"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
03-08-2021, 07:12 PM (This post was last modified: 03-08-2021, 07:12 PM by Beyza.)
Beyza
It’s the middle of winter and Beyza is done waiting. It is early, but there are three of them are there is only so much room in her body. If they take up any more space she’s not sure if there will be anything left of her by the spring. She wants them out and this thought is filled with such venom, such intensity, that the process begins.
For a time, Beyza had considered seeking the presence of someone else. Not Death, not the Reaper, not Jamie. Not for this. But one of her parents - someone who has been through this before with babies of actual flesh and blood and not shadows. In the end, though, she does not want to trouble them. She’s gotten out of the practice of asking for help and no longer knows how to do it.
So she does not give anyone the chance to give what she cannot ask for. She finds a deserted part of Pangea and creates walls of blistering electricity to keep everyone out. Maybe to keep them out, maybe to protect them from her screams, and maybe just to keep this moment to herself. No one else has a claim to what is going to happen here.
It is hers.
If there is any guilt about keeping Jamie away, it does not gain much traction. It joins the confusing twist of emotions bubbling within her, her regret over the darkness has made her feelings towards The Reaper complicated.
As if they had ever been anything else.
And what if their daughters are not perfect, what if they are not powerful like he dreamed? Will he still have any interest in them? Beyza has already grown attached to each of them and she will not risk letting their first moments be filled with anything but love.
While the process is less unpleasant than when she had birthed the creature at the beginning of the eclipse, Beyza is not capable of appreciating the difference. Time seems to stretch and contract around her.
First a girl dark as the night, then one that is a sweet grey, and finally one white as snow.
Smoke and fog and mist. And when all three daughters blink white eyes up at her, Beyza feels her heart skip.
Her eyes. Her eyes. Her eyes.
She whispers to them the words she’s heard from her parents, tells the trio how beautiful they are as she cleans them and cares for them, magically sustaining them. And with these whispers the wall protecting her new family comes down, fading into nothing and Beyza finally reaches out with her mind to beckon their father.
I CAN’T EXACTLY DESCRIBE HOW I FEEL
BUT IT’S NOT QUITE RIGHT
Life begins with such a heavenly glow, the most brilliant white. The last daughter instinctively curls herself toward it, the electric warmth of it, gasping against the cold. The last daughter seeks out the crush of her sisters, the familiar tangle of limbs, the soft beating of their hearts.
They are beautiful, heaven tells them, and she fills them with a warmth that radiates outward from the center of their chests. The last daughter sighs sweetly, fulfilled. This daughter will survive on love, this creator of life. She will let it sustain her. One day she will sink her teeth into it and let it stain her lips such a vibrant red. But for now she curls herself tightly against heaven’s side, warmed by the presence of her sisters, content.
And the father feels a tender pull in his own chest, a fish hook that draws him from the shadows of Pangea. He knows that it is her, Beyza, and he goes without an ounce of hesitation. He wastes no time in summoning a wall of darkness and steps through it, allowing her thoughts to guide him and emerging several yards away from the den she has built for them.
He had not been expecting them, not this early. That dark heart spasms, slamming itself fiercely against its ribbed cage at the sight of them and he surges forward from the dark to join them. “Beyza,” he gasps, breathless, freakish yellow eyes ablaze.
What is this feeling that seizes him?
This, he thinks, this is pride.
The daughters curled around her are even more terribly beautiful than he could have hoped they might be. For the first time, he hesitates, afraid to touch them. He trembles with nerves.
“Beyza,” he says again, wheezing, ashamed suddenly of the strange voice. He wants to be perfect for them, these otherworldly girls. “They are perfect.” He is reduced to the strange, chattering thing he had been the first time they’d met by this giddy excitement, this paternal pride. He wants so badly to touch them, but still he refrains. Unworthy, desperate thing he is.
Instead, he summons things from darkness for them. Creatures like him. Wolf pups spun from compressed shadows, one for each of them. Companions, pets. Temporary or permanent. Gifts, maybe. Whatever they’d like for them to be. The pups slink away from their creator and curl up beside each of the fillies as Jamie returns his focus to Beyza. “Feel free to destroy them if they get in the way,” he tells her and flashes her a shark-tooth smile fraught with nerves.
They are not left waiting long. Beyza is all nerves as Jamie approaches - her white gaze fixed on him, tracking every twitch and every move. There’s an instinct to move forward, to put herself between the girls and him, and it takes effort to remain where she is standing. To watch and prepare to react. He says her name but she doesn’t respond, she’s too wary, too on-edge, too sick with the knowledge that she doesn’t know if she can trust him with these precious lives.
Jamie calls them perfect and does not reach to touch them, an act that would surely have had Beyza’s heart in her throat. When he crafts the wolf pups she feels tension rising but they are gifts, not attackers, and she watches in her silent way as they curl up next to the trio of daughters. The darkest one laughs at the pup that comes up to her, standing to greet it and nips at it before falling over on spindly legs and curling back into the comforting presence of her sisters - white eyes flickering in focus to all the shapes that surround her.
The white mare’s heart leaps in her chest when this daughter falls, even though she knows this is normal, knows they will fall many times as they learn about what it is to be living and moving in this strange world.
When this daughter is content on the ground, curled with the others and their shadow pups, Beyza does not quite relax but as she exhales some of the tension loosens from around her heart. When she blinks, a cautious smile appears. How is it this moment - arguably the most normal of all those she's shared with Jamie - that makes her more nervous than the rest?
She takes a deep breath before her attention turns back to him, still with that cautious expression as she whispers. “You can come say hello, if you’d like.”If you’re careful with them is the thought that echoes in Beyza’s mind but she doesn’t project it. She’s not sure she has to say it for him to understand. As far as Beyza is concerned, he is allowed to be one thing in their presence and it is not The Reaper. She keeps her eyes on him when she moves her head to the level of the triplets, her voice soft. “Girls, this is your father.”
I CAN’T EXACTLY DESCRIBE HOW I FEEL
BUT IT’S NOT QUITE RIGHT
The heart (all fog and shadow and deep, impenetrable darkness) wedges itself into the narrow space at the base of his throat as the darkest of the girls staggers to her feet, as she reaches for the pup with her teeth. As she teeters and then collapses in on herself, curling inward as if that had been her intention. And he knows then that their daughters will be strong, capable, just as their mother has always been.
For a long moment, there is such a peculiar stillness as the two of them merely study the girls in silence. He thinks he should say something else, but he is such a simple thing. A chattering jaw and a hammering heart. An unworthy thing. Ugly and small. The child who could not look at her directly without it crippling him.
But she addresses him and he turns to face her (and he is surprised when he can look at her without grimacing, as if he has convinced himself that he is again the weak, exhausted child who could not lay eyes on her without his eyes burning with tears). Say hello. No, certainly he cannot come closer, he thinks. It seems foolish that she might have even suggested it but he swallows thickly and nods once, just barely.
Hardly breathes at all as he takes a series of small, shuffling steps toward them, head low. It occurs to him that he could shrink himself down, turn himself into one of their wolf pups, curl up amongst them and live there happily for the rest of his days. He knows already that he will belong to them always. But he doesn’t, he approaches them just as he is, this thing made of darkness with those freakish yellow eyes. The palest of them looks up at him, reaches for him just as he reaches for her, and he makes his edges solid so that she can feel him. And he is overwhelmed by an emotion he has never felt before. (It is love and he thinks it comes from his own heart but it comes from hers and this is the only way he will ever feel it, Jamie.)
“Hello,” he whispers to her and then moves onto the next, a girl the color of slate. A girl the exact color that her parents’ soft edges made the first time they ever combined. He gently touches her head, too, feels time shift just barely around them. “Hello,” he whispers to her, as well. And then, finally, the darkest of them. Darkness tinged in red and when he touches her, he swears he can feel bones murmur beneath his feet. “Hello,” he murmurs against her brow and then retreats, feeling as if he has overstayed his welcome in the daughters’ space.
He strays to Beyza’s side then, heart hammering, muscles trembling. “Have you thought of names?” he asks her, not bothering to hide the quivering in his voice.
Beyza waits for the tension in her to ease as she watches with her unblinking stare while Jamie greets each of the girls in turn. It doesn’t fade away but it doesn’t increase either. He joins her after greeting them and she remains still as a statue as an act of sheer will, or she'd be trembling just as he was.
On the question of names.
“Yes but…” She trails off, unsure of what thoughts she should give a voice to. Should she tell him that she does not know what to do, how to act around him, what this means that they share a family now? Should she tell him that the all-consuming desire for him, to make the world perfect for him, has faded in comparison to her desire to make it perfect for their children? That she would bring back the sun even if it brought him pain because it would bring joy to so many others.
He stands beside her and she cannot tell if she wants to close the gap between them further. To press against him until they blended together as they watch their daughters and pretend they are ordinary parents.
Beyza had thought creating lives together would cement their bond, tie him to her forever, but that feeling is absent in her.
Or… maybe not absent - merely eclipsed by the love she feels for her daughters.
Their daughters, she reminds herself. Because even though she feels she has more claim to them, they are forever his too. And so it is with that thought that she finally speaks, watching Jamie in her periphery but not turning to look at him directly when she asks quietly “Will you mind if I name them?”
I CAN’T EXACTLY DESCRIBE HOW I FEEL
BUT IT’S NOT QUITE RIGHT
Her uncertainty breeds uncertainty in him and he shifts his weight, his muscles still all full of tremors. How dreadful it is to be reduced again to the boy he had been some years ago, crippled by anxiety, but there is no better reason to be insecure, he thinks. No better reason than three perfect girls all lined up in a row, a masterful combination of their parents. Life, Death, Love.
He cannot hear the things that teem beneath her surface. He cannot feel them. Too immature in his magic or perhaps too preoccupied by the girls, it is difficult to tell. All he knows is that she hesitates and it is this that he feels thrumming in his veins. A taut line drawn between them and he trembles with this, too. The things that she does not say.
The silence pulled thin. The way the lightest of the daughters coos so gently to the shadow pup curled against her side. He feels a sharp twinge of worry that she will be too soft but tries to stifle it by shifting his attention back to Beyza as she speaks again.
Though she does not look directly at him when she asks.
As if she is afraid to ask it.
Is there reason for her to fear the answer?
He tilts that peculiar head.
“No,” he answers, quite plainly. “Of course not, you are their mother.”
He almost reaches out to touch her, to remind her that they are friends, to remind her where they came from. But refrains, though he doesn’t know why.
Even though she had asked, something odd twists in her stomach when he replies. The tether that ties her to him is still present, the undercurrent that tells her not to disappoint him, though it has been dwarf by something bigger. And at the same time she wonders why she had asked him as though she was waiting for permission.
But she looks at the girls and finds a smile, reaching out to touch each in turn as she names them - the words a gentle caress.
“Neuna. Decima. Maurtia.” Although she had been thinking them, having the names spoken outloud solidifies something inside of her heart. Gives her a few more words to share with the shadow standing beside her as she makes the conscious effort to focus on her gratitude and the feelings that are shimmering in the darkness instead of the confusing thicket that is everything else.
I CAN’T EXACTLY DESCRIBE HOW I FEEL
BUT IT’S NOT QUITE RIGHT
Neuna, Decima, Maurtia.
He trembles with his want to touch them again, to mumble their names into their skin himself, to brand them in his own way. But they belong to their mother, he understands, more than they will ever belong to him.
He will look back on this moment and know that it was the last time he was ever this soft. And certainly that will mean something. Certainly it will mean something that it is a moment he shared with her, when she says how much she loves them and she says his name and he looks at her and smiles that shaky, shark-tooth smile and nods because maybe, for this brief moment, he knows what love is, too.
This is the happiest he will ever be, Jamie, the closest he will ever get to love -- both literally and figuratively. He turns to Beyza, reaches for her, kisses her head because he does not dare touch the girls without permission. He pulls a soft blanket of fog around them. (And the white filly watches and she learns and she will grow to love the fog because it will remind her of the dark father and someday she will master it, too.)
jamie
