"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
It has been a long time since she’s felt fear like this: as a visceral, living thing, a snake slithering up her legs, a wolf’s breath on her spine. For years, she has beaten it down, defeated it with lightning, with her own power she had learned to wield.
(No longer a nascent magician, undiscovered: simply a magician, a woman clothed in lightning with gun-slick hardness in her eyes.)
Until—
Until the earth shook and roared with thunder, a land defied coming back to take what she is owed. Until the towering mountain, grim-faced, had torn back the magic; left Cordis staring numbly as lightning was peeled from her skin and sunk back into the earth, given back (not given -- taken).
She has not been powerless since the day with the wayfarer, the day she burned him alive and smelled hair burning and fat bubbled. She has not been powerless since His lair, when she was trapped and helpless, made to die again and again.
Her throat feels tight, closed off, and she struggles to breath. Fear has crawled across her skin, writhing like maggots, and now panic arises, too – fresh and awful, a savage hand across her face.
She runs, but cannot run forever, not without her magic; she is mortal and it is awful, it is dangerous, for He will surely come now, now that is she vulnerable and shaking, sides heaving and heart dancing a jitterbug in her chest.
Her brand does not burn – it’s not even warm – but she swears she hears hellhounds baying, all the same.
Look at them all, all burnt down to the flesh and the skin that they wore. There was nothing special about any of them anymore. The spotted stallion did not realise that this would truly be of no major consequence to himself. Other than nearly dying up on the Mountain of a sudden old age, he was not in the habit of using his traits regularly. He had hooves, and muscles, and teeth that he could depend upon. And, in time, perhaps his tiger self would come back to him, as well as his ability to make sounds, but until then, he does not truly feel all that put out. There were bigger things to worry about.
The spotted stallion finds himself in the Meadow once more, surrounded by strangers and strangers, all packed in like bees in a honeycomb. The pressing of the mists around them has kept everyone confined in this small area, for now, and the inability to get away is starting to irritate Romek. He is sure that Maribel is not around here, for he has checked again and again and again, looping back to every corner, covering every inch of ground.
She is gone, then, and he can only wait for her return. Perhaps she is taking her time crossing the darkness in the world-between-worlds. Or perhaps she was up on the Mountain still. He wondered whether his child had been born yet.
Perhaps another, not so distracted horse would’ve noticed how scared she looked, all tense and fragile and woe-is-me, but alas, Romek is stubbornly one minded. ”Hello. I’ve lost someone. Don’t suppose I could take a moment of your time?”
09-05-2016, 04:23 PM (This post was last modified: 09-05-2016, 09:49 PM by Cassi.)
It had been her security, the lightning. She dressed herself in it, turned her molten silver coat into a thing alive, a thing crackling and bright, her own electric fence, a silent, screaming warning: danger.
For she has never liked others in her proximity, she recalls too vividly the things He had done, the way He had flayed skin and cracked bone, had drank her own marrow in front of her. How He had pressed against her, whispered stories in her ear, stories of the cities He burned and the earth He’d sown with salt.
(One exception glares bright – the mare, the one like gold, who had broken down every defense, who had shone like an angel there in the river, the mare she would move heaven and earth for, the mare she would – did – kill for. The mare who is gone, again.)
So when he approaches she tenses, but his body is distracted, and though he speaks to her, he barely seems to actually see her -- and she finds this a great relief, for she does not like to be noticed, she likes to run, she likes to be alone and clothed in lightning, a woman untouchable.
(A woman touched too many times to ever be touched again.)
She does not run from him, though the thought crosses her mind. Instead, she listens.
I’ve lost someone, he says, and she knows the feeling. Oh, she knows it so well.
“Who?” she asks. As if she would know them – she knows so few, here, despite the years she has dwelled.
But she stays. She stays, because she, too, has lost someone.
