"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
“I love you! I’m so sorry, so sorry… But I do!” Her sobs are a chaotic solo against the melody of the waves upon the shore, of the sunset’s whispering words, of the creatures of the beach settling for nighttime. Her sobs bring forth a rush of sappy tears from her eyelids and a choking sound from his throat. They are silhouettes, now, against the backdrop of a drowning sun, and quickly after the moon rises to wash the beach – and their bodies – in the color of starlight.
Everything is vivid and sharp and perfect. Every move they make, every breath she sends to dance across his skin, every rumble of his words into her ears, every kiss he presses to her bark-rough skin. Vivid, sharp, and perfect. It is disturbed, however, by an awful cold that infiltrates the warmth of their skin pressed together, of their love intensifying the passion sparking a flame between them. A prickle of something wet and sharp with chill hits his shoulder, then another against his flank. The image of her wavers and flickers, like a mirage, before everything he sees is plunged into darkness.
The broken-hearted lover opens his eyes slowly. The world around him is painted with a thick layer of white, Mother Nature’s chilly arm of winter sweeping across Beqanna. Pulling his wings tighter around his body, he cannot help but think of her. The winter is always her least favorite season (it pulls at her magic, wrapping its frozen fingers around her spring leaves and budding flowers, tightening its grip around her heart and chest and lifeblood), and he figures this one will be no worse than the last. Just as well, it will be their own son’s fourth winter – the son that he raised himself, because she hid away from him again in her desperation and confusion. Their son had left him a year ago, now, and he had been living alone (he always seems to be alone, nowadays) since then.
Everyone runs away from him.
He doesn’t know where he might find her (she is a mirage, a whisp, a dream, a portrait, a hazy fog, a flickering flame just out of reach, a tall tree he is constantly walking toward), but he still looks. He’d had several months of relapse (of the darkness shadowing the corners of his mind, of the Beach looking tantalizingly comfortable, of cliffs ready for him to jump off of, of beaches ready for him to drown in, of painful nights spent crying in a corner of a world he didn’t feel a part of) after his son had left him.
He’d pulled away from it, if only because of the memory of her. Her doe-brown eyes (which are now bright, springtime green); her freckled, sun-kissed skin (which is now bark-covered and woven with blood veins of life); her long, strawberry locks tenderly brushing against her gentle cheekbones (locks which are now lively and plant-line, gentle cheekbones which are still there yet hidden under layers of something different and new). The memory of her kept him alive – as it has before.
But more than anything, he craves the real her.
So he goes on an adventure. First, to the Valley (where her magical power-hungry lover dwells, where she raised her triplets); second, to the Jungle (where her queenly mother birthed her, where her dearly father loved her); third, to the Dale (for some reason unbeknownst to him, other than he’d never been there before and he felt some sort of tug in that direction). It is there that the broken-hearted lover wakes, under a small tree providing little shelter from the reaching claws of the winter cold.
He wakes and he breathes and he wishes he didn’t – couldn’t – breathe. Breathing meant he was alive and being alive meant he loved her and how could he love someone who was only a memory?
Most days, most days stay the sole same
Please stay, for this fear it will not die
Down low, down amongst the thorn rows
Weeds grow, through the lilies and the vines
Three gift-laden wise men bowed low to the messiah once upon a time, submitting to his majesty. And while Noori may not be a god, she can relate to the infant. King Eight of Magic, King Sinder of Silence, and King Trekk of heartbreak. Each brought her gifts, each danced her dance once upon a time. Eight with his prowess and playful poisons; Sinder with his lustful gazes and erotic words; Trekk with his devotion and heartfelt promises. To each man she returned the same, and to each man she birthed a child.
To Trekk, however, she only returned.
Takei, her son of normality. No ivy or wolves or rain belonged to him; in fact, he possessed nothing. Noori was no mother, not to a son she did not want or care for. Throughout the whole pregnancy she had felt empty; Mother Spring had vast chambers for her young, and the tiny boy barely took up a quarter of her rooms.
She tries not to remember any of that though; of Nihlus and Daemron and Cerva and especially Takei. The memories are too sweet, too delectable for her bitter, sap-coated tongue. She prefers to be aloof, to avoid and ignore and live in the background. Even when she took three suitors, she held no grand role in the scheme of things. She started no wars and finished no lives, except perhaps her own. Where once she strived to swell and consume and grow almighty, Noori now hums delicately in the veins of Beqanna.
How he finds her, she shall forever be unsure. Her arrival to the Dale was nearly unnoticed, under the radar save for a sexually tense meeting with the King. She regrets not pursuing him; but the land simply enraptured her. Here, the Spring seemed ceaseless, unlike the acridity of the Deserts and the dampness of the Valley. The vegetation responds to her without her conscious attempts to control them; here, she simply is. And here, she shall always simply be.
Until he arrives.
She’s wandering when he halts next to the tree, shivering awfully and sniveling pitifully. The cold of winter is perhaps the one downfall of her new home: it saps her strength. Yes, the snow melts slowly before her lovely white limbs; but she is ill. And perhaps this explains why she did not avoid his comforting, distant figure. Instead, she only hobbles closer.
“Trekk?” She’s nearly to him, though the falling snow nearly blinds her, and dims her luminous green eyes. “Is that you?”
If someone ever told a story about the winged man, it would be a broken-hearted one. It would be a story filled with ups and downs – but mostly downs. It would be a story that would seem to have a happily ever after, only for a plot twist to tear that happiness away. It would be a story of tears and laughter and brokenness and the darkness of life. It would be a story of regret and adoration and endlessly forgiving love. It would be a story that would leave the reader begging for more – praying for the happy ending for the prince who lost his princess.
She is his princess. She is the one he will forever treasure, no matter how many times she breaks his heart and steps on the mangled pieces. She is the one he wants to grow old next to. She is the one he wants to hold close in their final moments, as the world continues to spin but their bodies cease to breathe. She is the only weakness he wants to have. She is the only darling he wants to embrace wholly in the autumn nighttime.
But in most ways, she is always just out of his reach. She always falls at just the right angle around him so that she might shatter. She always dances into his arms and then an inch away. She always cries into his t-shirt but once she has composed her sappy, sticky tears she aborts his warm presence for a different, unfamiliar one. He is always left waiting – waiting, waiting, eternally waiting – for her to come sobbing back into his gentle arms from heartbreak from a different man.
The sound of her voice sends a choked gasp out of his throat. How many years had he been searching, just to hear that heart-wrenching tune? The last time he’d seen her was when their son had been shoved into his surprised grasp (and she’d turned her back on him, just as everyone did). She is shivering and whimpering and blinded, yet she looks just as beautiful as she does in the springtime. The sight of her (however ill she might be) is a sight for his sore eyes and he sighs loudly when his suicidal depths relax in relief.
At first, he is at loss for words. Then, they spring to his throat. They are the only words his heart has ever sung and will ever sing. They are the words purely meant for her, even when she rips his heart out and dumps it in a trash can. They are not the words he intended to say (in fact, he had a speech prepared, but it went down the drain at the sound of her voice) but perhaps they are the words he has always meant. “I love you.” He staggers toward her, warm breath leaking out of his lungs to dance across her icy skin.
When he touches her, he melts. “Oh, I love you so much.” His voice is ache and sore and dreadful. The degree of his affection seeps from his voice like an overflowing dam, drowning everything in its path. “Please,” he begs, “don’t leave me again.”
The winter embraces her like the arms of a forceful lover, one who takes her to bed without letting her leave, one who kisses her until bruises dot her skin. Men usually absorb her time during the winter, distracting her from the onset of sap-lined nostrils and frosted vocal cords. Her song, however, has changed since the lovers last met. The polygamist has settled into the rhythm of singularity, seeking herself rather than others. Eight left, Sinder left, and she left Trekk; of others she remembers little, for it is in her nature to flirt, but not once has she taken another man as her own. Her lovers are gone, and to find new ones would simply be far too much of a hassle.
This does not please fate, for instead of leaving her to her lonesome self, it sends the one she abandoned back to her. Again, and again, and again.
Bark snapping off of her aching muscles with each movement, the mare moves rigidly towards him. Not away, not again; she is in no state to run, and old habits die hard. A nicker stutters from her lungs, a sickly invitation for his company. I’ve never been good at alone, why bother.
His words break her heart just as hers have shattered his. The affection of his voice defrosts her frozen body, though this only allows her to feel the pain. And with his skin against her alabaster bark, she is whole; wholly broken, and wholly vulnerable to him. Sagging into him, Noori shivers uncontrollably, unaware of how much weight she forces him to carry. I’ve always been a burden anyways.
Clenching her glowing eyes shut, the Mother Spring succumbs to the fragility of the situation, sticky tears dripping slowly down her cheeks. He holds her, closer and closer and closer until there’s nothing left between them, and maybe this is how it will always be: heartbreak when she leaves and heartbreak when he returns, a soap opera of self-pity and endless devotion through unbreakable waves of uncertainty and cruelty. Come and go, pull and push, they are the tide and the moon and the seasons. Gone and back, here and there, time doesn’t apply to them when their arms are laced through the skin of each other. Apart they are broken, and as one, their broken fragments fit together to form the heartbreaking image of their reality.
“I love you too, and I’m still so sorry…”
Her lips move against the niche of his throat. “Don’t let me leave, Trekk, don’t let me throw myself away again.”
ooc: this got better at the end but it's still yuck. but I wanted to get something up for you <3
