"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
In dreams, his memories are within his grasp.
In dreams, he can almost feel like himself again, although the self is a strange and indescribable thing, something he chases but can never quite catch. I know this, he thinks, I know him.
He doesn’t think, I am him.
It is a strange and unique kind of torture. He dreams and there are glimpses of gold, there’s darkness, pain, children, love, heartbreak, love again, heartbreak again, a cycle repeating. And there’s the angel, the woman in white, and she is so familiar that it hurts to look at her, but he can’t not look at her. He must. He knows this in every dream, that he must behold her, as if he could trap her in his gaze, bring her back when he wakes.
He never does. He wakes and the dreams fade, and he is left only with the knowledge that something is missing, but not what that something is.
(I’m sorry, he’d told the stranger, who had been kind and confused, you’re nothing to me. Why had he said that? It had been cruel, needlessly so. He is not a cruel man. At least, he doesn’t think he is. He doesn’t want to be.)
He’s back at the river. It had started here, the blankness. When he woke on its shores. The water still makes him nervous; he can too easily imagine the feel of water in the lungs, with such sharp relief that he wonders if it’s something he experienced before. His body bears no scars, but he feels them under his skin regardless, phantom pains and memories of a life he has so little recollection of.
“Please.”
He says this to no one, and the word is swallowed by the sound of the river, as useless and forgotten as whoever he was before this.
Agetta is pregnant again, a tryst with a kind stallion she is not entirely sure hadn’t been some kind of forest god. She will find him again in the spring, she thinks, so she can introduce him to his children but that is all she wants from him now. A strange friendship born out of her restlessness, that desire to be a mother again. To have someone to care for, a tiny piece of purpose.
She’s not begun to show but she knows the feeling well enough by now. It brings a smile to her face and she imagines, but does not remember, that it must have been like this for all her children. Similar trysts, never remaining with someone for too long.
She does not recognize him at all, this dark stranger, nor does she remember the words that had shattered her heart. Agetta goes to him because the word he speaks stirs something in her heart, because she is someone who cares for and worries about those she has not met.
Her dark blue eyes are clouded with this worry as she approaches, not coming too close - looking him over for signs of wounds or distress. When she speaks her voice is soft, like what you might use to soothe a wild, injured animal.
“Are you alright?” She does not know that this is what she had asked him the last time they saw each other as well, that this was what came after her joy at finding him alive.
He never got her name, but when he looks at her he feels like he knows it, like it’s a sound familiar to his lips. His mouth forms an A, the start of something, but he makes no noise because he doesn’t know how it ends, that sound. He doesn’t know how any of this ends.
He never got her name but he has replayed that moment many times, the strange meeting between them where she was so convinced that he was something, someone and he was so convinced that he was not, could not be who she was looking for. And so he had told her as much, and a horrible look had crossed her face, one he could not forget.
(Gods, he’d forgotten so much – why couldn’t he forget that? And why did it hurt him so? She was a stranger, and he was rude, yes, but not horribly so.)
He is surprised to see her, this stranger-not-stranger whose name he almost knows. He had not expected their paths to cross again, and he feels a rush inside him, dueling strikes of shame and excitement. Yet no recognition dawns across her lovely face, and he wonders if perhaps he had made too much of the encounter, if it had matted more to him than it had to her.
“I’m as good as can be expected,” he says rather honestly. He doesn’t know if he’s alright, or even if he’s even been alright.
“You’re the woman from the river,” he says, and it’s not a question. She is so familiar. Should she be so familiar? His heart is beating faster but it’s just nerves. He hasn’t spoken to many since he woke on that riverbank, so full of nothing.
Agetta’s frown deepens at his answer - she may not remember much, but she knows that’s an answer given when things are very much not alright. Once again she looks him over, feeling that worry stir inside of her. As far as she knows, she has no ability to heal but she can be fast when she wants and could fetch someone else. She doesn’t know who, but someone.
His next words cease her observing and she focuses on his orange eyes for a moment, her expression giving away her confusion. They’re a beautiful colour, those eyes - and she is sure that she would remember them if she had seen them before. She would remember getting lost in them. So he must not be one of those trysts she had been thinking of, then.
But then, she had forgotten Kensley and they were apparently friends. Could this another friend, who is lost somewhere in her aging mind?
Not knowing what else to make of his comment, Agetta glances to the river nearby and when her gaze moves back to him she’s not sure what to say beyond a “Yes… I suppose I am.” Attempting and failing at a reassuring smile.
“I’m Agetta.” She offers next, feeling a little more on familiar ground as she shifts into polite conversation. If he won’t tell her what’s wrong, she can at least introduce herself and make sure he isn’t in danger before moving on.
He is confused, at how her demeanor seems to have changed. She was so adamant, at the river, refusing to believe him, and now her features are fixed with the grace of someone simply going along with things, too polite to point out his mistake.
(Oh my love, you survived, she had said, so mistaken, yet he has replayed those words many times. He so badly wants to be someone’s love.)
“You thought I was someone you knew,” he says, prodding, reminding. He doesn’t know why he’s poking this wound. He didn’t know her then and he doesn’t know her now. So why does he want so badly for her to recognize him?
(Why does he almost know her name?)
She says her name then - Agetta - and it hits him like a punch. He doesn’t know why the name means anything, but his heart speeds up.
“Agetta,” he repeats, and the word is so easy on the tongue, so luxurious, “I’m Garbage.”
His own pathetic name, spilled alongside hers. Why couldn’t he have forgotten his own name, chosen something poetic, something noble, instead?
“At the river,” he says, “I think I was rude to you. I wanted to apologize. It was a very confusing time.” And you were so sure, he wants to add, so sure that I was someone who mattered. But he doesn’t. He has salted this wound enough, dredging their last meeting like this.
She thought he was someone she knew? Sadness eats into her polite smile, regretting that she feels no recognition now. It is an odd feeling, hearing things she had said with no memory of having saying them. She resists the urge to shake her head, to tell him he must have mistaken her with some other white mare. There are many of them, she knows - surely someone else had been the one near the river for him.
Agetta’s eyes widen a little at his introduction but she remembers enough of her manners not to act too shocked by the unkind name he goes by. And then he references the meeting by the river again, a rude exchange she does not know anything about, and finally she shakes her head - giving him a smile that is finally a little more friendly than just polite.
“No apology needed, truly.” Agetta doesn’t know how to kindly explain to him that there is no need for him to apologize for something she doesn’t even remember happening at all. But he had not known her name, and introduces himself as well, so surely their acquaintanceship could not have been all that significant. How long ago had it been, for her to have forgotten it? She had meant to ask that with Kensley as well - hoping that it was a long time ago, from back when she was a mare with a coat as dark as the stallion standing in front of her. “I’d like to have a word with your mother about that name, though.” She adds with an attempt at a smile and a joke - unable to imagine a world where she gives such a name to one of her own.
But worried that might be rude of her, knowing nothing about his mother as she does, she adds - that concern creeping back easily into her voice and dark eyes. “Are things any less confusing now?”
Something in his body cringes at the word - mother.
He hadn’t thought about parents. Hadn’t wondered who his were, had not had cause to, he supposes. But at her comment his eyes flutter closed, and he suddenly thinks of desert sand, hot enough to burn, and his face aches, as if with old wounds. Another echo, and not a pleasant one.
Who had she been, his mother? He supposes she would have been the one to give him the name, but he doesn’t know the circumstances of it. He has not dwelled overmuch on his name, the ugliness of it, the implication that it was likely a name bequeathed on him by someone.
(The truth: it was a mix.)
He smiles and attempts a laugh, though his response is delayed. He is still thinking of the desert, and wondering if it’s home.
“I can’t remember where it came from,” he says, then, “there’s a lot I can’t remember.”
It’s stupid, to share this. She doesn’t need to be made privy to his embarrassing lack of memories, lack of existence. As much as he wants her invited in, he knows that whatever he is, he is a burden, and she does not need to bear any of his weight.
He should walk away – he knows he should – but he answers her other question. He wants so badly to stay.
“Only a little,” he says, and he should stop, he should stop, but of course he doesn’t, he’s a foolish man, “I almost know things. About before I came out of the river. Where you found me. It’s all just…slightly out of reach.”
And oh, he is grasping. Grasping for the description of how he feels, what has happened. Grasping at anything to keep her talking, keep her here. She is the opposite of scorching desert sand, she is water, cool and deep. Almost like a river.
Agetta’s worries about misspeaking about this stallion’s mothers do not ease when he closes his brilliant orange eyes after her comment. There is an attempt at a smile and a laugh on his part, though she only half-manages a responding one - still wrapped up in her worry.
It roots her here with him but it is not as though she has anywhere else to be. And this could be where she is needed most - a listening ear, if nothing else, and her dark eyes remain fixed on him as he explains what he can. It isn’t much, and it is barely anything at all to remember of a life.
Though she is still unsure of what he means by when she found him - thinking it must be this moment, not another that she has forgotten.
Without even really thinking about it, she moves closer so that she can touch her muzzle to him in a brief gesture that's meant to be comforting. “That’s an awful burden to carry, I’m sorry.” She falls quiet as her gaze lingers on him, like she’ll find some answers to his plight in the lines of his face. This is not a problem that being able to shapeshift can solve, nor one that can be fixed by the healing magic that seems to only work on herself. Agetta herself is not gifted with any traits that can help, but she does have the desire to find a solution for him. She might suggest it could be a blessing, to not remember, but looking at Garbage he does not seem like someone who is finding peace in his current circumstances.
“One of my daughters is a magician, perhaps she can help?” She might not suggest it if she remembered all the chaos in her life caused by magicians, if she had known that they often cause pain instead of bringing relief.
She is the first one to touch him since his unwitting rebirth.
He doesn’t tell her this, because it seems like a burden, this confession – that she is his first, but not. He lets het touch him, he holds his breath, doesn’t move, as if she will startle if he does. He doesn’t want it to end, this touch, but it does, all too soon. Which makes sense – they are strangers, after all. The fact that he wants to close this distance, wants to touch her himself, is something he holds within himself.
(I like to think it would always be like this. That in every lifetime, her touch would set him ablaze, even without memory behind it.)
“Thank you,” he says. He means this for her response, her condolences, but maybe it’s for more.
She mentions a daughter, then – a magician. He feels a flicker of fear at the word, though, like so much else he feels, he cannot articulate why. He does not know, of course, that his mother was a magician, that Garbage himself has borne children to two different magicians as well, that magicians have been a great and horrible thing in his lifetime.
In this life, he has never met a magician. So why should he fear them?
“That’s very kind,” he says, then, “would she be willing to help a stranger?”
He can’t help the desperation that laces his words. He wants so badly so be helped.
At the very least, Agetta does not seem to be making matters any worse - and that is certainly something that soothes her worries a little bit. At least the worries that concern herself, how she has been affecting him. It would be horrible to cause pain where she only wished to alleviate it. Even with this stranger who seems to think she is someone else, even if he cannot remember who that might be.
If there was anything left in her to soften, it would at his question. That sadness continues to linger, as Agetta learns that she has a heart that so easily aches for others.
She cannot recall it happening for anyone else, but surely it must have. It happens too easily now for it to be anything other than habit.
“Yes.” She answers without hesitation. She’d say it even if it weren’t true, there was no way she could have given him another answer. Not with the desperation that lines his question. If she had to find a way to convince Beyza to help she would, but she does not think she’ll have to. Surely Beyza would help simply because Agetta asked it, and because it must be the right thing to do? Everyone had the right to remember who they were.
So she does believe that it is true, what she tells him, and she offers an encouraging smile as she tells him honestly “She’s like me that way.”
![[Image: Agetta-by-Star-smaller.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/bvb9bQBR/Agetta-by-Star-smaller.png)