"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
It is late in the day when he finds himself returning from adventures at the waterfall with his mom. He thinks she must know it has become one of his favorite places, because she takes him there almost daily now to play beneath the falling water and wade in the more shallow depths. There are even a few fluertles that wander along the grassy shores there - turtles native to the Pampas that carry flower beds on their large shelled backs. He likes to try and pick them out from the flower fields before they start to move.
He is pleasantly tired from a day of fun and sunshine, of playing with mom while she tries not to look like she is full of tears. He hasn’t told her that he can hear their pain, that sometimes thoughts slip into his head that aren’t his own and whisper secrets to him, truths not meant for his young ears. She is sad that he lost his sister, sad that she lost a daughter. Just like his father is sad that he let Revna die, that he let them all down. Like he is scared that he won’t be a good dad.
There is a weight it places inside Obsidio’s chest, a quiet that is made of both sorrow and confusion because while he knows there is a piece of his heart that went missing in those early moments, she is already becoming a stranger to him. He thinks she was the same color as mom, that cool heather gray, but he cannot remember her face. There might have been gold like him and dad, or less like mom. Might have been none at all, and it seems the harder he tries to remember, the less of her he is allowed to keep. He never even got to know her voice. These are the moments mom looks at him and worries, the moments she wonders about what dark lives inside him.
There is plenty, he would tell her if he thought it wouldn’t make her cry, but it is not so heavy as hers. Not so heavy to drown him.
When they climb back up the hill, there is a figure in the near distance that sets his little heart racing inside his chest. A tall, dark man all draped in gold, with long, elegant ears and flecks of gold that glint like stardust beneath the sun even at this distance. “Mom?” He asks, and when he turns to find her she is already smiling in her quiet way, already reaching down to brush a kiss over shining, golden brow. “Of course, love, go on. Tell him hello from me.” So he leaves her with a grin, dashes off a few strides to see his father and then stops abruptly when he hears her pang of secret sorrow. “I love you mom!” He has turned to face her again, his star-soaked face awash in a hundred shades of gleaming gold and swirling constellation. “I love you more.” And it is only when he hears that sorrow ease again that he continues his way across the grassy meadow to where his father waits.
He all but falls into the dark stallion, tumbling against Obscene’s chest because he knows what his father does not, that the fae stallion is the best dad. “Mom says hi.” He tells the man, and his young face has a shy kind of softness when he twists to look up at his fathers dark face. “I missed you, dad.” When he climbs out from the embrace of his fathers chest, he does not go farther than a shoulder away. “I saw the fluertles again today by the waterfall! Mom says they glow at night but she won’t let me see because I’m supposed to be sleeping.” He sighs like this is such a great burden to him. “Maybe you could tell her how important it is that I see them.” He is trying so hard for nonchalance, pawing at a clump of grass with one shining golden foreleg. “She’d probably listen to you.”
I can see through you, see your true colors Cause inside you're ugly, you're ugly like me
He doesn’t know how to be a father, barely remembering the one he had once had.
But he tries.
If he knew his son was carrying his weight, the burden that is only his and his alone, he would tic another box in the failure category. The many talents of his son are yet to be discovered and so he is at least blissfully ignorant to the dark that’s stored in his child, unaware that the day will come when he finds that Obsidio is better at hiding things than even he is.
With children he had always been able to, somewhat, cut down his cold and cruel demeanor and with his son he is no different. The boy barrels into his star patterned chest and he smirks down at him with amusement glittering in his red eyes, brushing his muzzle over the gold markings that drip from his withers as he embraces him, this colt that is the best part of him. He glances to where he can see Revelrie in the distance, his smirk fading into something unreadable as he makes a mental note to tell her hi himself later. He looks back down and grins at his son who finally pulls away, rattling words a mile a minute.
“Sleep is important too.” He says to him with a raised brow (realizing that he didn’t get enough of it himself lately), that unreadable expression hardening the lines of his handsome face. It doesn’t last long, melting into something mischievous as the red of his eyes turn dark with devilry. “But I suppose I might come sneak you away to see them.” He says as he pulls his son back to him and ruffles his baby mane roughly with his muzzle. “Our little secret hm?”
He almost misses what Obscene says because he is so intent on trying to remember where else he’s seen this shade of red staring down at him now from a pair of amused, shining eyes. He thinks maybe in the wildflowers mother won’t let him play in - the red ones that will make him too sleepy to see the fluertles, make him nap the whole day away like a little baby which he definitely is not. Or maybe in the shades of dawn he seldom sees. Pinks and oranges and reds that watch him while he lay curled against his mother’s soft gray chest.
It is good, perhaps, that he does not remember the moment his sister opened her eyes and found him in the starry dark with eyes just like those. Bright red and beautiful, like jeweled lanterns in the dark.
“Sleep is okay.” He says, as though this is a debate. But it is hard to disagree with his father when he has that raised brow expression that is so good at quieting any argument posed on Obsidio’s dark lips. “Maybe you should come sleep with us too.” He says, hearing that realization in his fathers thoughts just a moment before remembering this is still a secret he holds inside. “It would probably make it easier for me to sleep sometimes, I mean.” Quieter, careful, almost bashful in the way his dark eyes lift to peer up at his father.
But then he is all quiet joy and hopeless effort to be silent and stoic like his father always is, but it’s so hard not to wiggle his tiny brush tail when he’s happy. “I promise I will try to keep it a secret.” The boy says, and those midnight eyes are somehow oddly blank and alight with delight as he makes a promise they both know he will ultimately, and regretfully, break. “I’ll try really hard.” But he cannot help his little squeal of laughter, or this joy in his chest as his father tugs him against his chest and ruffles his mane.
He stays there a moment, that delicate face of midnight and gold stars pressed to the warmth of his fathers chest. “We can still hang out now though, right?” But even though his father is always busy, always doing things, he has never once told Obsidio no to this particular request. “We can do anything, I’m probably big enough to help with stuff by now.”
I can see through you, see your true colors Cause inside you're ugly, you're ugly like me
There was a time when he would love nothing more then to get stoned amongst the flowers. He still does, from time to time, but with the pressing issues coming in at all sides he has found less time for leisurely activities. He’s sure his son had seen him blitzed out of his mind and not thought twice but today he is sober and clear headed. So he doesn’t miss the bashful request on quiet words and he looks down at his boy’s sparkling face and feels that tug of regret in his chest, that reminder that he had no idea what he was doing and perhaps he wasn’t doing enough. It was hard to explain to him the unusual relationship him and Revelrie had found themselves in, that there was a reason he didn’t curl around them at night. “I’ve been busy Obsidio.” He says quietly but not unkindly. “But I will see if you’re mother might let you come stay with me for a few nights.”
He doesn’t tell his son about Gale and that there might not be many nights left for him, instead he smiles at his son and hopes that Obsidio will understand why he had done what he had done one day. For a moment he wonders if Offspring had felt this way as well and a pang of old hurt finds itself rising from the pit of his locked emotions, winding around his blackened heart. It’s easy to chase it away when Obsidio is laughing and giggling and flat out lying to him and he laughs back, a strange sound to his finely tipped ears when it holds no cruelty in it.
“Of course we can.” He says, having made it a point to clear his schedule today for him. Just in case he wouldn’t get another chance. “You have grown quite a bit haven’t you?” He says as he takes a step back and looks over the young colt. It was still hard to believe at times that this perfect child was his. There had been no signs of traits but having been born mortal himself, this meant little to him. Perhaps when his son was older he might take him to the Mountain and ask for immortality for his child, to spare another gutting loss like the one with his sister. He forces himself to not think of the girl’s eyes or her still body as he smirks at the colt. “I suppose I was learning about kingdom policies at your age…” He says as an afterthought, considering him. “How about I show you where the border of the territory runs so you know what’s ours and what will one day be yours?”
There is so much that the boy does not understand about how his family works. It is tainted by so much dark and despair, so many tangles like briars buried in and around all of their hearts. But he is learning that maybe families are supposed to be broken things, like how his mom and her sister only have their dad, how Fyr has Aela. Maybe this is why he can have mom or dad, but not both of them together.
“I’d like that.” He tells his father, and the boy does not realize that he is lying until he feels that pang tugging inside his chest, an ache at the notion of sleeping away from mom. It makes his heart hurt a little, makes his belly ache with something that is not quite fear but close enough to leave the first tastes of unease lingering on his tongue. “We wouldn’t be far though, right? From mom I mean.” Soft and earnest, soaked in starlight that drips over the gleaming black of his skin as he looks up into the red eyes of his father. “You don’t sleep with your mom anymore, right? And nothing bad has ever happened.” It is reassurance that he seeks without understanding it, comfort in facing change with an open mind.
But then Obscene is stepping back to study him, and Obsidio can feel his delicate child’s chest puff with a pride much too big for his young, slender body. “Oh yes,” he says, and he is frowning sternly because that is what adults do when they are saying important, serious things, “I am very grown. Almost six months old.” He says the number heavily, adding weight to it so that his father understands this is a very impressive, grown up age. “Mom says that’s half of a year, and a year is a very long time.”
He is silenced though by what his father thinks of next. Of pain and mortality, of Obsidio’s sister. He wants to flinch away from those thoughts for the way they feel strangely like a physical blow to his chest, but he remembers that this part of him is a secret, knows in some inherent way that his parents would die beneath the weight of their truths if they knew they had to keep them from the front of their thoughts. From where he could find them and feel every word like stones cast against his brittle bones.
“Kingdom policies.” He repeats the words, clinging to them like they will save him from the sudden tempest breaking inside his chest. “Does that mean you’re a -” but whatever he was about to ask falls from his lips like a comet, burning out before he even has a chance to finish his sentence.
There is a sudden weight he feels, a burden that sits squarely on his delicate shoulders as he stares searchingly up into his fathers face. “This will be mine someday?” He asks, and for once his words are not the young adolescent babble of a child, not etched in the hint of a giggle as he wiggles his short, feathered tail. This is the quiet weight of realizing duty, the moment the boy becomes something more.
I can see through you, see your true colors Cause inside you're ugly, you're ugly like me
Coming from a broken family himself, he should know how such things affect children. Still, this family they have made (tainted and shattered as it was) at the very least was still present, something that he had been denied at a very young age. There was hope though, for all of them. With the presence of Bardot and Tantalize now roaming through the wildflowers, there was a chance for all of them and the gravity of that realization was not lost on him.
If you got the chance to rebuild everything that was broken, would you take it?
There is something tugging at his withered dark heart at the thought of seeing his sister and their jaguar dam with Obsidio but he pushes it away, fearful of holding on to a dream too long that might never be. Besides, his time is limited and he selfishly wants to take as much as he can for himself when it comes to his son. Still, it seems a topic that’s unavoidable as he reads the signs on his son’s face and easily unearths his uncertainty in the lie (something he’s gotten quite good at observing when he is always held to the truth) that the colt presents to him. His lips twitch slightly but he does his best to alleviate the child’s fears. “No, we would never be too far from her.” He says quietly as his muzzle grazes over the star patterns that mark his bright golden boy. “And I have not slept next to my mother’s side for a very long time.” He says tightly, unable to keep the flare of anger at bay at the old familiar hurt that’s brought up with that memory. He cannot lie to his son and so he doesn’t tell him the truth, that he hadn’t turned out fine at all.
He refused to taint his son with his own misgivings though and he forces a grin to his dark lips as he looks down at him. “Would you like to meet her? Your grandmother? Your Aunt is here too.” Even if Tantalize had fucked him over, the least she could do was make it up to him by being kind to her grandson.
Obsidio proudly reminds his father of his young age and the thought of mortality briefly flutters through his mind again, making a muscle in his lower jaw jump and he makes a note to speak to Revelrie about this as soon as possible. Perhaps the fairies would be kinder to her requests then they had ever been to his. He gently points Obsidio and his glittering golden face in the direction they would start in and he is curious to what the boy is going to ask before he becomes distracted and then it is his turn to become alarmed, recognizing that weight that was suddenly settling on his very small shoulders. One that he remembered his own father wearing. And that would not do at all. “Only if you want it son.” He nudges the boy’s shoulder and gives him a raw smile although his red eyes never leave the endless dark of his sons gaze. “That is your choice and not one I will ever make for you. In the chance that you will want it some day, it’s best I show you now.”
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