"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
— and how long must I stay, will I lay by your side just to say that I’m yours and you’ll never be mine;
She does not think she was supposed to last this long.
It defied all that she knew to be true, to be one of the things that remains standing after all the turmoil and upheaval that Beqanna has endured. It did not make sense that she—something that had been designed to break from the start—would be one of the things still intact, still whole.
She had so often thought her mother to be overprotective to a fault; she had refused to believe that she was as delicate as her mother thought her to be. She knew that that glass heart of hers may not be able to withstand the blows that another could, but she did not think herself to be so fragile, so weak, that she needed to be shielded.
It was not until she watched the world fall apart—watched how easily mountains crumbled and entire kingdoms fell—that she fully reconciled with the idea that she is just as breakable as everyone had feared her to be.
She guards herself better now, because of it. She keeps to the quiet parts of the meadow, watching the world with soft lilac-colored eyes and a quiet longing, but she does not dare to get too close.
Gale started under neon lights, then it all got dark i only know how to go too far
The emptiness on the other side of the river has not changed in the years he has watched it. There was the far bank, and the trees, and then…
Each time he tried to look farther, his gaze slid away. His attempts to cross had only ever been that - attempts. There was nothing tangible to find. He had tried far below the earth and miles above it, but each time he had found…nothing. There was no barrier to throw himself against, no complex shield he might dismantle. There is simply nothing at all.
He’d tried throwing lightning at it once, only to watch the bolts snap out of existence. It had been a flare of temper, but the results soon had him trying other things, just to watch them vanish. Flames, water, leaves, and this morning he’d even tossed an entire yellow-leafed aspen.
What about something living, he wonders. He tries himself at first, jumping, flying, and falling, but with no change to his earlier attempts. He heads toward a seemingly impossible collision and then…doesn’t collide. He tries Erne next, tossing the black osprey across the river, but his companion has the same experience he had. So Gale asks another bird, and this one (a brownish sparrow) disappears just like the aspen had.
Intrigued, he tries a small hare.
Another successful vanishing.
Curious if size is a factor, he next tries a badger, whose thick grey body disappears.
Motion at the corner of his eye drags him from his contemplation. It’s a horse, and has arrived at an opportune moment in his hypothesizing.
— and how long must I stay, will I lay by your side just to say that I’m yours and you’ll never be mine;
She should have been paying closer attention to her surroundings, but the sound of the man’s voice seems to come from nowhere, cutting off her aimless thoughts and catching her off guard.
She does not know why she had assumed she was alone; no one is ever truly alone here.
“...me?” she asks, confused because rarely did anyone ask for her help with anything. But there is no one else within their vicinity that he could be speaking to, and she cannot deny that curiosity has gotten the best of her. Against her better judgment and promise to herself to be more careful, she moves towards him, her glass hooves making the occasional odd clink against a rock.
He looks vaguely familiar but she cannot remember if she has met him before — she has been alone for so long that her memories feel like ghosts, faded and intangible. It seemed to be a lifetime ago since she last saw her parents, her twin, or the blue-marked boy that used to haunt her dreams; all the other faces that she has met in passing are even harder to recall.
She follows his gaze to where he had been looking across the river, but cannot seem to find what he is looking at, her eyes unable to focus on any one thing. What used to be there, she finds herself wondering? It is almost frustrating how bad her memory seems to be — she is sure there used to be something distinguishable across the river, but what was it? Beqanna had undergone so many changes in a relatively short span of time that she had stopped paying attention, but this felt different, as if the truth was being kept behind a veil. “What are we looking at?”
hourglass
— with this love like a hole, swallow my soul —
if you dont want to continue this thread just wait 3 months to reply @ Gale
Gale started under neon lights, then it all got dark i only know how to go too far
“Yes. You,” Gale replies, beckoning her nearer without taking his gaze from place across the River. She complies, slowly enough that he tears his attention away to ensure that she’s not changed her mind. He looks her over with a curious electric blue gaze, and the flicker of recognition he feels is enough to make him look away.
His memory is too good, so he does not give himself time to think why she might be familiar. It is far too likely that it is for something he’d like to forget. Too much life has passed since their first meeting, and what it contained reaches out toward the rest of his memories like the creeping shadows that he had finally shed. Their touch remains, and he glances down toward his feet as though expecting to find them there.
Nothing.
What are you looking at? She asks, and he looks back up with a shrug, grateful for the distraction.
“I’m not entirely sure,” he answers, his words trailing off as he turns his attention back to the nothing. “But I’ve been trying to figure it out.”
“I can’t cross it. I was wondering if you might be able to.”
— and how long must I stay, will I lay by your side just to say that I’m yours and you’ll never be mine;
She cannot quite keep the unease that stirs in her chest from reflecting back in her lilac eyes when he voices his request. “If you can’t do it, what makes you think I can do it? Look at you, and look at me,” she says the last word with an air of exasperation, tilting her head in a gesture towards the smooth, chestnut-red glass of her body. While for the most part she has made it through the world largely unscathed, she is not entirely unmarred—a chip here, a scratch in the glass there. When she was younger she had ignored all of her mother’s warnings and pleas to be more careful, and her lack of caution showed. It’s only recently that she began to behave like the breakable thing she realizes she is.
But she doesn’t want to be fragile; she wants to be able to throw herself headlong into the nothing and see what happens, she wants to have the privilege of recklessly satisfying both their curiosities without wondering if she will only shatter against it.
So instead she inhales a steadying breath, looking in concentration across the river for a long moment, and then back to him. “So how do you propose I do it? Just…walk across? Get a running start and jump?” Her heart gives a thrilled little skip at the idea of this experiment. What will she find on the other side? What if the nothing swallows her up and she can’t find her way back? What if she doesn’t want to?
Gale started under neon lights, then it all got dark i only know how to go too far
He’d seen her skin catch the light in an unnatural manner, but hadn’t looked closely. To look too long is to risk remembering. It is easier to never look at anyone for too long, to keep the bright blue of his sharp gaze away from everyone he comes across.
But she does ask him to, and he reasons that it is best to understand all the variables in the experiment.
He glances up at the sun for a quick moment, to see where it shines, then back at the red glass mare. His vision slides across her - the hairline fractures, the chip, the scratches. She’d shatter into something deadly.
“I was going to…” there is the barest moment of hesitation, as though he reconsiders honesty, then plunges ahead: “throw you over. But that seems less wise now, considering, well…” this time he trails off to gesture toward the fragile expanse of her red chestnut figure.
Exhaling a sharp snort, he turns back to the Nothing.
When he crosses the river, he can walk for hours. Yet no matter how long he walks, the moment he turns around he is once more standing on this side of the river. He’s walked for months. Throwing himself at this insurmountable mystery, of a magic far beyond his abilities, has consumed him, and the possibility that he’s found a loophole has driven him to distraction.
It is at that very moment that a small brown sparrow flies out of the mist, scolding him with a series of short sharp chirps as it swoops off toward the distant Forest. Gale sighs. The hare and badger will likely return soon as well. A failed experiment.
He turns to walk away, only to find the chestnut mare standing in front of him. She’d not moved, but Gale had forgotten she was there entirely, and blinks in bewilderment for a few heartbeats, just as she asks him what she’s to do.
Right. The glass mare he remembers but refuses to allow himself to linger on why.
That is harder to do now, with her right in front of him and a temporary hiatus on his fixation on the Nothingness. It takes only a moment, a too long glance into her lilac eyes and then the swirl of the star on her chest.
“Hourglass.” He says, and its not a question because he does not - cannot - forget a thing. But the memory of their last meeting is not a bad one. She is not a memory he wants to forget, and there are so few of those that he cannot add the possibility of her shattering to his list of crimes. So rather than instruct her, he continues, rather awkwardly, “So you made it through the Eclipse.”
— and how long must I stay, will I lay by your side just to say that I’m yours and you’ll never be mine;
She hopes he cannot see the way her face falls when he finally realizes she is too fragile for whatever he had planned. She is used to this, of course; she is always too fragile, and she is always the last to accept it.
She supposes it is for the best, anyway. What would she have done had she actually made it across? She is not a skilled fighter, and there is no telling what the other side of the river is hiding. Beqanna’s magic could be beautiful, but so rarely could it be trusted. Nothing was ever as simple as an earthquake or a storm or an eclipse, and it seemed as though everywhere that magic took root, some sort of darkness bloomed to offset it.
Her eyes follow a sparrow returning from the Unknown, and her delicate head tilts, the very beginnings of an idea starting to form. It would be too late to peer through the sparrow’s vision now, but what if…. “Maybe I could try to find something that lives over there and look through their sight?” she says, as if that is an entirely normal thing to say. She can only assume that he is as accustomed to everyone’s individual abilities as she is.
In her distraction of formulating her own idea she had not noticed that he was about to walk away, and she glances back towards him, he is looking at her as if he is finally seeing her.
“Gale,” she says with a smile, her lilac eyes lit with delight, oblivious to whatever he is wrestling with within his mind. “You do remember me.” She has no idea the type of chaos his curse had caused; she still sees him as the amiable stallion she had met all those years ago, just after the Alliance, and her joy in seeing him again is genuine. “I did, and so did you. And it looks like now we’ve found ourselves another mystery.”
Gale started under neon lights, then it all got dark i only know how to go too far
Gale does not pay attention to Hourglass’ suggestion that she might share the vision of something beyond the barrier. Gale had tried that already. There is nothing - no one - that he can find there, not with any amount of his magic. He cannot forget what she had said, but he did ignore it - at least for now.
When he’d turned back, the joy with which she greets him is unexpected and contagious, and the smile he offers in return is immediate, flashing as bright and quick as lightning. It lasts for only a moment, for the time it takes to untangle her emotions from his own and shred apart the magic that made such Empathy possible. The grin, which had illuminated the sharp planes of his face, quickly fades into an amicable nod of agreement that yes: he does remember her. He is remembering now, their encounter in the darkness. She’d been adrift then, and he wonders if she is still doing the same now, with the sun to guide her way as she wanders.
‘We’ve found ourselves another mystery’, she continues, sanguine and shimmering in the sunlight. She reminds him of a jewel, Gale thinks. He takes a step closer, his attention caught by the rough edges of a crack. The damage has created a myriad of tiny facets, which vanish in the shadow he casts.
Drawing back at that, the intense curiosity that had appeared in Gale’s expression as he contemplated the small fracture is now focused instead on Hourglass, and after a few blinks and a moment of silence, he thinks back to before, to the social cues to which he’s expected to respond.
A mystery. Look through another’s sight. The way her face had fallen when he’d referenced her fragility.
“At least there are no monsters with this one.” He says. And there aren’t, not like there had been in the darkness of the Eclipse. That is a good thing, he thinks, casting about for something positive to add to the conversation. “I think you could start fires, if you caught the sun just right.” That feels like a compliment as he thinks it, and so he offers it with an accompanying smile.
— and how long must I stay, will I lay by your side just to say that I’m yours and you’ll never be mine;
The smile that he returns to her nearly catches her off guard — so fleeting and bright like a shooting star streaking across a barren sky, the kind you find yourself wishing you had been paying closer attention so that you might not have missed it.
And it is only then in the shadow that the brightness had left behind that she realizes how different he seemed from the last time she saw him. The smile had felt like a window to something she was not supposed to see, to a past version of himself that did not really exist anymore, and she feels almost guilty for witnessing it.
She can’t claim to have known him, not really; they are strangers by most definitions. But she remembers how easily they had smiled and laughed, even with the pressing darkness. If something had been wrong the last time she saw him then it had only just started, or maybe he had just been better at hiding it. She has never been in the position where she had to hide anything, but she imagines that secrets must be heavy, draining things, and she couldn’t blame him for not having the energy to pretend any longer.
“That we know of,” she says in response to what he says about monsters, looking again across the river. “Maybe they’re hiding over there. Maybe that’s why we aren’t meant to go across.” She laughs a little as she says it, because she knows it is silly. Beqanna didn’t usually do much to protect them, though she didn’t necessarily purposely harm them, either. Not if you were smart enough to not stay away from the places she was so clearly trying to keep you out of.
She glances down at herself at his comment about starting a fire, and for a moment worry floods her face, her lilac-colored eyes darkening with it. “You don’t think I could actually do that, right? That’s the last thing I need, burning the whole place down by accident…” she trails off just a bit, trading in the worry for a distracted kind of thoughtfulness before asking, “have you tried setting it on fire?”
Gale started under neon lights, then it all got dark i only know how to go too far
“Mhm.” The thoughtful sound is hardly more than a rumble, one that fades into nothing as he contemplates for several long seconds. He wishes it had been a more difficult question, one that would have taken him longer to think about, longer to collect himself.
“No.” He finally says, the word soft, and then again, more firmly: “No, I don’t think you could on, not accidently. You’d have to stand very still, long enough for it to probably be uncomfortable. Even asleep, you’d shift enough to change the angle of the light.”
Have you tried setting it on fire? She asks, and Gale lifts his gaze to hers, surprise brightening his already electric eyes. “I haven’t.” He replies, and turns away, his attention diverted back to the impenetrable barrier
Ineffective.
The fire was ineffective, no matter how hot it blazed. Gale does not know how long he tried - certainly long enough to be rude to the glass creature beside him.
“No luck.” He tells her, suspecting that the words were unnecessary. “Though I suppose any monsters there are probably not feeling their best.” Gale thinks that it will sound like a joke, as though he makes light of the possibility of monsters they cannot see. It has been a very long time since he has made a joke though, and perhaps he simply sounds droll.
Gale