"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
may these words be the first to find your ears the world is brighter than the sun now that you're here
Illum was so unlike his blue sister. Where she was wild and brave and eager to explore new places, be-it physically or simply through the eyes of others, Illum was content to stay at home in the sand and sun with his parents. He loved their closeness, their gentle smiles and quiet eyes, the way they smelled of warmth and dust, of fireless smoke. He was especially close with his father, their bond forged thicker each time their shadows swam together. Once, Heartfire had shown him what he looked like in his father’s eyes, and he swore he could almost feel the affection radiating from the blue stallion. It made him forget the times he thought he caught something dark swimming in Shahrizai’s eyes when the shadows seeped from the dark of his satin skin.
Today was different though, he’d asked Heartfire to show him one of her places outside the Desert. He’d seen all of the same places she had- she shared everything with him, but being there would be different. For Illum, it wasn’t enough to look at the memory of something. He wanted to feel the soft ground buckle beneath his feet, feel the sun on his skin and taste the scent of those enormous green trees when the pine-scent swept past him on the wind. He loved what Heartfire could do, loved the worlds she showed him. There was never a time, when she came up beside him to touch her nose against his neck and trade his eyes for someone else’s, that he had ever wished she hadn’t. Friction did not exist between them.
He reached over to touch his mouth to her shoulder, his lips nuzzling a small patch of white where it freckled against the blue. “Where will we go today, Heartfire?” He asks in a quiet voice, his green eyes soft and gleaming where they settled on her face. Again he found himself thinking of the green, of meadows full of grass and brush, of swaying trees whose tops tickled at the blue skies. He remembers a place with a stream, remembers loving the way the water glistened like there were trapped stars beneath its surface. But he says none of this aloud because anywhere will be perfect, so long as it isn’t more sun and sand. He still isn’t used to how the sand feels when it collects in the joints of his wings and between the black and white feathers.
She is lost in thought when his dark muzzle presses tenderly against her shoulder, distant gaze snapping back to him even as the barest hint of a smile touches her lips. For once she had not been peering at the world through another’s perspective. No, her thoughts had been somewhat more introspective. It is odd for her; she is not one given to such reflections – that is more her brother’s purview than hers – but she had seen things today that had thrown her off-guard, caught her by surprise in such a way that she could do little else but examine it closely.
So it is really no surprise that she is only paying half-attention when Illum asks where they should go. She blinks several times, pale blue gaze finding and locking onto her darker-skinned brother’s brilliant green eyes for a long moment of incomprehension. Then, with an abrupt shake of her head, she grins before stretching out to nip lightly at Illum’s ear. ”Wherever you like, brother,” she says, voice light and seemingly carefree. ”We could see the mountains again.” Her grin turns mischievous as her pale eyes sparkle. ”Or I could show you the Valley. A girl showed me the other day.”
Her jovial mood is lost as quickly as it had come, her own words reminding her of what she had inadvertently stumbled upon so recently. She still isn’t even sure what exactly it was she had seen, but she is certain that it had been nothing good. But she has never before hidden anything from her brother, and this is not something she could fathom keeping from him. With a slight frown marring the perfection of her dark lips, she asks ”Illum, do you think papa was right?” Pause. ”About there being some things I probably shouldn’t see?”
Heartfire
i filled up my senses with thoughts from the ghosts
may these words be the first to find your ears the world is brighter than the sun now that you're here
When he touches her shoulder and she turns to face him, he wonders where she was. There is a faraway look gleaming in her eyes makes him think she came a long distance back to him. But then she smiles and so does he, leaning in to bump his dark, feathery wing against her back. “Where did you go just then, Heartfire?” He asks softly, and there is concern etched into his willowy voice when his nose reaches across the distance to brush her forelock aside. For a moment, just a moment, he thought he saw in her wild face some of the darkness he had seen hiding in their fathers face.
Her lips touch his ear and he shakes his head with a laugh, sending the short tufts of his black mane skittering over the ridge of his small, curving neck. For a moment he sidesteps and flexes his black and white feathered wings, dancing deliberately out of reach just after swatting at her playfully. But then he is back at her side, those small wings tucked easily out of the way against his ribs. “I bet the mountains are beautiful.” He says dreamily, closing his green eyes for a moment to imagine how it would feel with so much wind beneath the feathers of wings that proved still too small to hold his weight. But his eyes flash back open and he turns to her, startled by her next suggestion. “We can’t go to the valley though, can we?” His brow furrows and his eyes darken as he looks around them at the miles of gold Desert. Then he sighs. “I’ll go anywhere that isn’t sandy.”
But at some point, and without him noticing, the shadows had returned to her face and he is surprised by how easy they are to see now. “Heartfire?” He asks quietly, his small voice lilting when he reached out to nuzzle her small blue cheek. But her explanation does nothing to settle the worry blossoming in his narrow chest. “I do.” He says after a moment of thought. “But I think these things would find us someday whether we were looking for them or not.” He slips even closer so that his chest is pushed against her ribs and his small, dark head is slung protectively over her withers. “What did you see, Heartfire.” He takes a breath and braces himself mentally. “Show me.”
Considering the idea that some things had not been meant for her eyes is an utterly foreign concept to the blue filly. Since the moment of her birth, she had been able to see the world in a way most others cannot. To think that perhaps she hadn’t been meant to see what she can is akin to considering that the stars and moon might not belong in the night sky. The conundrum is enough to pull her lips into a frown and gouge furrows above her eyes.
For a moment, Illum is able to distract her from such disturbing thoughts. The brush of his feathered wings and the dreamy quality of his soft voice distract her from the pull of those dark musings. The grin dances on her lips for only a moment before being tugged back into a frown. And he notices, of course. Her dark features are an open book, displaying every joy and sorrow she feels in the rise and fall of her lips and the shine and dim of her eyes. But he is her brother too, attuned to her in ways that no one else ever would be.
Her name upon his lips draws her attention back to him, wrenching her from the blackness of her thoughts. He affirms her question, causing a small sigh to brush past her lips even as they curl into a moue of disapproval – even if she does know that he is probably right. His next request, however, gives her pause. Her blue eyes seek out his green ones, latching onto his gaze for an eternal moment. She hesitates not because she does not wish to share her experiences with him, but because they are so fundamentally different in one, very important way: his heart is so much softer than hers.
But she could never deny him.
In the space of a single heartbeat, the Desert is gone and they are peering through the eyes of another. Flashes of purple are visible in their periphery and another is before them. What the stallion does to the poor girl defies explanation, defies anything Heartfire had ever seen before. And then there is more, flashes of violence and cruelty that take even her breath away. She brings them back abruptly, unwilling to witness the rest of what she knows is to come.
She finds herself staring at her black and white brother as words of apology leak from her lips almost without volition. ”Illum,” she pauses to swallow. ”I’m… sorry.”
It is a rare occurrence that leaves the blue speckled girl without words.
Heartfire
i filled up my senses with thoughts from the ghosts
may these words be the first to find your ears the world is brighter than the sun now that you're here
He is struck by the weight in her eyes, by the weight he thinks must also sit in the pit of her chest. Those honest blue eyes are too hard, too dark, all wrong for the small, perfect world his family has built around themselves. He cannot tell if what he sees there is sorrow, it is not a feeling he has reason to know yet, not beyond a static understanding of a plain definition. Still, maybe it is something worse, something darker- and even as he watches does it not force holes in her innocence, impossible cracks that pull her apart at the seams? He touches her again, his nose warm against her cheek, a mottled wing lifted over her back to pull her close against him.
Not for the first time, Illum wonders what a terrible burden her ability must be. He knows that she loves it, that the freedom she finds in the eyes of others is unrivaled by anything else. But he knows, too, that the cost of this freedom is higher than she had imagined it would be, maybe higher than she understands, that even as he waits beside her like this he can feel her peace unraveling. There was nothing he could do to stop her, he would never ask her to give up something that was such a part of her, but he would always be there to help, to protect. To soothe her heart when those beautiful eyes betrayed her. She would never have to bear these burdens alone; he wouldn’t forgive her if she tried.
All at once the desert is gone, the sand is gone, and there is trampled grass and dirt beneath their unmoving feet. He finds his attention forced forward, though there is a split second before he notices the violence that his heart thunders for the green of this new world around him. But then his eyes are on the mare and the stallion, and he is filled with a sudden, inexplicable fury. His dark ears disappear beneath the tangles of his corn-silk mane as he forgets that he is only inside of a memory, that none of this is really happening anymore. It is just as his wings lift and unfurl at his shoulders, just as he takes a step and lunges forward, that this world disappears and with it the mare and stallion.
For a moment he is lost, entirely disoriented by the change, by the emotions burning like raw heat in his bones, in his veins. The fury fades a little without anything to witness, it fades more when he twists to hold Heartfire in his gaze again. “What-” his confusion burns a little deeper, but he can’t force his frozen feet to carry him closer to the warmth of his twin, “Heartfire, what was that?” He looks around as if maybe he’ll catch another glimpse, as if maybe this is still happening and maybe he can help. But there is nothing but the sand and the sun, nothing but the two of them and something sears in his belly. “Where did you see that?”
