"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
Thoughts as clumsy as her movements plague this black mare as she moves through the forest. The pain of the still sizzling acid wound on her neck is so blinding it is almost a relief. A lifetime of memories, of emotions, of thoughts that she had been unable to process until now and they are all flooding her at the same time. Only the pain keeps them at bay, keeps her mind as quiet as it has always been.
She bursts through the last few trees and into the snow-covered meadow. Here it is easier to see, and the open space encourages her to take a deep breath - which exacerbates the acid wound on her neck and causes her to collapse as a wave of fresh pain washes over her and the imbalance of this body without the counterweight of her prehensile tail doesn't help. She thinks she might be sobbing, but she’s not used to these vocal cords and doesn’t register that the sounds she is making are coming from her.
There’s a part of her mind that thinks she sounds like prey, that she sounds like something she would have eaten for breakfast.
Something she has eaten.
A whimper escapes her after the sobs fade away and she lies there in the snow, black eyes rolling around in her skull as her overwhelmed mind desperately tries to find anything to focus on.
— there's something tragic about you, something so magic about you, don't you agree?
The meadow is hushed from the blanket of snow, and it almost makes her wonder why she decided to venture out of Hyaline. She disliked the quiet; hated anything that forced her to acknowledge her thoughts. Ever since the eclipse it seemed as though everything was quiet, though, and she could feel some of her old restlessness and agitation begin to simmer just beneath the surface of her skin. The rest of Beqanna is not used to the dark; not the way she is. She has spent more time in the dark than she ever has in the light, and when the moon decided to take the sun hostage she did not notice.
She decides that the meadow is not going to be a suitable release for her tension today, and she is moving back toward Hyaline when she hears a distant, but distinct cry.
Ryatah, for all her angelic features and relatively kind demeanor, was not the best at comforting others in distress. If not for an inexplicable pull that seemed to draw her towards the sound she would have likely continued on her way, but as it is she cannot ignore the way the sound had pierced beyond her typically selfish nature and managed to capture her attention.
She follows the sound until through the dark she finds the warmth of the body curled in the snow—bright, like the color of flames, against a world of cold. With angel-wings folded delicately at her sides, she does not take the time to think of how oddly light and shining she would be in this shadow-world, and instead she approaches directly, stopping only once she is close enough to lower a haloed head and touch her porcelain-white lips to the girl's neck. “Are you hurt?” she asks her, instead of asking if she was alright— clearly she wasn't. There is a spot on the mare’s neck that shows bright red, and there is something about the wound—the way she can nearly taste the acid of it—that reminds her of the types of injuries she had seen Ripley and her offspring inflict. The odds of prey escaping the jaws of her daughter seemed unlikely, but she cannot help but to think that she was drawn to this mare because of a connection through her.
there's something wretched about this, something so precious about this, oh what a sin —
Wild eyes continue to roll in the black mare’s skull until they get something to focus on - until someone approaches. It takes a moment for them to focus, but when they do they are intense despite the ring of white inspired by fear and pain.
A new emotion - surprise - creeps into this mare’s already overwhelmed mind. She knows this mare, though they haven’t met. The hivemind she had shared with her mother was strong and even when they were apart, images would flicker between them. She knows that this is her mother’s mother, one of the horse-creatures that were never to be harmed. Names are slippery things, she doesn’t even know her own or that of her mother, but she thinks she remembers what this gilded mare is called.
She hears the words, and even mostly understands them, and she attempts to stand in response. As soon as her neck bends, though, the wound feels like it’s been ignited in fire and with a cry she allows her head to fall back into the snow and stretches her neck as much as she can to avoid the pain as much as possible.
(It does not work)
A creaking noise that is an imitation of the clicking language she used as a monster to speak comes out of her instead of words. Her mouths have changed (just one now, with different teeth) but the sound is close enough to what it had been that it could be recognized to one who has heard it before. Her mind is still too muddy to try to speak, to try to explain, and she can only lie there for now. Rooted in this terrible moment by the pain.
— there's something tragic about you, something so magic about you, don't you agree?
“Don’t get up,” she tells her gently, and by now she is moving forward. Even though the girl is clearly terrified she can only hope that she will soon see that she is here to help and not inflict further harm. Thankfully, there was nothing about Ryatah that was even remotely intimidating. She has always been soft—often too soft. The glow that radiated from her was an easy one, and though brighter than usual in the pitch of dark, it further accentuated the worry in her almost-black eyes.
Her chest clenches when she immediately recognizes the sounds the mare is trying to make. They are awkward on her fully equine tongue, but fluent in comparison to anyone else that might try to mimic it. She is confused, and she has so many questions, but with the girl writhing on the ground in pain she pushes them aside.
She reaches forward, slowly so as to not startle her even more (or at least, she is trying not to). Her lips rest just lightly near the top of her neck, and she lets the healing begin to work in the surrounding areas before shifting, her touch now directly on the worst of the injuries. The injuries inflicted from Ripley and her offspring are not entirely normal; they are not as easy or as quick to heal as wounds inflicted by wild animals or scrapes of tree limbs and rock. She has had her healing long enough though that it is not too difficult, and when she feels the mare begin to relax as the pain eased she asks her softly, “Does it hurt anywhere else?”
there's something wretched about this, something so precious about this, oh what a sin —
It is a strange thing, to be touched with any sort of care. The black mare’s body jolts at that light brush of lips on her neck like she’s been shocked - not from pain, but just out of the sheer alienness of the gentle contact.
Not once in all her life had she ever known such simple kindness. It was not something that could survive in the world she was from.
She had not known it was possible - and just as strange as the touch are the emotions that swarm her overwhelmed mind with it. It is, against everything she has ever known, so utterly comforting. It’s nice - and she had not known there were such pleasant things in the world.
When the pain starts to fade, she relaxes - her haggard breathing coming in easier gasps and her muscles lose the tension that had been so extreme it felt like she might be torn apart from it.
The question takes a moment to understand but it is easier now that the pain is gone. Her mind is still a torrent of confusing thoughts she is only just starting to be capable of sorting out. There are words, a language she has never had to use, but one she understands (mostly) from being surrounded by it for her entire life. With effort, she moves so her head is up, her legs curled beneath her, and she takes a few steadying breaths as she tries to think about what’s been asked.
Did anything else hurt?
The words she speaks are clumsy and quiet as they fumble out of her while she looks up to the glowing mare with glistening black eyes. The first of what will surely be many tears. “My... ch... chest...” There is something, an ache that is deep - though no wound exists on the surface. She doesn’t know what it means to have her heart break, she only knows what it feels like now - this desolation that settles on her without the pain to focus on instead.
— there's something tragic about you, something so magic about you, don't you agree?
She can see as the pain begins to ease from the girl, but her own worry remains knotted in her chest. She cannot shake the feeling that she knows her, or that she should know her. There is something about her face that reminds her of Ripley—not transformed, alien Ripley, but the Ripley she had given birth to, the Ripley she had watched grow. The Ripley that had been a brilliant, vibrant girl, and not the feral beast she was now.
But feral or not, Ryatah was protective of her daughter, maybe even more so than her other children. The one who needed protection the least, but also the one most likely to be misunderstood. She knew Ripley had attacked her own siblings—Cassian and Evenstar, at least that she knew of and while she would never want anything to happen to either of them, she knew Ripley had no conscious idea what she was doing.
It’s why even though she feels for this girl—this girl that is maybe related, or maybe just an escaped prey, she isn’t sure yet—she cannot bring herself to blame Ripley at all. She acted in the only way that she knew how, like anyone would.
“I’m afraid I can’t heal that,” she tells her softly, sadly, when she speaks of heartache. She reaches down again, to gently brush her nose against the top of her neck. “But it goes away eventually. Sometimes it just takes a while.” She realizes that she is perhaps too close for the other girl’s comfort; personal space has never been something she was very aware of. But she withdraws just a little, her dark eyes still on the girl’s face when she says, “My name is Ryatah.”
there's something wretched about this, something so precious about this, oh what a sin —
This time she welcomes the touch that she is given. It still feels strange, she’s still tense, but she is able to enjoy the comfort it brings. The words bring comfort too, it is encouraging to know that the pain in her chest will go away. There’s no reason to believe they’re anything but the truth - she does not yet know that it is possible to lie.
She nods with the name she is given - the memory of those syllables extracting itself from the jumbled mess in her mind. “You’re… my…”
But how to describe the creature that ties them together through blood?
The word mother does not fully seem appropriate, but neither does queen which was how this mare thought of the one who laid her egg, who raised her and taught her how to hunt and hone the instincts she had known since birth. Who she had followed without question for the entirety of her life until she had ended up here.
So perhaps mother is best. The black mare frowns as she tries to sort out the words she needs and place them into an order that makes sense. Hearing Ryatah introduce herself has dislodged memories she hadn’t known where there - like the name of her mother. The name might have even been tied to that visit Ripley made in Hyaline - perhaps she would not have known at all if it had not been Ryatah’s voice that said it.
It is good to have something to focus on, though it does not ease the pain in her chest or the emotion she cannot name (sadness). When she speaks again, each of her words are spoken slowly and with such care. “You are Ripley’s mother. And she was mine.” The frown does not ease up as her thoughts fall into something of a more coherent mess than the jumbled one that she had stumbled out of the forest with. She knows this mare’s name, knows the name of her mother and a small collection of others, but she does not think she’s ever been called anything.
She’s always been one of the monsters, one of them, never an individual. Until now.
“I do not have... name.” She does not state this with any sadness in her voice but her confusion over her own identity - over what she's supposed to do now that she no longer belongs to the only family she's known - makes the ache in her chest deepen.
