"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
hold my hand, it's a long way down to the bottom of the river
She is restless by nature, with yearning in her veins and wanderlust in her heart. It comes from the years of early solitude, of belonging to nothing but the lonely in-between places. The longer she stays here the stranger it feels, and although it is not a bad feeling, it is sometimes unsettling. To have spent half of her life learning to accept that she would never have family, that she did not deserve it, that she would never know the peace of safety, of belonging, and then one day have that world turned upside down and all those truths torn apart is something that is not easily accepted. It is even harder to believe. So there will always be that sliver of doubt wedged like infection into the flesh of her heart and she will never, never know how to heal it.
When she had woken from a fitful sleep to find that Offspring had gone and the boys had disappeared to carve out a quiet place from the bruised dark of the night, it had been all too easy to slip through the narrow tundra gate and fade away into the cold, silver starlight. She hadn’t known where it was her feet carried her, especially now with her belly so full, so thick, so swollen with child, but it hadn’t mattered. She had spent every year of her early life like a ghost trapped within a world that couldn’t quite see her. Drifting without direction was something she knew well. But about the same time she realized that her heart carried her home to her mother, to forests beneath the chambers mountain range, she realized, too, that she had been followed. But neither Argo nor Nevi were easily deterred by her appeals for them to go back home, that she would join them soon, so on they went together.
It was slow going for Isle, but slower still for Argo who she noticed lagged quietly behind, though always without complaint. Nevi tended to stay by his shoulder and they shared in the easy quiet as though their understanding of each other ran well beyond verbal conversation and spoken word. Still, Isle could not shake the uneasiness she felt when after each break they took, Argo still did not seem to bounce back from the weariness that seemed to drape over him like shadow. So they continued on and took much pleasure and refuge from the company of their wild red grandmother, of Isle’s mother, Oksana. They stayed nearly a day and Oksana drew them to her with the same amount of fierce possessiveness she directed at everything these days. But as morning bled pink across the sky and they blinked sleep from tired, content eyes, they knew this visit had come to a close.
It wasn’t until they had cleared the mountains and entered the belly of the forest that everything fell apart. She should have known by the gnawed on carcasses of those lost in the wars, should have known by the stink of wet dog that clung to the moss on the trees and the pale bellies of the leaves on the lower plants. But she was foolish, so foolish, and it wasn’t until the small pack had surrounded them that she realized something, everything, was wrong. It was reflexive the way she and Nevi fell into place to defend their beautiful black and white boy, reflexive when they used their bodies to shield his already fading self from claws and snapping teeth. There was hardly a fight at all, nothing drawn out once the mottled white wolves realized this prey would not be easily felled, but Isle saw the way they looked at her baby, at her fragile Argo. She would’ve skinned them all if she could. All shaken and sporting various injuries, they kept moving, none of them slowing until they had cleared the edge of the shadowy forest.
In the watery light of day, it was easier to see the damage the wolves had left. Isle had a spot on her dark neck where teeth had managed a shallow hold and peeled back skin and fur to reveal something pink and sticky and dripping beneath it. It felt thick and swollen and entirely on fire, and there were pains in her shoulder and stomach from using her body like a wall. Nevi seemed even worse off, and there were punctures torn into his leg where he had kicked a wolf away from them, a slash open by claws in the fleshy part by his flank. But as she drew close and showered them in anxious affections, tracing her lips across the plains of their dark flesh, her heart unclenched just a little when she was certain the wolves hadn’t landed any fatal blows on either of her sons.
They didn’t rest long, none of them felt comfortable anymore, and although Argo looked like he might fall off his feet at any moment, they pushed on. But the pain in her stomach grew and grew until she realized quite belatedly that it was not an injury suffered by the wolves, but rather that her newest child was on their way. They made it just past the Falls territory and hid themselves at the edge of one of the herdlands in time for Isle to surrender to her body and turn their three into four. The birth was uncomplicated, and though all of them were hurt and exhausted and struggling with wounds that leeched strength from them, they were up and moving again by the following morning. Australis was a beautiful thing, all wide, bright eyes and exuberance, and she in no way understood what strange circumstances she had been born into. She was obedient though, only now, only in this newness, and she remained pressed against Isle’s hip as they finished the journey back up the mountain and to the safety of home.
Isle sees him immediately, and the desperate ache to curl into the safety of his embrace nearly chokes her. But even at this distance she can trace those rigid lines of tension racing along his dark, feathered body, can see the sharpness in his expression when those red eyes burn holes into her delicate face. She exchanges a wordless look with Nevi as they file through the gate, her stomach tightening at the way Argo moves sluggishly beside him. With the soft of her white nose, she pushes Australis along behind them, and the sleepy filly obliges without fuss, tucking herself against Nevi as the trio disappear. Only when all three have gone does Isle close her eyes and steel herself for the storminess that she can almost feel seeping off of her feathery king. When she opens her eyes again they are dark and bruised with swelling torment, but she lowers her neck and approaches the black tattooed stallion with a reluctance that hurts her heart. She stops close but not beside him, leaving cold, open space between them, and trying futilely to hide the wound on her neck from him. But even if he can’t see it, he will notice the pink smears against the whites on her body, tokens of smaller wounds, and smell the copper stink of blood and ruined flesh where it collects in a wet mat around the flayed open skin of her neck.
For a long moment she can say nothing, and her shame burns hotter than any fever when her thoughts drift back to Nevi and Argo and how her selfishness had put them in needless danger. The silence is oppressive, she is drowning in it, drowning in more exhaustion than she has known in her whole life, so in a voice that is barely a whisper, so brittle and broken and carved from the truths in her aching heart she says, “I'm no good for this family.”
BROTHER, LET ME BE YOUR FORTRESS, WHEN THE NIGHT WINDS ARE DRIVING ON.
I CAN BE THE ONE TO LIGHT YOUR WAY; I WILL BRING YOU HOME.
He is filled with hot, unadulterated rage. A fierce surge of ferocity bloods through his veins as he paces a thin line across the barren landscape of the ground beneath him, his hefty prints firmly displacing the soil, pebble and layer of frost that now encases the ground in the thick of night. He exhales heavily, his breath fraught with anxiety as a heavy puff of air lingers before him. The temperature has long since dropped, and it is only a matter of time until their bitter autumn turns into a frigid winter - and he worries. Beneath his steely exterior of anger and angst is the weight and burden of concern that had settled in mere hours upon realizing that he had become very, very much alone.
Gone were his sons, both delicate in their own ways - and gone was the warmth of his lover, who was now so heavy with child and so late in term. She was overdue, this he knew - this birth had not come as early as the others had, and it put her in a terrible position of danger, and the welfare of their child surely depended on how soon he or she would emerge from her womb. She had been so swollen when he had seen her last, when he had attempted to soothe her woes and anxieties with his whiskered kisses in the dead of night - but it hadn't been enough. It was never enough. There would always be a seed of doubt deep within her mind; there would always be a piece of her that could never belong to him, and it is this knowledge that feeds into his bitter rage.
When he realizes she has gone, that she has taken her two small sons with her, he is inconsolable. He knows of the dangers that lurk within the thick mountain lining beyond their borders. He knows of the wicked weather that threatens so slightly to appear at any moment, to blanket them in frost and tight, brutal winds, leaving them exposed to the elements - to the dangers of the night. His fiery eyes burn with fury when he sees his daughters, Lieschel and Maribel, concerned and worried - and what would he say if she were to never return? If their precious Argo and Neverwas were lost to the world, to the harsh realities of life?
It is so simple, so easy to forget how dangerous life can be. Their secure border and tight watch leave their lands barren not only of strangers, but of more earthly dangers. The caves protect them from the unkind winds, from the thick layers of snow that envelope them each winter. The walls protect them from the lurking, peering eyes of predators, which so surely crave the wet, hot blood and ripe flesh of a young life, or perhaps a rounded, swollen womb - open for shredding, for tearing. The stillness of the icy flatland leave those who linger behind that very same icy wall into a false sense of security, but nothing in life is ever certain. Nothing in life is ever safe.
And now, she is gone. And he waits.
He knows where she has gone. She thinks that he is unaware, that he hasn't a clue, but he can smell the warm stench of burnt wood each and every time she disappears from him. He knows that she goes to family, and this, he does not mind - he would never stop her, nor has he ever - but this time, she has gone too far. A whipping wind soars through the canyon as he peers anxiously into the pitch blackness of night, though the sun has begun to rise and will soon blanket them in its warm light - but for now, there is nothing but dawn and his fiery, red hot gaze set upon her as she pushes past the threshold of their boundary line.
His heart aches immediately. Searing relief, unwavering love and flooding anger washes over him as if it were a drenching rain, his eyes following as his sons limp and weakly move towards a nearby cave. He sees Neverwas, with thick streams of drying blood along his leg, and Argo, nearly untouched but exhausted, broken, close to collapsing. He sees a small female accompany them, her sweet doe eyes meeting with his for the briefest moment, and he realizes with a heavy anguish that strangles his too-big heart that she is his - that she has been birthed from Isle's now empty womb, their resemblance unmistakable. He aches, now, wanting to move towards her, wanting to touch her and to touch their sons and to ensure that they are more than a mirage - but he doesn't.
As they disappear into a cave for comfort, warmth and rest, his gaze turns again to his sweet Isle, though her presence has left nothing but a bitter, acrid flavor in his mouth. He watches her carefully, observing her and inhaling the thick stench of metallic copper as he stares intently at the flap of flesh that hangs from her, revealing too much of his perfect beauty's internal structure. Again, he surges with rage. His bites his tongue and waits for her to speak, and though he would love to move to her aid, to use his immense power of ice to mend her wounds as he knows he can - he cannot bear to touch her now. He cannot bear to look her in the eye. He cannot bear to listen to her self-pitying mess.
"You deliberately disobey me, long after you are due - you wander off in the dead of night, when I have gone off to find you sustenance, to bring you what foliage I can, and with you, you take our sons. You disappear, without a word, and leave me to wonder. You have endangered not only yourself, but the lives of our children," His rumbling baritone rises, though he fights to steady it, he undeniably fails. "and you have the audacity to come to me, to pity yourself in this time - and that is all that you have to say? That you are no good for this family?"
His breathing is heavy, and his heart aches heavily within his chest. He is filled with anger, but also doubt. How could he have thought he could keep her satisfied? Happy? She is anything but; a fragile wreck that he has only managed to soothe with brief lustful meetings and gentle promises she apparently cares little for. She does not need him; he is not even certain that she loves him. Her actions show otherwise - untrusting of him, too frightened to speak of her fears and tell him of her desires. He cannot know if she will not tell him, and her unsettling method of betraying him and moving beneath the blanket of darkness to get away from him tells him so much more than her pathetic, broken words ever could.
"You have hurt me deeply this time, Isle. Evidently, I was right - you were unprepared. Look at you," He whispers, his resolve breaking but only for a small moment. His fury returns. "you are bloodied, you are injured, and for what? And you have given birth outside of our walls, you have ENDANGERED our children. If you had told me you would hide away into the night, that you would simply disregard everything that I said to you - then I would have come with you, in the very least, to protect you. To ensure that you were not simply shreds when you return."
He is quiet now, his cheek turned, unable to look at her. He aches to draw her near, to love her, to affectionately heal her, but he cannot. White hot pain sears through his heart, and he realizes then that pain lingering behind his crimson gaze are tears that threaten to fall. Disappointment, anguish and hurt flood him again.
"You have disrespected me for the very last time. If you wish to remain a wanderer, if you wish to live your life with one hoof outside of that gate - why do you stay?" He does not mean it, but he cannot help but to say it. "Nothing I say, nothing I have done for you has been good enough. It never will be."
This he knows, with the entirety of his being. He will never be enough.
He has never been enough.
hold my hand, it's a long way down to the bottom of the river
She doesn’t think he’ll ever understand the way wanderlust is burned like a brand into the flesh of her heart. But then neither does she. It doesn’t make any sense that she is always letting herself be pulled away from the safety of Offspring, of her family, of this cold, snowy place that somehow feels like home. But it’s like there are pieces missing still, pieces she does not know how to live without, and she cannot convince herself that it will ever be time to stop looking. Her twin brother is out there somewhere, her other half in a way that no one else could ever be. She dreams in memories, their childhood played out like stuttered images and she can remember taking care of him- or maybe he took care of her, but they were whole and together. It is when she wakes from dreams like these with a sickness borne of worry burning holes in her belly that she leaves without warning. She cannot think, cannot reason with herself. All she wants in those moments is to go to where her mother calls home, to find him there and safe and content and know that this world hadn’t managed to ruin him, too. But he is gone, always gone, like a star in the cold, black sky. She has the echoes of memories, pieces of their past, but none of it is tangible, none of it is real anymore.
I just need to know that he’s okay. She wants to tell him, to explain, but it sounds weak even to her own ears so she holds onto a silence that consumes her in the same, slow way shadow consumes the world at the end of each day. How can I sit quiet in this place I call home, beside the love of my life, surrounded by our family and not feel treachery burning me up like a fever. How can I be happy when I don’t even know if he’s okay, I don’t deserve it.
But she traps these truths, these secrets, and holds them tight against the underside of her heart where he won’t be able to find them. Instead when he pushes her away with violence in his words, she lets him. Any fight she had was long since gone; any energy gained in those rare moments of sleep must have bled away with the wound in her neck because she was just a heartbeat away from giving out. But she stayed and she swayed and her dark, beautiful face crumpled beneath the weight of everything she carried on her shoulders.
“I shouldn’t have gone,” she tells him finally, agreeing with his sentiment with much less fervor than he had spoken it, “not now, it was reckless. And I should have told you.” She swallows the rest of the sentence, the damning part. But you would have told me no and I would have gone anyways. But the next bit feels like a punch to the chest and she cannot help but gasp at the way fresh agony rolls over her in unending waves. He actually thought she had invited Argo and Nevi to go with her, that she deliberately lured them from the safety of their home. “You must think I’m a terrible mother.” Is all she can manage as she turns from him bitterly, her words sharp and barbed to match the way her heart felt where he had buried his knife. “But surely you must agree that I’m no good for this family. Didn’t I lure our children into the dangerous wild because I am selfish and disobedient?” She feels wild in her grief, in this lack of faith, and she doesn’t know why she won’t just tell him the truth. That she had left without the boys, that she had no idea they followed her until it was too late to turn around. But she won’t tell him now because there is a part of her, a furious, jagged piece that no longer thinks he deserves the truth in this moment.
She slips further away from him, just a few more stiff strides. But it is not in that wispy way that seems so second nature, not in the way shadows hide from the sun. This proximity is killing her, to be so close to the one she loves most, to want to touch and hold and be held, to have her wounds kissed until they don’t hurt, but to see only anger and disgust in a face that has only ever been kind from the very first moment.
Look at you. He says, and for the first time she hates the way it feels when his eyes pick out each individual smear of blood, the way they settle against the weeping hole in the side of her neck. She feels undone by those jack o’ lantern eyes, red and haunting and so full of disappointment when they come to rest on her face. He does turn away then, before she has a chance to, and she is startled by how much worse this feels.
When he turns back again and breaks the silence, she is only quiet, only hollow. The grief still remains, the knife he buried in her chest, but it feels suddenly unimportant. “I stay because I love you.” Not loved, love. But this confession feels like choking on glass, like she would’ve rather kept it to herself because she no longer trusts that he won’t wield this truth like a weapon against her. “But don’t ever ask me not to wander, I won’t be walled off from the rest of my family.” Her eyes are dark and bruised and she refuses to look at him for a long time. But then a note in his tone changes, the edge to his words dull just a little and her eyes flash warily to his face. “You have always been enough, Offspring, always.” She cannot help it when she drifts closer again, though her movements are awkward and stuttered from the way her body aches and protests. “Don’t ever doubt that you are mine and I am yours. I will always come back to you.”
She doesn’t close the distance between them, but she does reach across it with the soft of her nose to lip at the velvet of his dark, whiskered mouth. “You’re mine.” She says again, so much softer this time though her voice stutters with the old grief that had caught like a burr in her throat. “And you may not like it, but I’m yours.” She pauses and closes her eyes for a moment, willing him not to push her away because she isn’t sure she would have anything left in her to push back.
I thought I'd lost you, he says, and she can still feel the bruises in her chest from when he had assumed she would ever lure their children out into danger. You still might, she thinks as she pulls away from his nose, tucking her chin back to the curve of her stained, pink chest, stop pushing.
BROTHER, LET ME BE YOUR FORTRESS, WHEN THE NIGHT WINDS ARE DRIVING ON.
I CAN BE THE ONE TO LIGHT YOUR WAY; I WILL BRING YOU HOME.
Wanderlust, too, has been etched into his every movement, into his every breath. He has spent so much more time on this Earth than she, though she was none the wiser - and for the entirety of his days, he had remained a wanderer, restless and searching for an escape. For death. He had been the very epitome of wanderlust; a ceaseless figure blending into the backdrop of time - meaningless existence in motion, lost within the creeping branches of his own mind. Many of those years remained a blur of angst, sorrow and suffering. He had spent it alone, seeking, rotting from within with an aching loneliness that not many had ever experienced .. and the emotional wounds it had left behind still burnt to the touch, still seethed like a festering wound beneath the stoic, yet demure demeanor of the great ice King.
He understood her better than she knew, but he could not and would not say. He had concealed his past from her thus far, and he could not unveil his truth to her now. She knew him as a single, uncomplicated layer - a statuesque expectation of solemn calm and serenity. He need not expose her to the blistering, infected wound of his heart and mind now. He watches her, his crimson gaze scathing as he travels along the length of her body, admiring the way she curves and bends, aching for the swell of her belly - he had missed the birth of his second child with her, and this aches in a way he did not anticipate. The echoes of her self-loathing linger in the icy air, and his breath mimics its presence. He has begun to bristle again, shards of thick ice encasing his coal-painted pelt as his taut tendrils of hair weave with ice crystals.
She confesses that she should not have gone, not without a whispered word, but what digs into the depths of his pulsating heart is the way she denounces herself as a mother, something she was always meant to be. He recoils, slightly, knowing his tone and words had cut too deeply then. He had been angry - he was still angry, seething with rage beneath his icy surface - but in spite of her hanging flesh wounds, in spite of his limping and wounded children, he would never see her as anything less than what she has always been to him. In a moment of spite, of aching hurt and panic, he had lashed out, and the wounds he had cut were too deep to stitch together again.
"That is not what I mean, and you know it." He says tersely, realizing for the first time since seeing her that he has hardly breathed, that every muscle is stiff and taut and firm with worry and fury and pain. Still, he cannot breathe with her drawing away from him, pushing away from him. She confesses she loves him, and he does not flinch. His heart does not pound as it had, nor does his blood pump more heavily through his veins. Her words feel empty, meaningless, followed by a subtle threat that he could never keep her trapped as the caged bird she inevitably feels that she is.
He feels torn apart, split open by these quiet but telling words; the very carbonate makings of his rib cage split in two as he is flayed before her by her words. He had never wanted to keep her locked away in this ivory tower of ice and snow, and yet there was some piece of her wary of his intentions, certain that there was some small part of him that was attempting to. His crimson gaze studies her as she begins to shift painfully towards him, but he flinches now, his skin taut and aching to push away from the proximity of her touch, though he does not. You have always been enough, Offspring, but he knows this to be a lie. I will always come back to you, but her gaping wounds, which reek of metallic blood and flood his mind with the idea of her bloodied carcass left half-consumed in the midst of a quiet field.
She touches him now, her nose pressing to the corner of his mouth and now his thick lashes close over his dark eyes. He breathes her scent, which still lingers beneath the sweat, filth and blood, and she gives herself to him, but he cannot push himself to give in return. Rather, his searing red eyes open and he eyes the open wound at the base of her neck. He reaches and delicately, he touches his nose to the split skin and fatty tissue that hangs, threatening her very well-being with its promise of infection and suppurating death. He brushes his nose along the length of this gash, and a surge of ice begins to dwell at the flat of his nose. His breath is as icy as his touch as he seals her wound with delicate crystals, and though they are heavy and burning against her open skin, they begin to mend the split and broken tissue. Ceasing blood loss, renewing dying cells and sewing peeled and skin flesh together, he mends her, while he himself is left with the unseen lesion her words and actions have left behind.
He pulls away now, the entirety of his massive, towering body covered in thick planes of ice - his very eyelashes are now dusted in frost, and his eyes no longer burn a longing red - but a telling, powerful icy blue.
"I have never asked you not to wander, Isle," He murmurs now, his breath a drifting cloud of carbon dioxide against the freezing atmosphere. "I have only asked that you tell me when and where you have gone. You do not know me at all, this much is clear. Go, rest." He says dismissively, his heart aching still. He cannot keep her, this he knows, and he was a fool to think she would ever be content by his side.
hold my hand, it's a long way down to the bottom of the river
That is not what I mean, and you know it.
Those same dark eyes lift reluctantly to his face, to trace the hurt and the tension and the worry drawing deep furrows in the black of his skin. She isn’t sure what it is she looks for, but she must find it there because her rigid body slackens and the fight falls away from her in a rush. For a long moment she cannot meet his eyes again, but it isn’t pride or fury that blinds her, it is an uncomfortable mix of regret and dawning understanding. “I’m sorry, Offspring.” She tells him in a whisper, and it is unclouded by any of the excuses she had brandished at him before.
He heals her with winter and ice, though it is his closeness that soothes the hurt in her chest, and she holds onto her silence even when the tattered edges of mutilated flesh protest at the contact. When he is done she can no longer feel the creeping fever-heat of infection, or the weight of too much flesh hanging awkwardly where it should cover muscle and fat. With a sigh that shudders unbidden from the dark velvet of her delicate mouth, she lifts her face to watch him. It isn’t a surprise to see the deep blue throbbing from his eyes, or the layers of ice and frost that cling to him as though they want for nothing more than to claim him for themselves.
She had done this to him.
Her brow furrows when he speaks again, her heart bobbing low in her chest as it drowned in such quiet, impossible misery. With the same quiet stoicism she had come to love in him, he bid her to go, to rest. But she balked at this, wholly undone by the unnamable emotion she thought she saw hiding in the shadows of his face. “No,” she tells him softly, flinching apologetically at her continued disobedience, “I’ve been gone for days, I just want to stay here with you.” Before he can turn from her, she reaches out to take a mouthful of frost encrusted mane between her lips, tugging him ever closer. “Please,” she whispers again even softer this time, her voice as fragile as the frost clinging to his dark lashes, “please stay.” She releases his mane and eases tiredly closer, tucking herself to the curve of his neck, against the embrace of his tense chest. There had been a moment, when the wolves came in a wave of grey like dirty snow, that she thought she might never see Offspring again. To have him so close now, to press her cheek to the ice of his chest and listen for the echo of his heartbeat and still feel an impossible distance stretched between them was the worst kind of agony.
She takes a breath and it is a shuddering sound, like when the wind rattles the trees in the night, and the branches click together like bones. “I didn’t take them with me.” Her brow pulls tight beneath the dark tangles of her forelock, furrowing when her lips traced over the lines of ice against his shoulder. “I left alone,” and she says this as gently as she can because it is not meant to renew the pain in his chest, “and I thought they were asleep in one of the caves. They caught up with me much later. I promise, I didn’t know.” She shivers against him now, partially from the ice within and partially from the ice without. It is impossible, in this moment, not to wonder if she is the worst thing for him. To trace the frigid blue of his eyes, the stoniness of his face and not think, I made him like this. But she is selfish, so selfish, and the idea of giving him a life without her (an easier life) makes her heart throb in a way she would never be able to describe.
She closes her eyes and bows her head, still pressed as close to his chest as he would allow in this time of so much tension, of fear that wedges them dangerously apart. “I had a dream,” and her eyes flash with something dark, something dangerously broken and she cannot tell him more, “it was about my brother. I just wanted to know if he was back, if he was okay. If he’s even still alive.” Her voice crumbles and she looks to the churned up snow at their feet. The color is grey and uneven, mottled and dirty and it makes her think of the rippling wolf pelts. She finds she cannot pull her eyes away even as her pulse turns molten and thrumming in the rivers of her veins, but she says breathlessly, “I should have waited for you.”
