"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
Mazikeen had cried, truly cried, for the first time in her life, back there in the forest. When she thought she was going to die, when the pain had blinded her and she had laid there in her own blood. When she thought she was going to die in such a weakened and pathetic state. She had been so sure that she wouldn’t be able to move if she tried. Then dawn had come and she had woken up - not remembering falling asleep (or passing out) only startling away when she could feel flesh being tugged. Orange eyes were wild as they spied the pair of ravens picking at her wounds as if she were just another corpse.
And that had finally got her to move. She shouted a wordless cry that startled the death birds and sent them flying into the red sky she could see between the boughs of the trees.
Somehow she managed to stand, though she could not put much weight on one of her forelegs. Her entire body screamed with pain as she took her first cautious step.
It was not an option to lie down again. She was not sure how she was still alive - the soil beneath her body was practically mud with how much her blood had saturated it.
And now, she is back in the Cove. The rocky mountains of Hyaline had done her no favours as she stumbled through them - sheer stubbornness driving her forward.
The soft coastal grasses of the Cove surround her now and it is an effort not to just lie down in them. She’s afraid if she gives into that weakness she will never rise again. Her gaze is unfocused with pain still - both from the wounds the creature had given her in the forest and from where she had fallen several times through the mountains. Her coat is more red than white now, mottled with streaks of blood and dirt and missing flesh.
She stands there, swaying just slightly, because she’s not sure what to do. She had only one thought - get back here - but now what?
She is not sure what she would do now, if she saw her son.
Not that she believes him to be alive – time has passed, somehow, though to her it feels like a blink. But she thinks of him often, of the disgust that had coiled in her belly when she saw those impossibly orange eyes.
(She had never figured out the circumstances of his conception. She and Covet had not crossed paths, she did not know of the demon that had done this for its own stupid amusement.)
She likes to think that somewhere in her is a capacity to forgive. She likes to think a lot of things about herself, preferably ones that are never put to the test.
She has been quiet, here. She is still out of place in this world, still stumbling along under the weight of her revelations (I died and came back and my kingdom is gone)
and does not have room for much else. She is not unkind, to the few who speak to her, but she does not invite them in.
It’s the scent of blood that she catches first, and then she sees the girl. Young – a child, still – and clearly wounded. Craft’s teeth clench as she wonders what happened, feeling an urge to punish whoever had done this.
She’s not sure what drives her forward, but she comes closer to the girl – not too close – and focuses on her wounds, on the torn flesh, the dirt.
“What happened?” she asks, voice soft. She is too focused on the damage to look much at the girl’s face, transfixed instead by the scent of blood.
It’s not someone she knows who approaches, but the palomino form is one she’s seen around and there is something comforting by that. When Mazikeen turns to look at the elder mare, that small movement unbalances her completely and her legs fold beneath her and she is suddenly lying down.
Pain shoots through her at this abrupt change in position and her head shakes back and forth as she tries to clear away the fog. The folding of her legs has reopened one of the cuts that had finally started to scab and fresh blood joins the dried in a small steady stream.
The question posed helps to anchor her to the present and she doesn’t pass out. Her orange eyes are unfocused, staring off instead of at the mare. Her voice quiet and hoarse, and Mazikeen wonders whether it is from screaming.
She doesn’t remember screaming.
“There was a…. A wolf but not in the forest. Not an animal, something new.”
Only then does she turn her orange eyes to the palomino stranger, pain and confusion written in every bloody and dirt-caked line on her body but those eyes are free from tears even as the pain threatens to drown her. “I can’t seem to die.”
10-06-2020, 05:54 PM (This post was last modified: 10-06-2020, 05:55 PM by craft.)
I was in the darkness, so darkness I became;
She rushes forward when the girl collapses, a tender instinct that will surprise her, later, when she looks back on this. Fresh blood joins the scent of old, and that too causes a strange mix of emotions in Craft. The last time she recalls blood, she was dying.
(She accepts this, now – that she died. That she was killed by her impossible son.)
(She still doesn’t know why she is no longer dead.)
But that memory should not matter, because Craft is well, now, and the girl clearly is not. Craft touches her, gently, tries to push healing into her. She knows her powers have changed, since returning, but she wields it poorly still. Could she heal her? She has granted gifts to the children born here – small things, but still – and she thinks of that now, tries to reshape it into closed wounds, seamless skin.
“I’m sorry,” she says to the girl, and she is – sorry this happened. She listens to the girl’s next statement - I can’t seem to die - and something wells within her, a strange and terrible laugh that she bites her lip to keep caged. I know how to die, she thinks, bitter, but not how to stay dead.
She sees her, then.
Their eyes meet and now it’s Craft whose knees are buckling, albeit from shock and not pain, because she knows those eyes, doesn’t she? Those goddamn eyes.
(Is this enough, mother? Is this enough?)
“Are you his?” she asks, her tone sharper now. She is reeling still, it takes a moment before she adds, “are you Covet’s daughter?”
Surely he’s not alive. Surely not.
She does not think about her son. Last time she saw him, he was dying, too.
The gentle touch goes unnoticed, lost in everything else that the youth is feeling, and it takes her a moment to realize she’s being healed. That the flow of blood against her skin has slowed and her body is becoming solid once more. Now instead of being hazy with pain, Mazikeen is almost drunk on the relief of it fading into a gentle roar instead of a blasting scream.
Had her mind been clearer, Maze might’ve noticed the shock in the golden mare when their eyes might. Might’ve felt that sting of rejection, might’ve remembered what it felt like to have a golden boy rebuff her friendship in the cool shadows of the forest.
She’s so focused on how nice it is to not be bleeding though that she doesn’t think of it at all. Does not realize anything has changed in the air until she hears the sharpness of the palomino’s voice, demanding answers, and Maze just blinks those damning bright orange eyes at her in confusion.
The question is so bizarre, so completely out of the blue, that it makes Mazikeen’s head swim almost as much as the pain had moments ago. Or maybe it is the pain that lingers still and she cannot sort it all out. “... No? My dad is Garbage.” There’s a small hazy smile at this statement and she corrects herself because, left as it was, she believes it not to be true. Like Agetta, Mazikeen wishes her father had a kinder name - but unlike Agetta, Mazikeen occasionally finds humour in it.
