"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
The restlessness should have ebbed, but it never seems to leave his bones. In the quiet pre-dawn hush, when he has little else to occupy his mind, he has begun to wonder if it ever would. For all his command of the past, present, and future, he still struggles to determine such things. Perhaps if he devoted a lifetime to it, spending his time trying to untangle the threads crowding his mind, he might finally understand. But he has neither the patience nor the will to commit so deeply.
Instead he bows beneath the relentless gnawing for more. Giving in has always been far easier than resisting. With impatient strides, he crosses the boundary of his kingdom. He has no destination in mind, but wherever he ends up, he is certain he will find something. Anything to temper the wildness, if only for a moment.
Dawn has long since broken the horizon when he arrives. He had finally determined where he was going by the time he was more than halfway there. The ruins stretch before him, desolate and eerily silent. He had investigated when the first appeared, though he had not lingered long then.
There had been too much weight in his chest then for him to truly give it the attention it deserved.
Now though, he feels compelled to continue forward. He can feel the shudders of death and pain that coat this place, but it does not stir any hesitation. Rune, who had been following overhead, shrieks his displeasure before swooping to land on the jutting bone of Reave’s hip. His stride dips beneath the weight, but he easily compensates for it in the next step.
He can feel how much the place disconcerts his companion, but he refuses to allow the bird’s whispers to dissuade him. Instead he flicks his tail hard, the strands snapping across Rune’s feathers, silencing large raptor’s grumblings. Rune is welcome to leave if he doesn’t like it, though Reave knows he will not. His companion would never risk it, and a very small part of Reave is grateful, even if he would never admit it. Besides, Rune already knew.
Her mind had once been a loud place, until she learned to lock them out.
Their thoughts used to infiltrate her own, a steady stream of fragments and pieces that she could never puzzle together because she was too busy trying to filter them back out. When they first began to squeeze their way through the cracks of her own barrier her instinct had been to retreat, to hole herself away into solitude, where they were no longer a threat.
But she was a stubborn thing, and not one fit for a life of isolation. When she had reinserted herself into society it had been with a renewed determination—a steely resolve to shut them and their thoughts out, once and for all.
The silence that followed had been a relief, like a sigh being released that took all the tension she hadn’t realized she was holding with it.
She let them keep their thoughts—she doubted any of them were interesting enough to listen to anyway.
When she finds herself in the ruins, she still relishes the quiet. There is something peaceful in knowing that she does not have to work to maintain it, since the area is largely deserted.
Deserted, that is, except for him.
Her sage-green eyes find the armored stallion amongst the ruins, with the eagle resting on a bone plate that juts out from his hip. There is something about him that she can’t quite place, a likeness, perhaps, that has her being drawn forward. She passes the peculiar rock formations with hardly a sideways glance, and if it were not for the faint glow that emanated from her she would have perhaps nearly blended in with the dimness of this place—her skin an inky black with dapples of steel gray, her green eyes the brightest thing about her.
“Care for some company?” she asks with her lips already curving into a faint smile, the question poised in such a way that implies she is not really giving him a choice.
His mind, like hers, is never a quiet place. Unfortunately he cannot shut out his own thoughts. He has learned to settle for filtering them instead, ignoring the whisper of memories and tangled lines of tenuous futures until it suits him to pay attention. He has wondered if those endless spirals are the reason for his restlessness, or if it is merely a fault in his being. It’s hard to tell when he has so many.
Also like her, he finds a strange sort of peace in this place. The shudder of dread does not bother him nearly as much as it does his companion, but the possibilities that linger in this place are endless. There is a ghostly quality to the wreckage here, whispers of past greatness that clamor inside his skull. But it’s not loud. No, there is something far more insidious about these murmurs, and they make him curious rather than repel him.
He turns at the sound of her steps, eyes picking out the shifting of her form in the shadow of the ruins. Her dapples glow in the dusky hue of her skin that blends so well with the darkness. Like the night sky she had been made to resemble. He eyes her with undisguised curiosity as she slips towards him, watching her lips curve upwards as she greets him with a question.
Reave returns her smile with a faintly wicked grin of his own. “Always,” he replies, his voice a soft rumble in the eerie quiet of this place. Rune ruffles himself atop his perch on Reave’s hip, yellow gaze piercing the dappled mare with a fierce stare before abruptly ducking his head to preen the feathers of his wing. Reave says nothing more, instead settling alongside the stranger in companionable silence as he studies her openly.
He has never been shy in his attention, nor would he be now, regardless if it would be considered rude or not. Finally, feet shifting beneath him, Reave breaks his silence to ask her, “You didn’t come here for company, did you?”
She feels the way he watches her, and where once she might have wilted beneath such a studious stare, she is no longer that apprehensive young girl. Now, she is the one with the power to make things wilt—to send rot crawling across the earth with every step, to take brilliant blooms and shrivel them until they crumble into dust. If she wanted she could take every bright and vibrant thing and maim it into something dim and dull, all the while plucking their thoughts from their skulls until they are just as stripped and bare as the desolate hellscape she might create.
And yet, she never does.
Even though she could weaponize her mind and use it to bend others to her will, even if she could force the world around her to submit to her blight, she is not nearly so ruthless. There is a sharpness hidden beneath that ethereal glow, an echo of her father that exists not just in their matching eyes, but despite all that, she is still very much her mother’s daughter. She was raised in that softness, knew the familiarity of the warmth that came from unconditional love, and it is, perhaps, her greatest moral anchor.
Being raised in the lightness of her mother is the only reason her powers are kept on hand, but not immediately ready to use.
She looks at him—appraises him in the way he does to her, as equally brazen and not at all bothered by him noticing—and she does not see anything soft. She sees the bones that plate him, sees the way the skin that borders them shows a history of being torn and chafed, and wonders what it would be like to live in a cage of bones.
“No, I came here for entertainment,” she says with a coy smile, her green eyes flicking from him and to the eagle with just the faintest hint of amusement on her lips. He didn’t seem to like her much. Maybe all birds hated her and she's just never noticed. She returns her attention instead to the stallion, briefly catching his eyes with hers before gesturing to the eerie quiet that surrounds them. “And I suppose I was curious about this new…place…that mysteriously showed up.” Here, her gaze lingers a little longer on the nearest formation, feigning to be more interested in it than she actually is. She isn’t sure yet if she actually cares what this place is, why it’s here, or what happened; but it is a good conversation piece. “Do you know what happened here?”
Perhaps it is the curse of lightness to birth darkness. It makes as much sense as anything else in this strange existence. Would explain why Reave had grown into something so corrupted when his parents are two of the kindest people to have existed in this world. Or maybe, given his blood, it is they who were the anomalies and not he.
Or, quite possibly the most sensical explanation of all, none of that truly matters and Reave had carved his own path through fate. That’s the one he always chooses to believe. He despises the thought that he must have been born for a specific purpose and refuses to give any credence to it.
Does that make him foolish or enlightened? Or simply another cog in the machine of life?
One could go mad attempting to figure these things out, but Reave is no longer certain he hasn’t already started down that path.
She does not flinch beneath his appraisal, nor does she shy away from returning it in kind. There is something undeniably pleasurable about that, a challenge he cannot resist. He doesn’t even try to. Her response causes one equine brow to wing up in surprise followed swiftly by amusement. Her declaration makes him decidedly curious about what she would consider entertainment if she is seeking it in a place like this.
Her next comment, however, draws his gaze to the ruins surrounding him. With an offhand grin, he replies almost without thought. “Aren’t we all?”
Returning his piercing blue gaze to the young woman beside him when she continues, he eyes her with an inscrutable expression. The silence stretches for a long moment before he finally says, “I might.” And it’s true enough. If he dug deep enough, he might be able to learn why this place echoes with despair. But he had already come to the conclusion it would not be an easily won answer, and he’s not quite sure he is ready to make the sacrifice it would require. Instead he steps closer, gaze searching as he stares at her, the corners of his lips lifting slightly. “But is that really what you want to know?”
She is not often tempted to read minds, but there is something about him that finds her considering it.
Perhaps because his face, while not entirely unreadable, is not at all a clear indicator of what he is thinking. Over the course of time she has learned how to read the subtle changes in other’s faces, and the way they link to their thoughts. The way a face opens in surprise when she says something clever, the way it tightens when she has pointed out something flawed in their logic, and each one backed by the thoughts she plucks from their mind. It was part of the reason she didn’t see much reason to read minds — not when they wore their thoughts so plainly on their faces.
He is not like them, she can see that. His eyes, while such a bright shade of blue, seem to still shadow his secrets, as if they are being dangled on a string and she is meant to chase it. For that reason alone she does not cave into the temptation, decides instead to appreciate the challenge of peeling him back, layer by layer.
She had not come here looking for a target, and yet she had found one.
“Truthfully, no,” she relents to his last question with a short laugh. “I came here because it’s quiet and everywhere else is loud. I don’t particularly care how or why this place came into existence.” Her sage-green eyes glance again to their surroundings, at the peculiar ruins and other fragments of the past littered across the otherwise barren landscape. She is sure the story behind this place is an interesting one, and perhaps it might one day force her to acknowledge and pay heed to it.
“My name is Aubergine,” she introduces herself as she turns her smile back to him, her dark head tilted towards him and his companion expectantly.
If she had given in to the desire to read his thoughts, she would have found his expression masked a chaotic tangle few would have the patience to unravel. Even he, who must live with them every day, rarely finds the patience for it. His mind houses so many memories and futures that are not his own that even he struggles to wade through it. If she sought silence, she would never find it within him.
Though her memories dance on his periphery, he extends her the same courtesy she had extended him. It’s not from any notion of politeness, but rather selfishness. In a way, he too had come here for escape, and he does not yet wish to relinquish that dream.
The grin stretches wider across his lips at her reply, eyes glinting with amusement as he follows her wandering gaze before returning his attention to her. “Your candor is refreshing,” he replies with a faint chuckle before adding wryly, “Though if you’re seeking quiet, you have found the wrong companion.” A pause, then, “I’m Reave.”
The admission comes freely, as many things do to Reave. But then, he has never tried to hide his myriad foibles, and he has always preferred to keep the company of those who enjoyed them. If she did not, he had provided her the perfect opportunity to take her leave.
If Reave is any judge of character however, he suspects she will not. He does not need to peek into the future to surmise that either. It’s only after a long moment, his gaze dragging over her with shameless speculation, that he finally breaks the silence. “If you have come here for the quiet, then the echoes on the wind must not bother you.”
“Reave,” she repeats his name, and while it sounds familiar, it takes her a moment to place why. “You’re one of the kings,” her mind finally makes the connection, though she is not confident which kingdom he rules. She has never paid too close attention to the politics of Beqanna, having always been more so on the outskirts. Her father had ruled one of the old lands, but he and her mother did not seem especially interested in the current ones. Aubergine was not disinterested, but they also were not things she thought about on a daily basis, having never had the need to.
Though this information caused her to regard him a bit more carefully, it did nothing to dull the sharply appreciative smile that still rested on her lips. “Am I supposed to bow in the presence of royalty? You’ll have to forgive my poor manners, I was raised in the wilderness,” she half-teases, a playful spark reflecting in her sage-green eyes.
“I bet you’re quieter than everyone in the meadow, though,” she counters with a small laugh at what he says next. “Between the actual voices, and all the thoughts, it’s exhausting.” She considers for a moment not explaining the last part of her statement, but when she once more studies his face, she thinks that might be a miscalculation on her part, because something tells her that he would know regardless. “I can read minds. And while I’ve learned to control it as I’ve gotten older, it’s still an effort to block everyone out in crowded spaces.” Perhaps he would see this as a weakness, and she almost regrets saying anything. But Aubergine has never been ashamed of who she is, weaknesses and all.
And perhaps a part of her is hoping that he will continue to guard his thoughts, knowing what he now knows.
Now, her gaze diverts to look at their surroundings, considering what he had said about echoes. “I didn’t really notice them. Or maybe I just can’t understand them as clearly as thoughts.” She looks back to him, asking inquisitively, “What do you hear in the echoes?”
His lips lift into a smirk at her observation. She seems momentarily nonplussed by her realization, but rather than say anything about it, Reave merely dips his head in acknowledgement. Having taken on leadership of Nerine at such a tender age, he hardly even notices the weight of it anymore. It has simply become another part of him. Indeed, it has grown so familiar that he rarely even bothers mentioning it unless asked.
Her next question draws a laugh from him, genuine amusement glinting in his eyes. “Only if you find yourself so compelled,” he responds wryly, the corners of his mouth twitching. “I promise I won’t hold it against you.”
Reave shifts restlessly then, Rune swaying with his movement. The large raptor lets loose an indignant grumble, wings lifting as he steadies his balance. He grins at Aubergine’s assumption. His gaze shifts over her in quiet consideration, head tilting slightly. “If you were reading my mind, you might not take that bet.” He shakes his head then, grin slipping as he turns to gaze at the scattered ruins. “It’s never quiet, even here.”
That admission is the closest Reave has ever come to sharing the chaos that lives inside him. The constant barrage of past, present, and future is a difficult thing to contain. It’s a wonder he hasn’t gone mad yet. Or perhaps he has and he simply failed to realize it.
His eyes slip back to her when she denies noticing the echoes. His lips lift slightly before the contemplative expression returns to his shrouded features. “Nothing good,” he replies easily, his light tone a contradiction of the words he speaks. “If I believed in ghosts, I would say this place is haunted.”
