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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


    we're knocking knees in a traveling breeze; brigade
    #1
    and the walls kept tumbling down
    in this city that we love
     
    He's died and come back, and she’s done nothing so astonishing, but she has grown stronger.
    She’s had little to do but practice her strange ability. She’s learned to make her own dreamscapes, to change things in these worlds. It’s still harder – the default is still the dream-place she grew up in, her touchstone – but she can change it almost easily now, make it unrecognizable and entirely her own. She can make creatures, too, though she is wary of this – her mother is a cautionary tale of the allure of dream-things, and Irisa fears  that path.
    Still, there have been times – indulgences – when she has dreamed things into being, because she is so often lonely. Mostly animals, other species, as if this is some sort of acceptable line.
     
    It’s a lovely world, but she forces herself not to dwell in it overmuch. She stays in reality often, wanders Beqanna, even if there is little here for her – she still has not found her mother, or her sister, and there was little else in way  of family.
    She thinks of him, of course, her friend (she wanted more, maybe, but she gives it no name, but she is comfortable with the word friend). But she had not found him, either.
    Until today.
    Until this night, when she sees a dark figure, the color inscrutable under the cover of night. But she does not need to see the color, because she knows the shape of him, she’s gazed upon it enough.
    A wolf howls, as if in confirmation, and she remembers him as one of those creatures, running through  a dream land with her. It’s a fond memory, and one she often revisits.
    “Brigade,” she says, her voice perhaps too loud in the quiet darkness, but she doesn’t care, moving toward him, suddenly so grateful for something that’s both familiar and real, so grateful that it’s him.
     


    Irisa
    tarnished x heartworm




    @[brigade] consider this my reply to your any post...couldn't resist <3
    Reply
    #2

    I was a poor boy; you were a bright light
    I was a sinner and you were a snake

    He catches the scent of her before he sees her and is surprised to know that she smells of life.

    (Of dreams, mostly, but they are more of life than death and thus the comparison stands.)

    He swings his antlered head up to peer into the darkness, searching for that familiar sight of ivory and the sheen of an oil spill and catches onto it just as she breaks through the shadows, the darkness parting before her like some great sea. He doesn’t smile at her (he isn’t certain that he remembers how, if his mouth has somehow atrophied into this stern, grim flash) but his face does warm, even if imperceptibly. It is the most minor of changes, the way his light grey eyes grow less steely, the storm in them quieting.

    “Irisa,” her name comes easily and he remembers what it was like to run alongside her as wolves when they were still the creatures of home and not the harbinger of his death. Still, she herself is a comfort still and if he closes his eyes, he is certain that he could remember what it felt like to be a young boy standing before her—hearing of dream worlds and marveling at the alien way it felt to have her wings brush against his. How strange and wonderful to be trapped in a memory when all of his are dark and endless.

    Brigade takes a step forward, tucking his wings in closer and frowning, unaware that what feels so natural comes across as such—a grimace melding into a scowl that shows nothing of his pleasure of seeing her.

    There are other words trapped in his throat. Questions about how she has been, things about how he has missed her and missed the world she created for them, stories of his own—no matter how dark—but they don’t come. They remain stuck and he just stands there, trapped and silent and wishing he wasn’t.

    shook like some old souls when our bones broke
    swallowed the sickness, a fever, a flame

    BRIGADE


    I AM SO HAPPY
    Reply
    #3
    and the walls kept tumbling down
    in this city that we love

    He is before her, finally, and she feels something calm within her, like the release of an unknowingly held breath. She does not let herself plumb too deeply into her own emotions, and so she had not felt his absence acutely, it is only now that she realizes the depth of her gratitude for his presence, the way something in her quiets as she looks at his still-dim form, the shape of antlers and wings, the curve of his crest.
    He says her name and she smiles, because she is bright and alive this autumn night. She has not yet scented the strangeness about him, the tightness, the scent that she will be unable to place. In this, she is perhaps selfish, so absorbed in how his presence affects her that she does not think deep enough about his presence in itself.
    He said her name, but says nothing else, and she is close enough now to touch him but she doesn’t, because she is less flippant now, though she remembers how it felt to touch him and take him into sleep, how he’d collapsed under her touch, and she’d felt the taste of power melting on her tongue like honey.

    “How have you been?” she asks, and the question feels shallow, insufficient in relying her feelings, but it’s simple enough, straightforward enough, so she leans upon it. She is eager to tell him of her own knowledge, that she is stronger now, in her dream land, that she can do anything he’d ask of, there, but first, she wants to know about him, about what’s happened since they last ran across her dreams as wolves, wild and free.
    It's only here, close and questioning, that she notices the change in him. She cannot ascribe it to any one particular thing, but rather an overall sense.
    “Are you all right?” she asks then, another question, and one she thinks she fears the answer to.



    Irisa
    tarnished x heartworm


    Reply
    #4

    I was a poor boy; you were a bright light
    I was a sinner and you were a snake

    When he was a young boy, Brigade imagined that he would have all kinds of constants in his life.

    He imagined that his family would always be there. That his father’s wolves would always run by his side and that he would never learn what it meant to grow apart from his twin. He imagined that he would have the constant example of his father to measure himself against—steely and strong but always kind. That his life would be set against the backdrop of Tephra and he would grow wild and free and unencumbered.

    Instead, nothing is as he had once thought.

    He has not seen his family in years—including his twin. He has not stepped foot in Tephra ever since he flew away from it. Each day, he feels himself grow further and further from his father’s example; more volatile, more selfish, more cowardly. And, perhaps worst of all, the howls that once comforted him so not leave him shaking and terrified. Yet another example of his childhood wrenched from his hands.

    But Irisa.

    Irisa in her own way has always been there. In his dreams, in these chance encounters, in her own head. She has been there with her inquisitive eyes and the way she seems to see through the steely exterior that others come up short by. She has been there when he was at his worst, and she didn’t leave.

    So he breathes low and deep when she looks at him, not bothering to answer her question just yet but instead studying her, taking in his fill of her, letting it settle in his chest like a stone.

    He feels warmer now, he thinks. Perhaps more whole.

    Which is why he is finally able to answer when she asks him the same question in a different form.

    “I have been dead.”

    It sounds so strange to give life to the syllables.

    shook like some old souls when our bones broke
    swallowed the sickness, a fever, a flame

    BRIGADE
    Reply
    #5
    and the walls kept tumbling down
    in this city that we love

    She hadn’t known what to do when her world had first split in two.
    When the veil was lifted and she learned that the place she’d grown was a dream, a kingdom built as Heartworm kept her asleep, some insane existence that she had not known was insane, because it was all she knew. She hadn’t known about her twin, either, the child who was left behind – perhaps because she looked too much like her father, perhaps because Heartworm only had the strength to take one. Irisa had never asked – why hadn’t she asked? Too caught up in her own collapsing world, perhaps.

    It's still strange, sometimes, because her tongue stutters across the word home, but it’s not a word she speaks much, so maybe it’s okay. And now the tables have turned – now she is the one with the power to dream places into being. She is careful with this power, or she thinks she is. She vows, that if she is to ever have a child, she will not take it into the dreamland until it is older.

    She isn’t sure what answer she expects from him, but it isn’t this one: I have been dead. Her eyes widen, and she moves without thinking. She does touch him now, just briefly, to assure herself that this form is real, that he is not some strange ghost come back to haunt her. He is warm, and smells of the earth, though she now thinks of gravedirt and inhales, sharply. But no. It’s him. Alive.
    “Dead?” she repeats, unsure what else to say. The word is strange in her mouth.
    “What happened?”
    She isn’t sure she wants to know. She isn’t sure how he’s standing before her now, but she’s so, so glad he is.



    Irisa
    tarnished x heartworm


    Reply
    #6

    I was a poor boy; you were a bright light
    I was a sinner and you were a snake

    She touches him and it’s like breaking the surface of water—like finally cracking through the surface and finding that first breath of air to expand his lungs. He inhales and finds that his vision clears even as his mind swims with it. Without thinking, reacting as he always does, he reaches down and runs his lips over the curve of her neck to her jaw, breathing in the scent of her that concentrates there—the perfume of it.

    He closes his eyes and rests his head for a second, pushing his forehead against her.

    “Wolves,” he manages the word and wonders at the way that it feels like broken glass in his throat—how a concept that used to comfort him could be so cruel now. “I didn’t stand much of a chance,” he says with a bitter laugh because he had always dreamed of being a soldier when he grew up and although he is rangy and strong, he is no soldier now. He is a vagabond more than a warrior. A traveler; not a fighter.

    He wants to tell her more. Wants to explain to her what it was like on the other side of the veil and how it was nothing like their time in her self-constructed dreamworld. How it was just grey nothingness until it wasn’t. How he was sucked into a quest that he had no interest in being a part of; how he had died again and again. How he had to relive his death and then give up a chance of life because he didn’t want it.

    How do you explain to the living that you didn’t want to be here?

    Instead no words come and he just exhales low and slow, not stepping away from the warmth of her.

    shook like some old souls when our bones broke
    swallowed the sickness, a fever, a flame

    BRIGADE
    Reply
    #7
    and the walls kept tumbling down
    in this city that we love

    He touches her back, keeps touching her, and her heart pounds hard enough in her chest that she has a moment to wonder if he can hear it. She can feel too well the softness of his lips against her neck, her throat, and then his forehead to hers, warm and alive, and she realizes how much she wants - needs - him to stay that way.
    She is shocked when he says wolves. She has always thought fondly of wolves, having only known them when they were together in the dream-world. She has heard them in this world, but only as distant howls. Truth is, Irisa does not know much of danger, having never really been in it herself. She has certainly never died.
    She doesn’t know that there was a version of her – the first version – who starved to death in a broken dreamland, in another quest longer ago. She doesn’t know that she is a recreation of that girl, that she was always living up to some unknown standard.
    (Though perhaps she sensed this, somewhere, a vague discomfort with her mother, why mother showed things and always expected Irisa to act in a certain way, a way she tried to guess at. She was successful, mostly, and even when she wasn’t, Heartworm never seemed angry, only faintly sad.)

    She is silent for a moment, after, breathless at the idea – of death, and more, of him dying.
    “I’m sorry,” she says, and the words do not adequately express her emotions, the depth of them, horror and relief and so much more, swirling inside her but unable to be articulated.
    “I’m glad you came back,” she says, and that’s almost adequate, it’s more than I’m sorry,, at least. Still not enough. Nothing she says can be enough.



    Irisa
    tarnished x heartworm


    Reply
    #8

    I was a poor boy; you were a bright light
    I was a sinner and you were a snake

    It is steadying to be standing next to her in this way, to feel her so whole against him and to know that she is alive and real—to know that she has a pulse. It is comforting to feel that warmth practically seep into his own bones, to know that he was indeed back. That this wasn’t some dream or some misfiring of his neurons in the final moments of life. He breathes her in deeper, letting it settle into his lungs.

    “It’s okay,” he murmurs at her apology, not bothering to correct her that it wasn’t her fault. He knows what she means—knows that she isn’t apologizing for causing it but rather expressing her sorrow of it. He wishes she didn’t feel that way (would she if she saw how little he fought the wolves? how he practically invited the death when it finally greeted him?) and he certainly wishes she didn’t feel it for him.

    He was so undeserving of such consideration.

    So undeserving of it anything resembling it.

    But despite knowing this, he doesn’t release her yet—doesn’t push her away as he pushes away most of anything in his life. Instead he just stands there, his wide chest expanding and then falling with each breath. Finally, he confesses. “I almost didn’t come back.” His voice is quieter on this but he doesn’t step away from her. “I actually chose to stay. I’m not sure why I’m here.”

    It was easier to just let himself fall into the shadows and let his mother take his place.

    It wasn’t brave or noble—it was just the way of things.

    It was the truth of him.

    “But I’m still glad I’m here.”

    shook like some old souls when our bones broke
    swallowed the sickness, a fever, a flame

    BRIGADE
    Reply
    #9
    and the walls kept tumbling down
    in this city that we love

    She listens to his confession, quiet, unsure what to say. She wonders if she should be shocked, perhaps, or even angry; wondering why he might have chosen to leave his life behind. She does not, of course, know the depths of his life, his experiences. She is only a piece of it, a woman who came into his life when he was barely out of foalhood, who dreamed him into a wolf.
    “Me too,” is all she says. And she is glad, even if it is perhaps selfish that she is glad, if living was not his original wish. She is glad because he is warm and smells familiar, and she has never met someone like him, has never had her heart beat in this particular way, fearful and flourishing all at once.

    She wants, of course, to fix it, to find some way to ameliorate things. She granted a wish of his, once, dreamed them both into wolves, but given the circumstances, that is not such a dream that they should revisit.
    “We could escape,” she offers. A strange choice of words, perhaps, but the more she experiments with the dreams, the more she understands the undercurrent of escapism that feeds her dreamscapes. She thinks, perhaps, that he could use the escape.
    Or maybe she is wrong, and dreaming is too close to death for him to want to partake.
    She waits, breath matching his, for his answer.



    Irisa
    tarnished x heartworm



    @[brigade] feel free to powerplay them going a'dreaming or he can be like "girl i just died no THANK you" imma have fun either way <3
    Reply




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