"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
Gale idealism sits in prison, chivalry fell on his sword. innocence died screaming; honey, ask me, I should know
Standing in the Meadow, Gale closes his eyes, feeling the thick snow as it settles along his back. The air around him is still, and the only sound is that of the falling snow as it settles on the winter bare world around him. He had not meant to come here, but in a world with no Islandres, his attempts to transport himself to the black sand shores only ever results in an aching head and his arrival in the common lands. His closed eyes do little to assuage that ache; that task is for the lightning that crackles across his navy skin and does the work of Healing.
Even when finished with its work, the lightning continues to flicker across his skin, illuminating the golden streaks against the navy, and the stark white contrast of the white mane that stretches down his back.
He blinks open eyes of bright, electric blue, and looks out over the Meadow.
Empty, but with enough snow and bent grass to see that others have passed through recently.
Dreary, part-way through the winter with only a watery sun overhead.
Uninteresting, there is nothing here to keep him.
A sound, perhaps a footstep, catches his attention, and he turns his head toward it, eyes narrowing.
She is familiar with grief.
It is an architectural thing within her, a marrow in the beautiful bones of hers that keep moving, keep persisting. It is foundational to her, the love story that ended as so many do – with one gone, one not.
But she grows around it. She keeps her foundations and grows still. Her life is by no means comfortable, but she is alive, and isn’t that something?
It has been a long time since she’s been in the meadow. She flickers in and out of Beqanna, finding the memories there occasionally too painful. But she cannot stay away forever.
Grief, in time, can become something almost sweet. A melancholy, a memory. And occasionally she aches for sweetness.
She expects these feelings when she comes to the meadow, and she is met with them. She feels the low ache in her, and for a moment her eyes close and she breathes deep, steadying herself. Another step, and another, until the rhythm of walking eases her.
What she does not expect is another lightning-being, and this makes her pause.
He is bright – blue to her silver – but the same crackling of lightning across the skin, and her own flickers unconsciously, as if calling out.
And so, curiosity piqued, electricity crackling over her skin, she steps forward.
“Hello,” she says, voice clear over the hum of electricity they each carry.
Gale idealism sits in prison, chivalry fell on his sword. innocence died screaming; honey, ask me, I should know
Gale becomes quite still as his eyes meet those of another. The lightning continues to flash, illuminating the falling snow around them, and for a while his unblinking eyes take that in as well. Though he tries not to think of the origin of his own magic, he cannot help but wonder where hers might be from. Was she something born of the elements, or a mortal blessed by the fae? He cannot tell by looking, and his looking is thorough.
This is not uninteresting, and so he replies with a “Hello,” delayed only a single beat past comfortable tension.
She’s coming closer, so Gale sidesteps. “Thunder.” He adds, as though the single word explains why he intends to keep his distance. And perhaps it will to her, who’s more likely to have experienced the shockwave of sensation than most.
“Gale. I’m Gale.” This is not the first time he’s reorientated himself to socialization, but he was odd even on his best days. He’s not trying to scare this particular stranger away, and he finds his gaze traveling once more back to the lightning as it flickers along her silver sides. He considers asking if she’s ever tried to rid herself of the lightning, but even rusty as he is with interactions that feels somehow impolite.
“How long have you been like that?” he asks instead, gesturing with his muzzle to encompass the lightning.
Truth be told, she is a poor magician.
She mostly uses her magic for little more than the trappings of lightning on her skin, it has been years since she has done more than that. She thinks about it, sometimes, but reaching out beyond herself to do much to the world seems exhausting.
Magic couldn’t bring Spyndle back, so really, what’s it worth?
Still, she likes she sense of protection. She likes knowing what the lighting could do to them (them is vague and indescribable, here, for Cordis has not been hunted in decades, but she will never forget the sound of the hounds). She likes the feeling of power, of safety.
She stops when he moves, nods a little at his response, takes in his name. Gale, like a storm – fitting, then. Her own name means nothing – she pulled it from somewhere, long before she knew the feeling of lightning – but she offers it anyway.
“I’m Cordis,” she says. Her name sounds almost strange on her tongue, for she hasn’t spoken to anyone in a very long time. She should say more, she thinks, but then he saves her by asking a question - how long have you been like that?
“Oh,” she says, considering – time has gotten so strange – and scrapes together an answer, “a long time, but I wasn’t born with it, I’m just quite old.”
She doesn’t look it – magic keeps her not only lightning-clad, but lovely, too – but she feels it. God, does she feel it.
“What about you?” she asks, and then she asks a question of her own, “do you like it? How it makes you feel?”
Gale idealism sits in prison, chivalry fell on his sword. innocence died screaming; honey, ask me, I should know
Gale been thinking of Islandres, of long black beaches and warm blue waves, of a horizon that stretched farther than even his enhanced eyes could see. He had been alone there, before Erne, before the memories of his early life had returned to him. Some quiet part of him knows that finding the physical place won’t change anything, but surely there is purpose in trying. It gives him something to do, anyway.
Something interesting.
I’m Cordis, she says, the second word punctuated by a crackle of lightning as a miniscule bolt leaps from the tip of one navy ear to the other. Gale is content to wait for her answer, and though it’s less precise than he’d wanted, it is more than satisfactory. Far longer than he’s had it, which he admits before her second question: “Not long enough to be used to it.”
Long enough to have grown tired of it.
Long enough to have used it to excise every bit of it from himself only to have it return in the next storm.
Does he like how it makes him feel?
It flickers across his skin, brief flares of tiny luminescence. That is the lightning he does not hold, the inevitable bits that slip through the restraint he has on the lightning kept beneath his skin. They are the little threads not worth trimming off, now worth losing focus and risking the whole thing unraveling.
It makes him feel on edge. It makes him feel as if he’s a bolt of lightning himself, jittery and bright and strange. It makes him feel like potential, like power, like possibility.
“Usually.” The single word answer is barely useful, and his brow furrows as thinks of how she’d paused to consider, and wonders if competition had been the key to conversation. Whomever could get more out of the other while giving up the least wins? No, he decides, still frowning, that hadn’t been it. Whatever it was, the silence the follows the brevity of his answer stretches on, long enough that when paired with his frown, seem enough to end the conversation.
He’s only thinking, oblivious to the expression on his face or the lull in conversation. When he’s given it enough thought, he continues as though no time at all has passed: “I wouldn’t wish it on anyone else, but there’s not much I would trade it for.”
She hadn’t even known it was magic, at first – so many odd and inexplicable things had happened to her, she assumed it was the way of the world. And while it was, in a way, she did not know the power of what she could do. Even still, she has not plumbed the extent of it, besides trying to bring Spyndle back, which had been doomed from the start.
She burned someone, once. She’s hurt others – killed, even. But magic isn’t needed for murder.
Sometimes she watches the other horses, fantastical and brilliant, how they shape the world, beckon beasts to their sides, control fire and water and smoke.
His answer is short – whether in mimicry of her brevity or just how he is, she knows not – but it says enough. She understands enough.
Usually, she likes her powers too. She likes the lightning, the thrum of it in her ears, the tickle on her silver skin. She likes their widened eyes, the wide berth she is almost always granted. She likes being untouchable.
He offers a little more, telling her he wouldn’t wish it on anyone else, and she nods again. Not in agreement, exactly – she’s never found the lightning a burden – but she is stiff, still, and it’s easier to move her body than her mouth.
There is a question she wants to ask, and she hesitates for a moment, wondering what to reveal, how to explain herself, before barreling forward.
“Does it ever fail you?” she asks. She answers her own question for him, then.
“It failed me. I wanted to bring someone back from the dead, but…”
She wants to say more – to add detail of her attempts – but the memory, old and well-worn as it is, surfaces with a painful vengeance, and Cordis, once again, goes quiet.
11-11-2024, 09:21 PM (This post was last modified: 11-19-2024, 07:47 PM by kahzie.)
Gale idealism sits in prison, chivalry fell on his sword. innocence died screaming; honey, ask me, I should know
He tries not to think of the source of his magic.
The conversation makes it difficult to avoid the memories of the… No. He considers vanishing, but he cannot disappear from his own thoughts. No, better to use the resources at his disposal, to think of something else, something Interesting to keep his attention from wandering.
Focus on what Cordis had said about the dead.
“They’re never quite right, no matter how I tried.” Discussing necromancy with someone he’s only just met is not what he’d anticipated doing when he’d tried wishing himself to Islandres. But he does not go into specifics, not when the wounds still ache, and his efforts to distract himself trail off into silence. Beside him Cordis has done the same, and he watches the lightning flicker across her silver skin
No. He needs to keep the conversation going. He needs to stay Interested. What had they been discussing again?
She feels a certain, unexpected comfort at his words. It is not a straight admittance of failure, sure, but it is a flaw. She is grateful, to feel some of the blame trickle from herself to the magic, though of course she will always blame herself, in the end. For don’t we all believe, in some secret part, that we can love someone into staying alive perpetually?
Still – she will take even the slightest unshifting of her burden.
(She would still have taken Spyndle back flawed, of course. She would take any part of her, no matter how distorted.)
“Thank you,” she says, and her head dips slightly. She is not effusive in her gratitude, but it is there, whether he can perceive it or not.
His next question is slightly unexpected – she had briefly expected the silence to distend – and she shifts her weight, as if considering fleeing.
But no. She aches – of course she aches – but the wounds are decades old now, and she is healed, albeit scarred. She moves forward, even if her gait is often slow.
“Spyndle,” she says, as if she expects him to know who that is. And he might – she knows the magic are immortal, if they so choose – so who knows how many decades or centuries this man has roamed Beqanna?
Still, she is not so foolish, so she adds her clarification, “my wife. I brought her back once, but the second time…nothing.”
It is easier to admit this than she thought. Time does this. She is both grateful and miserable that it is so easy to say her name now.
“What about you?” she asks, “who did you bring back?”
Gale idealism sits in prison, chivalry fell on his sword. innocence died screaming; honey, ask me, I should know
Her gratitude bewilders him, but he only stares and does not respond. He only waits for her answer, counting the individual hairs beneath her left eye, and when she gives him a name it is not one he knows.
He could know it, the lightning that flickers across Gale’s temple whispers, if he Looked. So he does, he uses the first of the magics he had known, the one he’d been born with, passed down by blood for generations. Just a Peek, a Glance through her eyes at the wife of whom she speaks and nothing more. He is a child to this lightning creature beside him, Gale realizes as he settles back into his own eyes; he is as insignificant as an oak to the ocean.
The gratitude from earlier.
He understands it now.
If Cordis had not succeeded, there’d never been hope for him.
He blinks, the unfamiliar emotion roiling uncomfortably within him. She asks who he tried to bring back, and he is buzzing with too much electricity to answer with anything but the truth. “A boy. My son.” A flash of lightning passes from one lip to the other, and the child’s name does quite not make it past them. Malik.
He lives, still. Somewhere far away, Gale knows, so far that he can no longer sense Malik. But not so far Gale could not sense his death, if it came. That he knows as sure, as surely as he knows that something had not been right, that something about the boy had fractured, split away into something new. Malik considers it a Companion, still, but Gale is not so certain.
He has succeeded in thinking of other things, and for a time he is contentedly lost in them. As contentedly as he can ever be, at least, and that lasts until the crackling of electricity brings him back to the present, to the silver creature in front of him.
To the talk of necromancy, to what the lightning cannot do. “I was trying to get to Islandres,” he announces, opening (reopening?) the conversation after an unknowable amount of time. “I end up here, or in the Meadow or over there -” He’s gesturing with a white wing toward the rest of the Common Lands. “I’d heard of places vanishing, eaten up by magic, but I never thought I’d see it happen.”
Gale
