"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
For someone who is not utterly comfortable in her own skin, there is something comforting about being near her own sister. Something like having her heartbeat echoed that feels like home in a way that nothing else does. So it is not surprising that Baptiste searches her sister out. She ignores whatever else is happening in their home. It would be pretending it does not exist if she was even conscious that there was something to exist. As the young often are, she lived entirely cocooned in the blanket of her own existence. She did not perceive anything beyond it—let alone the power dynamics of kingdoms at play.
Utterly content in her ignorance and uncomfortable in the knowledge that she does possess of her own self, she shakes off the souls who had been following her all day and sets off on her own. As always, there is something of sadness that strikes in her as she watches them dissolve into mist, knowing that it was unlikely she would ever summon the same pair again, but she buries the down, ignores the ache.
Instead, she moves forward with purpose, forgetting that which she leaves behind.
She just continues walking until she sees that familiar curve of her sister’s face and her own heart rate slows in response, content to be in the presence of her other half. Smiling softly, she moves to her sister’s side and reaches out to bump her nose against her neck, breathing in the familiar scent.
When Baptiste disappeared she did not ever try to follow.
To her, her angel sister was something untouchable, something so beautiful and deserving of reverence that sometimes she felt she had no business even being within the reach of her glow. It was not jealousy; she loved her twin in a way that she could never love anyone else, and she wanted nothing more than for her to take this world that was meant to be hers and make it so.
She missed her when she was gone, though.
She found herself looking up often, searching for that familiar rose-gold accented form, even as she distracted herself with perfecting her panther shifting and her newly acquired light aura.
When she finally sees her she can’t even deny the way her chest swells, or stop the smile that breaks across her face. “Baptiste,” she greets her with her own touch against her sister’s shoulder, her rose-gold eyes bright. The cold sun above catches the faint rosettes that continued to deepen in color along her neck and back. Nearing the end of her first year they were far more noticeable than they had been when she was born, and it seemed that the more time she spent in her cat form the stronger they became.
“I’m so glad you’re here, I wanted to show you something,” she tells her with a lilt of excitement. Taking a step back and a steadying breath, she slowly raises a thin aura of light around her. It is dim in the sunlight, but easier to see in contrast to her black coat. The light wavers and flickers with her inexperience before she lets it fall away, looking back at her twin with another bright smile. “I asked the entities for it and they really gave it to me. And now I can glow a little too, like you and mom.”
If you were to ask Baptiste, if were one among the sisters that was worthy of being called angelic, it would not be her. She is too acutely aware of the dark corners of her own heart—that hunger that swells in her and gnaws. She knows too well how she yearns for things she doesn’t understand and shies away from things that she should know she wants. She knows that there is something twisted in her.
But Iliana?
Oh, she is everything that Baptiste wishes that she could be.
And while there is something soothing about being near here—something right—there is also something equally painful in facing a mirror with truths you do not yet acknowledge. The pain though is easy to ignore, for the moment, and she instead basks in that deep love that swells in her when her sister smiles at her. She breathes her in and feels her stomach settle, her pulse turn into a steady thrum.
At her sister’s exclamation, she merely tilts her head and then nods, encouraging her, watching with slightly widened eyes as Iliana moves a step back from her. When the light expands, she feels her own heart clench in response, a fierce joy and pride sweeping through her. “I-It’s beautiful,” she says and can’t explain the catch in her throat, everything unspoken clogged there. She wants to tell her that of course she can glow. Of course the entities saw what she was and what she deserved, but the words don’t come.
So she just steps forward to fill the space that her sister had left between them.
She drops her head to press her cheek to her sister’s spotted shoulder and she smiles.
Her heart swells at her sister’s approval, her rose-gold eyes shining with glee. “Do you really like it? I was worried you would think I was copying you.” She pauses thoughtfully for a moment, before exhaling a short laugh. “Well, I guess I am copying you. But still, I could never be as brilliant as you, so it’s a poor effort.” She gives the aura another brief flicker as if to prove a point, the golden light highlighting the sharpening angles of her still young face. It is still weak in comparison to her sister’s ethereal glow, and satisfied with her own experiment, she lets the light fade for good.
She steps forward to meet her, pressing her nose gently against her dark neck just as she rests against her. “Impossible, because you’re the beautiful one,” she says in a matter of fact way, as if daring Baptiste to try and argue. While Iliana did like to think of herself as beautiful—or at least, the rose-gold rosettes blossoming along her black skin were pretty enough—she knew she paled in comparison to her angelic twin. The young panther girl was lovely in her own way, but Baptiste was heaven sent.
“Have you met anyone interesting lately?” she asks her, scanning their mountainous surroundings briefly. Iliana didn’t leave Hyaline all that often, preferring to practice her hunting within the kingdom’s borders, but she was certain that this place was not enough to hold her sister’s interest. “I want to hear all about them. So long as they aren’t someone that would replace me as your best friend.”
Baptise can barely hold back the laughter that springs forth from her, unencumbered and unhampered and so real that is nearly hurts. There is mirth in her eyes and although there are edges of it that are self deprecating and soaked in so much truth that it’s like poison on her tongue, she focuses on the joy instead. “Oh, Ili,” she says, shaking her dark head, the halo swinging above it, “you can’t copy that which you outshine.” Her mouth crinkles in the corner and she butts her sister’s shoulder. “You are your own.”
Something twists in her chest at the words.
Yet another truth unacknowledged.
(Her sister is genuine and she is false hearted. Iliana’s glow is real and hers is a sham.)
But they don’t rise to the surface and don’t show in the gentle lines of her face. Because if there is anything she is good at, it is lying—even when that lie is sweetened for the sake of her sister.
She smiles then again, real and genuine, and she chews on the inside of her cheek. “I have met several,” she goes through the catalogue of her memories, “but my favorite is the boy who turns to stone.” Her brow furrows into a frown as she tries to think how to describe Nemeon. “He was fun and it was like he didn’t care that he could never see the sun.” She pauses. “Do you think you could live like that?”
She shakes her head, brushing off her sister’s compliment with a slight roll of her rose-gold eyes, and she sighs and says with a smile. “If you insist, I suppose I won’t argue with you anymore.” She didn’t necessarily believe her, but she also knew Baptiste wasn’t going to weaken her stance on the subject. If she had any idea how her sister thought of herself, though, she would not have been so quick to yield; the idea that Baptiste could not see herself as anything but the radiant and exemplary creature that she is was not something Iliana would have been willing to drop.
She thinks that sometimes she sees a shadow cross her sister’s eyes, but it is always so fleeting that she decides she had imagined it.
She thinks that sometimes she detects the traces of some kind of sorrow when she laughs, but she doesn’t see how that could be, and she brushes it off.
Because her smiles and her laughs are always too genuine, too pure, for there to be anything lurking beneath the surface, and Iliana was just foolish enough to think that being a twin had linked her heart to her sister’s in such a way that surely she would notice if she was unsettled by anything at all.
“Turns to stone?” she repeats, her eyes widening a little before she frowns. “I don’t think I could. I like the sun. And not being stone,” she finishes with a small laugh, and then she thinks of Vital, the boy that she had met in Hyaline. “I met someone interesting, too. He can shift into some sort of firebird? I’ve never seen that kind of bird before, so I’m not sure what it’s called, but it’s pretty.”
Would Baptiste feel sorrow if she understood the magnitude of that which she kept from her sister?
Would she feel guilt for hiding away the shadows? For only showing her the faux sun?
Perhaps, but she doesn’t know better, young as she is. She doesn’t recognize that a lie by omission is still a lie in the end, no matter the source. She just knows that she needs to protect her sister from what she is and what she is not. She needs to pretend that she is as soft as her mother, as kind as her sister. She needs to pretend that she does not long for anything else, does not ache for what lives in the shadows.
It is so easy to pretend.
It is almost easy enough to fool herself.
But she does not, in the end. It lives constantly in the echoes and she feels herself pulling at the threads of it absentmindedly as they talk, picking at a wound they will not heal. “To stone,” she confirms with a gentle smile, her eyes going distant as she thinks back to her time spent with the young boy. She wants to tell her sister that she thinks she could. That it would be easier if she had some reason to avoid the sun instead of just feeling like it was not made for her, but instead she nods. “I don’t think I could either.”
(A lie, a lie, a lie.)
“What is a firebird?” she questions before laughing, the sound a genuine one. “Is it exactly what it sounds like?” Because what a silly question to ask otherwise.
