"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
cold in the violence after the war hope is a fire to keep us warm
She doesn’t know if Brinly would heed her whispered words. Doesn’t even know if she could. Still, what she’d learned of the Pangean’s seemed to all convey a general undercurrent of disorganization and lack of cohesion. As though their magical ruler would save them in the event their general dishabille caused them trouble. But if there is anything Brazen had learned from her mother, it is that magic only takes one so far.
Or at least, she hopes that’s the case. Unfortunately she couldn’t actually claim the innate foresight her mother seemed to possess.
Still, what Brazen lacks in that department, she makes up for in endless optimism and stubbornness. Those very traits are what had led her to this distant corner of the forest that met river and mountain. And it is those traits that keep her here, even as day fades into dusk and her legs grow restless with impatience.
Over the hours, a hapless tree that just happens to make a convenient scratching post has begun to lose its bark, and the ground within a Brazen-lengthed radius is rapidly worn into dirt as leaves and pine needles flee her restless feet. It isn’t until dawn is beginning to break the horizon she hears something that seems to be more than the nocturnal motions of forest creatures however.
Head snapping sharply up, her blue eyes strain to see in the dim, not-quite-morning light. Breath stilling in her lungs, she listens a moment, hardly daring to hope as she whispers, “Brinly?”
When Brazen had come to Pangea she had been surprised by the unfamiliar feelings it stirred inside of her. She had not expected anyone – not even her – to notice that she had been taken from Nerine. Brinly was used to fading into the backdrop. It was better when she was quiet, she had found, so that she couldn’t accidentally create problems out of nothing. It was better when she was not in the middle of things, where her abrasive personality rubbed everyone the wrong way and reminded how much she did not belong with them.
But mostly, she was surprised that she had missed her.
And that alien feeling is exactly what makes her hesitate when Brazen had whispered to meet her in the forest.
She stays in Pangea most of the day, turning over the options and scenarios in her mind; afraid of what it will mean if she goes, afraid that it would count as some sort of admission to herself. Afraid that it would mean she would now have to acknowledge everything she had been so carefully locking down in the chambers of her chest.
In the middle of the night, she makes her decision, and she slips away.
The forest is familiar to her and she makes her way through the dark easily, stepping artfully through the brush and bramble with minimal sound.
The gray light of dawn tries to creep through the tops of the trees when she finally reaches Brazen, and for a moment she stalls at the sight of her. Apprehension grips her heart, and she debates turning around before the other girl has a chance to see her. But then she turns her head, and the sound of her name being whispered from her lips draws her forward. “Brazen,” she replies quietly, stepping forward to come alongside of her. She reaches to touch the bone armor that plates her shoulder (still hesitant, still afraid that one of these days she will somehow manage to burn right through the bone), before pulling away and saying in a tone that is a little too curt, “You shouldn’t have come to Pangea.”
cold in the violence after the war hope is a fire to keep us warm
The relief upon hearing the familiar lilt of her voice is immediate. As though every tense muscle quivering over her body had been released at once, she nearly sags before the happiness of Brinly’s arrival sends her surging closer. Almost without thought, she wraps her in an embrace. Her skin hardens to granite instinctively at the touch, recalling her to the moment.
But she doesn’t release her immediately. Too much had happened. Too many horrors. Too much heartache. For a moment, she clings, relief and joy and sadness all warring within her as she soaks in the fact of her presence, alive and whole and well. As she tries to erase the sensation of blood soaking her skin.
In the moment, she wants nothing so much as to hold her like this forever.
But when Brinly’s words register, she is brought inexorably back to reality. Snorting, ears flattening, she nips admonishingly at her neck, ignoring the wash of heat over her tongue. Drawing back, she scowls at her, blue eyes vibrant and alive with emotion in the dim, early morning light. “How could I not come to Pangea?”
“You shouldn’t have gone to Pangea,” she continues after a moment, faint petulance coloring her voice. Just as quickly however, her masked features fall, regret and sadness etching across her expression. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.” Her gaze rises to meet Brinly’s. “I should have been.”
When Brazen surges forward she tenses reflexively, even though the other girl’s skin hardens to stone and logically Brinly knows she can’t burn her. She wants to pull away, she wants to put even more of a shield between the two of them than there already is. But she had learned that avoiding Brazen was impossible; that she paid no heed to Brinly’s sharp warnings, and that short of disappearing altogether, there was really no escaping her.
And maybe, she realizes, with the other girl pressed into her, she doesn’t want to.
It’s a fleeting moment, but, for an instant she relaxes. She wonders what it would be like to touch her when she wasn’t covered in armor and stone; she wants to feel the warmth of her skin, the kind of warmth that just comes from being alive, and not essentially on fire from the inside out.
But then Brazen is pulling away, and she matches her scowl with a taut purse of her own lips before saying tersely, “I didn’t exactly have a choice now, did I?” For a moment her own ears fall flat, her muscles growing tense beneath her auburn skin as she clenches her jaw. She already hated being seen as weak; being forced to submit to the whims of that draconic beast was already something that didn’t sit well with her, and she didn’t care to be reminded.
When she softens, though, and she recognizes the look of regret on her face, her own anger loses its flame and slowly dies away. “It wasn’t your fault, Brazen.” There is an uncharacteristic softness to her words, the sharp edge to her voice dulled by the sadness on Brazen’s face. She reaches forward, her lips gently brushing against her stone-armored cheek in a rare show of affection. “Are you alright? That…thing didn’t try to hurt you when you were in Pangea, right?”
cold in the violence after the war hope is a fire to keep us warm
Though she would never voice such a thing aloud, she too wishes their touch could be more than stone and fire. That she might feel her skin, warm and alive against hers without the chill barrier of unfeeling granite. It’s a pipe dream of course, but one for which she cannot seem to shake a lingering impossible hope.
Guilt drowns out those lingering thoughts however, as the brief snap of anger and irritability falls away. As Brinly’s lovely features soften with regret and sadness. Her assurances that she bears no fault are consumed by the overwhelming knowledge that it is not true. She had known the beast had been lingering around Nerine. She had foolishly thought that when he slunk away the first time it would be the last.
But she had been wrong. Her overconfidence had stayed her vigilance. Every word and breath, the glaring reality of this moment, remind her of her failure.
(There are so many now though. Accumulating faster than she can correct them.)
She wants to refute those assurances, but the words stick in her throat, mired in her own guilt. Instead she presses closer once more, expressing the things she cannot say through the language of her touch. But where once she might have tucked her masked head against Brinly’s shoulder, she faces the gruesome reminder of the foreign sweep of horns ornamenting her skull.
Instead she finds herself pressing stone lips against her shoulder, eyes squeezing closed as though that would erase everything that had happened.
“As if he could,” she finally responds, a faint bite to her voice as she answers the question Brinly had expressed with such an uncommon concern. “He didn’t…” she swallows abruptly as the thought occurs to her in the wake of Brinly’s worry. “He didn’t hurt you either did he?”
Oh gods, she hoped not. She would actually have to murder him if he had.
She wasn’t used to feeling attached to anyone. She wasn’t used to feeling anything at all beyond the usual bitterness and anger that she harbored like some cherished treasure; the only thing she had identified with, and when it was gone she no longer knew who or what she was. Every time she is with Brazen and feels something – a flicker of happiness, a brief moment of softness, anything besides the furious flame she was so accustomed to – it makes her want to draw back into herself, to pull away from the armored girl until she is back to a place that she cannot reach her.
Until she is back to not missing anyone, until she doesn’t have anyone doing stupid and foolish things on her behalf, like going to Pangea.
But the feel of Brazen’s lips against her shoulder keeps her planted, and when she turns to run her nose against the armor of bone across her face she notices the new horns for the first time, and withdraws. “Those are new,” she says with a hint of suspicion, wondering what had happened for her to have earned those. She wonders, not for the first time, why others awaken with something seemingly harmless, when she had been burdened with something that did nothing but harm anyone that she wanted to be close to.
There is a moment when her jawline goes tense, when there is a faint tendril of jealousy that crawls up her spine for no apparent reason. Perhaps not jealousy, but just a stronger version of the bitterness that was always there. She doesn’t know the story of how Brazen earned these new horns; she doesn’t know that they came at a price, and that she shoulders an invisible burden along with them. Even without knowing that, though, she swallows everything away, because Brazen was never someone that she wanted to feel animosity towards, for any reason.
“No,” she answers her, and when she goes to drop her face away from hers there is a second that her mouth almost brushes against the unguarded skin, where the armor does not lay. She ignores that growing ache in her chest at the idea that she will likely never feel what lies beneath the ivory bone – the softness of her skin or the feel of her curves – and she steps away from her. “I’m fine.” She looks away from Brazen, at a path that winds its way into the darkness, and says in a voice that is void of almost all emotion, “I should go back to Pangea before they realize I was gone. I don’t want to give them a reason to come after Nerine.” Her head turns again, and this time her dark brown eyes level with the bright blue of hers. “Or you.”
cold in the violence after the war hope is a fire to keep us warm
There is an unguarded ache in the moment. A sweetness and a bitterness for all the things that could be and all the things that should have been. Even if Brazen is not the most intuitive of women, she can feel it in the moment. She can understand the bubble that rises in Brinly’s chest. She knows, because she feels it too.
But if wishes were horses…
The innocent comment on her horns is like acid spilled in her gut. She barely avoids flinching in response. She would never share the horrible things she had already done with these horns. The horrible things she had done to Brinly (she wasn’t real, but she had felt real). She would not poison what lay between them with her ghastly truth. Would not taint their trust with the knowledge that, when faced with death, there is little Brazen would not stoop to.
“Yeah.” The single word is her only response. But that simple syllable falls heavily enough there can be no mistake the price she had paid had been far too high.
The relief at hearing Brinly had not been harmed is immediate. Releasing a breath she hadn’t known she was holding, she allows her eyes to flutter briefly shut before opening them once more as Brinly pulls away. “Good,” she replies, blue eyes rising to meet hers with resolution. And if she had anything to say about it, it would remain that way.
But Brinly continues to pull away, her words falling like lead into the air around them. Immediately Brazen begins shaking her head. “No,” she says. Then again more firmly. “No.”
She shifts then, moving quickly to cut her off, blue eyes now bright with a fiery determination of her own. “Don’t go back. They won’t hurt me. Or Nerine. But I need to know you’re safe.” She presses closer again, planting herself between Brinly and the direction Pangea lies. “Please.”
The weight behind Brazen’s single-word reply to Brinly’s observation does not go unnoticed, and though her eyes narrow and her lips purse, she chooses not to pry. She supposes that if she wanted to reveal more, then she would. As someone that personally kept every emotion safe-guarded inside her chest, Brinly never expected anyone else to be open, either.
And perhaps that is why she is so suspicious of everyone. Because she knows the kind of thoughts and feelings that she keeps hidden, she knows how easy it is to hide everything about you from the world. She knows what it’s like for not a single soul to know the real you.
She had already begun to step in the direction of Pangea when Brazen is suddenly blocking her path. “Brazen,” her name is sharp against her tongue, her dark eyes cold as they collide with the blue of hers. “Move.” Her jaw clenches, because she knows that Brazen knows she cannot hurt her. There are so few in her life that have skin that can protect themselves from the intense heat of her own, but Brazen was one of them. In a way, that was a blessing – because even though it would never be the same as touching real skin-to-skin, it was the compromise Brinly had had to learn to settle with.
With ears flat into the wild tangles of her mane she bites back the seething remarks that boil at the back of her tongue, her gaze fierce and unwavering, but of course, Brazen matches it.
Eventually, she relents.
“Fine.” The word is blunt, but her stance has relaxed, if only minimally. “Fine,” she repeats, and it is quieter this time, some of the heat dying from her voice, her eyes softening slightly when she says, “Let’s go home, then.”
