"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
06-07-2021, 03:05 PM (This post was last modified: 06-07-2021, 03:05 PM by iridian.)
iridian
She has the distinct feeling that her world is falling apart, that the dreamscape is fracturing around her every second of every day that she does not leave it. But she cannot leave it. There is no mortal body waiting for her on the other side, no other place that could sustain her growing soul like this one has. But this place, this dreamscape, it was never meant to be forever and now that she is grown it is like she is leeching the life from it.
There is no real name for the feeling that has begun to grow inside her delicate chest, but as her world breaks apart and the nightmares unleash themselves, she finds that she is afraid she is dying for a second time. It is like coming undone, like erosion in reverse and when it is finished, she is not sure what will exist of her or the dreamscape.
The sky is the same swirling shade of black and gray that it always is now, and the clouds hang low enough that they bend the trees as they pass. Lightning licks from them like static, and the uppermost branches burn and smolder. The clouds had been higher at first, just a smudge of dark grey on the ceiling of her imagination and so easy to ignore. Then they dropped lower and lower until they hung like shadows over her mountain ranges. She had climbed to a peak once to see these clouds, but there had been nothing beyond the clouds. No color, no sound, nothing but that swirling gray randomly illuminated with flashes of indistinguishable light.
She knew what it meant that they were at the treetops now, knew there was no sky and no birds, no anything that had once been above. It was all only below now. What she didn’t know, not with any kind of certainty that didn’t come purely from fear and loneliness, was what would happen when that swirling grey reached her.
Would it take her, or would she be left in a world empty of anything at all?
She thinks maybe she can be brave enough to say goodbye, though. After all she had lived longer than she might’ve otherwise, gifted this place for years when her own birth would’ve killed her. It was a gift in any amount of time, and though there is an awful ache inside her chest she is still glad to have anything as beautiful to miss as this place had been. She tries not to think about the ones she will miss or the what-ifs that will never be more than curiosities. She tries not to think of her family who will surely miss her, or the way she let them down by never being quite strong enough.
There is one though, one face, one boy, one smile she knows she needs to see one more time before she is as this storm, alive and vibrant and yet entirely ephemeral. Mortally impermanent. She wonders if she is still strong enough to make this place seem beautiful, to find a meadow without those burning trees and fill it with summer rain and wildflowers to hide the roiling storm and lingering distant fire smoke. She thinks, for him, she can. So she finds the perfect place, finds her meadow and plants her flowers in every shade and shape, gives rain to the storm clouds so they seem beautiful instead of broken. It is too much to do more, and every effort she makes draws the ire of those eroding clouds lower and nearer.
Instead she closes her eyes as though this will hide her from everything that unravels around her, as though if she pictures his face she can call him to her when it hasn’t worked before. “Firion,” she whispers, and her delicate wings lift and flare at the gentle yearning in her shaking voice, “please, please sleep.” For as soon as he does she will find that thread that binds him to dreams and pull him close to say a secret goodbye.
that day even the sun was afraid of you and the weight you carried
He thinks of her—but only when he is alone and it is quiet. She is a precious thing that he tucks away. A sweet thing that he treasures and does not trust to leave open to fade beneath the harsh sunlight. No. He keeps her hidden. Secret. Thinks of her only when he is by himself walking through the abandoned meadow at night with only the moonlight as his companion, with only the shadows that trail him.
He thinks of her then.
Of the dreamworld that she created, for him. How she could not possibly be real and how much he longed for her to be anyway. How it was a cruel trick for his mind to conjure something like her to comfort him when he could only visit her when he slept and how he tried desperately to avoid sleep these days.
But still, he thinks of her.
And when sleep does find him again—even his magic cannot stave it off forever—he slips into the world that feels distinctly her own again, finding the door that unlocks it as if on accident. He stumbles through and feels something pressing on the edges. Something dark that rumbles on the edge of his conscious, but he merely chalks it up to his own demons. Writes it off as nothing more than what waits for him outside.
Instead, he begins to walk through the meadow that she has crafted. The flowers that bloom so beautifully. He walks until he finds her there amongst them and his golden face softens. Suddenly, he is not cursed and he is not damned. He’s just the boy who she found in her dreams and he gives her a brilliant smile.
“Iridian,” he says her name like he has said it every night and not only thought of it so quietly.
There’s so much he wants to say—so much he should say. He should tell her that he’s sorry that he hasn’t been able to find her. He should tell her everything that he has kept from her. The ugly truths of him. But he is convinced she is just a figment of his imagination. A brilliant mirage he has made all for himself.
So he just smiles and gives himself this fleeting relief, this brief moment of joy.
“I’ve missed you,” he finally says and this is undeniably true.
so you saluted every ghost you've ever prayed to and then buried it where bones are buried
06-22-2021, 12:58 AM (This post was last modified: 06-22-2021, 01:02 AM by iridian.)
iridian
She can feel the very moment he falls asleep, can feel the way he finds a door in the dreamscape that allows him to travel directly to her even without her needing to bring him closer. It is odd, of course, and if she weren’t filled with such an aching kind of relief to have found him again she might wonder why this time felt different. But it is easy to blame the way her world falls apart, easy to believe that it is weariness or weakness or the beginning of the end, that it is she who has changed and not him. Not Firion.
Her eyes are still closed, still hiding her in a dark that she is so afraid to escape from lest she open her eyes and find she was mistaken, that she is here alone and there is no boy with gold and black and the most beautiful rosettes traced across the shining ore of his skin. That would be the true end, she thinks, that would be the reason her world finally crumbled and laid her to rest beneath it. She is used to the impermanence of dreams, of friends, of her life in its entirety. But she does not know how to survive the impermanence of him.
Iridian.
It is just one word, just her name, but it is enough to unravel every ache inside her chest until she does not know how it is she holds the tears away from her eyes, away from his. Her eyes fly open, soft and searching and full of longing she has no name for as she takes in the face of someone who is grown and more beautiful than she had ever seen. The boyishness and youth of him is gone, the gangliness she had not realized while they both shared it cleaved cleanly from his bones. She blinks, blinks again, and realizes that her pulse is a whispering in her ears that threatens to drag her under.
I’ve missed you.
He unshackles her with those three simple words and she steps forward to fall into the warmth of a chest that has grown half again as large as hers. It’s okay though because it means she fits here perfectly. Her lips find the curve where neck becomes shoulder, and although she is completely still now and remembering she had promised to keep her pain a secret from him, she cannot help but to remain there where she can breathe in the smell of him. “I’ve missed you too.” She says, and because she hasn’t pulled away from him, her words are a whisper of warmth against his gold and dark skin. “I wasn’t sure I would get to see you again.” She tells him, pressing her cheek against him before finally prying herself away again.
She resettles a more polite distance away from him, close enough to reach but no longer pressed into that odd, desperate embrace against his chest. It is nice this way because now she can see his face again, and harder because now he can see hers. She feels like a liar as she looks quietly up at him, feels treacherous in these secrets she keeps. That this is their one last hello, this is their ephemera. But this is a pain she can spare him from, and maybe he will dream of her again, even if it is only her ghost, her echo.
“You’ve grown.’ She says, and her sad eyes don’t match the crookedness of her affectionate smile as she peers up into his face. “You’re,” and she pauses there, a faint wrinkle in her brow as weighs the words she had been about to say, wondering if they’re better left unsaid. But she can find no reason not to say them, can think of nothing it will change. “You’re very beautiful.” He is. He is why gold is her favorite sunset color, why panthers used to haunt her daydream forests. Her wings shuffle against her back, the feathers an array of chestnut so bright it is almost copper, of blue so varied they must be stolen from every summer sky. Then the question that means the most to her, the one she holds so tightly to her chest. “How are you?” And she hopes he will give her truths, will give her more than one single word of affirmation - good, fine, well - because when the dark finally reaches her she will need thoughts of something else to carry her into the forevernight.
It is so easy to think that this is a dream that he could live in forever. To pretend. It is so easy to be the boy that she thinks that he is—to not think about the blood staining him, the memories that to this day come crawling back to him piece by piece. It is so easy to think that he can live here with her and the impossible things that she brings into being and they can be so happy under these stars she paints.
It is dangerous how easy it is.
But she looks so delighted to see him that he can’t stop himself from pretending. She falls against his chest and he gladly holds her there, tucking her in close. He reaches down to brush a gentle kiss against the slope of her shoulder, smiling into the spotted skin. “I wouldn’t stay away,” he murmurs, not telling her that it was harder to dream for so long. That he rarely needs to sleepy anymore. That it was easier to find it but harder to reach it—a logical twist that he has not yet unpacked.
She pulls away though and he doesn’t force her to stay. He just relaxes this body made of dreams, cocking a back leg and angling his head. His smile is slow and knowing, a little arrogant in the corners of his mouth. “You think so?” he asks, glancing down at his molten gold body—but he knows that he is. Of all the things that he has doubted and been unsure of, he has never doubted that he was attractive.
That he was pleasant to look at.
But it means more coming from her.
He laughs then, soft and assured, as he studies her unabashedly. She has grown in this dream world and he wonders what that means—how time must pass for her here. Were she real, would she come into his world fully formed? Would it be as if she was always there? He hates the part of him that wonders. That dreams such impossible things. That longs for it. “I have been…” his voice trails off and a frown made up of all of the realities of the world crosses his features before he chases it away. “It doesn’t matter.”
Another quirk of his lips as he falls back into this world of pretend.
“I’m here now.”
so as our grief falls flat and hollow upon a billion blooded seas all our worst ideas are borrowed (you do and don't belong to me)
She doesn’t bother to correct him, to tell him that isn’t what she meant. Not that she was afraid he wouldn’t come, but that he wouldn’t come in time, wouldn’t find her before she became as dreams do in the morning. A memory, a vapor, and then nothing at all. It would do no good to have him worry over something that could not be fixed, to have them both wishing for time to rewind when it can only ever move forward. To have more of something that had all but run out. She cannot help but feel that ache inside the cage of her delicate chest though, cannot help but wonder what things might have been like if this had gone differently. If she were strong enough to exist.
“I’m quite sure.” She tells him, and she is so careful to construct this smile against her snow-pale mouth, so careful to let this feeling of affection inside her chest crinkle the corners of those luminous cerulean eyes because this mask is a gift for him and an armor for her. But his smile makes it easier, makes it so that she doesn’t have to pretend at this joy behind her ribs. It is real because he is real, because he is here and in the absence of missing him there is peace inside her heart. “But perhaps you already knew that.” She says, not missing the beautiful arrogance of that smile on his mouth or the way it sparks like electricity inside her chest.
And, oh! His laugh! It feels like sunshine in her belly. It feels like home and like safety, like everything would be okay if only she could press her ear against his chest and listen to the sound of it forever. She is struck suddenly by the pain of reality, by this looming loss that settles over her shoulders even as the light in her eyes dims beneath his gaze. “I wish…” But she cannot finish that thought, cannot be so selfish as to give him a burden he will never know relief from, to tell him that she will be gone soon when there is nothing he can do to change that.
She takes one selfish thing for herself though, returns to his golden chest so that he can hold her close and she can forget the fear of what comes next. Of what nothing will feel like when it comes to take her. “You know it matters to me.” She tells him, her words soft and shaped against the hard curve of his shoulder. She thinks of his frown, thinks of the way he had trailed off. Doesn’t for a moment wonder if he is trying to protect her from truths like she is trying to protect him. “You matter to me.” A truth she can give him, one that escapes from her like a breath to wander like warmth over the gold and dark of his skin. “You can tell me anything, I promise.”
And there is a prickle of guilt, just a subtle flinch that races in secret down the curve of her spine because even as she asks for his truths, she hides hers from him. It is the right choice though, isn’t it? There would always have been a time where they traded their final goodbyes, a last time when life would carry them in different directions and she would become to him as ghosts do. A vapor in the night. They never would have known until after, until years later in a moment of remembering, that the last time had been the last time. This way, at least, he would never know the burden of guilt, of looking her in her terrified eyes and knowing there was nothing he could do to help her.
That fierce need to protect this moment rises in him and he cannot tell what he might do with it. Does he want to carve it away into time and space? Does he want to preserve it forever? The possibilities rush up beside him and he is dizzy with the new options that lay before him. All the ways that he might be able to change the narrative—all the power that now lies within his reach should he try to grab for it.
His thoughts storm and tumble upon one another, leaving him half distracted, but he is aware enough to engage with her as she smiles and teases him. As she folds into his chest and he holds her gently. There is a warmth that blooms there and he smiles down at her, the corners of his mouth crinkling.
Oh, how they all get such different pieces of him.
How many masks he wears—how many parts he plays.
But she gets the gentler side of him, dishonest as he may sometimes think it is, and he cannot find himself regretting it. Even as he deceives her with this gentle nature, the one that masks the ugliness underneath, he does not regret shielding her. So he smiles and bumps his nose against her neck. “You matter to me too,” he promises, wondering how he might care so deeply for something that he has dreamt up.
It is not enough for him to crack open his chest and share the details with her though. Instead, he skirts around the subject—just laughing quietly and moving on as though she had not prompted him to tell her where he had been. What had happened. Instead, he pivots, his mind latching onto the thoughts that had been forming in his head. The idea that grows and grows with each passing breath until he cannot stop it.
“What if I made you real,” he asks, the words coming too quickly.
“I think I could,” this less self-assured. “I think I could bring my dreams to life now, if I wanted.”
so as our grief falls flat and hollow upon a billion blooded seas all our worst ideas are borrowed (you do and don't belong to me)
Realization blossoms inside her in shades of pink and gold and orange, far brighter than any earthly sunrise. It wraps delicate fingers around that beating thing inside her chest, that fragile heart caged like a bird within the curve of her ribs, and it squeezes and crushes until she is not sure she still remembers how to breathe. Until she’s not sure she wants to, not sure she can stop.
It is how he holds her so easily when she returns to the curve of his warm golden chest, how he reaches down to touch her neck and promises her something she is sure she does not deserve. That she matters, of all things. She realizes in this moment that it does not matter how or when she leaves him, because she thinks her sudden absence will leave ripples in this tangle of their friendship. Echoes that will outlive her long after she’s gone. It feels like a shade of arrogance to think this, but she feels suddenly sure that one day he will look back and wonder why she never came back.
She knows she would wonder.
She would wonder if it was something she did wrong, a choice she made that broke the ties that had so easily bound them in the first place. His absence would draw hairline fractures of doubt over the delicate white of her chest, and one day those fractures would break apart into something more.
But he is not like her. He is strong and he is good, and he is brave where she is all wide-eyes and worry at the thing he says next.
“I am real.” She says with some uncertainty, and that voice is like summer, like starry nights filled with fireflies and the whisper of a passing breeze. She is wide, luminous eyes, a shade too dark to be sapphire, too bright to be gray. The color of late summer storms and the downpour of rain when it feels too cold for the season. “I don’t have a body, Firion. I don’t know what I would be if you took me from the dreamscape.” But it’s thoughts of an untethered spirit not unlike a ricocheting ball of burning white light that fills her imagination now, and the wonder that he cares enough to try and keep her. To make her something real and tangible.
She presses her cheek to his shoulder, tucks her wings in tight like it might help her fit more easily against his chest. Because this is the only place she would ever have the courage to be so honest with him. “I think the dreamscape is dying, Firion.” She is whispering now, buckling under the weight of horror and relief and burning guilt. “I think maybe I’m dying too.” She says the words like she is telling him she’s sorry, like she is asking for absolution from the guilt of this confession, like if she speaks any louder than this brittle whisper the whole world will fall apart around them.
Maybe it already has.
“I wish you could.” She says the words without thinking, without testing the weight of them before they land like stones upon his back. “I wish I could stay with you forever.” Though the words are sad, she looks up into that familiar gold and dark face with a gentle kind of smile born from the affection inside her chest, from the gratitude of this gift of friendship when she had no one else. “You made everything worth it.” She says, and there is a shade of sorrow that slips into those rainy blue eyes, a shade of grief she had not meant for him to see. “Thank you, Firion.”
How he would laugh if he could hear all of the things she thinks of him.
How much he has fooled her over the years.
He is not strong, or good, or brave.
He is weak, selfish, cowardly.
All the things she thinks he is not is what beats painfully in his chest, and it’s what makes his throat tighten when he looks at her—knowing that one day he will have to answer for his sins. One day she will find out everything that he has kept from her. The truth of what made him collapse into sleep and the source of the magic that he now promises her—the things that he could use to save her that damn him.
“I could make you a body,” he insists, his golden eyes overbright. “I could make you anything that you want to be,” a promise he feels certain that he could keep, even if he is also certain of what it might cost him. How he feels salvation slip further and further from him every time he uses this demonic magic. At a certain point, will he lose his entire soul? Is there really anything there for him to salvage at this point?
But she keeps talking and his frown grows deeper, pulling at the corners and darkening his golden eyes. “I won’t let you die. Stop talking like that.” It’s harsher than he intends but there is panic blossoming in his chest. He can’t sit by and let her die. He can’t just let her wither away when there is a chance that he could help, that he could save her from this decaying dreamworld. “Thank me then,” he holds her a little closer, affection painfully spreading in him—the kind that aches, the kind that could kill if he let it.
“Please, Iri,” his voice is softer now, barely a whisper. “At least let me try.”
so as our grief falls flat and hollow upon a billion blooded seas all our worst ideas are borrowed (you do and don't belong to me)
