"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
He is beginning to believe that happily ever after is more of a miracle than the common theme it is made to be.
When the twins were born and he was able to be a part of it, he thought, “This is it. I will finally be happy.” For a short time, he was. He began to sleep through the night, waking from dreams of his family rather than of endless deaths in the Underworld. Islas’s presence became familiar again, and her touch felt like home. He began to laugh with his children and a stern look toward Kamaria was respected.
It didn’t last. Tiercel isn’t sure how it happened (and he spent the first trapped year trying to piece it together), but he knows it happened fast. One moment he had kissed his family good night and went for a solitary walk and the next his lungs were filled with water. The pressure of tons of water attempting to squeeze the life from his body, the nearly imperceptible amount of light turning shadows into deep-sea creatures, the relentless sensation of drowning — these were the days and nights he experienced.
At first, it was almost comical. The darkness and depths must feel drawn to him. The Underworld and now Underwater. If he wasn’t choking on seawater, he would’ve laughed. But the humor quickly turned to anger, which morphed into desperation, and eventually depression. Memories blended with hours and he felt dreamlike. The only thing keeping him tethered to reality was the overwhelming water filling his lungs — his body keeping him alive by draining them only to immediately fill again.
Drowning. For days, months, and years; until a day comes when a shadow so large it fills his vision connects with the bars that trap him.
The first breath of real air is painful. Tiercel’s body is straining and exhausted, but he manages to drag himself onto a coast freckled with sweeping willow trees. He is thankful it is night; even the stars feel too bright on eyes that have spent years straining in the shadows of the deep sea. Their autumn constellations glisten on his slick body, whispering a warm welcome home.
isn't it lovely all alone, heart made of glass, my mind of stone
She has forgotten that she is missing something.
In the weeks following that encounter with her father she had felt something was amiss, but nothing that she could place. Sometimes there would be a phantom ache, and it was such a strange thing to feel in the midst of the hollowness she usually felt that it forced her to pause, to try to follow it. But she always came up empty—no answer, no memory, nothing to explain why it felt as though something was missing.
She did not connect the new phenomenon to her father; she did not understand love enough—or know her father well enough—to see why he would see that as a weakness that needed to be removed.
But as all things eventually did, the ache, too, faded away.
She watched as the world around her changed, and she did not remember that she had someone to miss.
The only thing she found peculiar is that now when she stared at the stars—the same way she had ever since she was born into this mortal body—it felt as if she were seeing them for the first time in years, though she cannot recall why she would have ever stopped staring at them.
There has never been anything earthbound worth her attention—not that she can remember.
She watches them now from a willow-lined bank, standing in some land that she did not know the name of. The lands had never been of much interest to her, though she has tried. There had been Pangea, the land her father had created, and she remembers Loess and its steep cliffs, but she did not care enough to return to the one or to miss the other.
The sound of a disturbance in the water catches her attention, and she peels her gaze from the sky above to look down to where someone is stumbling their way onto the shore. Even from where she stands she can see the way he trembles with exhaustion, can smell the way he is thoroughly saturated by the sea, as if he had been there for far too long.
She notices, too, the way a faint glow emanates from beneath his skin, his chest alight where his heart beats, and for a moment something like curiosity flickers in her starless-night eyes. She almost says nothing, but years upon years of teaching herself how to act like the rest of them had finally nurtured some kind of social reflex, though her tone is still hollow when she asks, “are you hurt?”
It would be a beautiful thing, to say that her heart immediately recognized his even though her mind did not, but instead all Islas does is stare in that otherworldly, unnerving way of hers, surrounded by her own starlit-glow.
His eyes are directed at the granules of sand beneath his face. Tiercel’s exhaustion forces him to focus on palpable things. He feels darkness swimming at the edges of his vision, threatening to pull him into a long sleep. But he can’t sleep yet; he knows he’s too close to the ocean to think he’s safe from it. Studying the grit of the coast keeps him awake, and he begins to use the time to congeal energy in his legs to stand up.
Her starlight glow prickles at the corners of his eyes, but he recognizes it sure enough to raise his head. She is brighter than any of the constellations glimmering above them, and Tiercel welcomes the burn in his eyes if it means a chance to see her. He knows he would tolerate blindness if it meant the last thing he saw was her slender face.
She is more beautiful now than in any of his dreams.
Tiercel cannot breathe. This drowning is much different than the years of seawater he has endured — he would gladly handle the breathlessness of being with her for a hundred years. How many times did he daydream of her touch? He cannot remember the hours spent envisioning her pale body gliding through the deepwater shadows, her glow breaking past the cage to rescue him. Tiercel had thought of the children, but most often his mind had found her. When his anger came, he would toss it recklessly into the empty spaces of the ocean, yet he wished he could place it among the emptiness of her soul, to show her just how desperate he felt without her. To see the flare of anger in her dark eyes, to see how it made her skin twitch, and — when night came — to see how she channeled it into lovemaking.
His emotions are palpable despite how exhausted he might be. Adoration pours from him into her, and he doesn’t hold back the strength of the emotion like he might’ve when they first met. His heart picks up speed, his body recognizes the one whom it loves even as she speaks in that hollow voice. Is he hurt? Tiercel laughs, but the fatigue makes it sound more like a choking gasp. “I’m okay.” His voice is rough, tarnished from years of saltwater. Though his legs shake, he is able to get himself off the sand and stands dripping before her, glowing heart and blood flaring rapidly.
isn't it lovely all alone, heart made of glass, my mind of stone
He looks at her as if he knows her, but that dormant flame in her chest does not reignite.
She has learned that some of them are transfixed by the idea of her having once been a star, though she supposes she cannot fault them for this; the stars were beautiful, more so than they could ever begin to comprehend. For years this reverence had only further stoked her desire to return to the sky, because telling them she used to be untouchable and incredible while trapped in this body felt like a lie.
She assumes, then, that this is why he stares at her the way that he does. That he recognizes her starlit glow, the celestial kind of energy that she cannot control radiating from her.
But she still is not prepared for the way his emotions flood into her.
The adoration is warm and comforting, yet it feels alien and strange flooding into something so previously hollow—like sunshine melting ice. She nearly recoils from it, having forgotten all of their previous encounters, but once it has a chance to settle she finds herself exhaling a sigh of something like relief.
“You don’t sound okay,” she tells him honestly, and she stares again at the way his chest pulses and glows. The distance between them closes, and for a moment it appears as though she is going to touch the glowing skin, before she seems to remember herself and she stops short. “Your chest. Does it always glow like that?”
