"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
As a child you would wait, and watch from far away.
But you always knew you'd be the one to work while they all play.
They are almost two sides of the same coin, the flame man and the girl who sometimes (but only sometimes) is a phoenix herself. She sees him as dangerous but valuable, an asset who could easily turn to a double edged sword and cut them deeply. But more importantly, perhaps, one that needed to feel a strong sense of his own self-worth, or he'd simply fade away from disinterest.
When he speaks of Oxytocin, she doesn't recognize the name. She's been so out of touch with the world that it's almost unbelievable. Although, if you want to be correct, she was out of the world in a way. Camrynn, her granddaughter, had held her a hostage of sorts far from the lands of Beqanna. But not anymore (she thinks, little does she know). She imagines that she is free, even as constant unpleasant reminders (an egg from a wound here, a miniature bunny hatched from that egg there) try to tell her that it's not as she would wish it to be. She flicks her tail across her haunches and regards the flamemaker with unremarkable brown eyes. "As kingly as you?" she asks, no hint of amusement, no hint of pandering, just an honest question. She's not sure that she'd call him more kingly than Eight herself, but she's curious what he'd say on the matter.
When the conversation moves forward, her turns it back on her and she shrugs. He might think to make her uncomfortable, but she lives in such state of social discomfort that it really hardly matters. When he finishes, she gives him a small smile, one that doesn't quite reach her eyes. "Just imagine how much worse it would be if I were actually undead or something." she says with a snort. "I mean, Carnage did that. For quite a while, actually." She had arrived here just after he'd left placing Glassjaw on the throne.
"You're right to think that I should've been dead long ago." she counters his statement with a simple acknowledgment, her brown eyes flat but holding steady on his. "And if you want to get technical, I did die." she gestures casually to the white scar that crosses her chest. "And then the Valley brought me back, and I've been…around ever since."
She pauses for a moment. "But what about you?" she asks, her voice flat, but with a hint of interest. "What keeps you here?" she looks at him levelly, her unremarkable gravel-voice colored with a slight edge of curiosity.
He was no fool. She no more thought him a king then she thought of him as a lover. However, he was content to put off that aura, that kingly demeanor wrought of his own supreme confidence in himself and his abilities. A crown was perhaps a long term goal of his. Often he’d imagined the weight of a crown upon his head, and had found his imagination had enjoyed the sensation. He enjoyed power in all forms, and a title beside his name would certainly grant him that. But for now he was content to stay in the shadows, so to speak. To learn and watch and absorb what he could from those around him. Long gone was the reckless colt who thirsted for nothing but destruction dealt from his flames. That colt had been replaced with a reckless stallion, but such recklessness was coupled now with a cunning that was hard to surpass.
“I’m no king, darling. I don’t have near enough experience.” he said, feigning disbelief at her assumption. A smile curled the corners of his lips, but it was a fickle thing that failed to reach past his mouth. “I can imagine if you were dead, you’d smell like a rotten pile of shit and would be most unbearable to be around. Thank goodness for all of us that you escaped true death and your flesh is still all in one place.” he laughed hollowly, swishing his black tail over his haunches and leaving embers in its wake. Truth be told, this was the longest conversation he’d ever had with anyone. He enjoyed the banter, or as much as was possible for him to do, given his true nature. She was a worthy adversary to his sharp tongue. “Well, Carnage is my father, so I suppose one could say that coming here was my…birth right, for lack of a better word. The promise of something more than the mundane keeps me here. I want the world at my feet, and what better way to get such a thing than to join the most powerful kingdom in Beqanna?”
As a child you would wait, and watch from far away.
But you always knew you'd be the one to work while they all play.
Does anyone have enough experience to hold a crown? It's a question that her granddaughter is grappling with as they speak, wrestling down her demons and her fears and some ancient gods far away in the Deserts. But it's a question that Librette has never needed to wrestle with, because she's always known the answer: she will never have enough experience to hold a crown. She will never deserve it. She will always have to work for her home, because she's at such a deficit, such a discrepancy, that she can simply never catch up. She's underwater, drowning in debt to the Valley that has given her so much.
And that was the fundamental difference between herself and Flamevein, possibly the thing that was making them spark off one another like two spark-stones. He is content within himself, trusting the knowledge of his flames, knowing without doubt that he is worthy of everything and capable of anything. She is nothing, worthy of nothing, capable of little and less. And that is something she knows down deep to her bones.
When he speaks of her death, she shrugs. It had been painful, yes, but mostly it had been strange. "I'd be just a pile of bones now. It was long ago." she says, speaking the truth, her voice muted ever so slightly by the memory. It had been many years ago that she had died; she'd been re-alive for the majority of her memory.
Flamevein mentions his parentage, and Librette smiles grimly. That explains so much. She doesn't hate the notorious stallion, which is strange considering that he's the one who killed her, but not strange when you consider her fanatical devotion to the Valley, and the close relationship between Carnage and this land. "Carnage is the one who killed me." she says, after Flamevein has fallen silent. She says it as though remarking on the weather, and she feels just as dispassionate. She doesn't care about it, doesn't hold it against him – if anything, she'd failed the kingdom and really deserved it.
"Are we, Flamevein?" she asks, returning to the statement he'd made earlier. "The most powerful, I mean." she might be fanatical in her devotion to the Valley, but she's also not an idiot. She's a realist, and she knows strength when she sees it, and weakness when the land starts to fade, when the horses become harder to find, when the life ebbs out of something. And she worries that it's happening here.
"We could be, but are we?" and she isn't sure if she's asking him, or herself.
