"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
04-26-2017, 01:33 PM (This post was last modified: 04-26-2017, 01:34 PM by Heartfire.)
show them the joy and the pain and the ending
The sun is stretching slowly towards the horizon, casting a warm, reddish glow onto the blue and white mare that stands quietly near the edges of the lapping waves. Her blue gaze, distant and unfocused, stares out at the expanse of gold-tinged water that ripples before her.
She can’t find him. Her twin, Illum. It has been months now, months in which she has grown increasingly more worried in her inability to find him. His sight is as nearly familiar to her as her own, but there has been simply… nothing.
Perhaps she had been overly distracted by her children, but that is no excuse. She should have known.
Until, suddenly, there he is. A sigh of relief escapes her, but it is a relief that does not last. He is there, but he is… different. There is something wrong. Terribly wrong.
It takes her but a moment to discover where he is. With a spray of sand, she is flying through her home, no thought in her head but that she needed to get to him. It takes what seems forever to reach him, and by the time she had reached the forest, reached its inner depths, her dark coat is slick with sweat, her breath coming in harsh, ragged gasps.
And then he is there before her, black and white form so achingly familiar, so achingly dear. ”Illum,” she breaths, her feet abruptly hesitant as she steps nearer. She wants nothing more than to pull him to her, to smother him in an embrace. But she dares not. She dares not because something is terribly, terribly wrong.
heartfire
i filled up my senses with thoughts from the ghosts
picture c Petrova Julia.N
@[jenger] Hopefully this works? I kept in a bit vague, but let me know if I should change anything <33
out of the woods, out of the dark, i’m well aware of the shadows in my heart
The forest seemed eerily quiet, but he was used to the quiet, used to the nothing. This was different though – worse maybe, because she wasn’t here anymore, because there was no one to tell him who to be. A year ago he would have known, would have taken to the skies with those ragged black and white wings to try and find his family.
That’s what Illum would have done.
But this man, bone-white and dark all at once, is something changed, something different.
He didn’t want them to meet this man he had become, the man he had been carved into by her bone creatures and her wrath and the weight of her mind. Would Heartfire be able to see what he had done, see the things she had made him do as she lounged beside him in the nest of his mind? It seemed likely. There was very little that seemed to escape his twin. Maybe that was why no one had come for him. She had seen him at his darkest and turned away from it, protected their family from it. He understood.
So when the quiet of the forest is broken by the crush of leaves beneath hurried hooves and he lifts that dark head listlessly to the sound, he is startled by the vision of blue and white and worried relief stretched across a face he remembers only from his dreams. Illum. She says and he reaches for her instinctively, seeking the changed lines of her beautiful face with the heat of his wandering mouth. But she slows, hesitates, and it is enough to remind him that she shouldn’t be here. That he had been carved away from her just as much as he had been carved away from everything else.
His dark face tightens, deep furrows appearing like slashes of shadow along the plains of his cheeks as he shifts back and turns from her tensely. There is still a part of him that wants to reach out and pull her against his chest, an instinct that tells him to wrap a wing across her spine as he had done a hundred times before, but instead he watches her silently, stoically.
She is changed after so much time. Older and only more beautiful, still slender and young and wild in all the ways he thinks he might remember, but she is different too. Softer in a way he cannot name – he cannot possibly guess from this distance between them that she is a mother now. There is sweat dark and damp in the hollows of her hips and shoulders, across her neck and her mane clings to it. Even her breathing is changed, harsh and hurried, flaring wide and worried in the delicate black of her nose. Despite himself he frowns and takes a step towards her again, those dull and ragged wings lifting tensely as his gaze swept past his twin and behind her, searching for an explanation in the distant trees.
But he finds nothing, no reason for the worried way she watches him, for the tremble he thinks he sees waiting just beneath her skin. He is good at noticing these things now. He doesn’t move any closer, but those dark eyes remain moving and cautious, drifting from her face and away to the shadows, through the trees and to her eyes again. So blue, impossibly blue. “What’s wrong, Heartfire.” He says finally, slowly, still not understanding that she is reacting to him, that she had not seen him all along as he had convinced himself she had. That she is seeing a ghost. His voice is deeper now, quiet and like gravel, and he winces at its strangeness. It had suffered from so much disuse.
It is not until this moment that she realizes just how much she had missed him. She might not have seen him every day, but she had always been there. And then she wasn't. Then he was gone, and she was left alone, with no way to find him.
That helplessness is not something she is used to. Not something she ever wishes to know again. Power has always rippled through her like tidal waves, but even she is not infallible. Her sight only extends so far.
And now, after everything, after all this time, her emotions bubble too close to the surface. She is not able to hide the fire of her soul behind a cool smile and a sharp word. What's wrong? he asks, and for a moment she is speechless.
”You!” The word bursts from her, more roughly than she had intended. ”Where have you been?”
Then, as though a dam has broken, she cannot hold herself in check any longer. Crashing into him, she pulls him into a tight embrace. He is different now though. Sharper, more brittle, changed. The pain of that realization wars with the relief she feels at having him next to get once more.
It takes her a moment to realize that dust is raining upon them from the trees above. That she is not nearly as in control as she should be. Taking a deep breath, she draws back slowly, eyes focused on her twin as she reigns in the destruction, pulling that cloak of calm over herself until the leaves stop falling to pieces over their heads.
Finally, in a softer voice still filled with far too much emotion, she asks ”What happened to you? I couldn't… find you.” Her voice cracks a bit on the last, her fire bright blue eyes betraying the turmoil still roiling inside of in her.
heartfire
i filled up my senses with thoughts from the ghosts
out of the woods, out of the dark, i’m well aware of the shadows in my heart
What’s wrong, he had asked, you, she had answered.
She says it roughly and he flinches, his teeth clenching to reveal deep furrows in his dark cheeks. Was it possible she could see inside his head now, see his thoughts and his secrets as easily as rifling through the pages of an old book? Could she see his wrongness and shied from it instinctively as others had? But no, she speaks again and he realizes she had not meant him - not what he had done or who he had become. Not the dark waiting impatiently (it was not used to being caged for so long) just beneath his skin.
Where have you been? She asks just as roughly, but he does not stiffen, does not flinch like before because in her words is the most beautiful gift she could have given him. Freedom. A chance to forget, maybe. Though not in sleep or the early hours of morning when the nightmares would spill like black from his veins. Not when he closed his eyes and let his guard down. Still though, she did not know, had not seen, and he watches her cautiously, not quite distant but definitely wary, more careful now that he knew he had secrets to keep buried. Secrets that were still his own.
“I-” he starts, hesitates, and then she is crushed against his chest and holding him close and he cannot stop the reflex to pull her closer. His neck drops over her withers, his mouth soft where it tastes the salt and earth on her opposite shoulder. She feels different to him - sharper bones in longer ridges, deep hollows. His grip tightens around her, holds her against him and even his wings lift to surround her. “Heartfire,” he says low, sharp, a warning to his own ears. But she doesn’t seem to hear him, doesn’t pull away, and he is left to the war in his chest as his lips trace everything they can reach.
She pulls back then, finally, slowly, breathing deep and focused on him with such intensity that his scowl softens and he reaches out to touch her cheek, not quite a kiss but something close to it, and says, “Don’t look at me like that, I’m not going to disappear.” It’s only then that he notices the dust falling around them, filthy snow except it’s dry and not nearly cold enough. He looks up and then back down at her again, obviously curious despite the quiet of his expression. “You?” He’s almost softening, almost reaching to pull her back against his chest again, but then she asks that question, the wrong question, and distance swells between them.
His eyes abandon her face, drift back to the trees, to the branches that seem thinner now that they’ve been undressed by her pain. When they return to her face they are calmer now, all those secrets made safely invisible. “Not omniscient after all.” Is all he gives her for an answer, a grim, crooked smile sitting on his lips when he reaches out to brush her forelock from her eyes. It’s meant to distract, yes, but there is something more there, too, and he buries it deeply before she can notice. “Good to know.” He glances away again, clenches his jaw and then looks at her once more. “Hey,” a pause, and there is genuine worry in the gravel of his voice, faint and guarded, but there nonetheless, “How are mom and dad? Augusta?”
She cannot seem to prevent it, the rise of emotions that bubble within her chest, threatening to spill over. Threatening to betray everything she had felt these lasts months and years. Her blue eyes burn bright as they bore into him, closing only briefly when he is crushed against her. Closed to better feel the solid weight of his body against her skin, to feel the reality of this moment. To know that his is not merely a dream, a figment of her imagination.
She has few weaknesses, but he is one of them. She has always known this, but this moment has only served to make it far more clear to her.
She can feel his hesitation at her question, the way he pulls himself back, away. Withdrawing from her, refusing to answer in his own quiet way. Instead he redirects, deflecting her questions, putting the weight of answer back on her. But she cannot help herself, cannot stop the way she stares at him. He had disappeared, and he refuses to tell her why. With a sound of frustration, she delves into his sight, an act as futile as before. She sees only snippets, flashes of sight that tell her nothing, give her no explanation. It is blank, as though it is not him. As though he had not been at home in his own mind.
She doesn’t take her eyes off of him, refusing to let him out of her sight for even a moment. Even as his eyes drift down, away, avoiding the question. She sighs as the dust settles, as she draws that mantle of calm over herself once more. A reminder of just what she could do should she lose control. She refuses to let Illum suffer for her lack of discipline.
She also refuses to let him deflect her further. He questions the dust, causing a scowl to tug at her lips. Pressing closer, she pushes her muzzle against him, a sharp nudge that says without words just how she is feeling. Finally she answers, a soft whisper into the skin of his shoulder. “You can’t hide from me forever Illum.”
She doesn’t press further. He knows her well enough to know she would be true to her word. Even if she had to hunt through every eye in this cursed land. In the end, she lets him change the subject. Allows him to draw the conversation in another direction. Gives herself the time to settle, to gain better control over her errant abilities. She leans into him, savoring his warmth, the familiarity of having him there by her side once more. “They are well.” A faint curve traces her lips as a tinge of humor lightens her tone. “Pregnant. For the sixth time.”
With no further prompting, she draws his sight to her as she had so many times in their youth. Shows him their parents, happy and settled, the siblings he had missed in his absence.
i filled up my senses with thoughts from the ghosts
