"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
A straggly wanderer, tangled tendrils of flaxen hair whipping against his neck. Framing his face as the golden flecks in his dark brown eyes gleam within the beams of the setting sun. Everywhere was white, snow had fallen and covered everything from sight. Turning from autumn to winter in a single night. Here he stood, knee deep in the snow. A single speck of red in the illuminating world of white. He had returned. Not because he had found inner peace. There was no forgiveness for those that had taken the few things he had ever loved. Magnus’s death had been years ago and yet still left an empty void in his heart. The flaxen chestnut stallion was so young in the flesh but his eyes held the fatigue of one that had experienced too much of life in such a short time. So much trauma, pain, and grief.
He had wandered for so long, had seemed to explore to the end of the earth and back. He had seen much, learned much, grown wiser and kinder with each experience he had with complete strangers and every morning that he awoke alive in one piece. His wanderlust over the past years had given him the closest thing he had ever experienced to happiness. Yet he still longed for that he could never attain. The thing that had been so cruelly ripped away from him at birth and then later on when he had been reunited for that short, but wonderful, time with his father. Love. Family. It had been in the Gates that he had finally been able to tell Magnus who he was, the long lost son he had with Raaquel who had been so viciously murdered on the cold sands of the beach. Her murder he can barely remember although Chernobyl’s voice still haunted his dreams. Liberette’s betrayal might have been worse… She who had so many opportunities to bring them together and chose not too. Maybe because she didn’t want to lose him, he doubted it. It wasn’t as if she had been the best adoptive mother to begin with.
His breath hangs in the air, frozen mist as he exhales before the coldness fills his lungs. He had returned to the Gates because he had no other place to go, finally tired from his adventures. Travel worn. Exhausted and ready to take off his shoes and rest his sore feet by the fire. Trim down his beard. Take a bath. All the comforts of home. The Falls held too much pain for him to go back there. Heaven though was the place where he had once had a real father. Heaven’s Gates. He looks up to the clouded sky, swollen and gray with the threat of another snowstorm. A soft whisper from his parted lips. ”I see you Dad. You found love here once. Maybe I will too.”
The cold had become knitted into my skin, strewn into my sinew and even deeper then. The cold bit into the marrow of my bones, the strings of my torn soul. I had been standing in the snowstorm, body rigid like stone. My weakened frame, scarred, healing skin, was berated by the winds, the gales that stung with icy bullets. The piles of snow had started to mound my hindquarters, as gaunt s they were, the snow still managed to settle. Sort of like the stalagmites that hang from tree branches, the icicles that sing in the morning sun as the crisp winter morning brings a new horizon.
There is no sun today, just the grey, the endless monochrome skies that overhang the gates with a sense of sorrow. I feel it, I feel the trepidation, the pain as sharp as needles, driving deeper and deeper inside of me. The memories are just as sharp, like the snow that drives against me. I'd been standing like the statue since dawn's first light. In the heart of the Gates, I was as sturdy as the magic tree. never shifting, even when the gales forced me from my feet occasionally. I was steadfast, but wish so much my eyes had been as steely. They were like clear marbles, grey as the skies, and as hollow as the endless cloud.
It was the eyes that spotted the russet figure as he strolled, knee deep through the burrows of snow. I watched him with a keen eye. Listened for any sound, for any form of threat. Not that my bony frame could do much. All out of proportion. A rounded barrel, that I was certain was not coming from grass (I had lost my appetite long ago and survived on nothing more than picking at the brambles and mint, occasionally the honeysuckle that decorated the summer brush.) Now winter's harsh season had hit and with it, Jack Frost's unfavourable rule. I had lost the condition I had gained. If my skin were not healing as much as it was (Thanks to Wichita and Jason.) I am certain you could see the white bone beneath, sharp angles jutting out from my skin. My weedy neck twists and I shake away the mountain of snow that had collected for the hours.
Frostbitten and numb, I moved each limb, mechanical and achingly. My cocoa body, like tree bark, stands out against the winter white. My creamy tresses, matted with forgotten leaves and burrs, remains limp and lank against my lithe neck. I travel like a ghost, ethereal and hauntingly across the loam, until I meet up with the stranger. My worn ears capture the trailings of his voice; he sounds like the lonely owls that call in the night, lost, alone, wanting company. And like how I accept the lonely creatures and mimic their lonesome cry, I pull to a halt just by the stranger, tilting my head just so to the right, to observe him, twisting my nose, flaring my nostrils. All is such a mechanical action, I feel as robotic as the iron beast that had jumped me, taken from me something, something as precious as rain in a drought, and as sought after as green grass in winter. He had taken and yet had given, and I was still unsure as to what.
I say nothing, the wind insists on berating me, frostbitten fingers striking my flanks, entangling my limp mane. I watch him, all silence and mystery, all hollowed grey eyes, as empty and lost as the cloudy sky above. My lips purse tightly, dry and course, cracked from the cold, the ice. But always a mess, and always a mystery, I stand as silent and bearing as a tree, yet as weak and fragile as a weed lost in the wind.
Reuen the little ruined girl resident of the gates
Winter greets with a raw fierceness. I trod idly through the frozen fields, the green of the Gates no longer present. The clovers my Mother and I enjoy so much, now an unfulfilled desire. Jack Frost had taken to the home décor and he had left it stark, white, and dull. Which meant digging through the ice to find sustenance, not my favorite. This is what I am currently doing, a black whisp against the pale backdrop. My daggers rake at the ground over and over until it finally gives way, exposing the yellowed blades I am to eat. Well, it isn’t much I think to myself as I tilt my dial to look unappetizingly at my breakfast.
It is then that I take note of two horses, I don’t miss much with my eyes it seems. Their view is ever increasing, sharpening, while my ears are not of the same governance. Today is a good day though, as I did not awake to their common ringing. Just as well, the noise is irritating and sours my mood. I’m sure my herd mates have noticed, they chalk it up to adolescence. I know better, something further is wrong but I cease to bother them with my needs. One horse is someone I do not know, at least not yet anyways, a flaxen chestnut colored male. What interests me more is my friend Reuen who is now beside him. Reuen. The simple woman, I worry for her often, more so than I do myself. I worry for Mother just the same, they both seem to lack a common sense that I come by naturally. They were easy targets, and they did not seem to heed the fact.
The drifts cause little trouble for me, my limbs are as long as they are dark. I would be tall, having not even reached my year mark and I was growing rapidly, and I was certain the outcome. I would be spared my Mother’s slight build, but it was one more aspect of myself that took after my Sire. That, that I was not so quick to be pleased about. My coat had come in thick, a prize I am pleased with, I am warm and that is all that matters. What is more unwelcome to me is the fading of my color, it had spread across the top of my head and down to my muzzle already. A deep slate colored gray, hairs finding their way down my nape as well. A nicker frees itself from my ivory cage, before I vocalize her name. ”Hey, Reuen. Who is that you’re with?” I call suspiciously, approaching the two, my copper colored eyes narrowed at the newcomer. Mother would think I was rude, but she wasn’t here to chastise me for my guarded nature, my smart nature I thought.
