"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
There’s no particular reason as to why Tiberios returns to the meadow. He considers it a force of habit, from being estranged for so long. There’s sanctity in the afternoon stillness, a sense of change. Autumn is bleeding out her life force, giving way to the inevitability of winter and her barren death. His gilded eyes are filled with the comforting warmth of orange and red hues. Tiberios is still thin and ragged from his time in the wild, but his coat (now heavy with expanding fur) hides this from plain view. He knows that when winter finally does fade away to spring, he’ll be somewhat restored to his former health. The only indication of his hermitage can be seen along the side of his body that is pale and hairless - only there can his ribs be seen jutting out in a sickly manner.
The aging stallion pauses for a moment, ears swiveling suddenly forward to catch some creature as it darts from the edge of the meadow to a safer location. His nostrils flare and he inhales the rich, earthy scent of this place. He’d missed it so much. Satisfied, he continues on, stopping decidedly at the edge of the great lake to placate his thirst. It’s there that he sees his reflection for the first time since leaving. The wide, golden band that ran vertically down the slope of his nose glints off the surface of the water, and Tiberios is overcome with memories of the Dale. They’re painful, and much sharper than he remembers, but he doesn’t bury them. Instead, he dwells on them - the good and the bad.
He doubts that he could ever return there now. Besides, there was nothing left for him within those borders. Talulah and Tiphon had woven their own life together, and Tiberios was satisfied with having a father - even if it was only for a brief moment. It would be irrelevant to go back and stir up something he no longer had a say in. He blinks, slowly, and turns away from the stallion looking back at him, intent on forgetting that life.
She is a different woman now than when he knew her.
Lies and deceit have ensnared the once untangled chords of her thoughts. She’s no longer wholesome and untouched by the drama she’s always avoided, always scorned from others. She’s lied to one of the few horses she’s never meant hurt. And even if it is a lie by omission – a hidden truth, really – she’s still kept her secret longer than she ever should have.
At first it had bothered her, as it should. Tiphon was one of the constants in her life. She should hold onto him with every ounce of strength in her iron bones, because the constants were becoming less numerous every day. She should remember how her parents left her, how Lion and Tiberios vacated themselves from her company. She should make herself an anchor around his feet, because time pulled away everyone you loved sooner or later. But of course, she hadn’t listened to herself. Seeking the affections of another man was proof enough of her folly. Finding solace in Jason’s embrace was a temporary salve to her aching heart, and in the end, it hadn’t sustained her.
Eldrian was the only boon of the entire mess she’d made. The boy couldn’t help who his parents were or the tenuous, momentary hold they’d had on one another. He was a bright light casting away the shadows. He reminded Talulah of the woman she wanted to be: the mother, the friend, the constant for another. It had almost killed her to leave him in the care of another, but it was in his best interest. Until she told Tiphon the truth, it had to be that way (and he’d done enough gallivanting around of his own to find fault in her, she told herself every day, hoping it was true).
Today, she puts it all out of her mind. Maybe it’s irresponsible and reckless (so much of her is these days) but it’s necessary. Fall has once again come around and it’s impossible to believe it’s already been a year since that fateful day. She shakes her head and moves deeper into the land. The colors are as mesmerizing here as they are in the Dale, a splendor of earthen tones splashed about the trees and across the ground. The shimmering woman sticks out in such a world, unwittingly shining in her out-of-place way. It’s no matter, she thinks, I’ll only meet with strangers today. Just as soon as she’s thought it, though, she spots a black form lingering near the lake’s edge. An inkling of familiarity creeps into her brain. At first she doesn’t want to go to him. At first, she doesn’t want to confirm her suspicions.
She goes, of course. She always does.
“Tiberios.” It’s soft but stern as it slips from her mouth. As much as Talulah wants to berate him for leaving his family without a word, her own faults turn her tongue into lead. It has only taken his absence for her to really understand his former motivations, besides. He had loved her – or close to it, anyway – and she hadn’t realized her own feelings were so closely aligned. There had been others for all of them, though: Tiphon, Elysteria, Shatter Me. Their lives had become like snarled pipes, pressurized by the steam of their collective feelings for one another. The turmoil had needed a release; Tiberios’s leaving had provided it, as much as she hated to admit it. As much as she hates him being gone, even now.
“I’ve missed you,” she says, reaching to touch the curve of his neck before stopping herself. The words are already there in the space she puts between them. She can’t take them back, and maybe she wouldn’t anyway. The truth is a refreshing taste in her mouth that has been long stale with lies.
It’s like seeing someone you think has been dead for a while. Odd, unexpected, and somewhat breathtaking. His name slips past her lips in that undeniable tone and despite the fact that he looks weathered compared to her, he feels the need to duck his head sheepishly. But he wont, he never could around her. He takes her in like a man dying of thirst, eyes wandering hungrily over her pewter body. If this was a test from the Gods, it was well designed. But she’s real, so real in fact that when she reaches out to touch his neck (his skin reacts, feeling the phantom sensation before she even completes the action) and pulls away, Tiberios can no longer deny her existence. He can feel the millions of question begin to pile up within him - How was she? How was her son? How was Tiphon? But she silences them with few words.
All this time and Talulah was still as dangerous to him as she’d always been.
“I’ve missed you too.” He says, finding it easy to release this built up tension. They had nothing to hide from one another anymore. There was nothing they could use to wound one another. In some ways, he feels as if he understands the silver mare more than he ever thought he did before. Life lived in a constant spiral gives him the opportunity to push aside all the restrictions he once had. “You look well.” He comments, finding it hard to fill this empty space between them. Her appearance had taken him off-guard, and he was fumbling to recover. He wanted her as badly as he always had, but thoughts of Khalis and Shatter loom like heavy curtains over his heart. He had made a promise to the Queen of the Falls, and he intended to keep it.
But, he cannot help who he is. A sideways smirk finds it’s way across his lips and he tilts his head gently to the side. There was something strange about her now, this unusual longing reflected in her eyes. For the first time he catches a glimpse of what she had seen in him all these years. A boy with a crush that had grown to wildfire - one she had never personally stoked, but she knew (she must know) that it had raged out of control for her. Now, she seems cathartically sad. “All this time and you still look as mesmerising as the first day I met you.” He knows why, of course. She and Tiphon would eternally look that way. “God I’ve missed you …”
She’s too absorbed in seeing him to really see him at first.
She doesn’t notice that he’s lost weight. She doesn’t see that the wilderness hasn’t fully released him yet, as it clings to his mane and tail in the form of burs and twigs. She looks past his tired eyes (though she wonders what they’ve seen besides the curves and rises of the Dale – where he’s been besides where he’s supposed to be). All she can see is Tiberios, familiar scars, hints of gold and all. All that matters is that he’s alive and in the flesh before her.
It takes a while before she sees the rest, but eventually she does. Her face falls as she looks him over, noticing his gauntness and the way his skin seems stretched across his body. If she cared about him any less, if she was a petty, scorned woman, she would have been glad to see that he has suffered. Karma for abandoning us, she might have thought. Instead, Talulah clicks her tongue in an admonishing sort of way and shakes her head. She doesn’t need to ask why he looks so ragged – she won’t go down that path just yet. And as it turns out, he’s none too worried about it himself. She can feel the weight of his gaze across her body, and for the first time, it makes her shiver with understanding of its source. She knows she should put a stop to it – there are others for both of them back in their respective homes (hadn’t that always been their problem?) – but she finds herself unable to.
She laughs, a loud and bitter sound from her throat, when he says she looks well. Well is a woman who knows her own limits. Well is not running at the first sign of trouble, not clinging to the helping hand of a stranger, folding yourself into their embrace to forget your problems. Well is the strong mare she used to be, back when she made a choice she thought would mean forever. Now, she’s a liar and a cheater; she hates herself because she’s also never felt freer. She has enough shame to look away when he says it, though. Her throat burns with all the words she wants to say, each one a pinprick of heat on her tongue. She wants to spill all of it, all at once. She wants to confide in him like a friend (though their relationship is more and different than that simple definition) but she can’t. Everything she says will hurt him. And even if he thinks they are long passed the ability to hurt one another, she knows it isn’t true. Time has only honed and sharpened their words to a point. They’ve exposed their most tender nerves to each other time and time again; the damage they are capable of inflicting could be irreparable.
The silver mare is quiet longer than she intended, longer than she realized, even. She turns back to him, trying to erase some of the sadness and confusion from her features. Of course, she can’t hide herself from him. Tiberios tries to lift her spirits, smirking and complimenting her like the young stallion he’d been before it had all gotten so complicated. She rises to the challenge, or tries to, smiling faintly. “Are you sure you’re not just looking at your own reflection?” She teases him lightly, referencing her mirror-esque skin glinting in the daylight. “I did look rather fierce that day, didn’t I?” She remembers charging through the forest, intent on defending the Dale from a would-be spy or attacker and finding a returning member instead – the son of the king, no less. The memory will always make her smile a bit brighter. Talulah realizes his sincerity, but can’t bring herself to counter it with praise of her own. The way she is now, the way she’s changed, she might not be able to part from him ever again.
She moves closer to the sabino stallion once more. She steels her heart for the smell of the Falls, and isn’t surprised when it reaches her on the wind. “You’re always leaving, Tiberios,” she says, her voice softer now and her smile faded. Then in her mind, “how do I make you stay?” But she knows that answer. She knows she had a chance to keep him, could have locked him away inside the bars of her ribcage for her own. She needs him, knows she has reserved a part of her very soul just for him. Talulah presses the flat of her forehead against his burned and wasted shoulder, breathing in his new scent. She’s done holding back any truths with anyone, but especially him. “I don’t want to lose you forever.”
He wants to know, more than anything, what force drives them together like this. He wants to understand a way to give her up, to erase her, to turn back time and prevent this from ever occurring. It’s not because he hates her, no - in fact it’s the opposite. He’s so desperate to have her that when her head touches the bare spot against his shoulder he knows he would die a thousand deaths to feel that sensation once every hundred years. Her words, so much like a bird that is new to flight, tremble in the air around them and he closes his eyes before comforting her. His nose trails along the side of her silver neck, and he smiles into her skin.
“Forever is a very long time, Talulah.” He replies, knowing that she understands the finality of his life compared to her endless one. He’d thought about it countless times; the life they could’ve led if they had chosen each other. It would have been glorious for him, the brightest existence possible. But fate can never be escaped, and Talulah would have watched him wither until he took his last breath. Tiberios knows that’s a pain he never wants her to endure.
Whether she likes it or not, someday Tiberios will not return to her side. Someday he will cease to exist, and like all the other mortals woven into her life, He’ll become a memory.
But he soothes her instead, pushing the reality of the situation far behind him until there is only Talulah to think of. She’s hurting, and whether or not he’s the source of her pain Tiberios is intent on simply being here for her, just as she’d been there for him time and time before. The image of that proud mare transformed into the one beside him is a sobering one, but she had seen the worst in him and still cared. “Tell me,” He asks, his voice a velvet whisper, “Do you honestly believe that I’d leave you for good?”
He feels her heartbeat beneath him, and suddenly he knows that he will always belong to her. “Never Talulah.” He insists, “Never.”
If only she knew what he imagined of their would-be life together, a burning star bound to collapse in on itself. If only she could picture the same tapestry of their woven lives, feel the roughness of a blanket finished by a hurried and unsteady hand. It would be a ragged thing, their shared lives, as if the yarn it was composed of had been stretched and tangled too many times to be completely useful. It would be uneven and coarse in some spots (all the times they had lashed out at each other) but it would be tough and resilient, too. Regardless of its faults, she thinks she wouldn’t mind a life like that. She imagines it would feel like the finest silk against the numbed metal that is her skin.
She is deaf and blind to both his thoughts and the images running through his brain, though.
Talulah has to content herself with reading a face that is, admittedly, easy enough for her to decipher. She can see that he wants to help her, can see the lines of concern irritating his handsome face. She hates the pity it implies. He’s warm and here, so close she can almost hear his heartbeat, though. As much as she wants to push him away for it like old times, it’s too nice just to be near him once again. His muzzle traces the groove along her neck and she closes her eyes. She imagines they are back in the Dale, reunited under the shadows of the distant mountains. They are safe, they are home, they are together. A desperate nostalgia weighs heavily in her bones, grounding her in that moment. She thinks she could grow roots then and there and be content for all of eternity.
But then he speaks.
The moment shatters (not the first time something broken has come between them). “No.” She almost growls, her amber eyes flying open as reality descends upon her. They both know his meaning, and the metal mare cannot possibly consider it right now. She can’t think about a lack of intersections, of the too few and too far between times their lives come together at crossroads. It’s not something she’s ever considered before (that her angel will always return to earth, but her fire-man will someday turn to ash), really, and not something she wants to start realizing. But he’s quick to rectify his mistake. Tiberios consoles her with his mantra. “Never,” he says, and then again, “never.” It’s almost enough to sooth her, almost enough to make her believe him. She retreats back into his side. Her time there is limited, after all, and she means to make the most of it.
Some of that new wildness creeps up in her, then. Some of her own fire returns to her eyes. She thinks they could run away (for a short time or forever, either would be fine with her). Maybe no one would notice. Maybe Tiphon will still be off wherever he’s gone to this time; maybe Shatter will find solace in the comfort of another like Talulah had. Maybe she doesn’t care what any of them think, anyway. She tilts her head to take regard Tiberios, that boldness still brightening her gaze. She’s about to ask him, but something in his own gilded eyes stops her tongue. For the first time, Talulah sees more than herself reflected in his gaze. She sees that he’s moved on in ways that are practical if not emotional. She sees that when he leaves here, he’ll return to the Falls, to her. He won’t run away with her, not anymore.
His question still hovers in the air around them, putting a pause on Talulah’s own inquiries. “I couldn’t believe it even if I wanted to.” A smile starts to pull at her lips, because he has made her feel better in some ways. In other, unexpected ways, though, he’s made her feel worse. But it’s his turn, so she asks. “Are you happy?” With Shatter, with Tyrna, with the Falls, with everything. She doesn’t have to specify; they can both read between each other’s lines to find the questions that really matter. All she cares is that he is, even if the truth will be yet another blow.
There’s so much left to explain to her. So much left to contemplate and work out. It seems like every time they take a step forward together, a chasm of impossibility opens up beneath them and swallows them whole. They’ll never escape it - not in this life. Star-crossed lovers. Tiberios wants to laugh at the thought but he can’t, because it rips through his heart like a serrated blade and leaves him empty. It’s the truth in that phrase that tears him apart. Talulah will never be his, and he will never be hers. But they have right now, and they have the notion that no matter what may transpire between them, they’ll never abandon one another. And that’s something that Tiberios can promise her even on his darkest of days. He doesn’t ask the same promise of her because he knows she already feels the same without having to tell him.
Almost
Her question sends his thoughts racing. There are many forms of happiness, this is true. He likes to think of happiness in different settings. He’s happy with Shatter, when she’s near. That will always hold. He’s happy with Talulah when she presses against him like this. He’s still happy with Tiphon, for being a shadowy guardian to him. Tyrna and Khalis are a level of happiness above all of this. They transcend any anger, pity or loathing he holds inside himself. They’re flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood, and they come before anyone else in his life. But he’s quick to answer her question so that he can stifle any indication of the opposite.
“How could I not be?” He says, thinking on all that he’s been blessed with despite his downfalls. “I’ll tell you what truly makes me happy though.” He starts, amber eyes darting to her own with pointed intention. “Seeing you happy.” She can deny it, or brush it off as childish sentimentality, but Tiberios was earnest. Talulah’s happiness was as important as anything else in his world. If he had any idea on how to fix the trembling pain that cowered in the soft edges of her face, he would wipe it away. But he’s powerless against her secrets. She will keep them, and he will lose sleep over them.
He sighs then, feeling the day beginning to wane. He’d come here with no expectations, and now here he was, tangled up with his past transgressions. But this is not an end. If anything, it’s a beginning - a step forward to amending the wrongs he’d committed against her and solidifying a bond that should have never been broken in the first place. He smiles, nose reaching out to run the length of her neck just once more before he breaks the spell. “I can’t stay. But promise me that I’ll see you again soon.” He asks, feeling the desperation leak out despite his efforts to cover it. “If you don’t, I’ll just hunt you down.” He threatens with a light-hearted chuckle.
Tiberios
