"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
throw me in the water, don’t think about the splash i will create
leave me at the altar, knowing all the things you just escaped
He is not prone to boredom, Isakov.
But the river is quiet, the current weak, the water kind. And so his own heart is quiet and weak and kind. It is a wanderer’s heart and he makes first for the forest and then the meadow.
He is too young for nostalgia, certainly, but there is some fragile corner of his brain that hopes to catch sight of a glint of glass. A woman draped in galaxies. But he sees neither, only a landscape that rolls softly away from him. Reminds him of different times.
He moves slow through the meadow. Not in hopes that he might stumble upon them but because the heart feels feeble and he weak with it. A foolish thing, certainly. A concept that exists only in his mind, but he feels it nonetheless. It makes him weary.
Until he catches sight of something else. Neither glass nor galaxy. A deep black and bright green eyes. And that shimmering beneath the surface that he has begun to thin might be a soul. They all have it but he has not yet worked out how to examine it up close.
He is drawn to her and he goes willingly, studying her as he goes. Until he stops just short of too close, smiling a slanted kind of smile. He tilts his head and exhales a low sigh. “What a day,” he says by way of greeting, his gold eyes fixed firmly to hers, “it’s awfully quiet, isn’t it?”
Avelina’s already smiling when he approaches, warmth turning her green eyes into the colour of spring leaves illuminated by sunshine. He’s beautiful - this star-dusted colt - and so unlike anyone she has ever met because of it.
Is he a piece of the night sky, animated out of her desire to have a new friend? It’s easy to believe. Her mother had told her the story of how she had returned from the stars, from the afterlife, all those years ago (though out of kindness, Agetta neglected to mention she had come back to battle Avelina’s father).
The black filly feels plain next to him, but it’s not enough to cause her discomfort. Avelina rejoices in their differences.
His greeting is a funny one, and she realizes she hadn’t even noticed the relative quiet. Most of her life was like this, afternoons and evenings stretched in companionable silence with her brother or listening to quiet stories from their mother.
Her voice is soft when she replies, the type of voice that is at home with the swaying grasses and gentle breezes of the meadow. “You don’t like the quiet?”
throw me in the water, don’t think about the splash i will create
leave me at the altar, knowing all the things you just escaped
How sweet the smile. How placating. How it seems to seize him by the heart and pull, beckoning him even closer. And how willing he goes, content to be strung along by it.
She is warm, it is not hard to tell. Receptive and inviting. Perhaps she will let him rest here awhile. Perhaps she will let him lay an ear to her chest to listen to the heart beating underneath. Perhaps she will let him revel in the magic of being alive.
But, for now, she smiles and he smiles back. There is something slanted about his, boyish. It is indicative of his age, even if the rest of him acts much older. In her, he sees the same glimmer he sees in everyone else. But he still does not know what to make of it. He does not know how to manipulate himself to match it. Not yet.
He exhales a stilted kind of sigh but his smile does not slip as he considers her question. The answer is quite simple, isn’t it? He has never quite known what to make of the silence. And the silence here is different than the silence down by the river, which is punctuated by the rush of the water. It is there that he feels most alive.
“I’m not used to the quiet,” he says, which is neither agreement nor argument. He sidles closer still. He means her no harm, see. See it in the way he smiles? In the bashful way he blinks those pale gold eyes? He is only lonely and he does not know what to make of the quiet.
“Do you like the quiet?” he asks then, “have I disturbed you?”
The dark filly does not mind when he sidles closer, not one bit. She’s discovering the joy that comes with being around someone, especially around someone woven from stars with the slanted grin that he wears. Like she’s getting the chance to stand close to magic, the source of all fairytales and stories. She wants to touch those patches, to see if his scent matches what it feels like to be lost in the stars on a summer night.
Her gaze doesn’t move from him as her expression grows a little thoughtful, a dream-like quality to her voice as she puts words to the feeling of comfort and home that a quiet day gives her. “I like it because I’m used to it, I think.” Avelina’s world isn’t one of silence, but it is certainly a quiet one. Secrets and sadness pulling her mother apart at the seams. And though she loves her family and does truly find comfort in the quiet, the answer to his second question comes without needing to think about it at all.
“But no, you’re not disturbing me. It’s always good to try new things.” Here that easy smile brightens with sunny laughter as she realizes that might be an odd thing to say. As if breaking the silence by talking to the star boy was like trying a new food for the first time or when she discovered a new animal she could shift into and found all the things she didn’t get to experience as a horse.
And it was - that feeling of a new joy is exactly what is causing a light to dance in her green eyes at this very moment.
throw me in the water, don’t think about the splash i will create
leave me at the altar, knowing all the things you just escaped
There is something deeply peaceful about her, something that draws him to her. Something dreamy in the way she speaks and he thinks that he’d like to live inside her chest, to listen to the sound of her voice for centuries. Let it lull him gently to sleep.
He wonders if she’d let him.
He ventures even closer still, like perhaps he’s hoping that whatever dreams live in her throat will wrap themselves sweetly around him, too. He wonders what it means that she’s used to the quiet. And he thinks of Sleaze, how he had ached for the quiet. How different they are. How equally spectacular. How evenly matched they are in the way they catch him by hooks in the belly, draw him closer.
Just as she wants to touch him, he wants to touch her. A feeling compounded by her insistence that he is not disturbing her.
He smiles like moonlight on still water and ducks his head something bashful. Like she is somehow making an exception for him, like it means something important that she has not asked him to leave when she so easily could have.
But not only does she not send him away, she shares with him her name. And what a lovely name it is!
“Avelina,” he echoes, testing the names weight and shape on his tongue. It rolls smooth out of his mouth while he considers her. “My name is Isakov,” he tells her and then reaches out to touch her shoulder, bumps it so gentle that it’s almost as if he has not touched her at all. “Why are you so used to the quiet?” How it pains him to think of her alone.
He shifts closer and she relaxes with the proximity, a slight shuffle of her own dark hooves closing the gap a little more still. “Isakov.” She echoes his name too, soft as a breath and just for herself as she memorizes it, holds it close so she might keep it safe like it is a new treasure for her to hold in her mind. And that is exactly what she thinks it is - a treasure like the brief touch of his muzzle on her dark shoulder that causes her smile to shimmer and dance like sunlight on the water.
She’s thoughtful for a moment before replying to his question, her green gaze on him but unfocused. It does not occur to her to evade the question or answer with anything other than the complete truth - she is happy to share pieces of herself. Happy to give and take in a conversation that might cause him to linger near her a little longer. “Oh, my family is quiet. Sometimes my brother and I play but my mom…” Avelina trails off, thinking of her quiet night-eyed mother and also wondering already if she had dreamt the touch of this star-brushed boy, if she had just hoped for it enough that she tricked herself into thinking it already happened. “She tries to hide it but she’s sad. And I think it’s easier to not talk at all than it is to talk about one thing when your mind is full of something else. So sometimes... it’s easier if I’m not there so she doesn’t have to pretend.” For Avelina this feels like a kindness, and she truly does not mind exploring on her own.
Her nose scrunches up again as she finds it easy to once again laugh at herself and the odd words she’s sharing. And just like that her focus returns and she’s smiling at him with a crooked slant to her smile. “Does that make sense?” And then a beat later. “Is your family not like that?”
throw me in the water, don’t think about the splash i will create
leave me at the altar, knowing all the things you just escaped
What a dream it is to hear her say it and he wonders what it feels like in her mouth. If the edges are soft or barbed. If she likes the weight of his name or if she finds it troubling. And he almost asks, so keen to know what happens in her mind that he very nearly blurts it out. But he swallows it down, buries it deep. She will share it, if she wants him to know.
He is learning to be patient, Isakov. And he is learning other things, too.
Her smile glimmers so brightly that it puts a hollow ache in his chest before it is gone, chased away by his thoughtless question. How mournful he is to see it go. But he listens and he tries to understand. He thinks of his mother and the glass stallion who was not his father and their glass daughters. How dreamy the girls were, how they were quiet but not in the way she describes.
He has smelled sadness on his mother and the glass stallion but he has never thought much about it. He has never considered it a thing worth contemplating and he feels some twinge of guilt now. To think that he should have paid more attention.
His brow darkens in a frown but he nods. How he wants to pull her into a warm embrace and assure her that she need not ever think to be quiet in his presence. Alas, he refrains from this, too. “It makes sense,” he assures her, edging closer like he might curl himself around her after all. But he merely touches her shoulder a little more urgently. Not the breath of touch it had been when he’d first reached for her.
“No, my family is not like that,” he admits, “though it’s not without its own problems.” He tries for a smile then, pressing his gilded tongue against his teeth. “You needn’t keep quiet around me,” he murmurs into her shoulder.
He does not elaborate on the problems his family has and though she is curious, she decides against asking about them. Though he has said his family is not like hers, she wonders if thoughts of his family are has heavy as the ones she carries about hers - and she cannot quite bring herself to be the one to ask a question that might give rise to unpleasant thoughts.
And, just a little, she’s unwilling to break the peaceful spell that descends around them as he touches her shoulder again, lingering there this time so she knows she did not make it up.
Avelina smiles as he tells her she needn’t be quiet, murmuring the words against her shoulder and she leans into his touch just slightly. At the same moment her muzzle dances across his star-strewn neck - a feather-light caress that is as gentle as everything else she does.
Gentle enough to be ignored if desired, though these are not thoughts the young girl yet has.
“I’d like that, to not be quiet for once.” Though her voice makes her uncertainty in that statement plain. Would she like not being quiet? Had she already, at this young age, cocooned herself in the relative safety of a quiet, unacknowledged life? Enough that a simple request from a new friend should send her heart skittering as though she were about to make a jump and was not completely sure there would be solid ground on the other side?
Avelina hasn't tried to fly as a bird yet but she wonders if this is what it would feel like before the air caught her wings.
She is not an expert in being loud, so she defers to him - her soft green eyes brightening with a cautious excitement. “But… how should I start?” How does one go from being quiet to… not?
