"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
YOU CAN HAVE MY HEART, IF YOU HAVE THE STOMACH TO TAKE IT.
She has always trusted the river like an elder sister. In times of chaos such as this, she finds herself submerging beneath the surface. Down here, there is only the muffled roar of the current and her heartbeat inside her skull. The surface and all its turmoil is a distant memory that she only returns to when it pleases her.
Her long tail takes on a relaxed, serpentine rhythm that carries her further down the river where small fish bite at the glimmering stardust she leaves in her wake. And when she smiles, it is all teeth that dream of catching the young bass. Her jaws part, her tail pumps her forward. She can taste copper across her tongue already, she swears it. That perfect pink tongue slides over her fangs in anticipation just breaths before the world rumbles.
Katarine has felt such quakes before in her young life. She pauses, considers the world above the river and its people. There is a thought, briefly, to not return. They may all think her dead and leave her be. Solitude and quiet would find her at last, leave her to live in the muck at the bottom of the waters. How divine, to never let the sun shine across her pale lavender back again.
But a thread of guilt weaves into her thoughts, then: her mother would never heal from such a wound.
A frown bleeds across her face and those bright blue eyes begin to scowl. Slowly, she rises toward the light until just her ears and eyes peek from the rippling waters. The sun is already just a thumbnail over the horizon and the day is nearly done. Every minute, it’s getting darker and she seems to glow a little brighter in some beautiful haze juxtaposed against that hateful expression.
He trusted nothing - but isn’t that how it always goes? Beqanna churns out darkened souls like cogs in a machine. Although, it is hard to trust anything when all you have known are the trees and the dead. There is quiet in the trees, perhaps quite similar to the pressing of water where all of you should be. There is quiet in the dead too, sometimes (although their voices always linger, sometimes never stop).
He rarely leaves the womb of the trees. And why should he? They are the only thing unchanging, everlasting. While he had fettered away his years in the woods - the world had changed (and would continue changing, he supposed). But the timber that arched around him would continue growing, continue changing in its own familiar way. It changed him, too. But that is to be expected, when you only speak with the souls of the dead for so long.
He would prefer to stay here, in the sullen and shadow soaked woods. He felt the churn of the world, felt it changing again (and again, and again). But here? Here he was safe, here he was secluded. Here he worried about nothing but the flora and fauna that he played with to his content, and the dead that he reaped when he felt in need of company.
He was not dead, though, unlike his friends that wove between the thickets. Wu, sadly, needed nourishment. Days passed since the rumbling from deep inside the world, and still Wu refused to leave the wood - surviving off the dew that was pocketed amidst the flowers he grew. He did not want to see, he did not want more change.
Survival outwins us all, though. In the last dregs of day, he quietly slinks to the edges of the wood, heading towards his usual nook of the river to satiate his thirst. The bleeding rays of sun seep slowly into the horizon, and he is quite assured of his safety and solitude. Until he sees the unmistakable eyes of an equine, followed by two swiveling ears. In the goddamn river. “What the fuck?”
YOU CAN HAVE MY HEART, IF YOU HAVE THE STOMACH TO TAKE IT.
The world is quiet all around her. Neither even the crickets nor the birds chirp to tell each other, “I am alive!” Katarine moves only enough to keep herself afloat. Slowly, gently, a breeze weaves its way between the trees and rustle the spring leaves. Inch by precious inch, the earth fits back into place. She exhales a breath she did not know she was holding and the water ripples before her lips. Somehow, this surprises her.
The moment is enough to distract her from the creature drawing near the shore. When he speaks, she rises from the depths like a dream - glowing soft porcelain in a haze of stardust pooling all around her. She bears her fangs, the death of dreams. Her wake sends silver fish somersaulting in the current as she pulses her way toward him.
The scales along her body cloud with frost the moment the chill air kisses them. “Never seen a woman before?” she breathes as she glides onto land, trading fins for long legs. Her aubergine eyes trace every inch of him and measure the rate of his pulse against the flesh of his throat.
She finds herself fond of those wild yellow eyes inside his skull. (How long would they keep that hue if she stole them away?) The dreadful ideas come rushing to her all at once and she decides she will have to keep him here long enough to find out.
He is used to solid things - trees, the earth beneath his feet. Or predictable - the flowers he grows, the souls he summons, the way the sun drips between the trees. His life does not allow for the unknown, the unsudden. He does not like it. The way the sun’s dusty kiss floats off of her, the way the river is undisturbed by her step- it is not right. Nothing is right.
She is not right.
This thought ripples through his brain - a resounding echo, the further she approaches. Nothing makes sense.She is moonlight in the dusky haze. She is all teeth, but none of them equine. She is glowing like the moonlight - but not throughout the trees. It is unnatural. It is not where he should be.
She rises like the moon, and the riverbank the horizon. But she is something hideously unnatural. Her teeth are the very shards that live on the bottom of the river - shards that those who are too weak get caught on. Her eyes hold nothing save for hunger. The river flees in her stance. She is not right.
She is immediately sharp and cold and all of winter when she arises - with the smoking hiss that rises from the river. She is not right. And Wu steps back, ears pinned, as she slithers onto land. The wood is too far now - and this is his penance for stepping too far away. He should have stayed - his souls and his solstice flowers. He should not have come here.
He falters everywhere. Not just his voice, but his step away, his (should be involuntary) reaction) - everything, everything, everything. What was once a creature, is now a.. ‘Woman’.
‘No.’ The only woman he had truly seen was his mother. But he remembered enough that she did not look like this serpentine, fanged, lavender, thing.. ‘’I’m not really sure you’re supposed to look like.. this.” Another step back, at he looked at her in full - not quite sure if she was all real, or not. “I haven’t been around, lately.” An excuse, but not entirely untruthful. “But no, I don’t recall… this”.
His eyes do not leave her fangs.
YOU CAN HAVE MY HEART, IF YOU HAVE THE STOMACH TO TAKE IT.
She has never been certain, even of the ‘certain’ things. There is mystery even in the most concrete things around her. Her brother has taught her to be wary and follow her gut. Whether he meant to is unknown to her.
But right now her gut tells her that he is a prey animal. Katarine reads this in the way his eyes linger around the sharper points of her and not on the way she glows or the feather-soft veil of stars she leaves in her wake. He smells like dirt and leaves and the wild pieces of the world that the hunted normally keep to.
I’m not really sure you’re supposed to look like… this.
He speaks the words and a laugh comes tumbling carelessly from her lips. Her chin tucks down to give a timid stare from beneath long eyelashes. “What should I look like, then?” she coos, presses that frosted body to his. There is a warmth across his skin that feels like the summer sun when she emerges from the coldest depths. A sigh eases from her lungs and she shifts her weight. It feels like if she toys with him too much, he’ll run off into the woods he had only just emerged from. Better to ease up on him for now.
“Are you supposed to look the way you do?” she asks with a tilt of her pale head. Katarine doesn’t mean to stare at his throat for so long, but the habit is so deeply engrained into who she is. She forces her lavender eyes to drift back to the river.
“I like to swim. If I was any different, I doubt I could.” And here she shrugs. She did not ask for teeth or songs or stars. The scaled girl has only ever loved her fins and gills, the least threatening pieces of her. That she eats meat is merely a byproduct of her gifts
