[open] swallowed the sickness

[brigade]

I was a poor boy; you were a bright light
I was a sinner and you were a snake

Finally, he is cold. Cold enough that the breath plumes before him. Cold enough that he can feel it begin icing over his hooves—the frost digging in and yet feeling no pain. That is perhaps the part that he loves most. He loves the numbness. The way it soothes him, wipes him free of it all. He closes his eyes and feels nothing but the endless ice and fog and winter that he calls, ignoring the thrashing of endless summer and writing his own desires into existence. 

It is beautiful to be cold. To be numb. 

He stands in silence, deep in the forest, and listens to the critters that scurry away from the winter of his own making. He sends it deeper and deeper into the roots of trees until they too shiver and crackle and protest the ache that he drives into them. 

Better than him. 

Better than the endless anguish of a soul tore clean in two. 

It’s easier this way, he reckons. Easier to turn a blind eye away from the sins of his past and embrace ignorance. Ignore those he has hurt. Those he has abandoned. Ignore the women and the children. His parents. His siblings. The wolves that howl in his dreams. 

A muscle jumps in his jaw—the only sign of pain buried so far beneath the ice. A twitch on his shoulder as his russet wings rustle and then settle. Another breath as he centers himself and draws the cold back into him. Directing it into his veins. His heart. Freezing whatever he can. 

When he opens his eyes again, they are as cold as the rest of him. 

And finally, finally, he feels peace. 

shook like some old souls when our bones broke
swallowed the sickness, a fever, a flame

BRIGADE