"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
It is not in her habit to wander far. The world is a dark place for her, and she’s wary whenever she’s not with Sixteen. She keeps wondering when she will get used to navigating blindly, especially when this is all she’s ever known. But she’s just bitter instead. She adores having her brother describe things to her - especially hearing about the sunshine that flanks her and warms her side - but she wants to see them for herself. Wants to know what all the colours he describes actually means.
The hard ground of Pangea gives way to the softer grass of the meadow and Catryn feels the grass tickle against her legs and inhales the scents that tell her an autumn rain had just cleared up.
She moves forward slowly, carefully, until her muzzle bumps against the rough bark of a tree. A soft sigh escapes her and she moves so the tree is at her side and then stands still. What else is she going to do? She's hoping that something will happen and for now she contents herself with listening to the noise of the meadow, the conversations that buzz around her and the undercurrent of nature.
She has since she was a young girl, and it was a habit that did not break easily—let alone when whatever lie beneath the earth rose above to swallow her mother whole. She did not let such a thing break her. Did not let such a thing splinter her. Instead, she let it cut her free—let it spiraling out into freedom.
It is this thing that sends her to the meadow today.
The thing that has her walking through the grass and the passerby until she comes across the young girl, painted in pink and stars. It pauses her for a moment, her delicate hoof hanging in the air, her fine head angling toward the other with a moment of consideration. She considers continuing to walk, considers just leaving her there in the meadow, but there is something that snags her attention, something gripping.
So she puts her hoof down and works her way in that direction.
Comes up to the young girl just as she sighs next to the tree. Rearranging her face into something soft and sweet, nearly shy. “Oh, hello there,” she says, her silvery voice a touch more breathy as she curls around the other side of the tree to face the young girl. “I didn’t see you there.”
She is not along long after her sigh is released into the air. Catryn has been told that she is brightly coloured, that she does not blend in with her surroundings, but when her entire world is darkness she has no concept of what that might mean. She can have colours described to her, but her imagination cannot form magnificent things from nothing.
All she knows is that whatever the rest of the world looks like, she is a piece separate from it. And she is not sure whether or not that is a good thing. Good, if it attracts good attention - but bad otherwise, she thinks. She likes the idea of being part of the darkness that she can see. It does not seem fair that she should be so easily perceived without her consent, that the world can know her before she gets a chance to know it back.
The voice that comes to her is soft and for a moment it is comforting but then those last few words hit her and Catryn’s pink-tipped ears flatten against her skull in annoyance.
“If that’s a joke.” Catryn turns her head towards the voice and blinks her milky eyes as though to emphasize them. Bitterness rising out of her in her response in a gentle plume. “It’s not very funny.”
Once Rosebay sees the milky eyes, she drops the physical charade. It can be exhausting to carry that kind of illusion on and she is grateful that she can relax into her normal stance, not shielding her usual expression and training her face into something sweet and unassuming. Her features sharpen, her almond eyes scrutinizing her a little closer, but when she speaks again, it is with the same breathy innocence.
“Oh,” she exhales, as though she cares deeply about the mistake. It is a jarring contradiction, were anyone close enough to watch them together. Rosebay looks nearly bored, her nose wrinkling, her stance askew, but when she opens her mouth, it is with the voice of someone entirely genuine, the sincerity so practiced that she nearly surprises herself with the way it rolls off her tongue. “I promise you that it was no joke.”
How easily she has learned to lie in these first few years.
She studies her a little closer, wondering at the bitter bite to her tone. She doesn’t move closer nor step away from her. Instead she breathes easily, careful to not give away any hint of the truth of her.
“My name is Rosebay,” this is honest at least. “I’m terribly unobservant sometimes.”
She wonders if perhaps this girl is self-conscious or worried about being overlooked and so she attempts to put just a tiny bit of pressure on the idea—just to see how she reacts.
“And it is so strange. I’ve never seen you before. Do you live here?”
Catryn is satisfied that she wasn’t being made fun of and so the pink and black girl relaxes a little. Some of the edge seeps out of her. Some. She’s comforted by the softness of the voice that’s nearby, anyway. It sounds like the voice of a friend, someone Sixteen might encourage her to hang out with. It was good to make friends, wasn’t it?
Rosebay becomes one of a very small number of names that Catryn has learned and that in itself feels like a small victory for today. Almost even feels like that means they’ve exchanged enough words and can part ways. She’s never made it this far into a conversation with someone else before.
“I’m Catryn.” She offers in response and decides not to agree outloud on Rosebay’s lack of observation skills. She’s thinking it, though - even as she’s aware of the irony of the blind judging someone else for not being observant enough.
The next question seems strange, but not insulting - and Catryn’s head instinctively tilts slightly to the side as she considers the response. “No. I lived in Pangea, and then the earth shook and ate someone, and now… I guess it’s safe again? It’s hard to keep track. I think we still live there - my brother and I.” Somewhere in here, Catryn becomes aware that she's rambling and she shrugs in an effort to cut herself off. "I'm just... visiting here. Is this where you live, then?" The question is added on as an after-thought.
The girl is not as self-conscious as she would have once though, and she is a little disappointed by it. It was always more difficult to find a foothold in others like this. But not impossible, she reminds herself. The idea of a challenge perks her up slightly and she straightens, eyes narrowing as if she would be able to spot those weaknesses in the other girl if she looked close enough. If she just tried hard enough.
“Catryn,” she echoes, wondering if playing pretend to earn the friendship would be enough. It would not hurt to have female friends, she knows, thinking of her sister for a moment. She wrinkles her nose again, unsure about what to do next or how she wanted to take the conversation, but content to go forward with this latest idea for now. At least until she has a better one—which was certain to happen eventually.
Her blood runs cold at Catryn’s next sentence though and she struggles to keep the chill from her voice.
“My mother,” she manages between grit teeth. “The earth shook and ate my mother.” It surprises her to know that she could feel angry over Straia’s death, or disappearance, but she decides that it is more the fact that this girl didn’t even know her mother’s name that upsets her than the memory itself. Her mother could be dead so long as her legacy lived on—so long as she remained in infamy.
Rosebay swallows, trying to get her emotions beneath her thumb once more.
“It’s safe though,” a pause, feeling herself shake just slightly. “I think.”
She continues to fight for control, to fight to remain when there is no small piece of her that wants to turn on her heel and run. “Yes, I live her with my sister.” She forces a laugh. “For now at least.”
The voice of Rosebay changes after the mention of Pangea, strained instead of smooth. The news that it had been this girl’s mother that had been eaten by the earth surprises Catryn, her useless eyes widening a little.
“Oh.” It doesn’t occur to Catryn to offer her condolences or even apologize for the cavalier way she had spoken of the incident. She wasn’t aware that others cared for their mothers or that they even had a decent relationship with them. Her own had tried to eat her soon after birth, and she had only been saved by the bravery of her twin. It had seemed logical, to her, to assume this was the natural order of things. That parents try to eat their young and everyone who grows up past infancy had simply been saved or was strong enough to defend themselves.
Catryn, when she spared her mother a thought, would have happily pushed her into the earth to be eaten.
“Are you a twin too?” She asks instead of speaking aloud the thoughts of matricide that are buzzing through her mind. This, perhaps, is a safe subject for them to talk about.
Rosebay finds that it’s difficult to keep her emotions in check once they have exploded free of her. She finds it’s difficult to reel them back in once they’ve found their way into the world and it takes every ounce of willpower to hold them back. Takes everything to try and keep her face composed and her voice even when everything in her wants to compel the girl to walk off a cliff or talk until her tongue fell off.
But that is not the purpose of this conversation and so she manages to keep her cool.
She swallows and laughs lightly at the question, as though she was unaffected by the casual mention of her own mother’s demise. Although there was nothing strange at all about the way she’d reacted.
“I am,” she answers, honest for once. “My sister’s name is Iris.” She has not seen her since the disappearing of her mother and were she a kinder woman, she might have feared for her. But she knows that her sister is more capable than most of keeping herself protected and she doesn’t think twice of it.
Catryn cannot explain exactly why, but as soon as the question is returned back on her - she does not feel like sharing information about her twin with this near-stranger. Even his name feels like too much, though that really shouldn’t matter. Names don’t hold much power, do they?
Perhaps this hesitation because the thoughts of how he had saved her on a few occasions are still thrumming around her head. It’s an instinct that she cannot seem to find the source for, but she trusts it all the same.
Without one of her senses, something as simple as following her instincts becomes important.
“Oh, he’s the best.” She says, in place of a name, and smiles with a sweetness she does not fully feel. Catryn turns her head away, faking that her attention has been drawn elsewhere, before she shifts her weight and readies to depart. “I am going to go find him now, actually. It was nice meeting you, Rosebay.” Kind words that are mostly empty but she manages a smile that is not entirely false before turning away. It would be good to find Sixteen again now, to feel the comfort of his presence ground her.
