with her sweetened breath and her tongue so mean
she's the angel of small death and the codeine scene
She has been this way before. Lost, drifting, untethered from a body too damaged to sustain the consciousness it is meant to hold. The first time this had happened, she’d been gone for so long, had come back to a world changed by time, made unfamiliar in the steady flow of seasons passing by. But she would not allow that to happen a second time, would not slip so willingly into the afterlife to meet with the dead, explore a world hidden from so many. It had been acceptable when there was nothing special to come back to, nothing to make her want to stay in one world over the other. The dead had been as fine as the living, their gray, plain world something new to discover.
But she was a mother now, had a boy who needed her. A boy she needed, too. Her secret Soldat, her perfect little Rian who must be wondering why she left him, wondering where she went and why she wasn’t coming back.
It makes her wild with fury, breaks the calm lackadaisy she is so good at holding onto. That is HER boy.
And-
But she frowns, as much as a consciousness can, and thinks about the man who must be with her boy. Their boy. Wonders why in the world her metaphysical chest tightens when her thoughts widen to include him, too. Is he not just a man who had been in the right place at the right time, as fine a companion as any for the adventure that discovering Soldat had become. He should be easy enough to disregard in that same way she can appreciate the usefulness of the sun or the trees or the air that they breathe, things she would rather have than not, but feels no particular attachment to.
Except that is not what he feels like, because all at once she finds she wants to return to him, too.
It is strange and baffling, nonsense for sure, but when she feels their minds drift free of their bodies as they surrender to sleep, she draws them in to her.
Dreams don’t require bodies, after all.
She builds them their forest, gives Ruan his trees and deep shade, a quiet pond nearby to reflect a sky the color of eggshells. But the bodies she chooses are not entirely their own, except in the case of the boy who remains entirely equine, entirely himself. She is the deep purple she-wolf with glittering amethyst eyes. Large and beautiful with thick purple feathering on the backs of each leg, a mane around her neck, a tail too luxurious to be realistic. Ruan is sleek and dark and muscular, retains all his new coloring except that he does so in the form of a large, handsome wolf. These are the forms Soldat knew them in first, the wolves who had found him and kept him safe, became his parents.
She pads over to where Soldat is laying first, makes sure she moves slow enough that he has time to recognize the face of her wolf and the scent she was careful to keep the same. “Hi baby.” She says, a soft, feminine rumble as she reaches up to lick his nose, clean some dirt from that beautiful little face she misses so goddamn much. “I miss you.” But the words don’t seem enough, don’t even touch this sudden new ache in her chest that she feels at knowing he is out there somewhere without her.
She doesn’t leave her boy, stays close and cleaning him, fussing over his ears and his mane until she finally lays down beside him, her body wrapped around him as much as she can reach. Only then does her head lift, those glowing amethyst eyes fixed sharply on the male wolf. Except that sharpness fades, fades quicker than it has any right to, until she is merely watching him with a kind of quiet curiosity. It’s good to see you, Ruan. Then she’s beckoning him closer with her nose, making room for him to join them.
bright