"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
His twin has gone off exploring on her own tonight so Nemeon does the same. He woke at sunset to find her there as always, illuminated by the very last rays of the sun he has never seen in the purple-blue sky. Though he does not think anything can harm him during the day, he appreciates her attentiveness and the company it brings - even if he’s not aware of it all the time.
Now he wanders alone through the meadow at midnight, the sky long since losing all colour and clouds dapple the sky, obscuring the light of the stars and moon. On clear nights he enjoys stargazing, making up stories for the different shapes that they see there but there is no point tonight - by the time he focuses on one cluster of stars, there is a cloud moving in to erase it from view. If there's going to be rain tonight, he hopes it comes soon so there will be a chance at a clear sky at some point tonight.
He’s on the look out for anything that glows, any light that he can gravitate towards. Although he’s used to the night-world, having known no other, there’s still a part of him that longs to see more than shadows. To find out what colour everything actually is.
His mother’s warnings about the effect that he might have on others linger in the back of his mind but Nemeon is a young dreamer and naturally curious. It is one thing to be kept in the dark constantly but he cannot avoid interactions with others forever. Just a small chat, a conversation at a distance that would make accidental touching impossible. Surely the risks would be minimal? And well worth it, to learn something and meet someone new.
open to any!
Nemeon is radioactive
Those that touch him may experience metallic taste, nosebleed, nausea, headache, hair loss and/or skin lesions.
Symptoms become worse with prolonged exposure and onset is accelerated when exposed to his blood.
so don’t forget to love me in damnation
For the living i have earned on love gone wrong
The world looks different from here.
Ennis is… where?
Someplace so far removed from her that she cannot even hear him.
Always fretting, her brother. Worried about things beyond their control. Worried about the darkness most of all. They are so rarely apart that they seem attached at the hip, but she is alone now and she left the sound of his fretting several miles back.
She inherited all the bravery, you see, and left none for Ennis. She teases him gently about this and he says it’s all right because he got all the color and left hardly any at all for her. But she doesn’t mind, not at all, because there is no shame in looking like their mother.
Alas, she is thinking of neither Ennis nor their mother as she ventures out into the darkness. She catches snippets of stranger’s thoughts as she passes them in the moonlight. She does not mean to, but she has never worked out how to control it nor has she ever felt any shame for the intrusive nature of her gift.
She is still young, though, and has not learned the inherent danger of it.
She will soon, no doubt, when she wanders into the meadow and within earshot of a young boy’s thoughts.
How the boy wishes to know of the sun.
(She will never be able to control this magic. It is not a magic that can be controlled. More a curse than a gift, perhaps.)
The glow starts in the center of her chest and spreads steadily outward. She stops short as heat collects on the surface of her skin, radiating outward, too.
She glances down at herself, brow furrowed, until she cannot bear to look any longer. Her own heat warms her cheeks and she draws in a steadying breath, trying not to panic.
She gazes out into the light she casts and spots him, this boy shot through with gold, and takes an uncertain step toward him. “Are you doing this?” she calls out to him.
Like with Baptiste, there is a moment when Nemeon thinks he’s miscalculated what time of night it is. Perhaps he has fewer conscious moments than he thinks, perhaps he’s wandered far from his twin and will not be found tonight so he wakes up alone in the darkness with no news of the day.
But though he freezes where he is standing, he does not turn to stone. Not even when the outer reaches of the light fall on his skin and he feels the barest hint of warmth on his nose. “No.” Is the first syllable to come out of him, his eyes wide as he realizes it is a filly.
But then, wasn't the sun nearly constantly on his mind? So he continues a little more hesitantly, though still whisper-quiet as he tries to sort out his thoughts. “Not…” Not intentionally, though the words drop into silence for another few heartbeats before returning to audible levels. “I had been thinking about the sun.” He admits sheepishly, his golden eyes taking in every bit of light that she casts. It is so unlike anything he has ever seen. He takes a step closer, so that it glints on the golden streaks that line his body and leathery wings, and then stops. All caution is forgotten, as it always is whenever this young boy is in the presence of light.
One day he will grow accustomed to the dark world that he cannot escape, but for now - while he is still growing, still hearing stories of another world - it is still something that captivates him.
And nothing he has seen so far has come close to this filly. The word glow seems so small compared to what she is doing - she’s become something else entirely.
Nemeon tries to find her eyes somewhere in the light when he asks her “Is that what it’s like?”
Nemeon is radioactive
Those that touch him may experience metallic taste, nosebleed, nausea, headache, hair loss and/or skin lesions.
Symptoms become worse with prolonged exposure and onset is accelerated when exposed to his blood.
so don’t forget to love me in damnation
For the living i have earned on love gone wrong
There is heat radiating outward from the center of her chest, she can feel it.
But it does not burn as she suspects heat of this nature should.
He had been thinking about the sun, he says, and she knows that because she had heard him but there’s no way he could have known that so she doesn’t roll her eyes and snap at him the way she might have snapped at Ennis. Like, obviously. So she just closes her eyes because the light is getting to be too much even when she’s not looking directly at it and it’s hot but it’s not burning.
But it begs the question of who’s responsible for this sudden development if he’s not.
(Too young to understand the way magic can manifest, the way things can change even when you don’t ask them to. This magic works even without her asking it to. In fact, she will never be able to ask it to and it will never ask her for permission. It is more affliction than gift and it always will be. But she will have to learn this the hard way.)
So he had been thinking about the sun, she’d heard him, and all of a sudden she’d begun to burn clean through with sunlight. Just like that. She draws in a steadying breath, trying not to panic.
Will she be stuck like this? Will she be forced to live out the rest of her days as some kind of miniature sun? She shakes her head, drawn back to the present only by the boy’s question and she forces open her eyes again.
He has taken a step closer and she frowns, tilts her head, marvels at the way this changes the way the light bends away from her. “You’ve never seen it?” she asks, only momentarily distracted from her predicament by the strangeness of his question.
“I’m not as bright, but… yeah, I guess this is what it’s like.”
The sun was even brighter than her? Nemeon could not fathom that idea, she was the brightest thing he had ever seen and it stung his eyes to keep looking, but he dared not look away. Not when this could be his only chance to get this close to something that even vaguely resembled the sun.
His head tilts when hers does, though he’s not conscious of the way he copies her. His golden eyes roam across her illuminated skin but he is not so lost in the light that he doesn’t hear her answer. Nor hear the skiing that the truth brings. It is enough to remind him to blink, for his head to straighten once more as he breathes out his answer. “Not once.”
Nemeon is learning how strange this is, though it is all he knows, so he is free with an explanation. “I turn to stone each day, but the sun is often in my thoughts. My sister tells me about it.” The colt’s voice is soft, filled with all of his dreams. He is smiling now, it grows on his face slowly. Just like the rise of the moon across the sky and - he imagines - the sun when it does its version of the same dance.
It is another moment before he remembers the question she had greeted him with, and that slowly-spreading, dreamy smile fades away as he refocuses back into reality. “You don’t always glow?” Was this one of the side-effects that his mother had warned him about? He hadn't even touched her... but guilt begins to seep in all the same and he takes back that step that had brought him forward. Just to see if it will dim the light at all.
Nemeon is radioactive
Those that touch him may experience metallic taste, nosebleed, nausea, headache, hair loss and/or skin lesions.
Symptoms become worse with prolonged exposure and onset is accelerated when exposed to his blood.
09-06-2021, 06:04 PM (This post was last modified: 09-06-2021, 06:06 PM by anaise.)
so don’t forget to love me in damnation
For the living i have earned on love gone wrong
He says it so casually that the gravity of it almost doesn’t sink in.
Stone.
He turns to stone every day. She blinks at him, head still tilted in disbelief. He looks so alive, standing there in front of her, eyes wide with wonder. She wonders, if she touched him, would she feel a heartbeat beneath the surface of his skin? Is there a heart trapped in his chest or is he animated by something else entirely?
She swallows and nods her understanding, like this is something perfectly natural.
Her parents are kind and they have taught her to be kind, too. Even if there is a streak of wildness in her, because to be brave is to be rogue, if only a little.
He is smiling like it doesn’t bother him at all to lose his life every morning and she tries to smile, too but it comes out something kind of lopsided and uncertain.
Would Ennis do the same for her? Explain things to her that she could not experience for herself? He wouldn’t have to, she thinks, because she could just go mining through his thoughts. But if they couldn’t sift through each other’s heads, would he? Probably, she thinks, though she’s not sure she’d do the same for him. It seems kind of sad.
It does make her feel better, though. It helps to ease the panic, to think that this is the closest he’ll ever get to seeing the sun and she has provided him with even the barest glimpse of it.
She shakes her head at his question. “No,” she answers simply, “I cut my leg on a branch once and my blood glowed, though.”
A beat of silence then before she asks boldly, “does it hurt to turn to stone?”
Her question surprises him - it’s not something anyone else has asked him yet. Nemeon is quiet for a moment, his golden eyes watching her carefully, debating on whether a lie or the truth would be kinder. In the end, though, he has not taught himself to lie well enough for it to matter - so he replies with the same genuine honesty that he had used when he told her he had not seen the sun at all, giving a small shrug with his leathery wings “Yes. But I’m getting used to it.”
He doesn’t want to tell her how sometimes his lungs turn to stone before his head and there is a very small moment where he feels like he has been buried alive.
Or how if he pays too close attention, he can feel the way his skin dies as the stone spreads across him or how he always worries if the tips of his wings turn first they will snap off.
Or even how every single morning, he is never absolutely certain that he will wake up again so his first breaths in the evening are always ones of relief.
None of these thoughts pass through his lips, though they pass through his mind when he asks her something to try to distract himself from these uncomfortable feelings. “What colour did it glow?” Was it red, or something else entirely?
Nemeon is radioactive
Those that touch him may experience metallic taste, nosebleed, nausea, headache, hair loss and/or skin lesions.
Symptoms become worse with prolonged exposure and onset is accelerated when exposed to his blood.
so don’t forget to love me in damnation
For the living i have earned on love gone wrong
Perhaps she had been expecting a different answer.
Or perhaps she had not yet learned that the truth can be brutal at times.
When she’s older, it’ll be the kind of question she’ll keep to herself but she is a bold thing, a rogue thing, a wild thing and it comes spilling out of her mouth before she can think better of it.
And she stands there, glowing so brightly she can hardly open her eyes, and listens.
Listens to him say: yes, but I’m getting used to it.
And then listens to: sometimes it feels like being buried alive, sometimes he worries he won’t wake up at all, sometimes the skin turns faster than the rest of him.
Her breath hitches and she closes her eyes tightly, flinching away from the brutality of it.
(Because she has only known good things and kind things and the softness of her brother’s thoughts and this is something else altogether.) But closing her eyes does nothing to stop the flow of his thoughts and a vise tightens around her windpipe like she can almost feel it, too. And she wants to offer him some comfort but doing so would mean admitting that she’d heard it all.
She doesn’t open her eyes again until he asks her something instead and she blinks at him, his passive expression, as if these thoughts had not just been churning through his head, too. She swallows thickly, surprised to find that her glow has not dimmed any with the darkness of these things.
(How long will she stay his sun?)
She glances down at her leg, though she cannot see the place where the branch had nicked her flesh and left her bleeding through the blinding light emanating from every inch of her. “It was red,” she mumbles and then looks back up at him.
(Has she not learned her lesson?)
“Have you seen blood that’s a different color than red?”
When the filly closes her eyes and winces after his answer to her question, Nemeon instinctively takes a step back. He does not connect the action with the brutality of his own thoughts - they are ones he has every day and despite the pain involved, he has grown accustomed to it. But he worries that maybe it is his proximity. Usually, it is just touch that can cause discomfort but this winged colt has spent so little time around those that aren’t his family. How would he truly know? Maybe the very air that he breathed was toxic and particles of it were reaching her and causing pain.
Which is the last thing he wants for the girl who’s continuing to bathe him in soft, warm light.
Red she tells him about her blood, but that had not been his first guess.
“My mom’s is green. But it’s…” And Nemeon frowns here, trying to figure out how to answer her question without scaring her off. Not a lie, then, just a kinder version of the truth like when he had answered the last. “It’s not a good glow.” It meant Anomaly was dangerous. And though, so far, it seemed like he and his sister were mostly immune to whatever toxins she housed inside her body, Nemeon remembers that he had often felt nauseous after the meals she had provided before they were old enough to graze.
And how on the nights he had spent lying around with his twin, Nemeon would feel his skin itch on his shoulder or neck or wherever they were leaning up against one another until he was forced to come up with an excuse to move away.
For him, these thoughts weigh heavier than what happens to him every morning. Not only is he unable to see the sun but when he is flesh and bone he is a threat.
Unable to find another question for her now, but wishing to disrupt this dark cloud in his mind, Nemeon finds himself wishing he could see what the sun-girl looked like when she wasn’t glowing.
Nemeon is radioactive
Those that touch him may experience metallic taste, nosebleed, nausea, headache, hair loss and/or skin lesions.
Symptoms become worse with prolonged exposure and onset is accelerated when exposed to his blood.
so don’t forget to love me in damnation
For the living i have earned on love gone wrong
She is caught in the current of his thoughts.
Green blood and nausea, the itch of being pressed too close to his twin.
She blinks at him but thinks better of asking him to elaborate. She does not know what it means to be radioactive, to cause harm with only a touch, and she wonders if he has inherited this thing from his mother. There is no way of knowing, she thinks, without trying to touch him.
(Though he thinks himself a threat and she supposes this is answer enough. If he were to bleed, maybe his blood would be green, too.)
But she does not feel compelled to turn tail and run. She has always been brave to the point of recklessness and she edges a bit closer instead. She could tell him that she’s not afraid of him, what he could do to her even without meaning to. She could expose herself, the fact that she can hear all the things he keeps private, if it might make him feel better about the things he is.
But she does not get the chance. Because she catches his wish and the moment it seeps into her psyche all of her light blinks out. She is plunged back into the cold of the season, plunged into the dark of the night, and she glances down at her chest in surprise. And she is just Anaise, standing there in front of him, throwing no glow at all.
“Huh,” she mutters and glances up at him.
It dawns on her as she squints at his face, struggling to see through the sudden darkness.
“Wish something else,” she tells him, bracing herself.
