"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
11-12-2017, 01:18 PM (This post was last modified: 11-12-2017, 01:18 PM by Vael.)
There is a moment where she knows everything will be all right.
It hits her suddenly with the force of a bolt between her eyes, lethal and sure. She feels the weight of her sister on the earth once more. She is a magnet drawing her in. She is like gravity pulling her down from where her mind has lingered too long up in the clouds. A life lived in solitude is not one she’s ever been meant for, and now, she will no longer have to. She is certain that fate has turned for her, that with the missing piece of her soul restored, everything will be just fine from here on out.
But it lasts only a moment.
Despair should come in waves once the feeling abates, once she is alone again, a lost girl in the woods. Instead, Vael rejoices. Alone is her niche. Alone is her strong-suit and best adaptation, forced perfection from too many days and nights of practice. So she sets out and moves off. Nowhere is home (nothing is curled against her twin’s side, pressed under her mother’s chin) so leaving anywhere is easy. It is the finding that is hard. But she is forever-eager.
Each new place she searches is treated with the same scoping and hopeful eyes. As she hunts her twin through the various terrains, a tenderness blossoms in her black-gold gaze as well. She falls in love with everywhere: the River with its pearlescent twilight waters, Taiga and its towering trees made ghostly with snow, Hyaline and its stark beauty that touches something familial within her. Even the Beach makes her shiver with a forbidden desire to walk its shores; she keeps her feet away and passes it with both longing and regret swirling in her breast. She finds so much she loves or could come to love, but never @[salt].
The forest welcomes her back after months on her quest. Her legs are tired but she is rejuvenated in other ways, her spirit lifted and eyes sated on all she’s seen. But still, she’s missing someone. Here, she won’t find her because it’s where she started when everything should have been all right. And if there are miracles outside of life itself, Vael has not had the pleasure of experiencing one. The dark girl keeps to the comfort of her old haunts, daring the universe to show her wrong. Make a liar of me, she thinks, peering through the tight-knit trunks of too-close trees one cloudless night. But it is silent and no sister appears. It is always silent.
Hadn’t some part of her known?
A tie, the memory of a heartbeat that matched her own (like music, there in the womb of a death queen, two strange lives begotten in a kingdom and grown among ghosts). She thinks of her often, as she flickers between lands (she doesn’t touch the kingdoms – they are too solid, they stink of commitment). She meets a horse who is bleeding and she thinks of her, achingly so, and her healing touch. Vael could have helped that horse. Salt only walked on.
Salt struggles to fall in love with anywhere. She doesn’t mind these places, the crashing river or the quiet shadow-places in the forest. They are alive and sweet and she feels an imposter, walking amongst them, wishing she were a ghost.
It is fortune, or fate, or simply the unexplainable tie forged between them that leads Salt down this particular path on this particular day, admiring the softness of the light in the trees. One place in particular almost glows, and Salt thinks again of her, of her haunting coat, like will -o’—the-wisps, fairy lights leading her astray.
She follows the light, and maybe her eyes place tricks on her, because there is a beautiful woman, glowing softly in the trees, and it’s a face Salt knows, it’s one that mirrors her own.
“Vael?” she says, and disbelief spackles her voice, “is that...?” I’m dreaming, she thinks, surely, I’m dreaming.
Silence answers her until the lonesome hoot of an owl breaks it.
She smiles, despite the fact that no sister has appeared. Because it seems like the universe is always playing tricks on her like that, like it is getting back at her for her very unlikely existence. She and Salt were born at the crossroads of life and death. The scythe had swung dangerously above them even before their cells split. Would they be born alive? Would they be born dead? Would they be ghosts trapped on the Other Side? Or would they forever wonder what, exactly, they were? Abominations, some might think. Bad omens, others may say, not fit to see the light of day. But these minds would be wrong. Vael’s come to terms with it herself; she’s found the perfect truth of them can be summed up. Miracles.
And then, there is one before her.
“Oh, sister! I’ve missed you dearly.” She gives thanks to the earth and the after-earth and all the stars in the sky, because she is whole again. With the same dark face and luminous eyes that know about places beyond staring back at her, she is restored. Vael rushes forward but stops just short of Salt. She knows about boundaries all too well (of both personal space and of the veil that separates the ghosts from the living). She has none, herself, but worries for her twin. They have been apart so long, how has she grown since? Who has she become?
This close, Vael’s soft golden glow illuminates Salt’s face, but it doesn’t reveal any answers otherwise. Those will be for her to divulge, if she’s so inclined. Every atom of her vibrates with the want to touch the other, to make sure she is real and in the flesh before her (not a figment of her imagination, not a walking dream). “There are parts of our past that are cloaked like a thick mist in my head. But never you. Never you, Salt.” And her name tingles like magic on her tongue. “ I’ve been waiting for you to guide me through it.”
“You!” she says – exclaims – as Vael confirms herself to be there, to be real, and delight rushes through her. She hadn’t known if they would see each other again, if they two roads had diverged too much. She had hoped, of course – she had always hoped – but until now, she hadn’t been sure.
She closes the expanse of distance Vael left, too thrilled to think about it (she’s not adverse to being touched, but sometimes it feels odd, and she cannot stop herself from shifting into a ghost, letting them pass through her, instead). She touches her muzzle gently to her sister’s neck, confirming the reality of her, the solidity, and a for a moment her own muzzle takes on the soft fairy-lights glow.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she says, “and that I found you. Or that you found me.”
A tie, here on a land where Salt lacks any friends, or any family aside from the most distant relatives, the way everyone is related to everyone, here.
“I wasn’t sure I’d see you again, when you left the afterlife,” she says. She doesn’t know if Vael had left of her own devices, or had been ejected from the place, spat out because of her state of being alive. She’d asked their mother – pestered her – but Gail had refused to answer.
Now, of course, it barely matters, because they are reunited – on the alive side of the world, this time – and Vael is as lovely and vibrant as Salt remembers.
Salt touches her, and it sends a pulse of energy racing through her from the point of contact.
It reanimates limbs that were unmoving, propping her up but doing little else. Because she walked through this world before, and for what? What had it meant without her sister by her side? She’d been so terribly alone. Now, she moves to embrace her twin because one touch is not enough, not nearly enough. Her dark neck drapes over Salt’s and she presses her eyes closed. She lingers in the hold of a loved one (how long has it been since she’s felt the touch of her mother or father or Salt?) for many moments before withdrawing.
It is so good, so right, not to be alone.
Vael pulls back but doesn’t take her eyes off the other. They must look the same, she muses, save for her own unnatural glow. They have the same glossy black fur as their beautiful mother, the same brush of gold gilding their gaze like father. Seeing herself mirrored in the flesh in front of her is like a punch in the gut, if only because she sees their parents who are not here. But it is all right. It has always been Salt she’s wanted, needed. She’s never missed her parents like she’s missed her twin.
“I don’t remember what happened, truthfully.” The young woman has spent hours, days, racking her brain to remember in order to find a way back – but she’s never been able to. “I just remember how heavy I felt, after. On This Side.” Like a stone thrown into turbulent waters and expected not to sink. Those days, she tries not to conjure to the forefront of her mind. She’d been a strange child spirited to a new land where no one knew her, and therefore, no one wanted her.
Vael shakes the cobwebs from her head and smiles widely. “What about you? Is this your first time on This Side?” She thinks of all the wonderful places she’s just seen, looking for the very horse that is here now. This Side is so different than the Other, which had been muted and wispy. Here, every step is jarring, every sight is raw and bright. The horses, too, are like night and day. They worry about trivial matters that mean so little when death is so close. She could show Salt so much. “Sister, we could have a lot of fun together here.”
