"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
I was a poor boy; you were a bright light I was a sinner and you were a snake
He remembers how she burns, but it’s like a memory now. An echo. He can barely hold onto it these days, so deeply encased in ice. Sometimes, he feels it like a flash burn across his dreams. A wildfire that blazes through and he feels the best of it wash over him—but always when it’s gone. Always when there’s nothing but the whisper of heat to remind him.
He stirs in his dreams now as he remembers. As something so important and so far gone calls out to him. A grunt as he shifts, as he clenches his jaw. His wings rustle and pull tight and he screws his eyes closed even tighter. It’s so close, he thinks, and he wonders why it matters.
Why he dreams of wildfires when he is now a thing made of winter.
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 swallows as he draws himself to standing, frowning faintly at his imprint left there on the ground, before shaking himself off. A flick of his tail as he turns his stormy gaze to the east, to the endless abyss of a land he once had known so intimately and now doesn’t know at all.
The young man in him once greeted every day with curiosity.
In his later years, he greeted it with a fight.
These days, there is just a slow exhale that mimics a sigh. An emptiness he has carved into his very own chest. An acceptance. And he rises once more to meet it.
shook like some old souls when our bones broke swallowed the sickness, a fever, a flame
04-08-2023, 05:44 PM (This post was last modified: 04-16-2023, 01:26 PM by Brinly.)
— i would rather learn what it feels like to burn than feel nothing at all —
She cannot remember a time when she did not hate her fire.
She knows there are some that long for power—some to use as a sword, others to use as a shield. To inflict pain or to hide from it. She had never asked for either; plain-born and content to live what she assumed would be a normal, if unremarkable life. There are stories of those that had asked for power and been gifted a twisted version of what they desired, a reprimand for their greed, and Brinly had searched her mind over and over, trying to recall a time that perhaps she was guilty of something similar.
Because it would be easier, she thinks, if she had someone to blame, even if it is only herself.
If there were somewhere to redirect this flame she had never asked for, if she could set ablaze whoever or whatever had landed her in this fiery misery.
But there isn’t, because every newfound curse is as much a mystery as the one before it—from boiling blood to flaming skin to an aura of fire, she is soon consumed by it, and she can do nothing but watch, helpless, as she becomes something she never wanted to be.
Her fire was supposed to be a sword, but she uses it as a shield.
Hiding behind a fortress of flames, it was easy to succumb to the very thing she had been avoiding—to let the fire swallow her whole, and pray that maybe she can be born anew from the ashes.
When she is alone at the river today she had not expected to find him. His memory sits somewhere in the charred remnants of everything else she has burnt, afraid to look at it, afraid to let herself continue to pine over what might have been if both of them were different from what they are. She had more than one of those situations in her life, which is strange, giving her inhospitable nature—Brazen and Illum burn on their own pyres, though she never thinks of them—but he is the one that she revisits the most, sometimes in dreams, and sometimes in sudden moments when her guard is down. It is difficult to not wonder what they would be if their broken pieces fit together instead of forcing them apart.
She would know him anywhere, even when frozen in ice, and the laugh that sparks like embers on her tongue is humorless and sharp as she steps in front of him. The fire that reflects off her dark eyes is almost not enough to hide the unexpected sadness that floods through her, a cold and unfamiliar sensation that feels like an ocean wave trying to sweep her away.
Of course he is made of ice.
Of course he is something so incompatible with fire, that how can she not laugh at the absurdity of it all?
She wonders how much this would have hurt if she had let herself miss him.
I was a poor boy; you were a bright light I was a sinner and you were a snake
It was not lost on him, the humor of their situation. How often they had clashed from the very first moment and now they are carved from the antithesis of each other. How he wishes he could go back to that first meeting; how he would have warned that angry boy that he would only grow angrier. That she would erupt in flames and he would bury himself in ice and they would always—always—end up further apart than when they had started. They would never know peace in one another’s presence.
But the humor, for all of his knowing, does not make its way to his head, let alone his face.
He does not laugh. Does not share some spark of wit as he finds her looking at him. Instead he feels the keen edge of a pain he cannot name and he swallows hard, fighting against the emotions that so desperately press against him—demanding, always demanding, that he feels that which he’d ignore.
“Brinly,” her name is a razor blade on his tongue and it is a miracle he does not bleed out for saying it. Even acknowledging her is pain, he thinks, and he is not sure that he is brave enough to go another round with her. He cannot bear to watch her strip back his defenses so ruthlessly. To stand and feel her strike the points of him that are the most vulnerable. A muscle jumps in his jaw, a precursor to what is to come.
His stormy eyes sweep over her, taking in each new element of fire that coats her and when his gaze goes back to hers, he does not try to hide the distance that now gapes open between them.
“You look burnt,” he deadpans, finally, an uninspired response from an uninspired mouth. He strikes first, a viper backed into a corner although he is prey to his very core—easier to revert back to poisoned words than examine why she always makes him feel so vulnerable in the first place.
shook like some old souls when our bones broke swallowed the sickness, a fever, a flame
— i would rather learn what it feels like to burn than feel nothing at all —
He says her name, and she cannot decide which is worse—the way he says it, as if the shape itself feels like fire on his tongue, or the idea of never hearing him say it at all.
He stares at her with those familiar storm-colored eyes, and for once she is almost grateful to be engulfed in flames, so that he cannot see the way she wants to shrink away from his scrutiny. She can only assume that he is seeking out everything that he despises about her, reaffirming for himself all the reasons that she is a lost cause that, somehow, continues to find him. And as she stands there beneath his stare, trying not to wilt beneath it, she finds herself once again wondering why she feels like she has to prove him wrong, when he is completely right.
Everytime she sees him she tries to fight for something that never existed, and that never will exist. She is scorched earth, a victim of her own fire and destruction, and she cannot blame him for not wanting to go up in flames with her.
But, selfishly, she wished that he would.
She is glad that he cannot read her expression or hear her thoughts; glad that he will never know that the absolutely most vicious, selfish part of her would turn him to ash along with her if it meant she didn’t have to be alone. She loathes herself for even thinking such a thing. It makes her want to lash out at him, and his icy stare and cold tone and flat words causes a fresh surge of flames to lick up her legs, her smoldering stare sharpening for a moment before she dampens it.
She doesn’t want to fight with him.
She doesn’t want to anger him and send him disappearing back to wherever it is he goes so quickly, and so, for once, she does not rise to his bait. “I prefer the term ‘well-done’, but thank you,” she says, a faint smile hidden somewhere in the words. Her tone is neutral, but the sudden sorrow that swells in her eyes is unmistakable, and for once there is no room for anger. For as long as her fire exists, so will the distance between them; she wonders how many times she will have to repeatedly accept that before she finally understands.
Now it is her turn to study him, taking in his own changes more closely even though to see them feels like a fist around her heart. She wonders if fire against ice hurts more than fire against flesh, or if the cold is so numbing he wouldn’t feel anything at all. Another lose-lose situation; one where she either hurts him, or where he feels absolutely nothing, and what a useless love that would be. “Can you control it?” she asks, her head nodding to vaguely suggest that she is referring to the cold that surrounds him, fighting against the envy she feels blooming at the idea that he could, as her own fire continues to flicker uncontrollably across her skin.
