"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
can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars,
I could really use a wish right now;
She had never had nightmares until that day in the forest.
She had known there were monsters; she had known the world was not the illusion she thought it to be. Her rose-tinted glasses had been shattered when she was a little girl, when she had realized the love that existed between her parents was not what she thought it to be. It was real — she knows it was real. But it was fractured beneath the surface, and realizing this had caused the world to lose much of its charm.
She had been born of love, but that love didn’t seem to mean anything to her mother. She isn’t sure what that says about her, then.
But being afraid of love, and being afraid of being alive were two incredibly different things.
Her skin was scarred where the alien acid had burnt her, where her skin had been torn open by their blows. She could still hear their feral, other-worldly sounds, still thought she could feel their hot breath on her neck. She didn’t know what had happened to her sister after that. Casimira had saved her but disappeared, and Evenstar was too afraid to go back into the forest and find her.
She never went into the trees at all, actually.
She stayed at the river and the meadow, always lingering close to others, but trying her best to never draw attention to herself. Sleep never came easy, except sometimes during the day. Her mind and body were weary, but every time she dared to drift off the snap of a twig or rustle of the grass jolted her wide awake. And every time she closed her eyes all she saw was the two black, armored faces, with the knife-like tails and depthless eyes staring back at her.
The edge of the river offers some kind of peace. It’s not much, but she listens to the water as it rushes past, noticing the way the moon and the stars reflect off the surface of it. There are others nearby, as always, but she never looks at them. She simply stands, silent, fighting every urge to sleep even though the lullaby of the night does its best to drag her under.
I'm praying that this stairway leads somewhere like Heaven's door,
and when you get there don't look down
I should have loved a thunderbird instead at least when spring comes they roar back again
Aegean has never known cruelty—true cruelty—in his life.
He had been born of love and cradled between the bosoms of his mothers. He had been given every single opportunity that he could have ever wanted; he had been loved and adored and given the freedom to explore. Even when his family had experienced the hiccups and heartache that is so common these days, he had been hardly scratched by it. He had been old enough, and enraptured by his own world enough, that he had not minded when his family had been scattered to the wind—when he was left alone.
So he does not know what she has experienced.
He has no way of sympathizing.
Still, when he is wandering and sees the familiar flash of green, he approaches with that same dreamy smile. And when he sees where the skin has been scorched, where her body bears the marks of some form of unspeakable violence, he can hardly comprehend it. “Evenstar?” her name comes out as a question in his silver bell voice. It rings off the tip of his tongue and he watches as the faint glow catches on her.
For a second, his breath catches in his throat, and he dips his antlered head, trying to sort through who would ever have it in them to lay waste to the girl by his side. He has never felt such urges—nor been on the receiving end of them—and they are completely alien to him, completely otherworldly.
But he has no desire to say such things, to draw attention to it.
So instead he offers her the hold thing that he can. He presses his shoulder lightly against her own, brushing against the undamaged skin, and then he pulls on his gift to gently start painting illusions. It is a quiet fall of stars—one of his favorites—that slowly envelop them, their music quiet and sweet.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead (I think I made you up inside my head.)
can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars,
I could really use a wish right now;
She hadn’t expected to see him here.
She doesn’t know at first if she’s glad that it’s him that finds her. He says her name in that sweet trill of his voice, and it is relief at first that floods through her. She looks up at him from behind the white hair that frames her jade-colored face, and for a moment she almost smiles. “Aegean,” she tries to keep the break from her voice, she tries to straighten herself and shake the fear and wearniness from showing. But she can see the way that he looks at her broken skin, at the scars and the places that had struggled to heal. And suddenly she is hot with shame, and she almost wishes that he was a stranger. Almost wishes he had never seen her as she was before and would not be able to recognize the irreparable damage.
Her head ducks away, hiding her wounded eyes from his sight as she bites back the tears that build in her throat. She wishes that her skin didn’t look as broken as she felt; she wishes her body didn’t so openly advertise how she felt on the inside. She had been so stupid and naive, and she had learned the hard way what could happen when you trusted everyone.
But she feels his shoulder press lightly against hers, and she lifts her face to look at him. When the stars begin to slowly shower around them it causes her breath to hitch in her throat, and for a moment, she is too wonderstruck to feel her pain. They glitter their reflection like broken fragments off her eyes, and she finally looks at him to whisper breathlessly, “How long have you been able to do this?” She finds his dark purple eyes with her own, and says with an almost wistful, nostalgic sigh, “It reminds me of that winter party. Do you remember? With the lights everywhere.” They had both been so young. They were still young, but she hadn’t expected to be shattered so fast.
I'm praying that this stairway leads somewhere like Heaven's door,
and when you get there don't look down
I should have loved a thunderbird instead at least when spring comes they roar back again
Aegean has little experience with brokenness.
He might have, had he given life that kind of hooks into him. Perhaps he might have felt the sting of his mothers disappearing and his family dissolving and being left without a home or purpose. But he had no true sting in the wound and felt nothing but the casual sweep of loss against his heart.
He felt it as a passing wind.
So he feels sorrow at her grief but there is no true match in his heart and he has no way to rectify that. He can only offer her support and his presence and the pretty illusions that he weaves around them.
His smile is soft and kind and he banishes whatever remnant of pity she might find in the folds of it. He instead focuses on the stars around them and the way they reflect against her evergreen skin.
“How could I ever forget?” he says and his voice is sincere, silver bells and flickering against the back of his tongue as he reaches over to brush lips gently against the curve of her cheek. “You were so beautiful and the night was so magnificent. I thought that my heart might burst clean out of my chest.”
For a second, he is quiet as he tips his head back and breathes in deep and then they are back there on that island. He paints it around them, leaving the magical snow against their hooves and the faint lights in the air and the subtle sound of the sea washing up the shore. He had never known just how his memory would come to serve him, but with this new gift, he is able to recall the details, the beauty of it.
And he paints it for them, for her.
With a smile, he catches her gaze.
“You are just as beautiful as you were that night.”
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead (I think I made you up inside my head.)
can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars,
I could really use a wish right now;
She cannot remember if things had been simple back then. She cannot remember if the rose-colored illusion she saw her mother in had already been shattered. The last few years felt blurred at the edges, until she couldn’t tell where one thing ended and another began. And so she isn’t sure if that day on the island had already been tainted by her crumbling fantasy of the world, but she doesn’t think it had. She doesn’t think it had, because when she looks back on it, it is one of the few things that can still ignite a warmth at her core. A warmth that spreads through her veins, a warmth that fills her with a melancholy sort of nostalgia, but she doesn’t want to let it go.
He says that he remembers, and she can’t help but to smile back at him. It is a broken image, but one that echoes with the ghost of the vibrant, albeit shy girl she used to be. She laughs when he says that she had been beautiful that night, and she wishes that it didn’t sound so sorrowful when it left her mouth, and she wishes that it didn’t taste like the tears she can’t seem to shed. “There was a lot that was beautiful about that night, that I feel like I paled in comparison to.” Like you, she wants to say, but for some reason the words become stuck in her throat.
But everything around them suddenly seems to shimmer and fade, and in its wake he built a new image. Only it wasn’t so new; it was a memory, just as she had remembered it. Her breath catches in her throat as the ground glitters with snow, and the warm amber glow of the lights reflect off the darkness of her eyes. “It looks just the same,” she whispers, and for a moment she forgets that she is scarred and ruined.
But when his eyes catch hers, when he tells her that she is just as beautiful as she had been back then, she wonders if he can hear the way another crack splits across her heart. “No,” she says with a shake of her head, her white forelock cascading over the vibrant star on her forehead. “Maybe I was beautiful, once. I don’t know. But now…” Her ribs ache with the release of a sigh that shudders forward, and she hardly realizes that she has come to let her shoulder rest against his, or that her lips were idly toying with the wisps of his mane. “They could have killed me, so I suppose I should be grateful that it’s just a few ugly scars.”
I'm praying that this stairway leads somewhere like Heaven's door,
and when you get there don't look down
