"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 had been such an effortless thing to say, such an effortless thing to do -- to show her this side of him that no one else had ever seen (not even Livinia), to say that it belonged to her -- but does he have any concept of what it means? Does he have any concept of what it means when she says that she will carry it in her chest?
The shadow thing is not a thing built for love, not really.
Belonging to someone is not the same thing as loving them, not as far as he is concerned.
He is a selfish thing. Greedy. Hungry.
Does this make him a monster?
Is the thrill he feels when she gestures to her own chest a dangerous thing?
Is there anything about this shark-toothed thing that is not dangerous?
She presses her lips to his cheek (and he makes himself solid just to feel her touch because it puts such a delicious pit in his gut to feel it) and he reaches out to press his lips to her chest where she had said she’d keep the plain gray thing he’d shown her. This is where she’ll keep it. He skims the shark teeth against the surface of her scaled skin. It belongs to her.
He lifts his peculiar head and meets her silver gaze with those freakish yellow eyes, knowing he would follow her into the depths. Into that new, crushing darkness. Will the weight be different there?
The first time he ever felt the wetness had been on the battlefield in that pouring rain when he had been made whole enough to fight. He knows that it must mean something that she goes there more often now. He exhales a rattling sigh and remembers how it had pained him to look at her once.
“I would like to see it,” he tells her and he means it. And then he asks, because he has to, because he never told her, “do you know who I am?”
( FROM THE DESTRUCTION, OUT OF THE FLAME
YOU NEED A VILLAIN, GIVE ME A NAME )
She’s not sure. She has never witnessed such a thing before—never been able to know what it means to truly love something. Her parents had not loved each other. Ivar had not loved her. She had not loved any of her children, not truly. So does she love Jamie? It is an impossible question for her to fathom, let alone try to answer. There is no answer to be had because her heart does not beat in the same rhythms as this world. She belongs to him, in pieces, and there are pieces of him that now belong to her—
and that is enough.
More than enough.
She relishes the feel of his dark muzzle against her. Relishes the reaper’s touch for all of the difference he is and the way that he feels against her slick scaled body. When he pulls back, she studies his yellow eyes as though answers could be found there and though she would be able to discern them if they were.
“I can take you,” she says simply, knowing that she would be able to find the pockets of dark with ease. Knowing that he would be able to follow her. She had never swum with anyone like that before. Her swims with Ivar had always been something different entirely—and she had never taken him to the parts of the ocean that intrigue her the most. The places where she rests beneath the pounding of the tides.
But she would take him.
At her next question, she tilts her slight head, curious.
I CAN’T EXACTLY DESCRIBE HOW I FEEL
BUT IT’S NOT QUITE RIGHT
His had been a simple question.
Hers is simple, too.
He considers it a long moment, studying that fine, dished face. (It is still such a thrill to be able to so plainly look at her! How it had pained him to look at her the first time he had seen her! Such a lowly fool he had been then, so weak. A pitiful excuse of a thing!)
Finally, he smiles that same ink-black, shark-tooth smile and he shakes that peculiar, featureless head. (And he could have any head he wanted, couldn’t he? He could be scaled, like her. He could be the finest thing she ever saw. He could be swathed in gold if he wanted. But he loves these shadows, perhaps the only thing he ever loved aside from the fog and the Death that follows him, the Death that he follows.)
“No,” he rasps.
No. Here, he will be the thing she dreamed up. The plain gray thing that she keeps locked away in the cavern of her chest. The thing that exists in the darkest places beneath the surface of the water. He will not be the greedy thing. He will be something else altogether.
His edges soften when he touches her again so that he passes through her. The same as it ever was. But frustration does not pulse within him now because he knows what it means to touch her. He knows that feel of her skin beneath the plain velvet of his mouth. These things belong to him. He draws away.
“No,” he says again, “here I will be whoever you want me to be.”
He is no romantic, Jamie. He may never know what love is. But, for this moment, he can be a dream thing.
Evia, in so many ways, does not know how to dream—not like other things do. She doesn’t know how to conjure things from nothing. Doesn’t know how to want and desire. Doesn’t know how to be truly jealous and squirrel away things in the cavern of her chest. She just knows how to be this thing that she is. She knows how to want and be wanted, to thirst and to hunger. To satisfy the darkness that lurks within her, this thing that she was born with. To go after her desires as though it was the only thing in the world.
But if she could dream—it would be of him.
She would dream of the raspy boy who had found her that day. Who had been conjured of dark and smoke and who had never told her his name. Of the man who found her later, not so weak. Of this champion who stands beside her now, so confident and sure in the death that cloaks him. These are the things that she would dream of. That she would gladly succumb to. Perhaps if she knew more of her father, it would make sense. That she would be born of a blood magician to become enamored with one for death.
Ashes to ashes—a daughter of blood, a lover of death.
But her mind does not work in such complex trappings and she merely follows the path before her. She can only give him her pretty, silvery smile, ethereal eyes mercurial as she regards him, as he passes through her. She laughs and it is like wind chimes and bells. “I will know whatever it is you wish to show me,” she tilts her fine head, “and that you keep hidden away.” A smile as she turns, nodding toward the horizon. “The water is that way—we will need to start walking if we want to reach it anytime soon.”
She can feel the itch beginning on her scales, that desperate need to slip into the waves.
There’s a sly smile that curves the edges of her lips.
“Unless you know a faster way to get us to the sea.”
03-22-2021, 10:09 PM (This post was last modified: 03-22-2021, 10:11 PM by jamie.)
jamie
I CAN’T EXACTLY DESCRIBE HOW I FEEL
BUT IT’S NOT QUITE RIGHT
There are many things the shadow thing does not understand, will never understand.
Many things that magic will not help him understand.
He will never understand, for example, why it is the beautiful things he finds most crippling.
Why there had been a time when he could not bear to look at her, or at Beyza, why the sound of her laughter does not soothe him but sounds like screaming. Perhaps because he is such an ugly thing, Jamie, and he has such an ugly soul and such an ink-black heart. (If the heart exists at all, there is still no concrete evidence of this.)
She had not said that she did not know who he was, only asked if she needed to.
She had not lied and he does not feel the same stab of betrayal as she flashes that sly smile that he’d felt when he’d realized that Balto had lied. (He remembers, though, the memory slipping seamlessly to the forefront as she speaks and it occurs to him that she must know and he has been deceived.)
It occurs to him that he could punish her the same way he had punished Balto. In this instance, he could simply dissolve. Go home to Pangea and wait years to resurface, avoid her, possibly manipulate her memory of him so it was as if he had never existed at all. Or worse, make himself far more important than he had ever been. Make her pine for him until it killed her. Until she could not breathe him. Until he became her sea.
But he does not. And why doesn’t he?
He has no reason. There is no reason, not really. He does not punish her, but reaches for her with long fingers of fog instead. The fog thickens until it surrounds them both and he closes those freakish yellow eyes, draws in a rattling breath and exhales. He is still such a young magician but he is well-practiced in the art of teleportation. And when he opens his eyes again, they are plunged beneath the surface of the dark, dark sea.
It is not a conscious decision he makes but rather survival instinct that has him breathing underwater, a natural progression of the magic that courses through him.
jamie
