"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
She is birthed to the world a stranger in her own skin.
Her pale gold eyes open one winter morning, and she is alive again. She is older than she was the last time she took a breath (at least, she remembers being smaller, taking mother’s warmth in her lungs). Her legs jut out from her prone position on the snow, longer than they were before. A dark strand of hair falls and curtains her gaze, grown from its former wispy existence along her neck. These differences she notices first, but they hardly matter. What she realizes next is that she is alone. Then, that she doesn’t remember why – she doesn’t remember anything, really.
She remembers love, but little else.
It is a golden glow that starts in her heart and warms her from the inside out. It keeps her calm on the frozen ground when she should be anything but, when she should be anywhere else. I don’t belong here, she thinks, not moving. The fleeting images of her young life are few and far between, as if they’ve been stripped or shorn away. She sees the cutting peaks of the Mountain in the distance and her chest constricts, but she doesn’t know why. She watches a family of deer as they filter slowly out of the forest, emerging from their night-hollows, and she blinks back tears.
Because it is not only her memories, sometimes foggy and sometimes missing entirely, gone from her. The worst part is the gaping hole in her very soul – the feeling that she has been halved, torn asunder. She is a diminished thing there on the snow, with eyes glazed with unshed tears. She is a lost child of the Reckoning, robbed of the life-force that should be pulsing alongside hers’. I do not belong here, she wants to cry into the snow.
But she doesn’t.
The inky girl quakes but stands on her new legs. She shakes off her mourning veil, shakes her head until a smile bobs to the surface. She remembers love, the golden glow of it that matches her own radiant skin. She keeps her love, and she remembers her name. And Vael moves forward.
while collecting the stars, I connected the dots. I don’t know who I am, but now I know who I’m not.
She wades restlessly through a meadow of dirty white, past hills of snow gathered together by the wind and the miniature valleys carved out by innumerable hooves. Each stride takes her someplace new, unveils the silhouette of someone hidden behind a copse of trees or tucked around a mound of earth and white – and yet in her distraction, everything looks the same. Leliana, the ever-dependable pillar of calm strength that Exist had grown to rely on, her twin and the other half of her wandering soul, had not come home last night.
It had been strange to curl alone in the sand, to sleep without the symphony of beatings hearts matched in time, of chests pressed together and warm in the dark. But it was something that was always going to be, a distance that was the evolution of all living things. She knew this, she did, but it did nothing to ease the burrs in her chest or the scratchiness of eyes that could not find sleep in such unfamiliar solitude.
Blinking, she pauses, settling like warm copper within that blanket of unending winter, of eternal white. From the forest emerges a family of deer, all grace and elegance in way that makes her think of her sister again. With a pang in her chest she watches them pass at a distance, tracing their progression as she does the stars in the night sky. It is only when one of them pauses and turns, flashing the white belly of a small tail, and then continues on unperturbed that she notices the girl at all. Following the direction of the deers gaze, she can make out that faint glow of sunshine-gold around a smudge of dark in a world of bright.
It is curiosity that finally pushes the sleep from her eyes and the worry from her chest, curiosity that lifts her into a short, low flight on pale and tawny owl wings across the heart of the meadow. Landing gracefully nearby, Exist weaves through the snow, flowing like liquid copper and rust until she can pool in the shadow of this dark and glowing stranger. “Hello,” she says in a voice like trapped birdsong, light and lovely and full of sunshine, “I am Exist.”
In the ensuing silence she weaves ever closer, pressing the gleaming indigo of her nose to the satin warmth of a dark shoulder. Then, in a voice as soft as the snowflakes that still fall sleepily around them, “Are you alright?”
He'd lost them when the world changed. What was once the regular annoyance of telepathic siblings come to check on his welfare, was suddenly a drop into real silence. At first, he enjoyed it. He was always sneaking off to find some alone time away from the eager care of his family, and now he didn't have to. But too soon it had become worrying, distressing. They were a constant in his life, every one of them. Where had they all gone?
Ever the carefree and fun, the one that tries to make others laugh though he cannot hear it, he slowly morphed into something different. Something much less fun and so dreary. A crease had stuck between his worried brows and his feet dragged careless tracks in the snow. He looked around, always searching, but there were no yellow sisters coming to speak in his mind, be his mouthpiece to others. His father had taught him to use his voice, form words and speak, but he didn't like to. Avoided it, if he could. His sisters had laughed, so it must be a terrible voice.
And now he passed, a melancholy soul that had once been so very bright and sunny. Instead of rolling in beds of flowers, watching their pollen sweep up and drift like colorful dust, he walked. Just walked. And bumped into things. Warm things that smelled pretty.
He stepped back and looked up, brown eyes falling on not one, but two pretty faces to go with the pretty smells. His sorrows were swept away for the time, welcoming the distraction of new people to meet, and a lopsided grin tipped his mouth upward. Oh, but they both looked so unhappy! His brows pulled together and black muzzle reached for a blue one, then the other, blowing sweet breaths. He reached for the darker girl, who looked so much sadder, and gently nudged under her chin. Chin up! Then he swung his hips and settled in next to the peach girl, completely at ease with such nearness to complete strangers.
After a long moment, he worked up the courage to say the one thing he'd practiced endless times so that he wouldn't mess up his own name whenever he had to say it for others.
"Baymax." Deep, strange, a little off. Then he smiled again, looking from one to the other and already formulating how one might make them happy for a time. His eyes fell to their lips often, ready to put more of his father's teachings to use and read their words, though he much preferred looking into their lovely eyes. Lovely, but sad eyes. He hoped to fix that though.
She has moved forward, but not far, when the other girl finds her.
This one is bright and bold pressed into the white winter at their feet. She shines in a way that Vael does not, not needing the soft glow of source less light to stand out. Wings fold gracefully along her apricot sides, and these, too, look anything but unnatural on the other young woman. The differences between them are stark as the snow that erases the meadow’s colors.
She remembers black and white and gold - nothing like this.
But when the too-bright girl slides her too-bright skin against her shoulder, her breath feels the same as any. It feels the same as her sister, she realizes with a jolt, goosebumps rippling across her black hide. Her smile grows unconsciously, instinctually (as if Salt is with her instead of a stranger). Her memories are like the last tide, late to come in, slow to come in, but there eventually and all at once. All-consuming, too, wiping clean the shore every night. In the next breath, she forgets again. Are you alright?.
“No,” she exhales, touches her delicate muzzle to Exist’s while it is pressed against her before withdrawing as slow as a sunrise. The shared warmth leaves her too quickly. Her face brightens despite the gloom that shades her soul. “But I will be.” She says it with the same certainty as the dying, with fervent gold eyes that do not blink as they hold the other’s. She says it because she believes it, (has to) because she has already found kindness and warmth since her bleak awakening. And because she will always care for others more than herself, she asks: “Are you?”
Vael cannot know that they have both lost their sister, their twin, their other half. She can only see what is ahead of her, and that is nothing, save for the patchwork stallion working his way toward them. Exist is alone, like her, and surely loss is the reason.
(She has never been alone before, remembers only the safe squeeze of black and white and gold)
In another few breaths, he joins them. This time, the girl who glows like the moon blinks easily when she looks at him. Being around others (no longer alone) drains the darkness from her heart, eases the weight of it in her chest. The corners of her mouth pull into a helpless grin when he nudges her chin up, up, up; his meaning is clear even if his words are not. “I’m Vael,” she says on the coattails of a soundless laugh. His voice fills her fluted ears instead – but only for a moment – with the heaviness of a dropped stone. She can’t help but wonder at the way he looks between she and Exist, looks to their mouths as if anticipating their every word. Eager to please, Vael obliges. “Are you both lost like me?”
