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  • Beqanna

    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "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


    you always loved the strange birds; adaline
    #1

    Imagine this: you are born damned. Not in a romantic way, no prophecy foretold, but this way: you are glass. You are a thing sculpted to be broken, draped in paper-thin skin. Wings at your back, not to bear you aloft, but to make a mockery of you. When you try to fly, there is a sensation of tearing and pain lighting an inferno in every nerve of you.
    The tear remains, a twist in the wing, a memory of a flight failed.
    You are a glass house in a world of stone throwers.
    Delicate in ways no creature should be, sometimes their eyes fall on you and you can read the sadism there. The notice, an annotation scribbled in their thoughts, of how easily the glass boy would break. The curiosity of what the bones would sound like, snapping.

    Contagion tries to forget, sometimes. Tries not to compare his body to the others, that he is papier-mâché where they are steel and strength. Tries not to meet their eyes and need the macabre curiosity there, the wonder at how long he’ll last.
    (He wonders, too. He tries not to, but he does. Of course he does.)
    He is unique amongst them, save for one. For Adaline, his twin, the encore for two doomed lovers, born of the dead and the dying.
    But she had left. There had come a day when he had woken up and she was gone, left him alone.
    That he is still alive is a miracle. He doesn’t expect her to be. He doesn’t expect a lot of things.

    contagion

    be careful making wishes in the dark

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    #2


    — A D A L I N E —
    your mouth is poison; your mouth is wine
    (you think your dreams are the same as mine)




    She is alive, but she doesn’t expect to be for long. She, like him, doesn’t expect much from this world. Why would she when it has given her so little? She rises with the sun and sleeps with the stars and appreciates each new breath that expands her lungs, but that is it. She is thankful for the time that she has been given on this earth. She is grateful for the sights that she has been able to see, and she scolds herself whenever she begins to yearn for more.

    She should not have been given even this. This is a gift. Her mother had been dead, her father dying, and she was sculpted from glass. She was not made to weather storms or climb mountains or live a life with blood pumping heavily in her veins. She is, instead, allotted to live however long this earth will have her by wandering quietly in the background. To be content with each breath and to be happy with the small pleasures.

    She is meant to live but not thrive. Adaline is not built to sustain storming passions and great tragedies and loves as big as the ocean. If she is to love, she is meant to do so quietly and with great restraint. If she is to dream, she must do so with the greatest caution. Tread lightly, my dear. Dream softly. Live gently.

    But that is not what she contains in her breast. There lives an ache for the wonders of this world and the fluttering wings of a heart that beats for something she may never attain. Tranquil, dreamy smiles and long-lashes eyes bely the ways in which she finds herself aching for more. To shout or to run or to fly. Fly with these tattered paper wings shooting out from her back like the cruelest of jokes.

    So it takes everything within her when she sees her brother. 

    It takes all of her restraint to not run to him and hold him and be held. Instead, she merely alters her course and comes up by his side. “Contagion,” she murmurs in her breathy voice, taking in the beauty of her graceful, delicate brother. He who seemed so ethereal and so much more than she. “I have missed you so.”

    Reply
    #3

    Like her, he tries to take pleasure in merely existing. He gives thanks when the roving strangers’ eyes pass by him. When he wakes, unbroken, to each new day. He has even found a friend, a woman of steel with a wolfish glint in her eye, whom he followed up stones and beheld the crash of the waterfall.
    (He had thought, the entire time, how easily such a marvel would break him. Every wonder of the land is a deathtrap to boys and girls made of glass.)
    And when his mind pipes up, speaks of legends, of love written in the stars, he shushes it. He is not and never will be a powerful man. He is not and never will be a great lover (for who would want such a delicate creature as he, who might shatter at their touch?). He doubts he will even be a father, for fear of passing it on, of making children who shatter like snow globes across the grass.
    But still, ah, sometimes –
    Sometimes he dreams of becoming a king, of ruling a land kindly but forcefully. Sometimes he believes of a love so great he might die (or reawaken) for it, the kind their parents had, the kind worthy of odysseys.

    Full of dreams and despair, it takes a moment to recognize his name is being spoken, and a moment more to realize who is speaking it.
    “Adaline,” he says, the same breathy voice, full of disbelief, “I thought…”
    Thought you were dead, he wants to say, but stops the thought.
    “I’ve missed you, too.”

    contagion

    be careful making wishes in the dark

    Reply
    #4



    — A D A L I N E —
    your mouth is poison; your mouth is wine
    (you think your dreams are the same as mine)




    Adaline has to wonder if there is more to their camaraderie than just the blood that runs through their papery veins; was there not something stronger to the understanding each had for the other’s plight? She knew what it was like to fear a particularly rocky path or to shy away when she heard the loud crack of a branch snapping beneath some passing stranger (how easily that could be the crack of her own bones). There was something in the understanding, and she is soothed to just be near him. She sighs deeply and rests the curve of her cheek lightly against his neck.

    She doesn’t need him to finish the thought for her to know what he was thinking. Death, after all, was a constant companion for them both. She did not need to be reminded that Death followed her for every step she took, and that Death had trailed her back home like a wolf waiting for supper. Some day, Death would claim her (and she would let it), but she was content for now to shut the door and keep it at bay for one more day. 

    For now, she did not feel the knife at her throat, and it was enough.
    (Not enough. Never enough. But she could fool herself into such thinking.)

    “Where have you been?” she questioned softly, as if she was not the one who had left their homeland to venture into the great unknown. But that didn’t matter—not to her. All she wanted to know was where he had been lying his head every night; all she wanted to hear was that he was happy and safe. Once those fears had been assuaged, perhaps she would tell him of the non-adventures she had. Perhaps then she would tell him of the long walks and the loneliness and how even outside their sheltered world in Beqanna, the world was the same. 

    All corners and edges and Death waiting at the corner with clever eyes and yellowed teeth.

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    #5

    There is no one else who knows.
    No one else who knows the unique fear they exist within, the ingrained knowledge that their survival is a slap in the face to evolution itself. That they should not exist, should not survive – and certainly should not thrive.
    (Does he thrive? He is alive. He has been alive for years. He has seen waterfalls and touched a wolf-girl and wondered what else there was.)
    He does not try to explain it to the few he exchanges words with. He does not know how, and besides, it would come off as whining, as macabre, as bemoaning his lot. He is lucky to be alive, and he knows it, but he knows there is so much else, so much he can never do for sake of his papery skin and glass bones.

    “Here, some,” he says, for he spent many days and weeks in the meadow, drifting. Then, “and the falls. I met a girl – Tyrna – and she took me to her kingdom. It’s safer there, I think.”
    He’d seen the waterfall, there, and has since dreamt of its beauty, its power. It scares and thrills him.
    “And what of you, Adaline?” he asks. He does not tell her he’s feared for her every day, but she likely knows it. She knows so much of him.
    “Where did you go?”

    contagion

    be careful making wishes in the dark

    Reply
    #6


    — A D A L I N E —
    your mouth is poison; your mouth is wine
    (you think your dreams are the same as mine)




    “Oh,” she breathes.

    Oh.

    He speaks of the girl he has met and emotion blooms in her--one she has never encountered before. Her heart thumps painfully against her rips as she attempts to catch the breath so quickly leaving her lips. She imagines her brother with another, and her heart trips. Jealousy blossoms like the flowers facing the sun, and she closes her pink eyes for a moment to contain herself--to reel back the violent storms into the tranquil lake of her breast.

    “That sounds lovely,” she lies as her eyes open to a tilt of a smile. With the practice of one who speaks falsely often, her expression goes lax and quiet and blank. Her smile goes from the pained twist of lip to placid and dreamy; her vision becomes unfocused. Adaline concentrates on the containing of vivid, thorny emotion as she reminds herself that she cannot keep him for herself. She cannot be selfish.

    (But, oh, she wants to. Life has given her so little. Life has fed her the promise of beauty wrapped in the packaging of death. It has given her access to life through a veil. It has given once and taken twice. The only gift in her life is the companionship of her brother, and the comfort in his smile. And now she must share?)

    These words go unspoken though. Instead, she rolls her shoulders and flutters the tattered edges of her wings as she gives a faint, silver-bell laugh. “Elsewhere,” she murmurs as she looks to the horizon. “I wandered.” It sounds so much prettier when she packages it as an adventure instead of an exercise in fear; it sounds so much braver when she does not touch on the nights spent cowering in the shadows. “It was beautiful out there,” she lies again and finally brings herself to meet his gaze. “But I found myself missing home.” Finally, the truth.

    Reply
    #7

    He knows she’s lying, of course. They may have been apart but she is his twin, his only known kin. The only one shaped as he is, his cohort. The one who left, quiet, no words said, no goodbyes bid. The one who left him wondering what had happened, imaging her body broken, shattered, easy prey.
    He knows and he wonders, if she had not left, if he would have gone to the falls. If he would have followed the wolf-girl so easily. Perhaps they both might have, and they could have beheld the waterfalls together, mouths agape as the waves crash over rocks.
    But he is kind. He lets her have the lie and does not press the issue.
    (Besides, he is afraid to press the issue, the bruise left upon them both that goes unspoken, unacknowledged.)

    “Why…” he is asking before he can help it. He lets her have the lies but he cannot let her go without telling him why he woke up alone, “why didn’t you tell me you were going?”
    Then, quieter, “you know I would have gone with you.”

    contagion

    be careful making wishes in the dark

    Reply
    #8


    — A D A L I N E —
    your mouth is poison; your mouth is wine
    (you think your dreams are the same as mine)




    His words make small tears, but they are tears regardless. Small and numerous, they multiply until she feels as if her very heart has been flayed open for the world to see. She takes a ragged breath that causes her lips to tremble, and her pink eyes became raw and vulnerable instead of the dreamy haze that they had been. 

    “I don’t know,” she whispers under her breath, closing her eyes and soaking in the warmth of his nearness. The warmth that seemed impossible given the circumstances, but that seemed to seep from his thin, fragile body regardless. It was a delicate warmth that flared next to her, one so potent she would have sworn she had felt the burn. “I didn’t want to risk you,” she finally confesses, which, although true, still felt like a pathetic excuse.

    The truth was that she didn’t know why she hadn’t asked him to come with her. She didn’t know why she had gotten up in the middle of the night to start walking without turning back. She simply had. She had felt a hunger in her belly for something else, and she had followed it. She had felt a pang when she had saw him sleeping, with his long lashes pressed against his cheek, but she had still left.

    Perhaps that made her cruel.

    One tear escapes and falls gently down the slope of her face, and she presses her forehead into him. “I was wrong. I am so sorry.” She waits with the silence weighing impossibly heavy against the curve of her spine, until she is sure that she cannot bear another second. “Please don’t leave me.”
    Reply
    #9

    He wonders if it’s the real reason: I didn’t want to risk you. If he would have done the same, had he awoken with wanderlust blossoming in his heart. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t think so. He has survived without her, even progressed, but it was not his choice. His choice would have been to stay. To be by her side, a matching set, two glass houses in the stone throwers’ world.
    He hasn’t had much wanderlust. Not when he had her, when she was home. They had made the beach home, and the meadow, and other lands. And then she had left and he had had no home because she had not been there.
    Now there is a place, the falls, and maybe it will be home.

    She touches him, gently, les either one crack. He does not want her to cry. She is back and she is alive and it is all that matters, that they are here another day, reunited.
    “I would never leave you,” he says.
    Already he cannot imagine being without her, she floods back into the spaces she left, the empty niches. He forgot what it was like, to feel full with her closeness, her presence.

    contagion

    be careful making wishes in the dark

    Reply
    #10


    — A D A L I N E —
    your mouth is poison; your mouth is wine
    (you think your dreams are the same as mine)




    He says that he will never leave her, and although she desperately wishes that she could believe him, there is something that flares in her belly telling her that is not true. One day, he will find someone (or already has) who will pull him out into the ocean like a siren; one day, someone will find the glory of his body and the achingly perfect curve of his smile and worship him for the god that he was.

    But, today, he lies and tells her that he will never leave her, and it is enough to stay the sickness that boils in her belly. It is enough to pause the venom of jealousy spreading through her papery veins—enough to ease the anxious tension pulling her nerves taut as wires. So she breathes out and the sound is soft, her exhale filling up the space between them as a tangible sign of her relief.

    “Promise?” she whispers softly and her lips rest against his neck, a possessive move that comes across more as tenderness—although not wrongfully so. “I don’t know what I would do if you did,” she confesses and tries to ignore the confusion rising her breast and clogging her throat. She shakes her delicate head, sending the silky, nearly translucent strands of her forelock flying.

    “I need you,” another confession she wraps tight and hands to him, pressing it into his palm for safekeeping. She needed him in ways she did not understand and could not explain; she needed him as the birds needed the wind and the trees needed their roots and the ocean needed its salt. He was an integral part of her, and when she breathes in, all she can taste, all she can smell, is him.

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