"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
For a year he had been trying to find his way back. There had been adventure, the excitement of meeting new faces, and now it seemed he even had a new place to call home. Despite all of that, he had never lost sight on seeking out survivors of the Pampas. Of finding those he cared about that were missing. Aela had always been top of his list but she was not the only one he searched for.
He had never forgotten his friend or her stars.
Often, he had looked up at the aquamarine aurora weaved between the heavens during the freezing nights on the Isle and thought of her. He wondered how she was doing, if she still wandered the Meadow at midnight, if she had yet to smile. He had convinced himself that no matter what had befallen the rest of Beqanna, she would still be there. Intact and whole, covered in her celestial blanket of twinkling stars.
Would she forgive him for being gone for so long?
Would she still want to be his friend?
Pangea is a much closer walk to the common lands then the Pampas had ever been and before the moon can lose its fullness, the young jaguar stallion makes his way there. There is trepidation in his steps, uncertainty flickering in the flames along his shoulders, but he cannot stop himself from seeking her even if he wanted to. He would come here every night if he had to, until he either found her or the answers he dreaded hearing. Silvery moonlight bathes the meadow in it’s cool hue but when it reaches for him, he glows gold. It makes the long curling tresses of crimson that fall against his arched neck seem as if they are aflame and, perhaps, they are as his determination wavers. Shining as bright as the sun, a dazzling beacon that can’t be missed by any that may lurk here. Exactly what he’s counting on.
She knows this fire.
This fire that comes swimming up out of the darkness.
Much has changed, but this has not.
The stars have gone out, winked down her throat so they might smolder in her belly, and the constellations scattered across her skin have gone dim. Because she has commanded them to. Because she wants to be cast in the flicker of his flamelight when she steps closer.
Still, she does not smile. (This has not changed.) She only looks at him, this grown thing standing before her, and remembers that she had gone looking for him once and had not found him.
(Is this a thing to be forgiven for? That he had not been there when she had wanted him to be? No, he owes her nothing. No, he and his strange friends do not need forgiveness.)
She shifts her weight and wonders if the fire would burn should she reach out and try to touch it. Would she come away charred? Does this fire burn like the stars burn? Had she wondered these same things when he had asked to be friends with the stars?
She draws in a slow breath, studying the plains of his face. This has changed. They both have changed. They are children no longer, but something bigger. She’s got a belly full of stars and she wonders if these flames would singe her throat should she try to swallow them, too.
Despite the way the starry patterns across her pale skin fades, no matter that her stars don’t swirl around her… There is no mistaking her. Just as there is no mistaking the expression of raw relief that floods across his golden features the moment he lands on her and settles on her familiar unsmiling face. That dark voice had been whispering in his ear since he had washed up on the Isle that maybe she would have forgotten him or worse, that she would be upset with him. He wouldn’t have blamed her if she had been. Yet, he doesn’t find anything accusing when he searches those endless black skies of hers and much of that fear Terror had manifested inside of him suddenly fades.
They study each other, these grown versions of themselves that are both foreign and familiar, until she shifts slightly and whatever spell that had fallen around him breaks. Relief starts to twist into concern as he looks for her stars and finds them missing. He has come to associate the heavens with the girl who called them down around her, had found some unholy determination when he looked up at them and thought of her even as the sea had tried to swallow him whole.
As a child, he had asked to befriend her constellations… These little sparks of heat and flame and beauty that had lured him to her in the hushed quiet that only midnight can provide. But it had never been the stars that he had really been curious about, as bewitching as they were.
He had never stopped hoping that one day he might still make her smile. It hadn’t occurred to him why that might be. It is so different from the playful banter he has found in Lillibet, that easy flirtation. While Pangea’s newest crown could make the fire rise along his back and curl bashfully around his shoulders… It doesn’t compare to the way the flames now dance beneath his crimson mane and spirals down his chest… As if they might reach for her and coax the stars from her once more. As if she wasn't mesmerizing on her own.
He understands what has changed.
The moment she says his name, that certain pronunciation, he smiles.
“Liesma.” He murmurs to her, not quite trusting the steadiness of his words. Regret flickering in the reflection of his fire when she speaks again. “I didn’t mean to be.” He says quietly in the deeper rougher tone that had appeared as he reached adulthood, feral yellow finding starless dark. (I didn’t want to be), says the fire dancing along his spine.
“I’m sorry.” Deep down he knows she wouldn’t ask for an apology but he feels she deserves one anyway. (I missed you), says the flames that scorch down his chest.
He owes her nothing.
No explanation and certainly no apology.
It had not been an accusation, only an observation, but it is so easy to misconstrue things when the mouth delivering the message does not bow or bend around the soft edges of a smile. (This mouth has never known such softness, not even when her mother gave birth to the Night and her sister came into the world, the most beautiful thing she had ever laid eyes on.)
He hadn’t meant to be, but does anyone ever? Or does time simply pass that way it is wont to do, unflinching, unyielding?
The flames curl around him now as if he has commanded them to do so and she remembers the way he had lit the branch ablaze the first night they’d met. A reflex, it had seemed. Just as, once, she could only pull down the stars with wishing.
“You needn’t ever apologize to me,” she says, leveling him with that same steady gaze. Depthless. (She cannot know how he yearns for the stars, just as he cannot know that she has darkened them so that she might be cast in the glow of his flame instead. So that, for the moment, it might belong to them both.)
“Have you been well?” she asks, tilting her head a fraction before adding, “and your strange friends, have they been well?” And she casts that dark gaze into the shadows, remembering that she had not been able to see them but had felt them all the same.
Then, a beat of silence before she shifts her focus back to his face. Handsome now, angular, without the softness of youth. “Where did your travels take you?”
Long ago beneath the light of a full moon, he had made a silent promise to always smile enough for the both of them. That is, if he could not make her smile at all. A feat he is relieved he still has a chance at achieving now that he has found her. His own twists uncertainly beneath the steadiness of her stare before it eases back into something smoother. Warmer. Tipping his dark muzzle in acknowledgment that he had heard, noting how similar the words were to what Aela had once instructed.
She searches the shadows for his strange friends and he knows she will not find them. He hesitates, the uncertainty spiraling along his spine openly. He cannot lie to her. “I’ve been… It’s been…” He snorts softly, frustrated with the sudden inability to put everything that had happened into succinct words. “It’s been.. A lot.” Is what he ends up on. Watching the orange cast of fire reflected in her depthless gaze and finding courage there. “I fell when the South fell. I woke up on the Isle and met an angel in Hyaline that reminded me of you. She healed me.” In more ways than one, he thinks. He leaves out what it was like to drown, that the soul that had stayed with him had been a terrible one.
“I've been looking for my mother. I met another Southerner, Lillibet. She took over Pangea and I live there now.” It is the short version, the highlight reel, that he settles on for now. In reality, he is bursting to know where she had been, what she had seen, what had happened in their time apart. But she had asked a question and he intends on answering it. “I don’t really talk to those friends right now.” He admits quietly, suddenly unable to meet her gaze. How can he explain to her, that reason of why? That he doesn’t want to see who might appear.
That he was afraid.
“What about you?” Eager to focus on her, his yellow gaze sweeping once more over this grown version of the girl he had known. Unable to stop looking at her in case this was a dream and she wasn’t real. “Liesma… Where are your stars?” A gentle question of concern and honest curiosity.
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