"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
Of all the seasons, winter has become Nemeon’s most and least favourite. The longer nights mean more time awake, less time as a lifeless statue frozen in whatever moment he was experiencing when the sun rose.
But he misses the colours of the other seasons. Misses opening his golden eyes and seeing life continuing without him. In winter, the world is slumbering with him during the day and slumbers without him at night. The darkness is thicker and he is more lonely.
He is glad when he starts seeing signs that the cold weather is beginning to loosen its grip, and the almost-adult is currently captivated by the emergence of snowdrops through the thin blanket of white crystals. His dark muzzle longs to brush against the blooms, to feel the softness of the delicate petals, but he refrains.
They would only be soft for a moment before they began to wilt and rot at his touch.
When Nemeon wishes for a little more light so that he could see them better than what the moon is giving him, he frowns - remembering some other wayward wishes. He hasn’t seen Anaise since, though he hadn’t really expected to. Not after she had disappeared. She sneaks into his mind sometimes as she does now, like the first hint of light on the horizon but when he turns his head to see more his world becomes black and cold and frozen instead.
Thinking about the dawn makes him uncomfortable - he could waste an entire night worrying about it. There are a few hours of moonlight and darkness left. He snorts and then sighs when his breath disturbs the snowdrops anyway, and he finally lifts his head and spares them from his attention.
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
What a strange thing it was, to ache as she’d watched him walk away.
And she had waited there for as long as she could to see if he would come back. Waited there until the sun came up and she knew that he would not be able to come back at all.
Then she had gone home and told Ennis about the strange thing that had happened. How she had become the sun there in the middle of the night, glowing so fiercely that she could not even stand to look at herself.
She had not told him about the other things, the things she had learned about herself, how she could be cruel without meaning to be. (Though her twin surely already knew this, as she had been cruel to him without meaning to be more times than he could count.)
It had been months before she’d confessed to him that she could become other things, too. And she had made him practice with her. She had made him wish things, outlandish things, and she had tried to resist each one. But she couldn’t. When he had wished that she were a bird, she had become a bird. When he had wished that she was fire, she had become fire. And she could not resist, no matter how fiercely she screwed her eyes shut and tried to want herself into anything else.
She wanders now, as winter begins to give way to spring, lost in thought.
And then she sees him, almost as if he has been divined by her wishing. Because she did not get a chance to apologize the last time, not in any real, meaningful way. But she doubts, too, that he will want to see her and she understands that she will simply vanish if he wishes her away.
“Nemeon,” she calls from several feet away, as if she might be immune to his wishes if she keeps enough distance between them. “Hi,” she tries, trying to carefully gauge how he will react to her.
He had not wished her into existence, but there she is. Nemeon’s golden eyes move from the snowdrops and catch on Anaise when she speaks his name. There are a lot of emotions that rise up in that moment, and almost all of them conflict with one another. Guilt, relief, hurt. It’s the confusion that reigns, though, and it is not well concealed. It clouds his golden eyes and creases his face into a frown as he looks at her, as she greets him.
She should apologize, he thinks. Or maybe he should?
He can't decide if he blames himself or her more for how their meeting had ended last time.
Instead of an apology, he finds himself saying “What do you want?” But realizing this question sounds harsher than he intends, even in his soft voice, he follows it up for clarification. “You left without saying goodbye. I thought…” But he trails off, thinking that telling her ‘I thought you hated me’ sounds petulant. Like he’s just a pouting colt. And maybe he is, for all that he is grown up.
His thoughts swirl around in his head, focusing on her, before this focus triggers a memory. His frown deepens and his gaze becomes more intent as he remembers how she had changed without him speaking any words out loud. “Can you hear my thoughts?”
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 deserves it, she knows that.
Because what she had done was unforgivable, wasn’t it?
She had felt it even as she had shifted without her own consent, felt it as the sun had fallen across her—his?—face in the dead of night. It had been unspeakably cruel, though she had not done it on purpose, though her cruelty was typically reserved for her brother.
And then.
And then she had heard his wish, though he had not spoken it aloud. I wish she’d stop, and she had abruptly returned to her own body, plunged back into the darkness. And then, I wish she’d leave. And she had vanished altogether. If he had walked toward her, would he have been able to walk right through her? She had called out to him, or tried to, but no sound had come out and he’d turned to leave.
I thought you hated me, she hears it, though he does not speak this aloud either.
And when he asks if she can hear his thoughts, her entire body flushes hot with shame.
“I’m sorry,” she says and she means it with every fiber of her being. Means it so fiercely that her eyes water with it. These are the consequences of her actions, these are the consequences of delving into the minds of others, she realizes.
“I didn’t mean to,” she continues and abruptly removes herself from his head, fighting against the natural urge to sift through his thoughts just as thoroughly as she sifts through Ennis’s.
Nemeon wishes he could be like his stone-self when she apologizes, when he sees her eyes water. He doesn’t want to feel the sympathy that grows inside of his heart for her. So he turns his golden gaze away so that he can not see her eyes and, maybe, she will not be able to see his as well. So much of what he could do - all of it, really - was out of his control. Things that he did not mean to do.
Luckily time has erased most of his memories about what else he had thought about when they had met last time - which he is currently trying to remember but coming up empty. All he recalls are those last two wishes that he hadn’t even spoken.
Nemeon frowns, finding it odd to be so aware of his thoughts and that trying to rein them in is having no real effect.
Is she listening to them now?
There's a hum of frustration that goes through him - not knowing how to defend himself against his own thoughts.
He turns back to her, offering a humourless smile that does nothing to lighten up the pain in his eyes.
“You said that last time too.” Both the apology and that she had not meant to do it. And then he is not quite sure what to say next, or how to tell her he doesn't want her to go this time (and then he has to wonder if she knows that already anyway).
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
Had she said it last time?
She doesn’t remember her own words as much as she remembers the panic that had seized her by the throat. (A girl cannot march through the world thinking that everything in it belongs to her. A girl cannot reach into the minds of others and think that there will not be consequences.)
It is the same panic that courses through her now, because she had laughed with him once. Because she’d thought she had given him a gift in showing him how brilliant the sun could be. (Had she thought that perhaps they could be friends in those early moments before she had turned into the worst possible thing—something he could never be? She must have, otherwise it wouldn’t hurt so bad.)
The words must not have found any purchase the last time she’d said them because he’s still looking at her like he cannot trust her, like she’d done it on purpose just to wound them. Based on his humorless smile, she suspects they mean just as little now as they did then.
She swallows thickly and takes a single step toward him, hoping to shrink the gulf that separates them.
“Before I met you, the only others I had ever been around were my parents and my brother,” she starts, uncertain, like offering up an explanation might somehow persuade him to forgive her. “Their thoughts were never secret,” she continues, though there must have been many things her mother kept from them. “I didn’t…,” she pauses, shakes her head, “it’s a lousy excuse, but I didn’t know how not to listen. I’d never had to try.”
Nemeon tenses when she steps towards him but the pressure in his head becomes less a fear of what she will do to him and more what he will do to her if she gets too close. He thinks there is still plenty of space, but that worry for her he had been fighting against rises up and takes over any attempt at shielding himself.
He doesn’t step back. Maybe he should but he is lonely, this youth that only knows darkness and stone. And even if he had felt his heart shatter a little at the end of their first meeting, he remembers the laughter too. Remembers the light.
So the wariness that remains in his expression when she takes that step is half because of that hurt and half because he is watching for signs that his very presence is making her sick, and not just emotionally.
It shouldn’t, but wouldn’t that be just his luck if it did now.
Nemeon watches and listens to her explanation and he feels some of it settle through the guard he has up. Didn’t he feel plagued by his own lack of control? Only he did not think that there was a way to practice not being radioactive or not turning into stone. He is jealous that she is capable of growing, of being better, and he feels some of the pain loosen its tight hold on his heart.
“I guess that makes sense.” He doesn't say he forgives her, doesn't know if he really has yet, but he doesn't want to leave and doesn't want her to go either - so maybe that is what forgiveness he's capable of. Curiosity follows, and a little more light eats away at his sullen expression. “Can your family all do it too?”
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.
Perhaps there is some small victory in this—the fact that he does not turn away from her—and she clings to it like it is the only thing keeping her afloat. There is still that same wariness in his expression and she cannot fault him for it because hadn’t she betrayed him? Hadn’t she shown him the sun and then… and then.
She daren’t think it lest that same unshakable grief tighten its noose around her throat again.
Instead, she searches his face in the dark. (And maybe she is beginning to feel it, the sickness as it creeps into her skin. But if she does, she mistakes it for something else, the unsettling tickle of remorse, perhaps.)
He relents and she exhales a breath she had not realized she’d been holding. There is such tremendous relief in this that she can feel it shuddering through her knees. She takes another step toward him then, as if there is still some chance they might be friends, that his forgiveness might someday be complete.
The sickness settles in the pit of her gut but, still, she takes it to be something that it’s not. She doesn’t know exactly what he’s asking, but she is so desperately eager to answer him, to provide him with some deeper explanation.
“My brother and I can listen to thoughts, we get it from our dad, but…” She pauses, glances at the ground and frowns. “I’m the only one who does things without meaning to.” She glances up at him then, releasing a shaky breath. How desperately she wants him to believe her, believe that it had been an accident, that sometimes she can be thoughtless and careless but that she would never intentionally hurt someone she’d begun to think of as a friend.
DON’T FORGET TO LOVE ME IN DAMNATION
FOR THE LIVING I HAVE EARNED ON LOVE GONE WRONG
No part of Nemeon wants to hate Anaise, though he’s vaguely aware that it might be easier for them both if he did - that way they wouldn’t have future chances to really hurt each other. There’s no chance of it happening, not when she takes another step - and he’s both heartened and worried by it. It’s better than her disappearing on him but presents different challenges.
He can’t forget that he still poses a threat to her.
Her admittance that she is the only one in her family that reads thoughts without meaning to strikes at his heart, kindling a sad version of kinship there. “Well.” There’s just a small pause before he continues. “I know what it’s like to do something you don’t mean to.” He finally voices the words that have been haunting his hurt - the reminder that he might just know exactly what it is to cause pain without meaning to.
“I think… I just thought no one else had that problem.” Which sounds a little naive now that he’s said it outloud - out there assuming he was the only one with problems. “But at least yours has a chance at control, right?” Nemeon offers her what he wants to be an encouraging smile, but it waivers and collapses in on itself so quickly. He wants so badly for there to be a way to simply not be what he is. To not cause sickness just by standing too close, to not be aware that the only time when he is not harmful is when he’s completely unconscious and encased in stone.
He’d like for Anaise to keep drawing forward, would like for them to exist in a moment where neither of them gets hurt and they can really have a chance at friendship. But he’s not sure that moment exists for them.
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.
