives him a watery smile, the grief and loneliness spearing through her. “Promise that even if we never see each other again, you’ll remember me?” Her purple eyes find his and they hold onto his gaze. She is not sure why it is so important, but she needs to know that there is someone out there who will know her. Who will recognize her. Who will keep her alive, even in this memory.
Her parents have gone and her siblings have drifted.
She will drift too, she thinks.
But if someone knows her, then perhaps she will not drift so far.
He can feel how fiercely she means it.
Her need resonates in the cavern of his chest and he exhales something shaky as he stops.
Stops so that he can face her fully, so that she can see how fiercely he means it, too.
For a moment, there is only silence as the glacial blue gaze skates across the soft lines of her face, as if committing it to memory. (As if he could forget it. As if he had not remembered it the moment he’d laid eyes on her here, this time.)
“I promise,” he says. And he says it with conviction. He says it with his whole chest. He says it with every ounce of honesty he has in him.
It is not the first promise he has made, but this one feels just as important as the other. Because he can feel just how important it is to her to be remembered, to leave a mark.
Maybe if he were something softer, he would have smiled gently and asked her how she thought it was possible that he could forget her. But he is not soft. He is cast from ice, just as she is, and he does not know how to say things that are warm and gentle. He has never been any of these things.
He swallows thickly and nods again, drawing in a long breath before he says a second time, “I promise.”
And he understands that there is some likelihood that their paths will not cross a third time. He understands that it had been some strange coincidence that had brought them together this time.
