"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
The dark had felt safe, but she is sure she is one of the few that felt that way.
In the shadows, with the creatures and the beasts, she did not have to worry about anyone finding her because no fool would dare to venture that far into the wood. Not in an endless, moonless, starless night, with no light to leak through the canopy of the trees. Not without a promise of a light in the dark, with no hope of a dawn waiting at the other end of a terrible night. She heard the creatures maim and kill, and though the sounds made her grind her jaw and left a heavy feeling in her gut, she told herself it was for the best.
The creatures kept the rest of the world away from her self-made prison, the one that existed mostly inside her own ribcage.
She could be alone, as she had grown accustomed to being—because she liked it that way, she told herself, and if she tells herself it enough, she believes it.
But even in the pit of the forest she knew when the sun returned, and something inside of her seemed to wither and crawl away from the idea of it. She ventured closer, of course, just to see if it was true; to press against the bruise, to see if it still hurts. When the dappled half-light fell across her skin, when the faintest whispers of voices on the breeze first reached her ears, ever buried emotion flared to the surface.
She remembers how badly she had only wanted to be touched, and how the only one that could withstand the heat of her skin was someone she would have never wanted to touch her at all.
She remembers the daughter, phoenix-born and fire-made, and how she had tried to raise her without showing the revulsion she felt each time she looked at her; her constant reminder that touch was not how she had thought it would be.
Some are beautiful in their breaking, but she is not one of them.
The light that filters through the cracks of all her broken pieces is not the soft glow of sunlight—it is fire, hot and relentless, and the pendulum between wanting to protect everyone from the pain she could cause, and the spiteful part of her that wants to watch them burn, swings recklessly.
From the edge of the treeline, she watches them, with eyes that seem to smolder from the heat that is just barely contained by her skin, praying that she will not get caught—she just wants to watch, just wants to remind herself she is not missing anything—and almost hoping that she does.
There is a deep mystery to the darkest depths of these woods. One that even Reave, with all the powers of sight at his hoof tips, could not quite unravel. As though it were shifting and changing. Something alive, and not quite right. It draws him time and again. Pulls him in to peer and wonder and discover.
But he is a restless creature, so he never stays long. Much to Rune’s delight who, for reasons the bird can’t quite iterate, does not like the darkest depths of the forest at all. Now though, he flies above the trees even as Reave travels within them. His path is slow and meandering, his sight inconstant as he finds the gazes of creatures small and large. It isn’t until he spots a figure that is almost familiar that his attention is caught. As he peers through the eyes of the forest fauna that surround her, he tries to place where he has seen her before.
It isn’t until he has nearly reached her that he recalls. It is not in fact his memories she had resided in. It had been his mother’s. They had been coiled in tangles of affection and longing and heartache. And it makes him curious.
As he steps from the trees where she lingers, his gaze fixes on her, the blue vibrant even behind the soft glow of the bone mask shrouding his features. The red and white of his skin is cast in odd shadows beneath the luminescence of the bone rupturing it. It paints an odd picture beneath the shadow of the trees, a visage that should be fearsome somehow softened by such subtle light.
With curiosity on his features and a faint smile teasing the corners of his lips, he eyes her, reading the pain and reckless grief written every line of her, dancing like motes of dust in sunlight. She had hidden herself from the world as though that would hide her from herself.
He doesn’t speak immediately, but when he does, the low, faintly amused tone of his voice holds a familiarity she would undoubtedly wish it didn’t. “Have you found what you’re looking for yet?”
Brinly had never been a creature designed for love.
She was not made from it. She was the result of lust and want, the consequence of her mother’s inability to turn down any opportunity to flirt with danger. While she had not been especially hard or guarded as a young girl, she was also never too eager to expose herself. She had assumed, naively, that eventually, someone would come around that made it easy for the armor to fall; she had thought she had all the time in the world, that it would pay off to be patient and wait for such things.
Any chance that she could have learned to love was dashed the moment she was cursed with being untouchable.
There were a certain few that could withstand the heat of her skin, but of course, they were never the ones that she was drawn to. She was fated to only catch the eye of those that she could never have; those that she would leave burnt and wounded by a simple touch.
Brazen had been different, almost. She could have been different. She could touch parts of her, at least. The stoneskin and the bone armor — but that isn’t what touching is supposed to feel like, Brinly always thought to herself bitterly. Skin against shield could only satisfy her craving for intimacy so much, but more importantly, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was causing more damage to Brazen than good. It was unfair to keep her locked in that romantic purgatory, lingering constantly on the edge of something always out of their reach.
Brinly had not learned much from either of her parents, and so she can’t be sure if her ability to sever ties and disappear was something she picked up, or if she was simply born with it. It came so naturally that she is sure it must be part of her genetic make-up, because even though she feels threads of guilt at times when she thinks of Brazen, she had left without looking back.
When his voice pierces the air, when she turns to find a young stallion with a face carved from something so familiar that it feels as though she is facing a ghost, there is a moment where her heart seems to stutter in her chest. She has never been particularly good at masking her emotions, and they flash across her face one after the other; surprise and confusion, guilt and shame, and then a single thread of envy that echoes her suspicion. “Who are you?” She answers his question with one of her own, the words simmering with the same heat that shifts uneasily beneath her skin.
She thinks he will know that she is not asking for only his name.
She does not even try to guard her emotions as they flash across her features, tangling in familiar memories. They are almost like daggers, the sharpness of their edges cutting as though to remind herself constantly of the pain. As though that is all she is and all she ever will be.
And perhaps it will be, if that is all she chooses. Reave can see the lines of it whispering out before her. A life of endless pain and grief and anger, fortune made fact by the power of her own belief. She could choose differently, but he has to wonder if she will ever find the strength. He can see how his mother had tried so hard to be that strength for her. Just as she had for so many that she loved.
Just as she had for him.
He can see the way his similarities to his mother are like a punch to the gut for her. A reminder of something she had been trying so hard to forget. A smile curls the corners of his lips at that. If only she knew just how surface level it truly is. In nearly every other way, he is almost nothing like the woman who had birthed him.
“You already know who I am,” he replies easily, blue eyes gleaming. He steps closer. She could burn him, but she would have to touch him to do that. “She died giving birth to me,” he continues. There is a rawness to his words, his own reckless grief and anger at the memory fueling it. She had revived much later of course, but it had been too late for some things to be undone. “Her bones could not grow as I did, so she starved and suffocated.”
His eyes burn with the memories as he stares at her. They should be fuzzy and distant (he had been a newborn, after all), but instead his own ability had ensured they would forever be held with a vicious clarity. “She named me Reave with her last breath.” He laughs at that. How could he not? The irony is nearly unbearable. As the laugh fades into a grin, he adds, “I’ve done my best to live up to her expectations.”
He shifts then, tilting his head, expression provocative. Brazen had loved him of course, even then. Still loves him. And she had loved this woman. She would never have admitted it, of course, but Reave knows too well what lurks beneath those denials. Now, as he stares at the woman he’d seen so often in his mother’s memories, a daring smile on his lips, he asks, “Did I answer your question?”
If anyone had asked her, she does not think she would have denied loving Brazen. Even being a creature never designed or destined for love she still knew it when it was in her chest, because it burned just like everything else—it hurt and made her want to pull away, just like her touch makes everyone else pull away.
She also would not have denied that she left, because it is one of the only things she knows how to do. To shutter herself away and to hide, with the idea that she is saving someone from herself, when in reality that is only half of it. She wants to save herself. She wants to protect the last remaining piece of strength that she has, that final stone that has not yet crumbled beneath the weight of rejection and loss and a dreamed future that can never come true.
Perhaps she is selfish in this way, or it’s a feral part of her that thinks only of how to survive, but she is not sure if she will ever learn to put anyone before herself because of it.
She does not move away from him when he steps closer, though her jaw does clench, her teeth grinding slightly with the effort it takes to not react. She does not want to hear any of the things that he is telling her, does not want him to give a voice to all of these things she never wanted to be confirmed. Of course this is Brazen’s son. Of course, because why would Brazen wait for the girl that was never going to come back?
But he says that she is dead, and whatever flashes in her eyes is quickly smothered. Her spine goes rigid, her face suddenly smoothing away any and all emotion, because this was not something she was willing to share with him. Her grief instead twists itself into the only emotion she knows, and she sends it directly back to him.
“Did she want you?” The question is blunt, and the emotion fueling the heat in her words could easily be misconstrued as accusatory. In reality, she is thinking of her own child, the daughter she had never asked for from a man she would have never in any lifetime willingly slept with. To think that Brazen had died birthing a child bestowed upon her unwillingly is enough for the heat beneath her skin to catch fire if only it could find the oxygen to do so, but instead all she can settle for is pinning the boy with her simmering stare, awaiting answers she didn’t want to hear.
He can feel it there, a tiny ember living in the center of her chest, burning her heart as her skin burns everyone else. Love tangled up in the memories of his mother. What Brazen would have given to have known the truth of it, he can already guess. But the world is almost never so kind as that. What would the world be without the endless fates of star-crossed lovers to fuel it?
Reave could not judge her selfishness however. He is an inherently selfish creature himself, and he can understand the urge that had made her creep away to suffer in anonymity. The bone-marked stallion has never cared for anonymity himself, but the urge is the same one that had fueled him to be so reckless and callous as he barrels through life.
A faint, almost bitter smile touches his lips at her question. His blue eyes spark behind the glow of his mask as he lazily lifts his head. Did she want you? The question feels almost hollow in the unfeeling air, and Reave does not answer immediately. When he finally does speak, there is something that borders on cruelty in his words, though it’s hard to say whether it is directed at her or himself. “She loves me.” But of course, loving someone is not the same as wanting them. A heavy pause fills the space between before he finally admits, “but no, she did not want me.”
There is an edge to his laughter as it grates past his throat. What else could one do when faced with the truth of their own beginnings? “I exist because of a joke.” There is a dark humor in his words. As harsh as reality might be, even he can appreciate the irony. “Imagine her surprise when she realized she was carrying a sireless child.”
He tilts his head as he peers curiously at the woman before him. As he wonders if she would appreciate the humor as much as he. Somehow he doubts.
“But I suppose you would know about unwanted children,” he continues, returning her with a sharp stare of his own. One containing far more knowledge than it should. “Wouldn’t you?”
