"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's strange what desire will make foolish people do.
Defiance is rearing its head once again, and she doesn’t know what to do. She is afraid, afraid to move too far from him, afraid that he will follow her if she does; she fears that she will get a little ways and hear that sound, feather and bone scraping the earth (the sound of her nightmares, the few times she has managed to get some sleep).
She wants to just walk away, but she feels drawn to him - some sort of substitute for the mother she abandoned (how many foals leave their parents? It it certainly unusual; it tends to be the adults who discard their young as if a living, breathing child is something to just be thrown away). She both reveres and rejects him; but the rejection is so small, it can never win - a tiny flame that the darkness threatens to extinguish at first chance.
It seems as though she is the tiny flame and he is the darkness.
She has to force herself to leave his side - the anxiety and the effort make her invisibility even less controllable, and the brightly coloured filly is visible one minute, then disappears the next. (She has tried, so hard, to learn how to wield her power - thinking it may help her to escape him - but the more she exerts herself, the more the wants so desperately to leave him, the worse her grip is; it seems the world is laughing at her.) But she has to do this (remembering, only days ago, that her first thoughts were of adventure); she cannot live trapped here, with him (oh, but she can).
She doesn’t get far, but it’s enough. She feels as though she has been released; the air tastes a little bit sweeter, the sun shines a little bit brighter. She has left him behind and she feels like she can do anything (but he is here, following; out of sight and out of hearing; maybe she can’t do anything).
She is free to do as she pleases.
(She will likely come to regret that thought.)
She’d been a girl alone once, too.
A stupid girl (she’d been mousy brown then, plain) who was left alone – not by choice but by circumstance. She’d gone to sleep next to her father, the fever-heat fo him keeping her warm, but when she woke, his skin had been cool, almost cold.
So she had walked. The stupid girl had walked and when He came, and asked the fateful question, (are you alone?)
the girl had said yes.
She’d been a girl alone once, in a filthy pit that stank of sweat and sulfur and something else, something less tangible – the precise nature of fear is acrid in the nostrils, but does not have many discernable notes.
He left her alone, often. Enough times for her to starve. Enough times for her to wish and pray for this death to be the last.
(She was denied, every time. In a dark god’s lair, prayers are made a laughingstock.)
She’d been a girl alone once, who ran and ran and ran until she thought her heart would burst from her chest then ran some more, because the chuffing of hellhounds never seemed to cease.
To that girl came a mare, gold like sunbeams made alive. With the mare came many things, came rivers and hazel and the commitment to a life of moments and pieces.
Now she is still alone, but the way the lightning crackles on her skin feels like an embrace and so she lets it be. She walks tall, and although there are ghosts in her eyes, there is something else, too – a spark that mirrors the lightning singing in her skin, the promise of something dark.
(Stare too long into the abyss and it stares back into you, and Cordis is a woman who spent years staring into one abyss after another.)
Above her flies a raven, a mangled thing that is half-ice and half-lightning. It is a remnant from her interaction with the raven queen, a dark and treacherous woman who turned from bird to queen and had not cried out when the birds fell at her feet.
It shouldn’t fly; but then, Cordis should not be alive.
She is crafted from a long line of impossibilities, and the raven is simply another checkmark.
She sees the girl, the red of her like a streak of blood in the forest. A little shimmer crosses over her, and for a moment Cordis thinks she blinked her out of existence, and then she is back again, solid.
Curious.
The lightning crackles on her skin like radio static as she walks forward. She isn’t sure what it is about the girl, only that something about her draws Cordis’s weakness.
(Perhaps the same way wolves smell sickness on a caribou.)
“Hello,” she says to the girl. Her voice is soft. She wonders if she has always sounded so wicked.
“Are you alone?”
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)
it's strange what desire will make foolish people do.
She wondered once, very briefly, if she had so terribly wronged her mother by leaving that this life was her punishment. The thought was whisked away when he demanded something of her (he demands so much, without ordering her to do anything), but it comes back to her now as she stands here, eyes flitting from side to side, ears dancing in all directions, in case he is here, in case he has come to steal her away again (and he is here, but she cannot see him, cannot hear him - he is stalking her).
It is not long before she is approached; it never is, not with a coat of green-and-red-and-nothing. She knows that she is watched, she can feel eyes upon her, but only one horse - a mare, covered in silver and in lightning - moves towards her, with a gaze as empty and dark as a pit filled with bones.
The eyes are different, the body is different, the whole situation is different, but the filly tenses, preparing herself (though she does not know what she prepares herself for).
The mare’s voice is gentle, but not like a nurturing parent. No, it is the sweet softness of temptation, of promises; it pulls the filly closer despite her trembling limbs and her pounding heart.
It is the voice of persuasion.
She blinks up at the mare, slipping in and out of sight, but trying so hard to stay solid. She is asked if she is alone, and she cowers backwards, just an inch; he berated her, the first time, for being alone. “I think so,” she replies (though what she really means is “I hope so”). And she looks up, expectant but nervous, because the last time she was found by a stranger she never managed to shake his grip.
This is the horror of it: it gets easier.
Easier, to make your voice like milk and honey. Easier, to stand before them with the lightning wrapped around you, all but screaming danger, but to smile and tell them you’re harmless. Easier, to think of whip-cracks, and have the lightning snap out in one swift motion and leave behind a swath of skin, scorched.
And maybe it wouldn’t be easier if it wasn’t so damn gratifying.
(That’s the other horror of it: it is a pleasure to burn.)
With the boy, there had been a part of her that had shouted its dismay. But with this girl, the voice is quieter.
The lightning crackles across her skin. She feels warm and powerful and untouchable. She does not let herself think of anything
(anyone)
else.
She notes with a quiet cunning how the filly steps backward. A tenseness flicks across her own muscles, she is ready to move quickly before she’s even aware. But the filly stills, looks at her.
And there is something in her eyes that a part of Cordis – a part deep-buried, but a part nonetheless – recognizes.
It is a look of a thing hunted. It is a look Cordis knows too well, having worn it for years when she saw hellhounds in every shadow and His mark burned like fire on her hip.
“Who’s after you, child?” she asks, because like knows like, and though Cordis now does her best to shed that particular skin – the skin of the hunted – it cannot be shaken completely.
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)
it's strange what desire will make foolish people do.
Will it always be like this? First him and now this one. Is the filly just destined to be found by horror after horror (perhaps too soon to label this a horror, but she is tainted by fear, and so much more prepared for pain than pleasure)? The crackle of lightning frightens her less than the slippery-warm voice, because her punishments have been verbal - she does not know just how far her body can be pushed, physically, before it breaks, but she knows that her mind is so close to crumbling.
Not much pushing left to reduce the filly to ashes and ruins.
For a moment, the pair look at each other, so different and opposite, yet with much in common (deeply hidden for one and plain as the green-and-red coat for the other). Then the older mare speaks, and the filly tenses up again, those four words shaking her - does she know? Is this silver mare looking for her, hunting her, because she escaped from him?
But something tells her (and that something has not served her well up to now) that the mare does not know the answer to this question. And so the filly tries to relax, tries to stop her ears from whipping around at every sound. A frown flicks across her face, just there for a second and gone again, much as her whole body is. “A stallion,” she says, because she is afraid to give much away. And because she does not have a name for him, not a real name, only ‘monster’ and ‘nightmare’ and ‘fear’. And none of these words can convey what he really is.
She wants to say no more, to just let this drop, to turn and to walk away and to find someone who doesn’t have a snake-skin-smooth voice and dangerous, dark eyes, but she can’t. Those same eyes draw more words from her, and she finds herself talking: “I ran away, I think he’ll be mad. I don’t want to make him mad. He, he scares me when he’s mad. I think he wants to hurt me.”
She stops, shocked at herself, biting her lip and staring at the ground. She wishes she hadn’t said a word - now that she has spoken, the threat of him seems much more real.
She remembers too well what it is to be hunted.
She remembers with an aching clarity the way the hellhounds had chuffed and bayed. They had been horrible, insidious things, living in the periphery of her vision, in shadows, always seen in the corner of the eye and nowhere else. It left her with a jitterbug heartbeat and a tendency to spin on her heels.
They’d felled her once when she had done the impossible. Like Lot’s wife, she had looked back, but rather than looking back at a city burning she’d been looking back at a woman.
(Truth be told, a city burning would have been cleaner.)
But rather than turn into a pillar of salt the hounds had noted the weakness and she had fallen. But they hadn’t killed her. She still doesn’t know.
She doesn’t like to think about these things.
There is much she doesn’t like to think about, from the particular horrors of His lair to the particular perfection of Spyndle’s neck. There is much she cannot bear to think of.
There is a brand burned on her hip beneath the lightning she wears, His mark, and she does not think of that, either.
A stallion, says the girl, and once more déjà vu strokes its fingers down Cordis’s spine. She knows what it is to not name them.
(“Naming things gives them power,” she’d once said to Spyndle when Spyndle had implored her to speak His name and she had refused. It was one of many things she refused her.)
More things roll out, confessions, and maybe Cordis should feel empathy for the girl – like knows like, after all – but instead she feels a queasy sort of disgust. You’re so weak, she wants to tell the girl, but she would not be speaking to the girl, she would be speaking to the silver mare she once was, the one who was chased with a brand burnt hot on her hip.
The lightning sinks into her skin as if absorbed. Her skin is still now, though it still glints in the sunlight like a sword. She steps closer. She could almost touch her.
“I’ll protect you from him,” she says. And that’s true enough. If the stallion came forth Cordis could strike him dead where he stood.
(She’s done it before.)
“What’s your name?”
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)
it's strange what desire will make foolish people do.
Every passing moment tears her in two.
Half of her is relaxing - the longer she is away, the safer she is. With each second that ticks by, the threat is less imminent, and she is more free.
Half of her is more terrified, because the longer she is away, the greater his wrath will be when they meet again. The little she knows of him tells her he is not a reasonable stallion; she should turn tail, keep running, but this mare keeps her here (like he kept her).
The two halves of her wish to slink away from each other, as if they could cleave her apart.
At least then he might not be able to find her.
The lightning that crackles around the silver mare suddenly disappears, sinking into her coat like water into a sponge - she almost seems to grow. The closer the mare gets, the more the filly knows she should leave, but she cannot. Perhaps this is her destiny; to forever be attracted to things that may cause her harm (and she knows this mare may cause her harm, but she does not want to believe it).
But then she promises protection, and the green-and-red filly suddenly wants to believe, that there is good in this world, that she can be safe again (but safe with this magician may not be the sort of safe the filly dreams of).
She nods, because she is too overwhelmed to speak - no-one has ever wanted to protect her before (what a lie; the mother she ran from would protect her).
“It’s Elve,” she replies, and the word is still bitter in her mouth; it is his word, his name for her. But she has no other name so she uses it, though it sits heavy on her heart, unwanted and unwelcomed (much like she feels she is). “Who are you?”
She wants to stay silent now, but she can’t; things hang just out of her reach, but she must grasp them and grip them tightly. “Could you really protect me?” she asks, not wanting to offend the mare but needing to know, for certain, that she is no longer alone (and needing to push aside the distrust that sours her thoughts of this mare, of all horses).
Are you alone, He had asked once, and she – the dumb girl, the stupid girl, the girl who was alone and believed He might be kind – had said yes.
Every day, she wonders if the word damned her, even though it’s a foolish notion – if she had said no, He would have surely taken her, just as He would return to her all these years later and take her daughter.
Mostly the memory sits in her skin because the yes meant she had been the one to start it. She had walked into the proverbial lion’s den.
(She’d said no, after that. Over and over. Said it, screamed it, cried it. He never listened.)
(She’d once wondered why He had asked at all, but she knows, now.
It is a pleasure to burn, and the pleasure is all the richer when they ask to be burnt.)
And maybe that’s the game she plays now, as she coxes and hides her lightning as if she is not a force to be reckoned with, as if she is not a magician with a wicked heart who is no longer sure of who or what she is.
“Elve,” she repeats the girl’s name because she can.
“I’m Cordis.”
The filly questions her, which is foolish, for whoever this man is Cordis does not doubt she could destroy him.
“Yes,” she says, and her tone is confident. The lightning aches inside her skin. The girl confuses her.
She wants to protect her, as if she could undo what had been done.
She wants to punish her, for being weak, for saying yes.
Cordis lives in her own duality, and the two parts quibble inside of her.
”I could burn him where he stands.”
I could burn you where you stand, she thinks.
Part of her aches at the thought. Another part breathes heavy, eager.
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)
it's strange what desire will make foolish people do.
It is convincing, this act that the silver mare is weaving around them.
Though the filly does not know it is an act. She believes (she wants to believe) that this is all truth - but she has wanted to believe that in the past and how wrong that has gone. (She thinks of the past as if it is some ancient, weather-eroded thing; it is mere days before now that she was born. But to someone so small, time is such a big thing.)
And maybe, one day, she will turn back to this moment, these first few days, and she will be able to tell how they shaped her, how they gave her everything she has. Maybe one day, she will be able to uncover how much they have twisted her.
Because this, surely, this will do something to her, it will claw its way into her and settle inside her heart and her mind and even her soul, and it will never leave. She is sure of this though she does not want to believe it (because not everything can be bad, surely); she is a walking contradiction wrapped inside a green-and-red coat.
Cordis - it is a name that sticks in her mouth, unwilling to leave her lips. She doesn’t dwell on why this is; her own name has a similar effect. Maybe that is what names do - they are not taken but given, by someone else, and perhaps by naming something you are extinguishing some of its freedom.
She thinks she may have been extinguished.
But this mare says she can protect the filly - not a promise but as good as to the green-and-red girl - and Elve feels as though something (something small, something light, but something nonetheless) has been lifted from her back; a golden feather, perhaps.
She watches with wide eyes that are beginning (foolishly) to trust this protector, this saviour of young, lost girls. And she is all but speechless, she wants the mare to burn the monster, she wants the monster to be gone from this world and leave all the innocents alone, but she doesn’t want to ask. She doesn’t want to put the words in the air because then it is all her fault; the death and destruction will be on her conscience. But she doesn’t know if she fears that or favours it.
So she doesn’t ask Cordis to burn the monster, she asks her to deliver a fantasy. “How would you do it?” she asks. She wants to imagine the golden stallion being torn from this world as so much will be torn from her.
03-08-2016, 06:02 PM (This post was last modified: 03-08-2016, 10:55 PM by Cassi.)
There are times when the roads diverge, when two choices emerge. It had been that way – in her mind if not in reality – when He had asked her if she was alone.
It had been that way when Spyndle asked her to the river, where they waded in baptismal waters and nothing since had ever looked so beautiful as the sight of her in the water.
It had been that way when she held the boy to her chest and let him burn.
And it feels that way now, as the girl lays disgustingly open and easy before her, trying – wanting – to believe that Cordis could be a savior, a protector.
There were so many she could not save – not even her own daughter – so why should it be expected of her?
The roads fork, and on one path is protection. On one path is darkness.
There is a third choice, of course: to turn and flee, leave the girl to the wolves, to the man she runs from.
Forget her name.
But, there is a story to tell.
“My lightning,” she says. This is the story. It used to hurt to tell it. Now it feels good.
“I was attacked and I burned him for it.”
The first time the lightning had come. The stallion had been a vagabond, a strange and rotting thing. He had been stupid, nothing like the man - the god – who had destroyed her.
“Another woman wronged me, hurt someone I loved,” she continues. She doesn’t know if this is true. She remember regretting the girl’s death, the odd prophetess. But she changes the narrative.
“I killed both of them.”
It gets easier, to say it.
“And there was a boy. He was about your age.”
This story is harder.
“He asked to see my magic, so I showed him.”
She showed him lightning, showed him burnt skin. For years she didn’t know if he survived until one day he walks from the woods like a ghoul, body covered in fire like he’d never stopped burning, and he’d said her name while she wanted to scream.
“If you man comes,” she says, “I’d burn him, too.”
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