"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
how can we wake without question when all of the world is burning?
She remembers him—even though they had met so briefly.
The boy carved of ice, although so very different from her own. An ice that she could not comprehend and could not even begin to give a voice too. Perhaps that is why she ran. Perhaps that is why she cut their conversation so short. Or perhaps it was the way that he had so quickly cut to the core of the matter, knowing that she was trailed by death every step of the way. How she had known she couldn’t handle it.
So she had left Beqanna, as quickly as she could.
Left if for the Northern mountains. Those that lay beyond. Where she could climb and climb and climb until she could barely gasp for air. Until there was nothing but a memory of what it had felt like to stare at that angelic boy and have him whisper about her father’s death to her like it was just a fact of life.
As if everyone had known.
And she only returns when she is grown. When the ice spears down her spine and her pale blue mane falls in waves down her neck instead of standing rigid down it. There is an iciness to her that she runs from still, but she has not yet lost her anchor—she holds tight to that molten core of emotion that runs through her and keeps her thawed. Keeps her still dreaming and hoping, despite the loss she has suffered.
She walks into the forest quietly, as if scared to disturb the shadows that grow long in the winter afternoon, and it is only when she spots him that she makes any sound at all. A quiet laugh that is laced with disbelief. Because of course he would be the first soul she sees when returning.
Of course he would look the same after all this time.
Curious about the twist of fate, she doesn’t move forward. Doesn’t move at all. She just angles her pale head to the side, purple eyes contemplative, and she pushes forward a wave of emotion toward him.
Something tinged with shyness but warm all the way through.
Once again it is fear that has driven him into the forest.
Fear that someone will come for him, send him away.
Because he has overstayed his welcome.
Because Mazikeen had made it clear that they were no longer friends.
And so he drifts and he feels no guilt for it now. Because Este no longer reeks of death and their mother has moved onto other things and the world spins madly on while he seems to stay rooted in one place.
There is nowhere for him to go. He is a thing meant to be left behind. Life does not unravel for him the same way it unravels for the others. It is a stagnant thing and he listens to the heart voice its same old worries as he wanders through the forest again. It is such an insistent thing, the heart, and he lets it carry him through the undergrowth, into the darkness where the sun does not shine as bright.
(Because he was a thing made in the darkness, a thing made for darkness, and he still has not gotten used to the harshness of the sun.)
It stops him short, the warmth that finds him and he exhales a shuddering breath, casting a cursory glance into the shadows around him. And he sees her then, just as he had seen her the first time, glowing softly and he remembers.
He remembers how brash he had been, stumbling through the underbrush, asking her if she was frightened, asking her what death followed her. The warmth settles in his chest and he takes one shuffling step toward her, careful, slow, but does not allow himself to get any closer than that.
“I remember you,” he says and tilts his head. They are older now. They had only been children then. “Please don’t go.”
how can we wake without question when all of the world is burning?
She has wandered for so long that she has forgotten what it is like to interact with someone else. Wandered for so long that she is surprised to find that she is both thrilled and terrified of the prospect of it, unsure of whether she would be unable to stop talking or unable to start. It races through her and she just watches as he sees her and looks toward her, feels pinned to the spot as their gaze snags on one another.
He remembers her.
Something warm blossoms in her chest and she cannot stop the warmth that continues to project to him, the uncertain joy of being recognized, of being worthy of being remembered. The heat finds her cheeks and she drops her head a little, a smile growing in the corner of her mouth. When he asks her to stay, she glances up, finding his eyes again and she shifts her weight a little, the ice cracking down her spine.
“I won’t,” she promises, although she doesn’t know if it’s a promise that she can keep. The uncertainty of it though races down the line she has now connected to him, as if shouting her every feeling toward him. It’s been so long since she’s interacted with someone that she’s not sure how to turn it off once she’s opened it up, the flood dam rushing forward in response to the moment, latching onto him fiercely.
The embarrassment and vulnerability quickly follow the uncertainty and she bites down hard, a muscle working in her jaw as she realizes all of the emotions that she is feeding him—the constant stream of it.
Determined to not give in and acknowledge the open line of communication between them, she smiles.
“How have you been?”
In the years past, she thinks, and this time, it is only curiosity that radiates from her.
These are things he has never felt: this specific warmth, shyness, joy.
And she smiles at him and offers him a promise that he clings hard and fast to, says she’ll stay, and he dares wander closer. Deeper into the pool of the emotion that radiates outward from the center of her.
(Does he realize that the feelings blooming and bursting in his chest don’t belong to him at all, but to her? He must because they are so foreign that he would not know how to carve them out of the depths of himself.)
She smiles at him and he smiles back, the curve of his mouth all tinged with the uncertainty that she projects onto him. It is such a strange sensation, to realize that he is stepping directly into a field of her feelings, and he immediately feels like he is intruding on something secret, sacred.
But he does not allow himself to retreat because he does not trust that she will not flee into the darkness again. He had been drawn to her then because the beauty of her tightened a vise around his windpipe, because he had not yet understood what it meant to be shrouded in death, because he had wanted to help her in some way.
And now?
Now he wants to convince them both that he is capable of carrying on a conversation that does not end in one of them running.
Her question elicits a laugh. Soft, soft, soft. Barely there at all. There is no mirth in it, really. Rather it is a sound of disbelief and he shakes his head, a smile barely lingering in the furthest corners of his mouth as he studies her across the negative space that separates them.
“I don’t know,” he answers and it is the most honest answer he can offer. Neither good nor bad seem to cover it. And, because he understands how difficult a question it can be to answer, he asks her something else, “where have you been?”
how can we wake without question when all of the world is burning?
She wonders if it was a foolish question to ask and there’s an embarrassment that streaks through her, hot and flushed so that she dips her gaze, avoiding looking at him directly for a second. It was a silly thing to ask of someone—something so innocent but so personal for two souls who did not know another, not really. A brief encounter as children did not acquaintances make, let alone friends. They weren’t friends.
Disappointment bites into her next.
She flushes it out with renewed determination though, glancing up at him and unwittingly blasting the full force of her emotions toward him in the newness of this encounter. “I don’t know either,” she says with a crooked smile, answering the question he had not volleyed back at her. She has no way of knowing why he had not bothered to ask her again—did he view it as too personal? did he not care?—but she chooses to not dwell on it. Instead, she focuses all of her energy on studying him, drinking in every detail she can.
“Everywhere,” she is as vague as him, she realizes, although not intentionally. She just doesn’t know how to answer that question. “Away?” her voice rises on the end, as if asking if the answer was satisfactory. It is then that warm humor radiates from her and she laughs, shaking her pretty head as if chasing away her nerves that lace through her every thought. “I’m sorry, it’s been so long since I’ve done this.”
She bites her lip and looks up at him, shy once more.
He is made to absorb, just as he had been made to bend instead of break. Each of her feelings sinks bone deep and, though he does not immediately understand their source, he lets them resonate. They echo in the cavern of his chest while she smiles at him, just barely, and he wonders how long he will be able to keep her this time.
How long now until she flees?
He feels it all and it flits wildly through the network of his veins but he feels these things biggest: nervousness that belongs to him alone, worry that has been his only constant companion. There is something else, too, something just out of reach. A thing that he does not have a name for and there’s no way to tell if it belongs to him at all.
She answers and then she laughs so warmly that it could almost thaw all that ice inside him. He watches her, the way the light moves across her face, how she seems to glow with the sound of it and feels such a vicious rush of sadness. Such a beautiful thing, he thinks, and he will never touch it.
He shakes his head and insists, “you are.” He blinks at her and then looks away, enveloped still in the lingering warmth of her laughter. And he can almost ignore the stench of death that surrounds them both. (This stench the thing that will keep him from ever touching anything at all, let alone something so beautiful.)
“Are you all right?” he asks quietly, calling to attention the first time their paths crossed, referring to the fact that she has not settled in any one place. He knows what sets a soul to moving and how difficult it can be to stop sometimes.
how can we wake without question when all of the world is burning?
The distance set between them feels unfathomably large and made even larger still by the way that her own emotions ricochet off every rock and branch. The way that they seem to echo and grow in size with every heartbeat, rippling through the air and then coming back to her, taking root in her chest and expanding. She wants to name each one but she finds that she cannot. There are no names for what she feels, nothing but confusion and warmth, something bitter followed by something sweet.
It is open and yearning, her young heart sinking its teeth into every moment.
She flushes again when he calls her good company and shakes her lovely head, knowing that it was nothing but a kindness that he was extending her—a kindness that she did not deserve, not when she was being so confusing with him. But how could she explain this? How could she tell him that her heart iced over when her father died and she was doing everything possible to hold onto the warmth? How could she tell him how she wandered and did not find home? Did not find truth? Did not find peace?
How could she put it into words?
How dare she even try?
So she doesn’t. She just smiles at him and thinks of how handsome he has grown to be, the angelic lines of his face shooting warmth through her. A heat she has never grappled with before. “I don’t think so,” she laughs again, embarrassed as she shakes her head. “But I’m trying and I think that counts for something.” She shuffles her feet, not noticing the way that the ice grows along her spine, the jagged lines of it catching the faint light. “Would you like to take a walk with me? I think that might help.”
She says she’s not all right and his heart spasms. (The heart is a strong one and he feels the pain of this acutely. It sinks into the marrow of his bones and he wonders what he might do to help her. But he is just a wayward angel carved from ice, there is nothing he can offer her, not really. And even if he could, would he be brave enough to try? He had asked her once if she was frightened, what death she had seen, and she had fled instead of giving him an answer and his loneliness is so tremendous now that he does not want to risk scaring her off again.)
She does laugh again, though it has nothing at all to do with him, and he can feel the pulse of her embarrassment. (Why can he feel these things? He has never been able to feel them before. It does not occur to him that she is giving rather than him taking.)
He smiles and nods. “I think it counts for a lot,” he says. It is an indication of strength, he thinks, but he does not say this out loud because he is not wise and he doesn’t want to sound like he’s trying to be. He just agrees with her and feels a little twinge of something he doesn’t have a name for when she invites him to walk alongside her.
He studies the ice that collects along the ladder of her spine and swallows thickly. He shouldn’t. (It is a specific kind of grief that steals through him, though he does not know how to recognize it as such just yet.)
“Okay,” he says finally and moves to follow wherever she sees fit to lead him. He is silent for a long moment as they fall into step together.
“I should apologize,” he says, quiet, “for the things I said the first time we met. I’m sorry, I didn’t know any better.”
how can we wake without question when all of the world is burning?
The emotions that churn in her are new and difficult to pull apart. They are fierce and she cuts her teeth on them, feels them with every new breath. But is the warmth that she feels the most, suffusing through her as she concentrates on the way it makes her feel relaxed and highly alert at once. As if she could stay for hours, basking in his presence, and desperate to run away in the next. It makes her flesh tingle and she smiles, enjoying the strange and pleasant, uncomfortable sensation as they continue to talk across the distance.
She just dips her head as he says he thinks it counts, a rush of appreciation spearing toward him. She didn’t have anything to ask—if her trying was enough, if she was enough—and hearing it validated means more than she could possibly explain. So there are no words in response. Words failing as she feels the ice crawl over her skin, a thick layer of it spreading from her spine down her shoulders.
There’s no chill in response and she steps toward him, that heady rush of anticipation and thrill of being close to him crashing through her and then rippling out, unknowingly, to him. She continues to signal her every emotion as they fall into step next to one another, her young heart pounding with the closeness to any other soul after so long by herself, but mostly by being near him. Without speaking, she angles them toward the river, hearing the distant crash of the water and wanting to feel that ferocity.
For a moment, her only response to his apology is a grief so large and yawning that it sweeps everything out of the way. She feels it open up before her and she swallows hard, that darkness beckoning. It takes effort to slam the door shut on it and step back, to lock up her sorrow and loneliness. When she focuses on him again, it is there, but muted, followed by confusion. “Please don’t apologize,” she whispers, her voice quieter than it has been. “It had just happened. I didn’t know how to talk about it yet.”
She sighs softly, looking up ahead.
“I still don’t feel like I have the words, but I’m trying there too.”
It feels wrong, somehow, to feel all the things she feels.
And he wonders if he should tell her, if he should admit that each of her feelings overflows its boundaries and stretches out into the air around her, sinks into his own chest.
But he doesn’t. Because he doesn’t want her to shut it off.
(This is the first selfish thing. He wants to keep them for himself because they are such a welcome reprieve from the worry that typically plagues him. Because he so rarely feels anything else, especially now.)
Her gratitude thaws the marrow of his bones and he smiles, just barely. And then he leaves it behind in favor of his apology because she deserves to hear it. Because he had not meant to chase her off when he’d asked. Because he’d only wanted to help but his help has never been very well-received. He knows that now, though it has been a hard-learned lesson.
He swallows thickly in the wake of her response and nods his understanding. She owes him nothing, least of all an explanation. But he blinks a pale blue eye at her, quiet as he considers.
It is so familiar to him, death. It has followed him (or has he followed it? It’s difficult to tell anymore) his whole life, doggedly refusing him to shake himself free of it. But he knows how difficult it can be to drudge up the words.
“We don’t have to talk about it,” he says and then, watching her still, he adds, “we don’t have to talk at all, if you don’t want to.”
Because it is enough to simply walk in step beside her and feel all the things she feels. The warmth and the cold and she is crafted from ice, just as he is, and there is some comfort in this.
