"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
It will not always be so easy to make friends—she will not always simply be able to command others to be her friend—but for now it is that simple. To befriend the stars, he must first be friends with her. And he smiles at her in a way that injects sweet heat into her chest and she tilts her head at him but still not does not smile back.
(Will she ever? Or is she too much like her father?
Her father, who could not even bring himself to smile at the birth of his daughter.)
“Good,” she says and it is settled. A pact that she believes will last them a lifetime. Because he has agreed to be her friend, she has no doubt that they will remain friends until one of them perishes. She takes these things just as seriously as she does everything else, though he is the first friend she has made that she hasn’t pulled down out of the sky.
And she finds she wants to be friends with the thing that comes close enough to disturb her wings, too. Even if she cannot see it, no matter how intently she peers into the darkness. And she wonders what it is about him that makes him able to see them, turning her head sharply at the sound of the rocks splashing into the water nearby.
How curious it is, she thinks, when he tells her his name and she wonders which came first: his name or his ability to manipulate flames? Had his parents known or had they only hoped? Had he wished his magic into existence the way her mother had dreamed her wings into existence simply so that the name would make sense?
She does not ask any of these things, though. No, she stares hard at the stream and the rocks tumbling into it and asks instead, “why can you see them and I can’t?”
i see you shining through the treetops
But i don’t feel you pulling strings anymore
She doesn’t smile but his is brilliant enough to shine for both of them. In his mind, right then and there, he vows to always do so for her as long as she will let him. What he has inherited from his unknown sire is that golden streak of incoherent goodness that runs beneath the shadows that weave the unrelenting knowledge of being damned. That invisible net of their pact settles over them and he knows deep in his young questioning heart, that she is a friend that he will never part from willingly. Something flutters in his chest when she had said his name, had pronounced it in the manner of fire… so absent from fear. It does so again when she tilts her head to him and looks for the things she cannot see.
Fearless.
She asks the one question he didn’t want to answer. Yet he had already vowed to always try and make her smile and he knows that a lie can quickly cause a frown. So he vows to never lie to her and he smiles through his uncertainty as he escapes into her endless midnight skies. “I was born terrible.” He says the word that he has always thought himself to be since it had first been pressed to his newborn ears. The dark thing that settles in his skin and constantly questions between what is wrong and right. “I lived nowhere once. Because of it.” He admits to her, fire rippling down his backside as he tells her things he would have never thought to tell.
“But I’m not sorry for who I am.” He says quietly as the ghost brushes between them and settles there as if they were a close-knit trio. He seems to glow a little brighter, the spots of his coat melting into uneven patterns. Never apologize for who you are. His new mother’s words gently reminding him that he was more than a single word.
There is a moment of quiet that passes between them, after she asks the question and before he decides whether or not he’ll tell her the truth. A moment where she simply looks at him, studying the plains and angles of his face while he’s lost to his thoughts.
And then he answers and her brow darkens with confusion.
He’d been born terrible and he’d called nowhere home because of it.
(Are they terrible, the three of them? Her father, her mother? Is she terrible? Is that why they settle in no place at all, but call the meadow and the forest and the river home instead?
The thought doesn’t turn her stomach, no. She doesn’t think she’d mind being terrible.
And she’d mind it even less if she knew what her father really was, the horrible things that he did in his dreams.)
She exhales a breath and goes on looking at him, wondering about the way he smiles even with the edge of uncertainty in his tone. And he bathes himself in fire then, as if to cleanse himself of the truth of it, and she nods her understanding.
Does this make him even more terrible? The fact that he’s not sorry?
She finds that it makes no difference to her, not really. And when the air beside her is displaced, she knows it must have been the friend that she cannot see who’s done it. She must not be terrible if she cannot see the things that he sees and she doesn’t know if she’s disappointed or comforted by this realization.
“You don’t seem so terrible to me,” she tells him and the thing she cannot see both. “Who told you that you were?” she asks then, head tilted to better meet his eye.
i see you shining through the treetops
But i don’t feel you pulling strings anymore
At least not in the way that he is. She is the kind of terrible that Aela had hinted he could be.
(Terribly beautiful. Terribly brilliant. Terribly wonderful.)
He is still working to match those things, all the ones that his adopted mother had suggested.
(Terribly handsome. Terribly powerful. Terribly smart and terribly strong.)
But he doesn’t feel he’s any of those things yet. Just terribly confused, terribly uncertain, and terrible in the sense of that rolling darkness that sometimes makes him act first and ask questions later.
But he is trying. It becomes easier when he remembers Aela’s wisdom. It’s easier still when she nods in understanding and he finds no confusion there. He doesn’t think she’s doing it just to make him feel better, doesn’t gets the sense that she would lie to him just to give him confidence. She asks him, with a tilt of her pretty head, who had named him as such (a question that his unknown sire would soon ask as well) and for a moment he glances away from her, the flames still rippling down his spotted back. “My mother before she left me.” He murmurs to her, dark lips curving into a soft frown as his smile unexpectedly fades.
He doubts he will find pity in the endless dark of her eyes but he checks them anyway, hoping to not see it there. All he wants is her smile, not her sympathy.
And he’s right, it’s not pity that darkens her expression but confusion. It furrows her soft, star-kissed brow and she studies him a long moment.
He does not elaborate and she does not immediately ask him to. Instead, she lets the silence yawn between them. Instead, she thinks about her own mother. The ferocity of her conviction, the thunderstorm in her chest. How she had touched her gently and told her that she was beautiful, that she was loved. She cannot imagine her own mother telling her that she was anything other than what she was: a force of nature.
She glances from his face to the line of flames that rise from his spine. (If she touched them, would they burn her?)
She draws in a long breath and fixes her focus to his face again.
“Why would she say that?” she asks, unaware that it might be improper. She does not know yet that it is impolite to lance old wounds, especially those of your friends. For the moment, she is only a curious child who has never known anything but deep, unfathomable love, and she cannot understand how a mother could say a thing like this.
She offers him no comfort, only watches. Waits for a change in his expression. The smile has long since faded but she does not chase it. She is not unkind, Liesma, she simply does not know any better.
i see you shining through the treetops
But i don’t feel you pulling strings anymore
Her confusion is a cancer that spreads from her to him, something that settles deep into his bones and stirs the darkness underneath. Feeds its doubts and uncertainties, reveals hidden insecurities. All because of her simple question, a question he had never thought to ask anyone including his birth mother… Or himself. The flames across his back spread but he does not feel their heat, instead his tawny eyes are locked on hers as he tries to find a suitable answer to give her.
He doesn’t have one.
Beneath the moonlight, he glows bright and golden but on the inside… On the inside he suddenly feels incredibly dark and small. He doesn’t notice when the ghostly filly fades as his connection to her loses focus. As it allows something darker to manifest behind him instead, taking advantage of a power that he still couldn’t completely control.
The thing he calls Terror is exactly that. A soul so twisted and corrupted that he can never actually see it, just something he can feel. It creeps up his spine and smothers his flames, chills the air around them, and whispers to the darkness inside of him. Breathes new life into those doubts and insecurities that Aela had done her best to chase out. Slips an answer into his pinned back ears that he takes as truth because he is also a child that doesn’t know any better. “She knew I was born wrong.” He says quietly, staring at her as the frown lingers.
Terror reminds him that he doesn’t deserve friends like Liesma. It is gentle as it pries into his mind and tries to encourage isolation instead of companionship. He takes a step back from her, feeling the presence of the stained soul but unable to untangle his thoughts from the ones that are pressed into his mind. “I should probably go back.” He finally manages, looking away from his friend and her beautiful stars as Terror encourages a new thought, one where he is never able to make her smile and that, if anything, he might make her sad. He might make her cry. And even worse, he might enjoy it.
Thoughts that are far too horrible for one as young as himself, even if he can set others on fire and see the dead.
She cannot see the thing he sees but she can feel the shift.
She can feel the shift in the air and in her friend as the thing makes itself known.
She glances around, peering into the darkness that bends around them, but sees nothing. It is a thing that belongs to him alone and his answer does little to ease the burden of her confusion.
(She does not fear dark things, Liesma, because her father has told her of the things he dreams. He has told her that her mother dreamed herself fearsome, untouchable. Liesma knows that dark things exist and that sometimes they are not always as dark as they seem. But this thing that plagues him turns the air around them thick and heavy.
But Liesma, all she has to do is think of her father and how dark he can be in his dreams because there is a monster that lives inside him. All she has to do is think of the parents she came from and know that no darkness can truly touch her. Not while she has stars on her skin.
No, Liesma is not afraid and she wants to encourage Fyr not to be afraid either. Afraid of the things she cannot see, afraid of someday hurting her feelings.
She is beautiful, she knows that, but she is not breakable.)
But she tilts her head when he moves to separate himself from her. She studies him across the dark stretch of air between them and then nods.
“Okay, Fyr,” she says. There is no animosity in it, no disappointment. In it, there is the promise that this will not be the last time they cross paths.
Still, she asks, “will I see you again?”
i see you shining through the treetops
But i don’t feel you pulling strings anymore
The air around him is thick and oppressive, the soul across his back smothering the flames along his spine until they vanish.
Terror whispers and he listens.
The more he listens, the worse he feels.
She breaks his concentration though with her easy acceptance of his leaving. Terror sees an opportunity and fully intends on taking it until she places that small seed of hope in his chest. "Will I see you again?” The colt hesitates, looking back to her with his bright glowing eyes and finally a small smile ghosts across his dark lips as it roots into his young heart. “Of course you will.”
He pauses, angling his head at her as yellow eyes meet her midnight skies and there is an intensity in his gaze that hadn’t been there before. ”Your my friend. I will always find you.” He says quietly, setting new flames to cascade along his backside as Terror releases its grip, disgusted by the brightness in the colt’s chest. The air becomes less tense and he loosens an uneasy breath as he steps further away from her in the direction of home. But not before he casts her one last look over his glowing golden shoulder. “Goodnight Lis. Tell the stars I’ll be back soon.”
