"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
Mazikeen is back to old habits and it feels like last summer and fall were just a fever dream. She’s that same mare from the eclipse who patrols until she’s too exhausted to continue, rests, and then continues. She doesn’t have to do this anymore, they have an entity that will let them know if there is an intruder, but what else is she going to do? She’s putting off seeking out the thing that was once Gale, putting off her plans to figure out how to get his self-healing taken away so she can kill him.
For now, she’s being obedient and even though she thinks it a fair price for what she’s asked for, it’s making her restless and irritable.
So she keeps moving, pacing as one animal and then another. How is it possible that there are so many places within Hyaline she avoids so she doesn’t have to think about the memories she’s made there? Her home is shrinking and soon she’ll run out of places to hide.
It’s early in the morning when Mazikeen descends from one of the mountain paths and into the foothills that slope towards the lake. The bright, burning markings along her back reveal how well her whole ‘just don’t think about anything’ plan is going and she’s tired enough that she shifts back into her natural self, easing the comfortable strain of shifting. Her bright orange eyes blink, and she pauses to watch the sun as it begins to peak over the mountains.
And despite the beauty of this moment, a few more of those burning cracks appear across her skin as she stands still and fumes at the morning light.
He spends his days looking to the sea now.
Imagining. Wondering if life might be simpler there.
It aches to think of leaving but it aches to think of staying, too.
He stands now in no place in particular, breathing, his gaze cast toward the horizon. Someplace else. Because he is tired, Selaphiel, and he wonders if there is any place in the world that does not stink of death.
If there is any place he might escape.
How heavy his head.
And there is a pressure mounting in his chest as he stands there, thinking about the sea. Steady, steady, steady. And a burning in the eyes. A crushing vise wrapped around his windpipe as he draws in a staggered breath and turns his heavy head.
He sees her there, burning. He drags in a breath, a white-knuckled fist clenched in the cage of his chest where his heart should be. Pain, pain, pain. And he knows that there is a difference in sensing a death that had nothing to do with him and a death he should have prevented.
This is his payback. He feels it, too. It eats him alive, too. The pain cannibalizes him as the two of them stand there in the morning light, separate but together. Bound by this.
He does not call out to her, he only watches and tries to find a name for all of the darkness that consumes him.
Sela is nearby, and when Mazikeen notices she does not immediately go to him. She hesitates because anger rises up as her first reaction and she doesn't want to go near him while it rages. Why is he still here? He had told her that he wouldn’t leave even if she died, even if she wasn't here to protect everyone, but she wanted him to anyway. She wanted them all to leave. Mazikeen wanted Sela and Este to find somewhere sunny and safe, somewhere peaceful.
It doesn't really have anything to do with him, this rage, but he is here and it focuses on him with such ease. So she waits it out - inhaling deeply and trying to get it to settle.
The sun is almost completely above the mountain peaks before she finally moves towards him.
The instinct to hug him, to tell him that it’s okay - that his mother had found her in time, that something had changed about her when she had been hollowed out and now she can heal herself - is still there but she doesn’t act upon it. Selaphiel is both protected by being her friend and in danger because of it.
And this morning, she does not have the energy to pretend that she believes everything will be fine. There is no hope left in her right now, though she thinks it will come back. She thinks she still just needs more time - as annoying as it is that any recovery time is needed at all.
And though there are still a few markings down her spine that flare with life, there’s only grief in her voice when she greets him with a hollow smile. “I’d hoped you would have left anyway, that you'd be somewhere safe.”
It means something that they both hesitate, he knows that.
He is not so young anymore, Selaphiel. (Was he ever all that young?)
It means something that they were friends the last time they saw each other, that they walked together in the sun and she told him the truth and now they stand on two separate sides of this clearing and look at each other and seconds pass and pass and pass and neither of them says anything.
He cannot sense her rage but he knows that something has changed because she does not smile at him. She does not move to swallow up all the space between them and he does not either and this is how he knows that something has changed.
(And still the pressure in his chest builds as the two of them look at each other across all that distance. Separate but together. Bound by the fact that he had not been able to save her.)
And then, finally, she moves. He would not have asked it of her but she comes anyway, Maze. (Or is it Mazikeen?) He does not flinch, though the pressure in his chest is nearly unbearable by the time she reaches him. (He should have saved her. He should have stopped her. He should have done more. Useless boy.)
There is nothing to the smile and, as usual, he does not smile back. Somber boy that he is. He just looks, lets her grief sink bone-deep, too. In the wake of her words there is only a pregnant, pointed silence as he studies her face, the silence and his eyes burn. Not with tears but with something else. A memory that does not belong to him.
He draws in a thin breath, the most he can manage with the way his chest caves in. “I would hope you’d know me better than that,” he says finally, the voice strained. He does not look away when he adds after a brief pause, “I would not leave you.”
Mazikeen’s efforts to close herself off from her memories of kindness, to keep her mind simmering in vague rage to avoid anything and everything else, are not strong enough to withstand the presence of her young friend and the strained sincerity with which he speaks. She’s the one to break eye contact, closing hers after his words and feeling them permeate her heart and wrench it in her chest. “Don’t say that.” The words come out in a whisper harsher than she intends and she shakes her head afterwards as though that will dissipate the tone from the air between them.
She is fraying at the edges, but she does not mean to be harsh with him, only with herself. She doesn’t know what to do with this sadness she is trying not to feel or how much she wants to find comfort in those words instead.
How is it possible that they make her so happy that there is no actual joy, just devastation?
She’s afraid of this friendship, afraid of the day when it might be Sela instead of Sabal. Would Gale ask her to banish him too or would he request something else if he knew how much the young angel meant to her? Mazikeen cannot stomach the idea of being the one who tells Selaphiel that he cannot stay here anymore, that she was revoking the rule change she had made for him.
Mazikeen is scared, right down to her core. And she knows she cannot do this on her own, but she also knows she has no choice because of what it means to involve anyone else.
“I don’t deserve that loyalty from you, Sela.” She finally tells him in a soft voice when she opens her eyes again and there are tears in them, so many they cloud her vision of him.
