"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
12-28-2015, 12:28 PM (This post was last modified: 12-28-2015, 12:28 PM by Raelynx.)
I love the way that your heart breaks with every injustice and deadly fate.
He is not a creature made for nostalgia, not one to reminisce on moments long past. He is made for the moment, to live and create a havoc of his own making. To find, seek out others that might learn as he had learned. But if ever there was one he might remember so fondly, it is She. She had been the maker of him, had introduced him to a life of pain. Had shown him the true delights agony might provide. Had brought him to the attention of a glorious god.
Should he meet her again, he might thank her.
But he has searched, and she is nowhere to be found. That silver form so ingrained in his memory is a sight he has come believe he is not destined to see again. He wishes to. Oh how he wishes to. She had been instrumental in his release, in his creation. He wishes only to show her what she has wrought, what her lightning might give to the world.
But she is nowhere to be found.
And then he is surprised, stilled by shock, when an all too familiar silver form fills his vision. For a moment he can only stare, certain that he must be mistaken. Certain that it cannot be she.
It has been years, too many long years. One step, then two, then ten. ”Cordis.” Her name escapes him on a raspy breath. And then he is there before her, bland gray eyes wide and disbelieving. Those eyes are the only recognizable thing about him, the only piece of him that she might see and remember. Gone is the dull boy of black with the unkempt coat and wispy tresses. In his place stands a man full grown, a tall and imposing creature with charred skin, sunken muscles, and deep, fearsome scars etched into a hairless hide. He is hideous, a child’s worst nightmare.
She was made, once, in the simple way that biological creatures come into being. Sperm and egg meet, fertilize, and a child comes into the world (that her creation was helped along by magic – that she sprung from a temporary, magic womb, her father acting as her mother – is irrelevant). The creature made there was a small girl named Mahala, a mousy brown.
She was made, again, in a lair full of sulfur and shadow. She had been made and unmade, in His lair, the skin stripped from her bones and grown back, her body set aflame, body frozen, torn apart by hellhounds. All this, and more, some things she doesn’t think of because she buries memories so far down she might crumble if they ever saw the light of day. The creature made there was a fearful girl, with a jitterbug heartbeat, the kind of girl who says you can’t, you can’t, which told them that someone once could.
She was made again by a woman. In a river, in hazel, in a thousand moments made of held breaths and love growing like a virus in her bones, unable to stop it. The creature made there was a strange one, who loved and lost on repeat, in cycles, but never stopped loving her.
But the things we make are impermanent, and crumble.
Now she is made of all that and more. Now she is a magician, dressed in lightning. She is a sword honed on a whetstone, sparks flying to reveal a sharpened edge.
(She is all sharp edges.)
Now she makes herself untouchable even as she touches them.
She doesn’t want to, but she remembers the boy.
She remembers how he had felt, close to her. The aching purity in his voice.
(The way lightning had sounded as it ate into flesh.)
She was sorry. Wasn’t she? Surely.
Just because a sword is sharpened does not mean it aches to cut.
She wonders if he survived. She isn’t sure how badly she had burned him. Do you want to know a secret? she’d asked him, like it was a game, just as He had once asked her.
She almost doesn’t recognize him.
What she remembers is a boy, weak, frail and impossibly stupid as he pressed against her and believed sugar-spun lies. What stands before her is more thing than horse, burnt and scarred like it had crawled from a nightmare.
Ah, but the eyes are the same.
He says her name, and she wants to cringe. He’d thought her kind, once.
“Raelynx,” she says, unsure if she should stay or flee, unsure what of him is her doing and what is not.
she said it was a mistake to let them burn her at the stake
Cordis
(and she learned a lesson back there in the flames)
I love the way that your heart breaks with every injustice and deadly fate.
What might be terrifying to others is wonderful to him. Were he to know that they had been made and re-made within the same space, the same cavern, the same cells, he would have been awestruck. For a creature whose emotions run a very short gamut between bored and impassive, that is just shy of impressive. But what he feels for Her and Him is nearly indescribable. Certainly, even if it could be described, few would likely wish to hear it.
But unlike so many (unlike her), he had reveled in his torment. Had glutted upon the punishment until he could drink no more. Until his body had given out and his mind had shattered. He had become His plaything in truth, a willing (indeed, even eager) puppet for him to create with. To tear apart and re-stitch together in new and terrible ways.
He understands, probably more than most, just how impermanent such a thing is. Knows just how easily one can lose what one has gained. He has become a teacher in his own right, understanding the pain and failure and heartbreak when a pupil is found unworthy. Perhaps there are those that would argue, but he is not unkind. He releases those who cannot (will not) learn. Only, it is not always back into life that he releases them. He had learned, long ago, that death is far more a release than is life.
Life is pain, after all.
Raelynx, she says, his name upon her lips evoking a sudden shiver. His dull gray gaze seeks out hers, willing her to stay. Willing her to see, to know what glories she had wrought. ”You remember me, he says in that rough voice of his. A voice forever turned to sandpaper because of her.
She knows, abstractly, that some of them love such horrors.
She knows this because she is older now, but also because sometimes He would bring them into the lair where He kept him trapped, and make her watch as he did things, committed sins upon them as they begged for more.
(What she doesn’t know is her own daughter is one of them, that her daughter sat splendid and silver in His lair and took everything He gave her with a smile on her face.)
It is strange and surreal, to stand before him again. She looks no different than she had all those years ago, except for now she wears as lightning as a constant thing, the way he wears his fire.
(Fitting, she supposes.)
She wears it to remind them – to remind herself – that she is untouchable.
She wears it because the crackle and hum of the lightning helps drown out the terrible cacophony of her thoughts.
You remember me, he says, and almost sounds surprised.
“Yes,” she says, “but I thought you might be dead.”
Maybe he is. The thing before her is so unlike the colt she once knew.
And then, the oddest thing – he thanks her. For what? She is a wicked woman, a woman who drew him close and burned him up, who had known in some secret part of her that she wanted it.
Her eyes widen and for a moment the lightning shudders on her skin as her concentration wanes.
“For what?” she asks, because she must know.
She meets his eyes then, because she feels she must. She meets his eyes, unsure of what she’ll see there – but then none of it matters, because she sees the brand on his forehead, and her heart quakes like earth on a faultline.
“You met Him.”
It is not a question.
she said it was a mistake to let them burn her at the stake
Cordis
(and she learned a lesson back there in the flames)
