"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
you taught me the courage of stars before you left
At first it had felt like her soul was unraveling, all those carefully knit-together pieces coming irreparably undone. But it felt different now. Empty. It felt like nothing. The agony of standing before him while he tore into every shame, every flaw, every mistake she had ever made was unbearable. Like being betrayed by your own heart, by something that knew you in a vulnerable, intimate way. At first she had not believed him, love trapped her like a moth in a web. But then, suddenly, it was not a matter of believing, it was seeing herself as he saw her. Only flaws, only regret.
She had pushed everything out at that point. Every happiness and every sadness, every accomplishment and every regret. And in their place walls had been erected. Tall, vast, impenetrable. It had been the only way she could look at that sneering face she had loved so much, and still loved, without shattering to pieces like a dropped porcelain doll. She had tried to think of his flaws, his weaknesses, but animosity did not come as easily to her. She thought of his wildness, his rawness, and she loved him for it. She remembered his dying days when his skin cracked and bled and red bubbled from his raw, swollen mouth, and she felt only fear, only concern.
But her love was not blind anymore, and her loyalty was untethered. It was true that she would always love him, you couldn’t give away so much of your heart and expect to just take it back. But she would never trust him again. And now, with the wounds still raw and aching and flayed wide open, she hoped he would never come looking for her.
Night had fallen in the hours since they had parted and with only the company of the moon and her stars, Oksana shattered those walls in a torrent of quiet desperation. She reeked of sorrow and of loneliness, of regret and a lack of belonging. She hunched agonized beneath wilted feathers on lethargic wings, the bright copper of her skin trembling violently.
Makai was gone, her children had gone, mother had died during birth. Her life was filled with lies.
And now, without Makai to voice judgement, she began to unravel that tangle of regret. Every failure, every heartbreak, the loss of Ilka and Pyxis, the distance of Malis. And Makai. She ached to go back home and forget all of this, to heal from these wounds, but home had always been Makai. The Chamber was just a place. Her not-sister was there, the only family who seemed to love her, but so was Atrox and his heart. A constant reminder of a regret she couldn’t bear to face just yet.
There was only loneliness.
Only the solitude of here.
But even that would be gone by morning.
a long way from from a firework daze
but I still like to burn, burn, burn
One day, perhaps Dempsey’s wandering would actually keep him from the land of his birth; perhaps, he would not find himself drawn back like water circling the drain—constantly trying to avoid the trap of it without success. But today was obviously not that day, or night, as it were. Standing on the edge of the meadow, he scowled down at it, hesitant to take that step back into what he had long considered the cesspool of Beqanna—a group in which he had cheerily added himself to long ago. After all, Dempsey’s ambition had always been rather low, and his only true accomplishment had been a herd where he had lived rather contentedly with a color-changing, temperamental Amazon Queen. His life's high point.
Still, even the buckskin stallion could only trace the same patterns so many times before her began to grow bored. He was easygoing and, admittedly, lazy, but his mind was sharp and his tolerance would wear thin long before the residents of the meadow tripped onto a conversation of interest. (Of course, the silver mare he had encountered years before had been intriguing. Dangerous, but intriguing.)
Sighing, Dempsey resigned himself back into the ranks of meadow dwellers and began to pick his way down into the crowd that was beginning to disperse. Lazily, he flicked through their thoughts as they passed him, his face neutral as he expertly danced through their memories and concerns. When he was younger, he had been brutish with his abilities—barging into other’s most private corners of their mind without much concern for being respectful. That is not to say that he has stopped his habit of casually poaching thoughts from his neighbors—he was just more skillful at doing it under the radar. Often, his companions could not even tell that he was thumbing through their mind like a dog-eared book.
Unfortunately, tonight the meadow was full of a…rather dull, unimaginative lot. He yawned, wishing that he could somehow will them into being more interesting, more intelligent, and more worthy of his time. That is until he runs across a mind that was screaming in agony. Pausing mid-step, he angled his rather handsome head toward the source of it, eyes landing on the slender mare. Curious at having found something shiny in the pile of unremarkable, he altered his path toward her. Coming up along her side, he paused, not bothering to introduce himself. “You should be careful looking so sad here,” his voice is as smooth as whiskey and bordered with years of amusement. “You have no idea the sick minds who would be attracted to a beautiful mare with broken eyes in a place like this.”
He chuckled under his breath, the tone kinder than he often allowed to strangers. “Not me of course,” finally he caught her gaze and he winked, although he knew that it would be lost on her. “I am completely healthy and in no way attracted to the way the light reflects off your frown.” Hoping to distract her with his banal rambling, he quickly navigated the thorny, bloody mess of her thoughts, and he frowned with more genuine emotion. “Poor lamb,” he murmured before perking up. “Oh, I am Dempsey.” He considered her for a second before settling into a more comfortable position.
“It is nice to meet you, Oksana. One day, you will say the same about me.”
d e m p s e y ashley and wren’s mind-reading nomad of a son
I'm always (I'm always) in the haze of a car crash
you taught me the courage of stars before you left
When that first moment happens, that first instance where your heart soars in your chest and you feel more dangerously alive than you ever have before, you don’t remember to take a second to consider how far it is you have to fall from that point, how broken you will be when your heart crashes against dirt and stone. That is the flaw of loving. Of loving freely and with all of yourself. Falling out of love, out of a life that feels like electricity, like lightning under your skin, is wholly obliterating. The pieces of who you were and who you are get scattered so far, so savagely, that it becomes impossible to be that self any more. We call it growth, justify it by saying it’s a lesson learned, but this growth is only made so by the death of who you were. This growth is a sudden ending, a lost beginning. It is the putting back together of pieces that don’t fit, forcing them together until they do, and pretending like that could ever be enough.
But it has to be, because that’s growth, it’s how we learn from our mistakes.
We learn how to recognize them the next time we make the very same ones.
But we don’t learn to not make them again.
The solitude, this loneliness she both resents and craves with every shattered fiber of her being crumbles as an unfamiliar stallion makes his way towards her. Her heart trembles reflexively in her chest, battering itself to death against the cage of rib-bones like a trapped moth. For a moment she’s certain she’ll turn away from him, leave him glowing gold and alone like the moon herself, but exhaustion traps her, wounds her, leaves her vulnerable at his feet.
There is a wariness in those emerald eyes as she watches him come, a hesitance that bleeds like shadow over the soft angles of her delicate chestnut face. She turns her head from him when he speaks, pretending to focus on something in the distance, the glint of yellow eyes and the click of claws on stones. His voice seems dangerously friendly, almost kind – it certainly doesn’t match the darkness of the warning on his lips. She turns her head to face him, her eyes locking distrustfully on his before she can stop herself. “If I see one,” she says in a voice impossibly soft, her breath fogging like ghosts in the cool night air, “a beautiful mare with broken eyes, I’ll be sure to pass along the warning.” She resents the steel creeping into her voice, resents Makai for putting it there.
His wink disarms her if only for a moment, and she can feel the way her eyes soften and widen before the ice has a chance to harden them again. She watches him for a long moment, trying to understand him, trying to ignore the way doubt hangs over her like a gray-bellied storm cloud. “I can’t decide whether you’re trying to lighten the mood, or if you’re having a laugh at my expense.” She says and it’s a lie because she knows it’s the first. But the ache in her chest, the carved out hollow of flesh and bone, it isn’t ready to be filled with a smile. She isn’t ready. Even the lightness in his expression pushes her back from him as though she is made only of shadow.
But his expression changes for a moment and it’s like being thrown a life line. He’s less bright now, less radiant, and it’s easier for the shadow in her to creep closer. She wonders suddenly who he is, and it’s almost as though he knew what she was thinking because the answer is on his lips before she even had a chance ask it. “Dempsey." She repeats, flinching away from the renewed interest in his expression. But when her name falls from his lips her eyes sharpen like stone. “How am I supposed to trust you if you’re keeping secrets, Dempsey?" She pauses and her leathery wings lift defensively from her withers to hang darkly at either side of her ribcage. “I never gave you my name, it isn't yours to use.”
a long way from from a firework daze
but I still like to burn, burn, burn
Her eyes are sharp, her voice sharper still, and he finds himself simultaneously amused and saddened by it. Even his surface understanding of her (something made easier by his quick digestion of her swirling thoughts) let him know that this was not her—not really. Someone had molded her into this bitter facade of who she once was, and he found himself frowning because of it. In a past life, he may have been the one to have done this to another—he was not always kind to strangers—but he had mellowed with age. When he was unkind now, it was usually with good reason; at least he liked to think so.
“No need,” he responds easily, smoothing over the edge to her words. “I have already informed one and have thus filled both of our social duties for the day. Keep the warning in your pocket for a future time.” He sighs lightly, enjoying the ease he felt in the uneasy situation. Dempsey knew that she would much rather he be gone, but he had made it a habit to make his welcome wherever he pleased a long time ago. There was not much that could be done to ruffle his proverbial feathers or make him go away.
Not unless he wanted to go.
Which is why he is able to chuckle again before shaking his head. “Laughing with you, I assure you. Never at you. At least not now.” He looks at her, his gaze warm and flecked with the same gold of his coat. “And that depends—do you feel like the mood is lighter?” He angles his head, considering it for a second, but barely has a second to truly consider the question before her walls go up and the air between them is electric with tension. It wasn’t his first rodeo though; he had navigated these waters before.
“Oh, it’s hardly worth the fight, Oksana,” he lightly admonishes her, “although if you are looking for an easy target, feel free to pick me.” His expression is as calm as hers is turbulent and he lets the silence hang between them for a second before he explains, “Getting angry at a mind reader for reading minds is as futile as getting angry at a bird for flying—it’s as natural as breathing to me. I won’t apologize for it.”
Shifting his weight, he lets out a breath into the night air. It wasn’t that he didn't understand her anger or sympathize with it, but he was long past the age of reconciling his ways or feeling bad for what he was. He was an old dog who simply had no interest in learning new tricks. “Instead of taking out your anger on me (although you can if you want, I understand that helps some people), why don’t we actually focus on what is truly hurting you?” He doesn’t touch her, but he does angle his head toward her again, “Of course, we could ignore it and find an amusing past time if you prefer. I am quite good at diversions.”
d e m p s e y ashley and wren’s mind-reading nomad of a son
I'm always (I'm always) in the haze of a car crash
you taught me the courage of stars before you left
Mind reader.
The relief she feels is instantaneous, as is the shame that creeps over her skin like a fever. But the suspicion fades away from the shadows in her face, the skepticism too, and her green eyes seem softer now when they settle back to the gold of his face. She considers for a moment whether to tell him the truth, the why, but realizes with a tight smile that he must already know. The reason would have become his as soon as the thought took shape in her mind. But she decides to tell him anyway, because it feels less like a stolen secret when she can convince herself it’s been willingly shared.
“I thought you might be playing a cruel joke on me.” She confides quietly, her voice drawn and vulnerable in the wake of the confession. “I thought someone else might have given you my name.” She doesn’t say who, but his name must read as bright and aching as moon in the sky above them. She understands that this information is his too, whether she offers it willingly or not, but his name feels like poison in her mouth and it hurts so much less when she doesn’t have to say it aloud. “I don’t know what to believe anymore,” her voice shakes a little and she makes a weak effort to try and conceal it from him, “I don’t even think I can trust myself anymore.”
She looks away from him quickly, flustered, and considers disappearing into the shadow of the night. He didn’t seem to have any intention of leaving, but she also didn’t think he would try and follow her if she left. But a thought throbbed like a flesh wound in her chest and she found herself frozen in place. You have nowhere to go.
When he speaks again it is with much reluctance that her chin lifts and her dark eyes return uncertainly to his calm, imploring face. “Can you?” She asks before she has a chance to soften the accusation echoing in her question. “Can you ignore it?” What had first been edged with accidental steel was a question now tangled in simple desperation. “I don’t want you to know what I do, I don’t want all of my shame and weakness displayed for you like a story. But I cannot make it stop running through my mind.”
She looks away again, her jaw clenched tight, and when she turns her head back to face him, her expression is a tangled reflection of the turmoil within.
“Makai didn’t send me,” he says quietly, and he is not sure whether that would be something that hurt or relieved her. Frankly, Dempsey had never seen the wild-eyed stallion in her thoughts around the meadow, and he is glad of it. “Not that I would have come if he had asked…” his voice trails off in thought, lifting his handsome head to ponder the idea. He had done unsavory things in his past before, things he was not entirely proud to admit, but all in all, Dempsey was never a particularly cruel creature. Lazy, apathetic, slightly arrogant, intrusive—he was all of those things and more, but never outright cruel.
Shaking himself of the idea, he gave her a kind smile, “If it makes you feel any better, I have seen much worse thoughts than your own. You are relatively tame, in fact.” He reaches out to nudge her neck lightly, ignoring the wings that seemed to bend and shape at her will. He knew he would not be able to convince her of that fact, but it was true. Throughout his years, he had read everything from the most grotesque of thoughts to the most bland—there was little that could shock him anymore. What he saw in her was just pain (agony) and confusion and mistrust, but it was nothing to be ashamed of, at least to him.
“Think of it this way: now there are no secrets between us,” his gold-flecked eyes brighten slightly, “so there is no reason for this to not be a completely safe space.” He is not entirely sure why he has decided to adopt her problems as his own, but it seemed like a simple decision now. After all, he had been entirely too bored and Oksana seemed anything but boring. Why not pass his time doing something that may be somewhat useful? If it ended up being too much work, he could always wash his hands of it.
Nudging her again, he took a step forward, “Let’s take a walk.” He found it helped to be moving when untangling one’s self from their own thorny emotions. Being in some sort of motion seemed to ease the tension that threatened to crack your heart—that painful pressure from within. He gave a quick side glance toward her before looking forward again, rolling his shoulders, “There are always places to go, by the way. We could go claim a herd land if you’d like privacy or just make the meadow our kingdom. I have wandered a long time without tying myself down—I can show you how to disappear.”
you taught me the courage of stars before you left
She flinches when he says Makai’s name, looks away with unfocused eyes and a slack jaw. It’s astounding how something as simple as hearing his name makes her feel so sick to her stomach. But it’s only been a few short hours, though it feels like lifetimes lost, and she shouldn’t expect this wound to heal so quickly. When he speaks again her eyes refocus and drift back reluctantly to his face, lingering there for a moment with an expression of guarded simplicity. “Be that as it may, I don’t know anything about you, Dempsey.” She paused, those emerald eyes sharpening slightly beneath a furrowed brow. “And I don’t have much patience for trust right now. I’m sure you won’t take it personally.” There is almost a smile ghosting the corner of her mouth when she says this, a gleam of something besides loss shining in her eyes before it fades again almost immediately.
There is a flicker of something ominous running through the shadows in the backs of her eyes when he speaks again. “Tame.” She repeats, distant, testing the weight of the word on her tongue. “I believe the word Makai used was boring.” She flinches again imperceptibly, the use of his name the same as tugging on a barb buried snug under her skin. Her jaw clenches. “It doesn’t sound as bad when you say it though.” She laughs here, a mangled sound, like a smothered cough. She flinches again when he touches her neck, but there’s a dangerous longing that flares in the pit of her belly, a desperate need to dull the loneliness of rejection, of her scattered family. She smothers it as quickly as it appears.
“I’ve had more than I can handle of honesty tonight, Dempsey. Perhaps a few secrets would be best.” She glances sideways into the still night. “But you’re wrong, mindreader, I’ve been given every reason not to feel safe tonight.” For once there is no pity in her voice. There is only a coldness as she mentally recounts the tatters of her flayed open heart. “You’ll need to give me a reason to feel safe.” But there isn’t one, and she’s well aware, there’s not a thing in this world or the next that will crumble the walls thrown up around her heart.
This time when she sees him reach out for her, she quietly sidesteps his nose. But she follows him anyway, soundless, her mind burning with too many thoughts in a night far too silent. When she turns to look at him again her wings lift and unfold to the star strewn sky, and she can feel the coolness of the air as they pump slowly at her withers. “It’s a shame you can’t fly.” She breaks the silence at last, a new note of subtle longing in her murmurous voice. But he can’t, not unless he had more secrets buried than she had first guessed, so she drops the subject with a soft, unreadable expression fingering at her lips. Her wings resettle restlessly along the curve of her back. Instead she says, “Why, mindreader, are you asking me to run away with you?”
The pain in her expression does not get by him, and his eyes narrow in concentration. It wasn’t that he particularly enjoyed causing her agony, but he figured that the situation was a little like a snake bite: you had to suck out the poison before the healing could begin. So he doesn’t apologize or gloss over it, instead tilting his head to the side and considering her. She was stronger than she thought she was, although he had to think that she would never admit that. She seemed like the type to consider herself weak.
That is, until she had a knife to someone’s throat.
But alas, he did not fear for his life and did not move out of range from her wings, instead walking by her side with the lazy stroll of a stallion who had never feared anything. “There isn’t much to know about me, but if you’d like to know just ask,” there is a quick flash of teeth.“I am an open book.” Not entirely true. There were secrets that he kept tucked into the corners of his mind, thoughts carefully placed and hidden. It was one of the unfair, but wonderful perks of his trait. He could flip open another’s mind as easily as he liked, but he also knew how to guard against a similar intrusion a little better.
“You aren’t boring,” he responds carefully, not looking at her but testing the edges of her thoughts as they hung in the air around him. “Perhaps a little testy, but not boring.” He laughs, the sound of his rich and calming in comparison to the jagged edges of her own. “You do have terrible taste in men though.” There is silence for a second as he considers bringing up the obvious before easily brushing it aside, “I mean, you have the chance to run away with me and you have to think twice?” He clucks his tongue against the edge of his teeth in mock disapproval. “Terrible taste indeed, Queenie. Leap without looking for once.”
His words fade away and, for a moment, there is silence between them as he listens to her without responding, wondering if he would indeed ever be able to make her feel safe again. It was unlikely. He certainly was not a knight in shining army, and there was nothing that he could do that would ever inspire her to open up. He wasn’t the type to sweep someone off their feet with grand gestures, and he was not exactly the reliable type. It would be foolish of him to pretend otherwise and cruel to let her believe so.
“I am afraid I won’t be able to give you a reason to feel safe,” but she already knew that. They both did. “You’re just going to have to get their on your own.” Another casual shrug of his shoulders, the meadow opening up before them as the sun began to slant through the trees, the crowds slowly beginning to form. “Why do you need a reason?” he counters quickly before exhaling. “Perhaps I would just like some company. It has been a long time living alone.” Perhaps he saw a project that could keep his busy mind occupied. Perhaps she struck a rare, compassionate chord within him. Or, perhaps, he was just bored.
you taught me the courage of stars before you left
Leap without looking.
She watches him silently for a moment, an internal battle raging within the confines of her shattered chest. There was something dangerously tempting about the freedom he offered her, the release from the chaotic churning of her thoughts. But the newness of her hurt, of the wounds on her heart and on her pride sang to her of caution. Her expression deepened, would be as clear to him as her thoughts. The quiet longing, the crippling indecision, all nestled curiously within the hollows and lines of her drawn, delicate face.
“Okay” She says suddenly, her jaw clenching and releasing just once as her eyes settled over his. “I’ll leap.” And her voice is strangely soft. It doesn’t wither at the center, doesn’t crumble at the edges, it’s just gentle. Just calm.
She shifts closer to him and their hips and shoulders brush every few strides. It isn’t deliberate, but it’s welcome, though she hardly notices at first as she sorts through the thoughts floating like clouds through her mind. She would leap with him for a while, for as long as it took for her feet to find solid ground, but she had a family to return to, a family (though spilled across multiple kingdoms) that meant more to her than hiding from her own demons.
She sighs tensely, though the tension had faded some, and her mouth brushes across the gold of his neck to regain his attention. “You said I could ask you anything,” she starts with a furrowed brow that matched the uncertain curl to the shape of her mouth, “but I only have one question.” She slows to a halt, drawing away from him so that the cold could filter back in between them. “Have you ever hurt someone this way?”
And she isn’t asking about relationships he’s had or hearts he’s broken, she’s asking about the poisonous lie Makai had knit. About the false life he had led with her and the love he had promised when there was nothing in him to give. She winced as a new wave of sickness pulled her back under. But mostly, and though she hadn’t asked, the answer she was looking for was why.
Her green eyes darkened, deepening with regret as she shook her head and turned from him again. “You know, it doesn’t matter. It did though, it meant everything. And this time as she paced beside him, though her skin ached for the warmth of closeness, she kept the cool morning between them. “Just don’t ever lie to me.” She said turning her head to look at him. “I’d rather face the pain of a truth than the poison of a lie.” Despite her careful distance, her nose reaches across to brush his shoulder as she turns to him with the ghost of a smile on her lips.
“If it’s been while, then I feel obliged to remind you that company can be overrated,” she says, turning to look forward into the rising sun, “and there’s a rumor going around that I have terrible taste.”
“Atta girl,” he said softly, nudging her cheek gently. He felt the tension in his chest bleed a little at the shift in her thoughts—the way that they were slowly but surely strengthening at the core. What he felt was not quite accomplishment, although it was dangerously close to it. Dempsey felt like a sculptor, his hands dirty with clay and his back aching from the strain, but the finished product coming to life before him. Not that he could take credit for it, but Dempsey was not known for his humility.
So they walk together, side by side, and he sighs in the pleasure of the quiet company. That is, until, her mouth is on his neck and he is contemplating her question before it ever leaves her lips. “No,” he says simply, “I haven’t.” He doesn’t look at her as they keep walking, the shadows of the early light dappling on their backs. “I have hurt before. This may be hard to believe,” a chuckle, “but I am rather selfish, a little lazy, and mostly self-absorbed.” Another contemplative pause, “But my hurting others has always come from being brutally honest about those facts about myself. For all my flaws, I am honest.”
He pauses for a second to look at her, “I promise that I won’t ever lie to you.”
And he wouldn’t.
He could not promise to be her shining knight, or even be a permanent solution to what seemed like her unending pain, but he could be a temporary salve—a needed reprieve. That much he could give her. “Your taste has become much improved, Oksana.” He straightens up, lifting one corner of his mouth into a lopsided grin before winking. “Who would have thought you were capable of improving?”
