“what do you fear, lady?' he asked. 'a cage,' she said.”; any

[brigade]

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

He wishes he could peel himself away from the swirling shadows of his thoughts.

The darkness of them has only deepened with time—turning opaque with his pain, his confusion, his fear. Death has not done anything to lessen the weight of living and he finds that his spine still curves under the pressure of it, still aches with the sins of his past. He wishes he could cast them off and enter into this second life anew, but he has no such luck, no such skill, and instead he glowers at her, reflecting his bad mood back onto the woman with no rhyme or reason for his temper except his very existence.

For several moments, he is silent, simply watching her with the shadows stretching long across the wide expanse of his winged back, and he realizes how unfair he has been. He has no penchant for conversations such as this one—he has never been one for spinning words and putting others at ease—and he has no real reason for engaging her with conversation today. He has nothing to offer her except for his presence and he knows better than most that others are better off without it than with it.

Still, he doesn’t leave. Instead he just angles his head to regard her with his light eyes, his lips remaining stubbornly still as they press together. He considers her question for a beat too long before he rolls his shoulder, wincing slightly at the muscles not quite used to the movement of the living just yet.

“You could say that,” his voice is rough on the edges, gravel and soot, and he wrinkles his nose a little. “I did before so I imagine that Starsin won’t cast me out immediately.” Although he is certain that she would like to. After all, the pair of them haven’t exactly had the warmest of interactions together.

“Do you?”

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

BRIGADE