"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
i think i'm better on my own but i get so lost in you
She does not stray from Pangea often ever since the dark settled and the eclipse refused to leave the sky. Like the twins before, Thomas had once again gifted her another beautiful glass girl. Amathea was still small—porcelain and perfect, but fragile in a way she wanted to fiercely protect. The idea that she had brought her into a world far more dangerous than before was not a task she took lightly; this darkness was like none she had ever known. She left only because the unknown was beginning to weigh on her, pressing on her heavier than the darkness was.
She needed to know what was out here, needed to know what kind of threats Pangea was facing.
So after promising Thomas that she would be back soon—though time seemed to have little meaning now, the day impossible to tell from the night, the hours both dragging and flying in an indiscernible blur—she left.
Her plan, for now, was simply to explore the meadow. It was, for the most part, an easily navigated area, especially with infrared vision. The bodies of other horses stood out starkly against the coolness of the landscape, but despite this, she still finds herself feeling uneasy.
She isn't sure if she can see supernatural creatures; isn't sure if whatever had spawned from the afterlife would have a heat signature at all. She feels exposed despite the cover of nightfall, and finds herself being drawn more to the outskirts.
From the corner of her eye, there is a small stand of trees, and among the cool colors of their trunks, there is something that flickers warm. She tilts her head, watching the young girl watching the rest of them. There is something that tempts her toward her, an unmistakable pull, and Desire does not deny it.
“Hello,” she greets her as she approaches, a smile on her lips out of habit even though she doesn’t expect her to see it. “You’re not afraid to be in the dark alone?” It is a question but spoken more like a statement. The other girl is not afraid, and she has taken notice of that.
She wonders what weapons against the dark she must have.
i think i'm better on my own but i'm so obsessed with you
The darkness should frighten her more than it does, but Rosebay finds she does not mind it.
Rather, she finds that it calls to her. It whispers of that which stole her mother and there is relief in knowing that she is surrounded by the same thing. She wakes in the morning to the shadows and she sometimes finds herself peering out into them, wondering if her mother was there waiting for her in turn.
She never is, of course, but that doesn’t stop her from looking.
It empowers her, feeds her need to explore, and she gladly plunges into the shadows—not willing to admit that the monsters may find her tempting and that she was vulnerable before them. It was difficult for her to admit that she may be vulnerable at all. So instead she walks with her head high, her light almond eyes studying the darkness and all that she could not see within it. All the sounds and her imagination.
It’s only when she pauses to watch them that anything of note happens at all.
When the mare approaches her, she straightens again, her face impassive and cool. “Should I be?” she questions, genuinely curious at to what the other mare might have to say. Short-tempered and not patient enough to deal with half truths, she looks at Desire in the eye, close enough to find her gaze.
“Why don’t you tell me everything that I should fear.”
She waits, her tail flicking against her haunches as she smiles sweetly, wondering what she might say.
i think i'm better on my own but i get so lost in you
Desire is not one to be easily riled, which was somewhat surprising given her overall personality. Perhaps when she was younger she would be more prone to letting barbs work their way under her skin, but the older she became, the less she cared. She supposes that is something inherited from her mother; Ryatah had a way of refusing to react to her surroundings, in a way that Desire almost found to be irritating. Desire was not nearly the pacifist she was, but she still regards the younger girl with a placid expression that lingered on boredom. “I don’t know, should you be?” She mirrors the question back to her, her tone almost dull.
She steps through the dark, without any moonlight to shed light across the galaxy of her skin or the flat-black of her eyes. Her head tips in that way of hers, regarding the girl without her infrared vision. “I’m not afraid because I can still see in it. I assume others that are not afraid also have something that gives them an edge.”
A smile plays across her lips, and though it is nearly impossible to see with the shadows that swallow any light that tries to strain from behind the eclipse, there is an almost amused spark in her eye, a lightness in her voice. “So what is your edge, besides your sharp tongue?”
i think i'm better on my own but i'm so obsessed with you
That the other doesn’t rise to her bait frustrates her, but only mildly, and Rosebay quickly drops the sweet smile. There’s no use at playing such games with someone who clearly plays them too and so she doesn’t bother expending the energy. Instead she regards her with a sharp gaze, her pale brown eyes studying the mare openly—as if trying to understand what lies beneath, what would make her tick.
“I rarely fear,” she simply says, not willing to go so extreme as to say she is never afraid. She has known hints of fear in her life. She has known what it is like to feel afraid. When Crowns took her over the cliff’s edge into death and then struggled to bring her back, she had felt fear. In those moments after the afterlife had yawned open underneath her mother and dragged her down, she had known the whisper of it.
But the darkness?
No that does not illicit such a response in her.
So she remains cool, continuing to watch whatever pieces of the galaxy-strewn mare that she can see in the darkness. “I have plenty of edges,” she says with a shark’s smile. She gladly pours her poison into the other mare, letting it fill her for just a head-buzzing moment before she draws it back out again. Whether Desire truly felt the effects of it or not, she doesn’t know, but she is confidence she got at least a taste.
i think i'm better on my own but i get so lost in you
There is something refreshing about the other girl, in their shared similarities. It could be a dangerous game, sometimes, to get two calculating minds so close to each other. There was always the chance that they would never mesh, like oil and water, both of them warring over some imaginary idea of dominance. That is not what Desire is after right now, though. It wasn’t difficult to find someone she didn’t get along with— that was nearly everyone. And she was not in search of someone that she could control; if anything, Desire leaned on the lazy side, and the last thing she wanted was someone that needed to be told what to do.
She wanted a co-conspirator, someone that would not bend to anyone’s whims but would not exhaustively fight, either.
An ally wouldn’t be the right word, since that required at least an ounce of trust, and Desire had none of that to spare, but it was close.
And the way the girl drops the act so quickly tells Desire all she needs to know.
She has no doubt that Rosebay is just as good at this game as she is, but had she continued to push back just now, to try and force the upper hand, she would have known that she would be more trouble than she is worth.
When the poison first reaches her veins, she almost thinks that anyway.
Growing up with Stave she was used to the unexpected attacks — the way he would sometimes so subtly begin to drain the life from her, just enough to get a reaction from her. That is what the poison reminds her of, the way it rushes in and then rushes back out, like the waves of the sea. Her breath catches in her throat, and when her vision blurs the dark makes it all the more disorienting. But she clenches her jaw when it leaves, closes her eyes to keep the ground beneath her from tilting,
When she opens them again her gaze sharpens on the girl, and, nearly breathless, there is a moment when something like fury glints in black depths of her eyes. It passes, though, and the smile the weaves across her lips is an appreciative one. “Have you ever killed anyone?”
i think i'm better on my own but i'm so obsessed with you
