"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
She has lost track of her mother.
And she has learned that healing does nothing for a broken heart.
Nobody had warned her that friends could break your heart, too.
(Had her mother known? Was this something her mother should have thought to teach her?)
She stands at the edge of the river now. She has lost track of the days in the same way she has lost track of her mother. How long has it been now since the darkness descended? How long since Aureus stood before her in the meadow and told her that they’d never been friends?
How long has it been since she’d encountered the monster in the shadows? How long has she been dripping blood into the water? Strange, she thinks, how the healing and her exceptionally strong heart seem to counteract each other. The heartbeat is so urgent that it pushes blood from the wounds faster than the skin can heal itself. She doesn’t think she’ll die, not her. Not like this.
But she is so removed from the idea that all she can do now is stare blankly at the faint lilac glow of her reflection as it ripples gently outward. Would her mother be disappointed to know that she’s stuck here at the edge of the river feeling sorry for herself? It’s just that she’s so tired and she doesn’t know where else to go. The thought of trying to venture back through the darkness in search of her mother fills her with a dread so potent that she can hardly breathe around it.
So she’ll stay here.
She’ll stay here until the sun comes back.
Surely the sun must come back.
He was always such a gentle boy. Coddled by a fiercely loyal and protective mother and fed adventures and goofy jokes by a loving father, Orville matured with a sweet, soft silliness most might poke fun at. It's that gentility of his that keeps him out of the monsters' shadows. Such unforgiving creatures not only frighten him, but carry something he is not sure he will ever understand.
Bitterness, anger, evil - he fears that more than death by monster tooth or claw (though such death certainly keeps him within his family's nest).
But such a large, tussling, teasing family sometimes drains the energy from Orville's typically bright bones; and when he's feeling dreary, and when he's feeling lonely, and when he feels as if he doesn't understand his own brain, he wanders into the darkness. At least there, amidst the choking shadows and hissing things, he doesn't have to understand being overwhelmed. He only has to focus on not knocking his head against branches and running from the monsters crouching at the gates of hell.
At first, Orville things the lilac glow is a creature in a more creative form: a siren so enticing with her silky voice. But as he draws closer to the river, thinking he is quiet enough to not disturb the monster if it is one, he begins to think it is another attempting to brave night. And as he draws closer, and closer, and closer, he can see the blood leaking from her chest to the river (there's poetry in that, a strong heart imbuing the water with its magical blood, and Orville thinks for a moment, there's poetry in that, blood meeting water).
"You're bleeding," he says, softly, voice lacing into the current of the water. He didn't know he was stepping into the river until he was, such certain strides pushing back rushing water. She stands opposite him, glowing Basilica, and he wants so badly to help her.
"You're going to bleed out," Orville says, still drawing closer, brow furrowing in the way it does when he does not understand.
He is such a unique thing that, at first, she thinks she has imagined him.
He crosses the river like a dream, swims through the fog that exists only in her mind until he’s standing there in front of her. And even then she’s not convinced.
She is bleeding, he says, and she thinks (quite peculiarly) of her father. She thinks of the gaping wound in the center of his chest and how it bled and bled and bled and how it never killed him and how he had looked at her mother and said, you shouldn’t have brought her here. And this inevitably makes her think of how Aureus had looked at her and said, we were never friends and this makes her look at this dream hovering before her with a kind of mournful expression.
She exhales a kind of shuddering sigh and nods. Yes, dream thing, she knows she’s bleeding. But she’ll be all right. As her father had been all right. The loss of blood cannot kill her.
“It’s all right,” she murmurs, soothing the dream thing, trying for a kind of lopsided smile even as the blood continues to drip steadily into the water. She wants to reach for him, as if to touch him might convince him that it really is all right. But she is also afraid that he might dissolve beneath her touch and she is so desperately lonely. Perhaps this is why she has dreamed him up.
“I won’t die, dream boy,” she says, though even this has begun to sound distant, “I promise.” She shakes her dark head and sighs. “I don’t think I can.”
HEAVEN’S GATES HAD SUCH ELOQUENT GRAFFITI
@[orville] i love him
@[The Monsters] please mess with her immortality too!!
Why's she bleeding like that? he thinks, and his head cocks to follow the question, his brow furrowing deeper until the wrinkles are tiny black abysses. There's something wrong with her, whether physically or mentally - she's not there quite right, not really. Orville swallows.
I won't die, dream boy.
"Dream boy?" he murmurs, that concerned head tilting even further. Stuttered steps follow suit, pressing from the deeper water into the shallow water she stands in. No, she is certainly not here like she thinks he is not there. "Dream boy . . ." Orville hums out, blinking, stretching out his nose to hers as she promises she won't die.
"How do you bleed out and not die?" he questions, again, so many questions. But the thought of magic, of healing, of how beautiful things can be twisted into torturous, unforgiving curses answers his question. They're only stories to him, funny bed time curses and laughing parents. This is real, though: Basilica, bleeding like the lost creatures in the scary stories his older siblings once told.
"My name is Orville," he whispers, drawing his mouth back close to his neck. His eyes grow soft with ever-bleeding concern. "But you can call me dream boy." Orville breaths out heavily and closes his eyes. "I think we should stop your bleeding. Even if you won't die. Please."
A strange flickering catches her eye and she turns her head slow, blinking, to see that he has brought her the stars. They catch in her tail, in the tangles of her mane, and she smiles. What a wonderful dream this is, she thinks, her eyes closing heavy as her head falls back to center.
And her eyes do not open again until he reaches out to touch her, just barely, nose to nose. It runs through her like an electric shock, kicks the breath out of her chest. But she opens her eyes slow, as if she were operating underwater, smiling still. Because dreams cannot die and he has brought her the stars, this dream boy, and dream boys don’t break your heart or tell you that you were never friends.
She considers his question and draws away from his touch, arches her neck to press her mouth to the wound. The blood is real. Warm. So red. She sighs and turns back to him. “Isn’t it strange?” she asks him, the tone dreamy, otherworldly, so far removed from the strange reality of the situation. “The most peculiar balance of healing and a strong heart,” she tells him, searching his face, “they cancel each other out perfectly.” Still, she smiles.
Just a dream, just a dream.
She drags in a shaky breath as he introduces himself and exhales such a soft breath of laughter. “Orville, my name is Basilica” she coos like a prayer. “Orville, you brought me the stars,” she whispers, “thank you.”
She shakes her head, just barely. “I’m so tired,” she tells him, “I just need to rest. Just for a moment. When I wake up, I’ll stop it.”
The blood from Basilica's wound paints her lips in a way Orville has never seen before. The way in which nightmares are not real to Orville suddenly and viciously disappears. This is a nightmare. A living nightmare. Blood paints her mouth and she manages to look dreamy even with such a ghoulish smile. Orville swallows hard, lifting a single back hoof as if he might retreat.
But he doesn't - doesn't even move one hoof backward. He stares just long enough to burn this image into his brain, to never forget. Tragedy like this can exist. Sadness like this can exist. Madness exists. Before, he didn't want to think it real but now - now he longs to erase such misfortune from existence.
"Won't you grow tired, Basilica?" he asks, stepping closer. "You look so tired," he murmurs, frustrated and unsure, wanting to step into her side to offer her something to lean on. "You can't keep this magic up forever . . ." But he wonders if she's even listening, or if he's even listening; because she says she's tired but he can barely hear it. Alarm bells ring in his head. Loud and raucous, the call of sudden and unforgiving death.
"You won't wake up, Basilica," he says, repeating her name, trying desperately to emphasize how badly she needs to stay awake. How he can't bear witness to another's final breath. "We can lay by the river," he whispers, this time giving in and pressing his neck to hers. "But you have to promise to stay awake. Maybe we can count the stars I brought you."
Just enough to disturb this dream air.
She mourns him already.
But he does not go. He stays. Won’t she grow tired? She is so tired. She cannot even nod. But there is still some sort of dream-smile tying up the corners of her blood-red mouth. (Will the bleeding stop? Will it kill her? Will the magic give out eventually? Which of them is more powerful, the heart or the healing? Her will to survive or her desire to give up?)
“I’m sorry, dream boy,” she murmurs, and then corrects herself, “Orville, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’ve done this to you.” It takes more energy to speak than it does to keep herself alive, she thinks. But you cannot die in your dreams, at least she does not think so. (Or is that part real? Is he the only thing she has dreamed up? Something to keep her company while the blood runs out? While the magic runs out?)
He feels solid when he presses his neck against hers. A real, solid thing. Aren’t dream things meant to feel like dreams? She’s never met a dream thing before.
“You don’t have to stay,” she tells him. She will not make him stay. She’s sorry she’s dreamed him up just to watch her bleed. Just so she did not have to be alone. She never knew she was such a selfish thing. “You brought me the stars, that was so kind,” she continues and turns her head to look at them. How sweetly they kiss her hair, caught there as if by tethers.
She draws in a long breath. A steady breath. Leans on him a bit more than she means to and, in doing so, finds enough strength to stitch together some of her skin. Just enough to slow the bleeding.
"Please don't be sorry," Orville pleads, peeling his gaze away from the floating, multiplying stars to implore Basilica with his eyes. Please don't be sorry, he thinks, because he wonders if regret might tire her out, might kill her faster. The striped stallion sighs loudly, leans into the woman even if such a gesture might be fickle and useless. "Don't be sorry," he repeats, softer, the ghost of a whisper.
When she leans in, Orville feels hope, strong and renewing. A delicate, hesitant smile lifts his lips.
"Of course I'll stay, Basilica," he responds after a few moments of thought. He didn't have to stay; and this is the first time he's ever faced a moment like this: choosing to bear the weight of a stranger or refusing to simply because he owes her nothing. But that's not how Orville perceives the world, he finds for the first time. He owes the universe everything, all the dark and breaking things, because he held so much good within him. Good memories, a sweet family, so little pain. He can carry all of Basilica's and little of everyone else's. He'll take it all on, if it means the world might get to experience the kind of lovely, simple life he leads.
"Let's count those stars," Orville murmurs, lifting his head to press his cheek to hers, to lend her strength and hold her head up. "One . . ." a breath out. A breath in. An exhale: "Two . . ." Orville guides her face, finding new stars everywhere, too many for them to count, but still he perseveres.
"Let me help you more," he hisses, sounding more as if he is praying than speaking to a bleeding stranger. He thinks he might pray to her - to this feeling - forever.
