"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
She can feel the creeping cold of the coming winter, the way it makes her body weary and her limbs feel heavy. It is still hard sometimes to accept that this body is hers now, these legs that look like slender branches, this skin that will never be soft or warm again. At night, in the dwindling moments where she can still find sleep, she still dreams of being a girl. Of the old body a shade of soft ash and crimson dapples, of an inner warmth and a thrumming pulse and the sound of her own heartbeat.
Sometimes the heartbeat is all she dreams about.
This body is quiet except for the rustle of leaf and flower - though now her flowers have turned to rosy apples in her hair, and soon they will rot and fall and stain the bark of her skin with their putrid sweet juices. She has not decided yet if this shames her, if it is as repulsive as she initially thought it was, or if perhaps she is just growing used to these new truths. But she knows this quiet body scares her, that it is so hard to lay still in the silence of deep night and wonder what it is to live and die. To be lost in these mortal worries and have no bump-bump in her chest to call her back, no gentle hush of breath in her lungs.
There is only ever the quiet, so how does she know she lives?
Sometimes it feels like there is nothing inside her.
She is just like the quiet trees, tall and solitary, a universe within itself. Just like every flower yearning for the sun and summer showers, like every blade of grass swaying gold and brown in the autumn noon. Alive, and so quiet. Unnoticed.
Except, she can hear them. She has never told anyone, never shared this secret or spoken it aloud for worry of what others might think. For fear of being even more strange than she was before. She can feel the sorrow of a world during fall, the silent dread of winter months and waiting death. She can feel the heartbreak of the oak when her boughs fill with too much snow and her branches break and die beneath its weight. But she can feel the delight of the white silk seeds when they float free of a dandelion stem, too.
The world is quiet to everyone but her, and she wonders, if she is like these things, is anyone listening to her quiet joys and sorrows?
She rises from the grass in her patch of autumn sunshine, and she can feel the weight of the apples bobbing heavily in their tangle at the crest of her neck, hear the hum of bees buzzing amongst the ripe fruit. But her gentle focus is elsewhere, following the sad song of a cluster of wild violets as they brace against the cold. She can feel that hopeless yearning for more summer and more sunshine, more life where there is none left. She pauses to nose a branch aside with such gentle care, letting more sunshine slip through to her patch of violets as the bees continue to bumble gently through a mane of leaf and twig.
linnea
these wildfires grow and grow until a brand new world takes shape
For him, this world is entirely too loud. He sleeps as often as his body will allow but he always awakes in a cold sweat no matter how many seasons pass. It has been years and sometimes his mother comes to him when the world is quietest. She begs him for answers, cries on him, and then she slips away into the night just the way she came. The questions that rattle out of her between sobs are the same ones he asks himself – why couldn’t he move? Why didn’t he cry for help? How long did it take until she went limp and silent?
He blinks his eyes open and lifts his head, dried leaves still clinging to his pristine white mane. The sun is too bright, but he yawns and accepts that it is time to move on to the next area. The scent of apples lures him into slow, lazy steps as he searches for the source of the smell. It’s been so long since he allowed himself such simple pleasures that he nearly reaches out and plucks it from her. The sleep is clearing from his vision, though, and he realizes this is not a tree at all.
He snorts softly and takes a step back, tilting his pale head and observing her with obvious intrigue. His bright red eyes mirror the apples of her mane and this realization brings a soft smile to his lips. She’s pretty, and he might have told her that in another life, but in this one he simply takes another step back. Scorpio would like to slip back into the trees. This is the most interaction he’s had in years and it feels suffocating.
He is not one to be rude, though. Scorpio offers a whispered nicker of apology and takes yet another step back. This body of his isn’t easy to look at – the armored plates or the sharp teeth, that awful tail. It would be best for him to leave, he thinks as he lowers his gaze shamefully to stare at her wooden hooves and his own armored ones.
If he had to be a monster, why couldn’t he bloom the way she does?
" May the bouquet of your hips wither. May the wolves forget your name. "
05-04-2020, 11:50 AM (This post was last modified: 05-04-2020, 11:50 AM by linnea.)
He is the quiet of fog drifting in to nearly touch her, but she moves and, much like fog, he swirls away with a whispered breath. She is not sure where he came from or how he managed to come so quietly and unseen, but now he is the only thing she can look at. He is white and armored, with splashes of red and quiet eyes that match. She finds she likes the armor if only because it makes him odd like her, solid where he should be soft and warm. But his tail is strange in a way that might’ve made the hairs stand along her spine if she still had any left.
So she focuses on his face again, on the way those red eyes examine her just like she had been examining him. She wonders what he must think, if he also finds comfort in the strangeness of her body, or if perhaps he feels politely horrified. But then his eyes flicker and she all but falls into the soft smile that changes the shape of that quiet mouth. Her eyes lift to his again, pink as springe petals, and there is a soft kind of sunshine waiting for him if he looks up too.
But instead he backs up, making soft snorts and quiet whickers that thaw some of the ice in her chest because this boy seems so gentle, so full of a kind of quiet she’s only ever glimpsed. She wants to follow his retreat, wants to make sure he doesn’t slip away like the fog he so reminds her of, but she thinks any step she takes forward will push him back three more. So after a moment of thinking, with a brow that might’ve wrinkled in concentration if it could, she shakes her head until the apples drop around her feet with a soft thump thump thump. Then so carefully, with that shy pink tourmaline gaze wandering over every curve and hollow of his downcast face, she reaches down and rolls a shining red apple into the shadow of his hooves and waits.
linnea
these wildfires grow and grow until a brand new world takes shape
