"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
jupiter's by my side and we watch galaxies collide
Here she was:
A girl, on the threshold of adulthood.
Here she was:
A storm, barely contained.
From birth, she had felt too much—absorbed each emotion like a blow. It spread through her like wildfire. One day, it would destroy her. One day, she’d let it. She was as volatile as the lightning that flickered under her skin and though her veins. She was a tempest—raging like the sea, running toward the wind, galloping until her body was weak and her legs protested and her lungs threatened to collapse.
She didn’t know how to be any other way.
It did not make for good relationships. She did not know how to be loyal when her heart was so fickle. She did not know how to be kind when raw honesty turned her tongue sharp. Aios followed each twist of her mind, allowing her emotions of the day to shape her, carve her out like a statue buried in marble.
She was a catastrophe waiting to happen, and she didn’t care.
Today was no different.
The autumn sky was heavy with rain above her and she grinned as she stepped out into forest, mist swirling around her legs as though it might claim her. There was a challenge in that sky and she felt it like a beat of the drums. Like the mother who called her forth with the magic tied to it. Like the father who rushed along the sand. Aios folds her wings over her back, today composed of fog and lightning, and she steps forward when she would rather run. She tips her head back and smiles as she calls forth the rain and when it begins to sluice over her, she comes to a stop, letting it drench her whole.
He had changed, and with the change he knew less who he was than before.
He has always been a thing made of storms—colored like churning clouds, wings dark with thunder and dripping with rain. When he had dreamt that he could control storms it had not been entirely surprising, for what else would a man made of storms dream of? It was not the dream itself that changed him, but rather, the physical changes that happened upon waking from the dream.
That he awoke flickering with lightning.
That he could touch things and send a ripple of shock into it, like his body had become electrified.
He dreamt he could control storms, and he awoke changed, only still not in the way he needed to be.
The storms he conjured remained difficult to control. There was nothing that he could create that remained within his grasp, always spinning from his control, his clouds blown away by the wind. It was a frustrating thing, to dream what you thought you always wanted, to awaken with something yet it was still not what you needed.
It felt like a taunt, and considering the source of the change—a task completed for a man, a god, that he didn’t know—he now can only think himself a fool.
He wants to go back to the mountain, to spit this magic back into the hole he had dug it from, but he does not. He clings to it stubbornly, waits every day for it to change, for him to get better at it, even if the thread of power has no anchor and he knows this is something he will never accomplish.
And so when she catches his eye, the reason is obvious.
She is colored like him, cloaked in fog and flickering with lightning, and his own flashes in a silent response. He recognizes her power, the way she is calling the rain, but even from where he stands she can see she has more control over it than he ever will.
When the lightning glints across his face this time it is almost with jealousy, and he swallows the bitterness of it away, where it lodges somewhere in the very pit of his chest.
He walks towards her, two storms rolling to meet, and instead of saying any one of things he could say, he says absolutely nothing, standing in the silence of her rain shower.
jupiter's by my side and we watch galaxies collide
Aios has never had a reason to feel jealous but if she were, it would cling to her like a second skin. She is the kind to covet. The kind to want. The kind to hold onto things with sticky fingers, with the need to possess. She wears these ugly emotions like a badge, as brightly as the beautiful ones. She has just never run across something that she has guarded so fiercely or wanted so desperately. She has never craved.
So she does not recognize it in him, could not—even if he did not hide it away so deftly.
She just watches him approach with those overbright violet eyes, the storm within her rising in response to the one that he calls forward. He is like her, but not. He is carved from the same storms that have made her, but they are not identical. He is dark, brooding storms—granite skies and swollen clouds. She is a violent bruising of purples and blues. The colors of a storm breaking across a forgotten sea.
But still,
Like calls to like.
Her teeth flash as lightning ripples beneath her skin and she shakes the ivory of her hair away from where it clings to her face. Her wings shift ever so slightly to match his better, as much of a greeting as she can offer him, and instead her gaze rips away from his face to appraise the rest of him. To study the rain trapped within him and the crackle of energy that crosses his body. She takes her time studying him, unafraid to be caught in her study, to be trapped in this moment where she so clearly watches him.
When she has had her fill, her gaze comes back to his and she tilts her youthful head to the side.
“You can call me Aios,” she offers—
as though the name, the privilege of the offering, is a gift.
He does not wilt beneath her appraisal but instead seems to harden, his jaw clenching. He tries not to imagine all the flaws she is finding. He tries not to wonder if she can look at him and see all the things he cannot do—that he cannot shape storms to his every whim, that his wings grow useless in the sunshine, that the lightning in the clouds of his coat is only for show. As far as he can tell the most useful thing he can do is create electricity, but for one that rarely sought to bring harm to anyone else, it was a useless skill for him.
Her wings shift to match his, and his gray eyes narrow as he tries to silently decipher what this means. Perhaps it is meant to be mocking; to rub salt into the wound of all that he cannot do. He realizes though, quickly, that his suspicions are not only unfounded, but unfair. She is merely a girl—younger than he is, based on the youthful brightness to her face. Not only that, but she is a stranger. His assumptions come from his own insecurities, and he wonders how low he must be to feel threatened by a young girl.
And just like that, the negativity diminishes, washed away like a storm.
“Aios,” he repeats her name, tasting the rain and fog of it, wrapping it in the thunder of his own voice. “My name is Tumult,” a name that speaks of chaos and clatter, when he is merely a rainstorm.
“I have never met another like you,” he tells her, honestly, and it is only then that a small smile flickers across his lips, similar to the lightning.
jupiter's by my side and we watch galaxies collide
She scrutinizes him openly, but not to uncover flaws or find weakness. Instead, it is a nearly scholarly activity—a way to absorb the essence of him, to try and decipher that which makes a man tick. She is worldly and yet wholly naive, a girl who does not yet know how to traverse this world on her own. For so long, Aios has lived beneath the shadow of her mother’s wing, safe to explore within the reach of her mother’s magic—but here, with him, she is exposed. She is free. Her body sings with the joy of it.
“Tumult,” she echoes back to him, taking her time with the syllables of it—savoring the very essence of it. There is so much beneath his surface, she thinks, and her eyes brighten with the challenge of it. With the joy of finding something not so easily revealed. Her heart beats a little faster and she wants to step closer, wants to study him further, but she holds back—keeps her distance with white-knuckled restraint.
His next statement may not be a compliment, but nothing stops her from taking it as one. She flashes him another grin, and her face lights up, storms flickering wildly beneath the muted clouding of her coat. “Nor shall you,” she says with all of the youthful arrogance she is owed. There are others carved of storms, she knows, but she dismisses the thought. None are her. None are the same.
Not lesser, perhaps, but she doesn’t think on it too much.
Instead she drags her gaze away from him to look at the sky where the rain continues to pour over them both. Her eyes close and she sits in silence for a moment as the thunder grows, growling through the sky with the promise of more. “Is there anything better than this?” she muses, feeling that peace only storms bring spread through her, warring with the violent need to run, to act out, to do something.
“I can’t decide if I want to nap right here or run until my heart bursts.”
