"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
When she comes home from the battle grounds, she is victorious in more ways than one.
The land splits open before her, the hill she stands on racing down into the bowl-like heart of the kingdom. The wind pulls at her mane and tail, a southerly gale that urges her to follow the spill of green and return to everything she cherishes. Because somewhere down there, her son waits with his questioning eyes. She knows she has a lot to answer for (so much that she wonders how many sunrises and sunsets will come to pass before she’s through with her truths). She knows that he will worry for her if she tells them all. She knows that he will worry more if she keeps them behind pressed lips any longer.
She also knows that he will accept her, faults and all, because she is his mother.
Still, the weight is not any easier to bear.
Talulah finally moves her feet and meets his gaze and spills her truths. And when she is at least free of them, she can feel the freedom, everywhere and all at once. Her legs loosen with the knowledge that they won’t be running – not for a long while, because here is the pause she’s waited for. Her lungs fill more readily, effectively; her breaths are no longer stunted by all the words she’s unwittingly held back. And her heart seems to slow to a pace that is nearly as untroubled as her unbridled youth. She swears it sings when Ramiel doesn’t turn her away.
And then the unimaginable happens.
Her angel comes home. Tiphon’s light is fleeting and hesitating, but she spies it in the fall. He is there soon after, real, guiding, magnificent; she does not turn him away.
Now, the familiar pains are a welcome sign. Talulah finds the same place she’d birthed Ramiel – a high spot between the shelter of pines overlooking the river below – and falls to the ground. The pain is severe this time, as if Lupei’s white-fire has followed and cursed her long after the end of their challenge. She grits her teeth and sets her jaw. It is nothing less than she deserves, nothing less than she’s earned after the last half a dozen years. Finally, when she wonders if this child will be her end (after everything else she’s been through, how could something so pure drain her?), it slips from her.
It, she thinks, recoiling at the sight of the foal. What have I done? The monster flails under its cloak of afterbirth, desperate for its first taste of air. And for a second, the metal-mare thinks she won’t provide it. How easy it would be to leave it here, looking for all the world like the mistake it must be. She closes her eyes once, twice. Life, death. Then she works furiously to clean the undead child. Her body shakes and she’s not sure if it’s lingering birth-pains or repulsion for the nearness of her own foal.
05-06-2016, 09:50 PM (This post was last modified: 05-06-2016, 09:53 PM by Tiphon.)
We danced with monsters through the night
While he had originally been reluctant to find her Tiphon couldn’t resist any longer. His heart yearned for her – her smile, her voice, her warmth – and he couldn’t control himself any longer. The years had blinked away (a decade is a beat of the heart when immortal) and he had begun to crave her, need her. ”Talulah,” he breathed her name into her skin as his heart fluttered against his chest. He had missed her so much.
They come together again. It’s the first time since their reunion, since their passions gripped them and took control. A smile spreads across his face; it warms him from the very core. His happiness wants to consume him, but there is still the darkness clouding his thoughts and reminding him of Tiberios. Even years after his son’s demise, the nightmare of it still haunts Tiphon. Often he wonders if a day will come that the burden will be lifted. The loss reminds him how delicate life is for the mortals and how easily he can lose another child of his. It’s out of his power and yet he feels like it’s his fault. If only his own immortality could bleed into his children. If only…
He watches from afar as she gives birth, his heart leaping. Another child, a sibling for Ramiel. The minutes feel like hours to Tiphon as he begins to pace along the crest of a hill, waiting. His molten eyes dance back to her every so often but every time he looks she is still down and still occupied.
A long breath is drawn in. His nerves are tingling when he takes a final glance to see her staring at the bundle behind her. The child is here, scrambling around in its sac. What strikes him as odd, however, is the absent smile on Talulah’s face. Tiphon’s eyes flicker between the two figures as he descends toward her and he notices her concern. ”What’s wro—“ he cuts himself off when he looks down to truly see the child for the first time. It isn’t the golden sheen glimmering from its coat that distracts him, but the protruding bone and lifeless appearance. ”… But it’s alive,” he whispers more to himself as he reaches down to touch the frail filly. It jerks underneath his touch and looks at him with golden eyes. They’re piercing, stabbing into him and clawing his heart.
”She looks like my father,” his voice is low as he murmurs into Talulah's ear somberly, ”This is my fault.” Tiphon leans down to press his muzzle against the cool metal of her neck. ”I’m so sorry.” The world is laughing at him now, mocking him for having lost his son. Now the world sees it fit to hand him a child that is already dead.
Is this punishment for having killed his parents?
Is this some cruel joke?
Is this real?
The child peers up at her parents with a deadened stare, observing their confusion and concern. She’s different, she gathers, and so she looks back across her shoulders to see her sunken in body and pieces of exposed muscle and flesh. She doesn’t look like her parents. Mother is a creature of silver metal and father is blessed by the heavens above. So why does she look like Hell spat her out? Swallowing a breath she tries to muster the strength and ability to speak for the very first time. ”I’m a monster,” it’s a statement, not a question. It’s a realization, not an idea. Beneath their stares she feels inferior and so she looks away and tries her best to ignore her father’s apologies to mother.
She doesn’t feel him lingering behind her during the birth. For once, his presence isn’t like her own heartbeat, obvious and sustaining. Worry hides everything from her, takes away her joy and revels in the new lines creasing her tired face. Because as she looks at the foal - her daughter - she seems to look through it at first. She sees, not the angelic face of an innocent taking its first gulp of mountain air, but a sinewy, raw tangle of limbs and hair. She sees that there will be no normalcy for such a child, no sense of belonging in a world full of the otherwise whole and beautiful. She sees all the mockery and disgust and isolation. She sees that the world is a cruel beast that rips apart and maims little girls, and that there is no way to combat it.
It is not fair.
She is powerless.
More than anything, she finds fault with herself. Life or death had swung like a pendulum above the undead filly’s ears, and when she pulled her head down to clean the girl, she had also pulled down death. Even having chosen life, she is filled with a sense of dread. What kind of a mother lets something like this live? What sort of woman puts their own selfish need for a miracle above their better senses?
But the hope swirling in her breast is like a light slow to die out.
Talulah remembers how it felt to tell the truth; she remembers cutting the tethers from her heels and feeling lifted, free – as if the rules of gravity had no hold on her any longer. The truth is that she loves this child. She loves that Tiphon had found his home with her again, that their souls had sparked at the welcome sight of each other’s. She loves that they had bared themselves before entwining again, silver meeting gold, and made another walking reminder of their adoration. How could she end their newest child’s life for its differences, for its potential to be mocked and prodded, before it has had a chance? The monster would then be found in her own reflection, not staring back at her from the place she’s just entered the world.
Her guardian comes then. He is like the sun after a storm that only she had been caught in. And one look into his worried, metallic eyes tells her that she will keep one secret from him to the grave. She will tell him all the rest (the way that Jason had been another kind of angel, how she had tasted the white-hot flames on her lips and craved the afterburn), but not this. Not that she had almost ended his daughter out of pity and revulsion. As if he can read her thoughts, she turns from holding his gaze and leans her head against his leg.
“Tiphon.” The undead-girl-with-no-name watches them watch her, her golden eyes understanding more of what they see each passing moment. Talulah can see that she is not so different from her other children, apart from the flesh peeling off of her in strips like an accordion. She wants to learn and breath and feel like the rest of them; she is living, even if she looks one step from the grave. The porcelain stallion’s words drop like a lead weight in Talulah’s ears. “Like your father…” she repeats, like the family you refused to tell me about all these years. For a moment, she wants to be angry. Because maybe if she’d known, maybe if he’d let her in all those decades ago, this wouldn’t have happened. They could be together still, but they wouldn’t have had another child. Maybe they had been lucky with Ramiel. Maybe their luck has run out.
But it is no good now. He knows it as much as she does, and when he apologizes, she cuts him off with a shake of her head. She can feel his muzzle sliding along her smooth neck at the sudden motion. “She’s special – a miracle.” The metal-mare looks from Tiphon to their zombie daughter, a fire igniting in her stare. She must believe it – they all must for this to work. The girl calls herself a monster and it nearly breaks her heart all over again. “You are a miracle.” How else could someone live with such deformities? How could someone survive in such a state of gore and not be in pain? But there is one thing she cannot do. “Please,” she looks to him, her eyes more desperate and lost when the filly can’t see. “She needs a name.” What do you call a monst-- a miracle? What kind of name suits such a girl?
05-10-2016, 04:13 PM (This post was last modified: 05-10-2016, 04:14 PM by Tiphon.)
BUT HOW COULD YOU KNOW THE SWEETEST SUFFERING OF MOVING ON
When Tiphon looks at their daughter he sees the fates laughing at him. This is for killing your parents.
A small piece of flesh sloughs off the girl. This is a reminder of your children’s’ mortality.
The child breathes and he sees part of her rib protrude through her paper-thin skin. This is for your suffering.
Their daughter’s voice scrapes against his ears like nails on a chalkboard.
It hurts so much to look at her and Talulah both. They could be so beautiful together but when he sees the child he only sees Infection. He sees a past that he has kept hidden for decades. In his chest the beat of his heart patters. All of this is his fault and he can see Talulah wanting to make the best of it. Together they created Ramiel, and what a handsome boy he was. He had no flaws. They tried again and this is the end result. This is what mockery is.
Tiphon draws in a slow breath and tries to swallow the situation, but grace is fleeting. It escapes him as easily as wind through fingers.
He almost speaks but then she repeats his one statement: Like my father. It’s the father that he has never uttered a word about. It’s a character in a story that he has never told to anyone. A lump forms in his throat as fear branches through him. Will she push the subject? Closing his eyes Tiphon waits for a question or a remark, but it never comes. Instead he hears the word “miracle.” It doesn’t immediately register with him what she is referring to, but when he opens his eyes he sees Talulah looking at their daughter. ”Miracle,” he repeats in disbelief, his voice gravely and confused, but still somehow firm. A miracle she’s even alive, he almost says but holds his tongue. He shouldn’t be so cruel to a child just minutes out of the womb. It isn’t her fault that she was cursed with his genetics.
”Our children are both touched by death,” he murmurs into Talulah’s ear as his muzzle reaches down to her poll to obscure his moving lips. ”Ramiel with ghost shifting and now this,” somehow Tiphon digs deep enough to find humor in the situation, but he doubts that she will do the same. The girl lifts and turns her head at the sound of her father’s voice, but she isn’t listening. Her attention dives past them toward the trees and stream nearby. Then it jumps to the bluebirds singing in the branches and the doe nuzzling her fawn in the meadow. Everything is so beautiful and so lively. The colors around them are vibrant. The kingdom is simply majestic.
So why isn’t she?
When she truly looks at her parents, observing their closeness, she scrutinizes the way they lean against each other and their appearance. ”Metal,” she whispers, ”with an angel, brings death.” The innocence of her eyes flashes as they narrow in skepticism. ”Is death a miracle?” She looks at mother more closely and envies the smooth metallic finish of her skin. ”I’m not whole. I don’t look like either of you… What’s wrong with me?” And suddenly the childish innocence has returned to her voice and stare as it falls to her own peeled skin. Tiphon sighs in response and hesitates by looking over to Talulah. Perhaps she is able to more easily coat her words and mask her disappointment. He struggles. The only way that he is able to think of a name is by focusing on Talulah and no one else, like they don’t have a daughter lying there.
In his head he pictures her pregnant with a child as beautiful as the sunrise or as the starry night sky. ”Elaria,” the name is silk on his tongue, suitable for anyone except their undead child, but he can’t bring himself to name her like his father (a disgusting name to announce her flaws). It’s a cheerful name. It’s a name threaded with his lost hope of having a beautiful daughter.
