"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
Sometimes they wear the faces of people she has known, and other times they are mangled, warped, shifting and becoming pixelated any time her eyes try to focus in on any one discernable feature. When they’re in disguise their hands, gnarled and clawing, always give them away. Sometimes they draw pictures into her skin until the gold is washed away by violent red hieroglyphics; two mermaids in a river, bathing, and laughing, and yearning to touch each other — there are variations, but the overall images are always the same.
There is a spire, wild and white and made of water frozen in place, while here or there the waves of it just out sharply like flames; a monument to something she can’t remember anymore. Horses made out of rivers charge the shore until their knees buckle beneath them and they disintegrate into nothing at all, never leaving the sand they die on damp.
Sometimes she sees the blue flames of his eyes right before a dagger splits her heart in half.
And then she wakes, coated in a sweat that leaves her wet and chilled for it, her heart aching like the blade is real and not a figment of her own wild imagination. The dream is different in small ways everytime that she has it, but some elements are fixed. The shadows are always there, the spire, the dying horses; she cannot shake them, not since she woke up the first time among the wildflowers, somehow changed.
She still doesn’t know what she is, what dangers are lurking just below the flesh — what her body so desperately does it’s best to cage (and still, not nearly well enough — here, a spiked barb splits the skin of her hip, appearing just to disappear in the fractions of seconds it takes for her to flinch from the sting.).
A wyvern.
What she does know, however, is that she is dying — that a sickness has stolen away into her bloodstream where it infiltrates everything left of her that is her own, that it takes her quickly, replacing gentle curves with jutting bones. Today, she is laying by the river watching the blood that drips from the edge of her nose as it stains the bed of blue lupines she has found for herself. She should be panicked, but she is only peaceful. The sickness has made the memories quieter.
Most days, most days stay the sole same Please stay, for this fear it will not die Down low, down amongst the thorn rows Weeds grow, through the lilies and the vines
Though she has never had an easy life, these past few years have been perhaps the easiest. Five years passed her by since her return to Trekk, with many children to show just how fruitful a reunion theirs had been; twins, even, though with her disposition for them none ought to be surprised. Even with the onset of the contagion, their little family has managed to stay safe; Tylana, Tsara, Targaryen. Her little hoard of children, reminiscent of her original triplets though admittedly less chaotic considering the nature of their birth (that being the fact that they all have the same father, and are not triplets, of course). Though the threat of the plague never lessened, they thought themselves immortal.
Until one day, they realized their naivety.
The sickness latched on quickly, perhaps sensing the wood that lay beneath Noori's pristine first layer of bark - she grew old the more time she spent in this reality with Trekk, and her unequine immune system gave way without warning. In the twilight hours of her life, she and Trekk relived their happiest moments and pretended as if there were no sad ones. Her one true love held her close until the sap in her veins slowed to a stop, and he held her past that still, his body quaking as he mourned alone for the life of a goddess.
As they discussed beforehand, Trekk did not bury Noori, but instead left her where she lay with but a single flower atop the point of her shoulder, to commemorate the divinity of her being for any who passed by and saw the tree-mare slowly becoming one with nature. Gradually, over the course of weeks, her body decomposed into the earth, being overtaken by green grasses and bright flowers which had no place on this wasteland of a continent.
Months later now, Trekk has slowed his coming round to his wife's final resting place. As such, when the sound of a baby's snuffling emerges from the small mound where Noori died, no one is around to hear it. When two opalescent nostrils peak from the grasses to sneeze out a ludicrous amount of dirt, no one is there to laugh. And when four clumsy hooves kick themselves free of the earth, no one is there to witness her rebirth: to witness her first reincarnation.
Woman, Spring, Phoenix: and now, Baby. She is lucky to be Spring incarnate; she has no need for milk, and instead will be able to photosynthesize to receive the energy she needs.
In the limited understanding of her first few days, Noori wanders through forests and fields which feel familiar, though she couldn't tell you why. Each day she feels stronger and more sure of herself, with the weeks gradually passing until she begins to remember her life before. At about one or two months of age, she recalls the major points of her life, namely being raised by Scorch and Hestoni, having many children, and her that she loved someone dearly. Who, she cannot yet recall: but her heart calls for him incessantly, and she wanders in the hopes of finding one who reminds her of him.
Unfortunately, strangers are not wont to approach a tiny tree-nymph, of white bark hide and red willow-frond mane and tail. Especially dissuading are the pupil-lacking, glowing green eyes set wide in her skull, the crimson cracks running through her alabaster coat, and the deep green glow from within; and of course, let us not forget the trail of growth which follows behind the babe. Flowers, grass, saplings, and rain showers; they follow the nymph without pause, too great a power to master for the yet childlike Noori.
During one of her wanderings, the filly begins to worry that she will never be subject to the company of another for the rest of her days. Though some semblance of adult understanding now belong to the growing being, understanding their implications and properly interpreting reality are tasks which yet evade her mental abilities. As such, she skirts the edge of the river with an anxious quiet, eyes searching for something she doesn't understand; and when they fall upon the pale figure of a woman more bones than flesh, what she does understand is that she must help.
That, at least, she can do.
Thin and utterly alien, Noori realizes that her appearance may upset the prostrate mare - so she approaches slowly, though every fiber of her being wants to rush forward. To help, of course, but also for self-interested reasons; her stomach clenches and unclenches wildly at the thought of being able to converse with another, for so long has passed since she spoke to anyone but the flowers.
Close enough now that she could touch the ghostly creature, the babe swings her head low and closely studies the blood drooling lazily from the other's nostrils. Wordless for now, the child calls upon wisdom she forgot she knew to quietly grow and harvest a handful of herbs, grinding them with her mind until a small amount of poultice floats, a salve at her disposal. Nickering low in her throat to reassure her new friend that all is well, Noori carefully guides the salve to the mare's nostrils, applying it across the membranes both inside and out until the pain lessens and the bleeding ceases.
It is far from a permanent solution, but it will help her feel better for now.
"Hello," says the child, blinking abashedly and wondering where she found the courage to do as she has done. "You have pretty eyes."
noori
@[Glassheart] I wrote you a novel with a closet character. Sorry not sorry.
Perhaps when the clatter of river rock giving way underfoot reaches her ears, followed shortly by the gentle swish of long-grass as it parts, instinct should have come to life inside of her and sent her heart slamming up against her ribs.
But it doesn’t.
Instead of feeling her legs wind up like tightly coiled springs, instead of running like Loveliar would have begged of her, she only looks up from the blood she’d been eyeing, meekly, from under the dark curl of her eyelashes and blinks softly. A veil of spring sunlight breaks through a canopy of leaves somewhere overhead and when it reaches her skin it refracts off the sheen of her flesh, still slick with sweat be it from fever or nightmare, or both. She shivers when a cool wind skirts the meadows edge, but it isn’t from fright. Maybe it should be. Maybe something inside of her is fundamentally broken.
Maybe that simple wrongness is why she chases absurdities like the one that stands before her instead of hiding from them.
And she’s certainly never seen anything quite like what is here, now, gathered before her bed of wildflowers and long grass; more fairy than horse. She looks as though she’s been plucked from a dream, all rough birch-flesh and languid, heavy branches still tangled with imagination; the kind of vision that might remind you of Ophelia with garlands of wildflowers strewn tangled through her hair while she drowns in the most beautiful way imaginable (as if death could ever be so clean).
It never occurs to her that perhaps what stands before her now, dripping in leaves and weeping boughs, is a creature she should not want to know. Why should she run? Why should she be afraid?
(Her heart yearns the most for the strange and unusual.)
So Glassheart, still hazy from her dreams or fever, smiles through the blood that runs in rivulets across and down her lips. With an easy placidity she watches as plants sprout from nothing to live and die at this creature’s careful whim, and as she does so she does not think to question why. She is used to things wrapped in magic (be it lightning, or earth), and she has come to like them, perhaps more so than will ever be good for her.
A salve floats between two strangers for a moment, and then it is gone.
With a short exhale and twitch of her nose she finds the bleeding ends, and though she is still without the energy to stand in the company of her newly found companion she blinks the sleep from her eyes and shakes her head as though the fever could be lifted as simply as though it were a veil draped across her face. She does feel better, however temporarilty.
“Hello,” she says, mother nature come to life.
“You have pretty eyes.”
It’s those four words that reminds her then that her body is ruined, dying. There were parts of her, at first, that mourned her impending demise — instincts, quickly quelled by the rather compelling realisation she leaves no devastation behind her. She is only a blip in time; nothing more than space dust. Cordis would mourn her, briefly, for what was left of Spyndle that she could not have to keep, but they would find another way without her as a medium. Love like that didn’t just end. Things like Glassheart did.
“What are you?” She asks, wincing as a barb cuts through the hip she leans against the dirt. It is shielding by earth and her body, so neither will notice and both will only assume the contagion. If only they knew.
Most days, most days stay the sole same Please stay, for this fear it will not die Down low, down amongst the thorn rows Weeds grow, through the lilies and the vines
The bone-laced woman smiles as Noori deftly crafts a serum for her bleeding nose, the stretch of her pale lips placid and dreamy. Young and innocent, the magician smiles back, eager to encourage any form of affection sent her way; she longs for approval and for validation, and hurries in her fabrication, as if that might win her ever more smiles from the dying creature. Ironic, really, that spring incarnate finds herself so enthralled by one who calls her mistress by the name of Death. She who is responsible for new life ought not be so in love with one whose every breath could very well be her last.
The poultice does its job, stopping the rivulets of blood in their tracks and somewhat reviving the prostrate figure. Though her head far from lifts, she at least shakes it, as if ridding her mind of cobwebs which grew far too long ago. As this small movement overcomes the other (and as she processes the compliment given to her by the magician), Noori studies her face thoughtfully, and then her body. Without meaning to do so, she brings three butterflies to perch weightlessly against the point of the mare's emaciated shoulder. The flimsy things are as thin as she is, Noori thinks to herself. Blue, as are the mare's eyes.
What are you?
A wondersome question, filled with possibility and question. Noori blinks her pupiless eyes, stiff bark ears flicking as she thinks upon an answer. Standing this close to the mare, she can see the way her skin twitches with death, but to Noori, the movement is only another expression of beauty and pain.
You're beautiful.
Am I? She knows in her heart that she is, but the babe has yet to conceptualize exactly what that understanding means. In her mind, her beauty stems from her perfect union with nature; she thinks upon this as her eyes settle on the butterflies. Their wings open and close lazily, utterly within the child's control, as unconscious as said control may be.
"I am... a girl," she starts, teetering for a moment as a powerful gust of her own wind pushes her thin, weedy body over the twigs of her legs. Restabilizing, Noori shakes out her willow-mane and promptly plops down into the space between the dying mare's neck and chin. The flared edges of her flesh catch against the other's soft, dying skin, but after a few wiggles and adjustments, Noori is comfortably settled with her chin resting atop the mare's cheek. Their faces are hilariously different in size; the nymph is not a large creature, as small as a newborn foal despite her months of revival.
"I am also the Spring," she whispers, not needing to look to know that the butterflies still sit where she has left them. Enjoying the pulse of her new friend (as it is much faster than her own, as sap flows slowly), Noori closes her eyes. "What are you?"
Three butterflies come together at the crook of her shoulder.
She isn’t certain if they’re real, but she tilts her head to eye them from her peripherals as they perch lazily, vivid and wild against her golden skin. For a moment she becomes an entomologist, and she traces the lines of their fragile bodies in pragmatic ways. They are swallowtails, she knows, even if she doesn’t remember how. They are yellow and black, with small stained-glass windows of blue and red at the ends of their wings, and Glassheart, still ripe with fever, watches the colours spin and melt into one another. She dissects them in her mind, searching for metaphors while only drawing blanks. Somethings, she decides finally, must not mean anything at all.
And so she forgets the butterflies then, and looks up towards her companion once more.
“I am… a girl,” nature says to her then, blinking eyes made out of emeralds. Glassheart watches as she drops to her knees then, folding in on herself before crawling in to find a place between Glassheart’s own neck and chin, and then at last draping across the flat plane of her cheek. It’s an unusual encounter, and with anyone else it might have felt claustrophobic, but Noori, (with a body as small and nimble as a child’s) is effortless.
“I am also the spring.”
“What are you?”
Dying — that’s what she thinks, and almost as though proof of her opinion, a light cough rattles from her throat in the moment that follows. She swallows it down though it isn’t likely to save her friend, nestled against her own body, from exposure. In the background the river hums as the violent water spills over rocks on its way to the sea, and there are parts of her that hope the sound of her cough has been masked by this noise. Of course she knows that her illness is no clever secret, but she doesn’t want to talk about it. She doesn’t want to think about the things, the people, that she is giving up to die.
“I don’t know that I’ve ever been sure,” she settles on, an answer that’s honest albeit more than a little vague.
She doesn’t say haunted, but she should.
She doesn’t say dangerous, but she doesn’t know that she is.
“Alone,” she says, then, thinking of Cordis and the way she looked at her and it always looked as though she was looking just past her (to Spyndle).
In the moment that follows Noori’s question, a cough rattles from her friend’s lungs, reverberating through her entire body despite its feebleness. The reality of Glassheart’s sickness hits Noori then, causing her to momentarily lift her porcelain head to look closely at the other. By the way her fever-glassed eyes trail to the burbling river, Noori takes it that she wishes not to discuss the details of her illness; a strange, alien sympathy flows through the babe.
“I know how you feel,” she whispers, lips brushing against the mare’s sweat-ridden cheek. From here, she smells the death and decay as it ripens the other’s flesh, and becomes sick as she remembers that exact scent marking her previous body. Swallowing back bile, Noori presses her lips to the other, a gesture of unfeigned pain and understanding. Death’s kiss, though she knows not how true that saying may very well be for her companion. “It’s going to be okay.”
She knows deep down that this mare will not revive as she has; but for all finite beings, the release of death would always bring peace, even if it is in the shape of pure, unadulterated nothingness.
The moment passes, however, as Glassheart’s jaw begins gnawing around words. She offers no insight into her character, except perhaps that its foundation is innately cracked, unstable, and uncertain. Alone, she offers next, the word a reflection broad enough to encapsulate all that could possibly have come to pass in this grown mare’s life; I’m alone. In the wake of silence following this statement, Noori suddenly hears the world around them more keenly; her magician’s fingertips run swiftly across the singing birds, the jumping squirrels, and the rooting pigs; she feels also the sway of the grass in the wind, the blood-like coursing of the river, and the swift movement of the wind far above.
Mother Spring never feels lonesome the way other mortals do; but when she strains and remembers her first childhood, emancipated from her parents and her elder sister, she thinks she can imagine what loneliness feels like.
Noori pauses a while longer, listening to her friend breathe and wondering if she could say anything at all to help her feel better.
“You’ve got me,” she begins quietly. “And I could find you a healer to rid you of this disease, if you’d like.” But something tells the child that she would not make it back in time; whether because of death or because of Glassheart’s abandonment of this place in the name of being alone, Noori will never know.
“I’m Noori, by the way. I hope you don’t die. I don’t have many friends, and those I had, I fear have forgotten me…”
