"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
05-24-2020, 10:34 PM (This post was last modified: 05-24-2020, 10:39 PM by thorn.)
THORN
The occasional echo of 'Thorn the Third' draws a rare smile to Thorn's lips. The sabino lurks just outside of earshot whenever he watches Tamlin, shadowed eyes bright purple and dewy. He doesn't often seek his brother out, but when he stumbles upon him on accident, that little whisper of affection soothes the reverberating cries vibrating in his chest. He is enraptured, eyes blank, mouth slightly agape, lips turn up in the sweetest, most secretive smile. Here, away from Tamlin's eyes, he can feel joy.
Because here, so far from his brother's direct hurt, Thorn doesn't have to remember he deserves this.
Here, he forgets how he has hurt his family.
Here, ethereal in glow and in gore, terrible and beautiful - he is Thorn, Tamlin's beloved brother, and not Thorn, a cursed son.
For a few moments, Thorn forgets that the Tamlin he now watches is not a vision. He is the flesh and blood brother of his youth, smile still boyish, so like the look he'd give Thorn when he won one of their races. "Oh," he whispers, feeling that familiar ache of pain forcing more blood down his legs. "Oh," he repeats, barely audible, pained by how very there Tamlin is, and yet he cannot be there. Thorn is trapped in his ache, invisible and frozen, distant enough from reality to mark this is as a memory he'll soon dump from his brain.
That is, until his dazed staring causes him to lean to hard to the left and -
Tamlin got so good at pretending he didn’t know his brother was lurking nearby that he actually forgot for a moment. Forgot that that was why he was talking to and about Thorn the Third so much. It’s when the branch snaps and he turns to spy that very familiar form that he remembers - and that he has an excuse to stop pretending. He leaves his wolves and trots over through the Tephra foliage to where that first and best brother was.
“Thorn! Where’ve you been you bast--” The curse dies on Tamlin’s tongue for two reasons - first because he likes both of his parents too much to make a snide comment like that, and because he gets a good look at his brother’s chest. For a moment, his eyes just bulge out of his face a little bit, watching the fresh blood drip down his brother’s legs.
This is so different than the world Tamlin lives in, so much violent than the bubble he has cocooned himself in here in Tephra. He doesn’t even go with the wolves when they hunt and instead comes around after they have been satiated.
His parents had warned him, but seeing it is so much worse than he had pictured. He had just figured Thorn had a splash of red on him.
“Damn that’s gross.” And with that, he recovers. His smile returns, soft and touched with concern - but the curiosity is setting in too. “Does it hurt? I bet mom freaked. Is that why you’ve been sulking and not coming around? You know I hang out with wolves, right? They could smell the blood better than I could and I had to keep them from going to seek out the source.”
