"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
Wondering where you've been all my life, I just started living
She wonders if she’ll be able to face him.
The darkness of the forest shrouds her, pressing in comfortingly at all sides. The moon is full and low, silver and bright as it filters through the dense canopy, playing patterns on the fiery scarlet of her coat. She is merely wandering purposelessly, every now and then stopping her quiet walk to dig silently into soft earth, where her teeth grab at whatever she can find, swallowing mealworms and dark, glittering insects. The forest reminds her of Sylva in a way, but not so much that she can truly revisit those dusty (yet oh so fond) memories.
It reminds her of him, but she does well not to let her mind linger long on the idea of the pale wolf that twists around her heart so tightly, she could almost feel barb-like stings in her lithe chest if she thought about him for too long.
Merida has been alone before; she tells herself it is how she prefers it, that she blossoms beneath solitude. It’s a lie she chants to herself to keep her crimson eyes tear-free and to keep her heart from breaking. She was better alone.
They’re better without you.
Damp black nostrils lift into the night air, sniffing intently. She cannot help but follow the old scent of other shifters, finding that many of the smells are not familiar to her. She shrugs. With a twitch of her white-tipped tail, she gracefully leaps over bramble and great roots of trees, a flash of red within the midnight darkness.
Soon she finds herself tired, her long snout lowering to the ground as she walked. She finds a place to settle, nestling into the crook of two large roots of a large tree trunk, curling her paws beneath her while her tail settles lightly on the tip of her snout. Sleep finds her easily.
Beneath the damp roots and great shade of the oldest tree in the forest, the vixen’s eyes twitch in her sleep while soft and mournful whimpers leave her, their sound muffled by closed lips.
Now and then he roams as nomadic creatures tend to do. Maybe it’s the immortality that keeps him from resting peacefully tonight; usually Crevan is content to just curl up beside Sabrina and share her warmth. The female Hellhound is growing on him, not just a pup herself anymore. They synchronize well.
But she can’t replace the past, and she certainly isn’t Merida.
Just like in his dreams, the memory of the fox-shifter haunts him in these restless hours. It’s like she’s there, watching him and all that he does, judging him silently while asking, where is Shiye. The moaning winds between Taiga’s trees were all the same: where is Shiye. Bitter cold and lashing storms in Icicle Isle all moaned in unison: where is Shiye. He wanted to howl and rage that Shiye was gone, gone like his mother before him because living immortally meant living in constant pain.
The seasons flew by after Merida went away. Shiye outgrew Crevan, and one night similar to this one the wolf-shifter saw his son for the very last time. He tries to outrun those memories but they nip at his heels when he goes, driving him on in a frenzy that never ends because his power is able to replenish the broken cells in his body almost as quickly as he kills them off.
On through Nerine, a pale blur that streaks through quiet Taiga, here and gone in a flash across the border of Loess and Hyaline until at last he breaks, pale chest heaving, ribs expanding, into a slow lope through the Forest. The faint sparkle of a fat, heavy moon illuminates overused trails. Crevan slows to a brisk trot, the wicked curve of his nails almost silent as they dig and lift rhythmically while he goes along.
Merida.
The bodily scent of her lingers here. Faint, yet strong enough that he stops entirely to lift his narrow mouth and test the direction of the wind. One of his paws crosses overtop the other as he turns and darts off the beaten path into darker parts of the wood, sinuous and deadly looking as he goes. He thinks of nothing but finding her, and when he does there’s only the black glint of his eyes when he peers out from the shadows to watch her sleep.
Wondering where you've been all my life, I just started living
Many of her dreams start out like this.
Shadows crawling silently in the deep dark of a forest, low hoots of massive owls and the leathery flick of bat wings somewhere in the midnight sky. She would stay like this for hours, in her dreams, below the blackness of night - small and insignificant, swallowed up by the yawning sky and the neverending trees that stretch upwards to scrape at the blue and purple above them, littered with tiny stars. Within the darkness, she knew, her crimson eyes would lock onto the shining black of another pair, with shining fangs glittering white as a mouth opened to reveal them.
Crevan.
She awakes with a start, scrambling her paws beneath her clumsily as the dream fades from her mind. She blinks blearily into the early morning air, wondering if dawn would soon be on the horizon. Merida’s thoughts as well as her body freezes; eyes were on her.
With a flip of her ears backwards, her eyes narrow to peer quietly through the darkness; black-lined lips ripple slightly, uneasy with the feeling of being watched.
Then, the wind shifts.
Her shoulders go limp and her jaw slackens in shock - she remains motionless as his scent (living, breathing, fresh) swirls around her. It’s a dream, it’s a dream, it’s a dream…
She cannot see him, not yet, but as her dream comes to fruition she can feel her heart ripping in two.
He’s found her.
Lowering her head, the fox nestles back into the damp earth her bright yet uncertain eyes staring in his direction. She huffs uneasily, her ribcage pounding with the rapid beat of her heart, and a low whine leaves her lips as her muzzle comes to rest on soot-colored forepaws.
At this hour, he should be returning to den in preparation for a long day of hunting. The night is still black and silent around them both, but he can clearly picture the svelte outline of Sabrina’s bulk moving past the rim of their hollowed out den. Would she be searching for him? It’s not hard to imagine that odd, split tail of hers flicking back and forth with a signature swish of irritation. No; he doubts it. The hellhound female wasn’t like Merida in that way.
The picture in his thoughts changes. Turns to the dark hours before dawn when he would slip past a forest of eternal autumn and into the apexed entrance of another den. In those memories he can see sharp, reflective eyes like wide almonds staring back and tainted with mock disapproval.
“You cry for the ghost of me.” Her once-mate mutters through glinting teeth. His square shoulders roll smoothly underneath a thick layer of gold-tinted fur, gone ruddy brown in the low light, when he plods forward on silent paws. “Don’t.” Is the only warning she’ll receive.
Merida, he thinks silently. The side of himself that seems more ‘horse’ and less ‘wolf’ is drawn out by her appearance, the smell of her lingering all around him, even the sight of her there - hunkered down into the brittle refuse of this ancient forest. That Crevan wants to sink into the ground with her and hold her prisoner between his forelegs. Maybe run a rough tongue across her smooth, reddish forehead and mingle their whiskers together.
Wondering where you've been all my life, I just started living
You cry for the ghost of me.
Merida’s ears fall flat against the thick auburn of her neck at the sound of his voice - it is unlike what she remembers hearing in her dreams, and its tone is enough to cause her fiery gaze to shy away from his as he plods towards her. The bite in his voice is so casual, yet dripping with the disappointment that she was expecting. It almost hurts more than she had imagined it to - their reunion - and it is less than a happy one.
Don’t.
The black of her lips turn downward into a grimace, lifting her chin from her paws with a breathy huff. She can’t stand the way he looks at her; like he doesn’t remember her, as if she is something from a long lost past that is too far gone. Perhaps she is. The thought causes her to clamp her jaws tightly shut, staring at the slender ebony of her paws.
His voice draws her gaze upwards, meeting his glassy eyes with the sharpness of her own and she can’t decide if she stares him down out of bravery or pride. She goes to stand, wondering if the movement would cause his mouth to open wide to reveal shining teeth, to warn her to not come any closer.
“Not long,” she half-lies with a quiet voice, her proud stance diminishing with a simple shrug of her shoulders. She pauses, her face becoming quiet serious and still, her eyes framed with the narrowing of her lids as she peers up at him from a distance. “Long enough to have found you, though.” Her voice is even more quiet as the confession falls from her lips. She could have found him easily within moments of returning, and she knows that he knows this too.
I was afraid, I'm still afraid, she doesn’t tell him.
She reminds him so much of Shiye. Their son had inherited those sharp eyes of hers. Merida’s expression behind them was exactly like looking into the eyes of his fox boy. He wishes that he couldn’t understand her thoughts but after living together and loving one another it’s so hard to pretend. Crevan wants to smile, maybe mock her in that old familiar way when she puffs up and stares him down. He might’ve, if he hadn’t sensed the hesitancy surrounding her.
Did she… did she really think he would attack her?
Attack Merida, who’d known him since he was a thin, young thing?
She talks and he sits, curling his tail in one familiar, swift action so that it comes to rest over his gathered paws. From above he peers down into her semi-deflated stature, keeping his curiosity in check but allowing his eyes to speak for him. The brown curve of a marking that resembled eyebrows shifted; one rose and one held still. A quizzical gesture.
“I live north these days. In a place known as Icicle isle.” Comes the gruff, lacadistical response. “With a few other shifters.”
Who else would he be with but his own kind?
For a brief second he almost blurts out I missed you. The admission rises in his throat but dies on his tongue. Did she find him, or has she been avoiding him? Their meeting just now seems a bit fortuitous for either of them to claim it as anything other than accidental. He exhales. Turns his blocky, bulky head and looks out into the quiet dark. “Long enough to have found Shiye as well?” He asks.
It sounds more like an accusation than a question.
