"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
The mountains look like people, she thinks. Hands, cupping one another in the valleys that rise into sloping arms and broad shoulders, leading to faces that see the sun first before the life below has a chance. How long have they been here; the silent guardians of the Chamber? Stoic, weathering the elements, shaped by them but still remaining. They’ve embraced fire, stood to tell the tale. These mountains, with their quiet woods and their ancient creatures, had been here long before Beqanna was a notion and they would be here long after Dacia and her great grandchildren were forgotten. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
She loves them though. She loves them like she loves many things here. In a way, she offers everything to them. Her pain, the atrocity that is life, even the beauty that sometimes circumvents the horror. Highs and lows, all of them, each one having begun or ended right here in this hallowed earth. She would die here, if she could choose. But death does not come for her today, nor would it come for the young girl in the future to pass, so she gazes at her mountains (yes, they are hers) and smiles briefly to the tangle of fur and limbs that is her eldest son, Hellbane.
Mortal needed only a label before finding his independence in the wooded kingdom. Hellbane was a different story. He’d spoken not a word since he left her womb, silent as a grave. Dacia’s not accustomed to the unordinary so his meekness has her struggling to find an answer. Being a newly-made mother was a challenge on its own without the burden of a soundless child. “Hellbane,” She calls to him, voice hovering above a whisper. His ears flick back - those beautiful ears, dipped in dark green - but he doesn’t turn his head. “come here, please.”
He’s not deaf. He can clearly hear her and distinguish what sounds she’s making when she speaks. The language doesn’t escape him, simply the mastery of it. Stubborn, it would seem. Her firstborn disobeys her without explanation, choosing wordless resistance over easy conversation. Frustrated, she draws near, olive green nose gliding protectively over his rump. “What is it?” She questions, humming meaningless chords through his skin so that he might understand the vibrations of tune or melody. Silent as the mountains above them he only stares out into the spotted woods, shadows dancing over his familiar bay coat as the breeze disturbs the canopy above them.
The mother of twins follows his eyes and for the first time, she sees her.
There are always a thousand thoughts swimming in the oceans of her mind, a billion questions sunk like stones in its depths. Lately Dacia has been at the forefront. The indigo mare cannot help but wonder whether or not Killdare had ever found the right words to share with her, whether he had found any words to share at all. Truths can be hard that way; they wedge themselves like blades between bones, creating chasms and crevices like flayed open wounds. Malis thinks he had told her first because it was easier that way, because she had come later, because losing Malis would not have been the same as losing his Dacia. Their roots were not buried as deep as the ones he had woven around Dacia- there was no promised forever between them.
Perhaps this distance suits her, though. While she had not been born a broken creature, the life of such found her quickly. A family broken and shattered, scattered to the furthest corners of kingdoms and lonely in between places- and maybe it wouldn’t have hurt so much if theirs was the kind of family who were meant to fall apart. But Malis had never expected it. The cracks that had tracked across her soul like the veins on leaf had only widened and deepened with time. There was no healing in a world like this one, a world so full of dark and violence, there was only unraveling. So she did.
But Killdare had changed that somehow, not quite fixed it, but he had stopped the progression of those hairline fractures if only for a little while. He had become a friend and something more, something strange and easy, and he had offered her a home and a family. It was the birth of Victra that changed everything again, and only time would tell if it were for the better or worse.
The blue mare reaches over to touch her nose to the crest of her daughter’s dark mane, brushing the corn silk hairs smoothly in place with the soft of her blue mouth. They are often quiet when together, Victra having noticed Malis’ preference towards silence and brooding, and today is no different. Victra is busy exhausting herself with her strange, beautiful wings which she holds aloft at her withers to cup the warmth of the sunlight that filters through the treetops. Her small bay and indigo face is crumpled with concentration as some of the feathers in her wings shift their shape, widening and shortening, lengthening and narrowing. First they are blue and black like those of the mulish blue-jays hooting in the trees, then they change and they are bright and extravagant like peacock feathers and she cannot help but giggle at her own ridiculousness. When at last she is too tired to play more with her shape-shifting wings, the feathers shrink until they are gone, and the skin stretches so it is thin and smooth and almost see-through in places. She lets the black bat wings settle against her shoulders and then leans in close to her mother, resting that small, perfect face in the crook of a slender blue shoulder.
Malis turns again to nuzzle Victra, but those lips pause just shy of her daughters ears as she locks eyes with Dacia at last. She knows her immediately, if not by the soft green than by the colt that stands beside her. He is so much like Victra that a reluctant smile slithers across her mouth, just a slit of warmth for a heartbeat before she manages to hide it again. The boy is bay like his father, like Victra, with points like his mother, and again like Victra. This feels like the first solid thing to be found in the tangles of this messy family. But Malis must have tensed (of course she did, how could she not) because Victra lifts her sleepy head and turns to follow the direction of her mother’s quiet gaze. But where Malis would have stayed still and immobile, a statue carved from the stone whose color she had stolen, Victra is absolutely delighted.
Before Malis can stop her, she tumbles forward and the sleepiness seems to fall away from the girl like steam from sun-baked stones after a storm. “Ooh, you are like me!” She says as she reaches out to touch noses with the green pointed colt standing beside his dam. “Except you are green and I am blue.” Her eyes are wide and green when she tilts her face at him imploringly, regarding him with perhaps just a little impatience as she waits for him to be as delighted with this discovery as she is. But she is distracted when Malis appears behind her and touches a nose to her hip, coaxing her back to her side with the furrowing of her dark brow. For a moment she says nothing, because what could she possibly offer to this woman, but the silence settles too heavy against her back and with some reluctant uncertainty she says, “I am Malis, and this is my daughter, Victra.”
“Oh disaster,” She thinks, watching the hushed mare with nameless fixation, “why must you be so beautiful?”
They regard each other now with full and complete knowledge. In Dacia’s eyes there is a brokenness that leaks the pain she cannot outwardly express, while Malis molds herself to a stony sort of disposition. In her mind, she holds herself up against the blue mare, looking over every angle and corner to try and discern where the two meet and where the two most differentiate. Was it her horns that Killdare had found so intriguing? Or perhaps that odd shade of color? Perhaps it was the way her legs fit just so into the angle of her hips, that curve of skin she now pictures his bay nose running slowly across. In the end she decides that it must be their intelligence.
Yes, Killdare must have thought that Malis was certainly more intelligent than she. Why else would he not tell her? He must’ve thought her so stupid, or stupid enough, to think that she would be so blind as to not see the connection between their children. Victra and Hellbane. Hellbane and Victra. Sister and brother. Brother and sister. Blood of her blood. “Kill me.” She wants to reply, dumb mouth unable to form the words. “Take your horns and aim true, sister. Strike under the rib, just here - I’ll show you. Wrench them free and let my life spill out onto the forest floor.”
The pain would be a welcome friend to the feeling that numbs her now.
But where (please, can anyone tell her where?) does the blame lie if not upon herself? Does she saddle Killdare with it, for being led by passion and not honor? No - the same devil lies in Lupei and that same devil will lie in Hellbane, a curse on all men. If she points a finger at him, she dooms her own family in the same sentence. So, then, does she blame the reticent paramour? Wasn’t it her doleful gaze and her honeyed words that first drew Killdare into the serpents den? Wasn’t it her body she offered up to him and wasn’t it her body that stood here now, as if she’d always belonged here?
No.
No, no, and no. There is no blame, only choice. Right now, it’s the countless choices that overwhelm Dacia as she tries so very hard to dam the threat of tears. She blinks, rapidly, vision blurring while her tongue turns to lead in her mouth. Her son eases forward as Victra is drawn back into the protection of her dam’s side, stretching out his neck so that his nose briefly alights on her tucked wings. “Mama.” He says, the sound floating up to Dacia and she thinks it’s the most beautiful sound she’s ever heard. “Mama they’re just like Mortal’s.” He notes. The tender mother of twins holds Malis in her sight while the silence stretches out between them, and then she makes a choice.
“Yes, Hellbane.” She agrees, stepping ahead with shaking legs. “They are.” A tepid smile flickers over her lips, breaking through the sorrow and betrayal that would otherwise drown her. They are nothing if they are divided, and without the both of them Killdare will cease to be what he is. Without Killdare there is no Chamber and without the Chamber, Dacia will truly have nothing. Now - if she concentrates on it - her joys will only multiply if she lets them, if she can be brave. Dacia and Malis. Malis and Dacia. Lover of my Lover. The green mare gathers what little strength remains and finally looks away from what could have been her adversary to instead gaze wondrously over the curious children. “Welcome to the Chamber, little Victra.” She says, head tilting so that she can glance back at the indigo mare. The pain is not so sharp the second time around. “And welcome home, Malis.” She says, not yet fully understanding how very, very true the statement was.
If Malis is beautiful, it is only in the way that broken things are. She is none of Dacia’s soft beauty, none of that quiet, tender warmth. Where Dacia is earnest, Malis is full of dark and secret and cold truths. She is pieced together by the broken bones of impossible memories, dreams made real, wholly tangible. There was a life where she might have been more like this beautiful green mare with honest eyes, where she might have believed in wonderful things, heart things. But that life had slipped from Malis just as the night slipped away from the sun each day in an endless, exhaustless cycle. All that was left for her were the shadows in her soul, the darkness she both craved and feared, a darkness so eager to consume her.
If Malis is beautiful, then it is in the way that death is beautiful to the broken.
She stays quiet when Hellbane speaks, quiet because there are no words for her in this moment, there is no place for her in this conversation. But Victra is immune to any of the uncertain tension that ebbs from the tide of her mother and her small face remains eagerly upturned to this new pair she has already decided she loves as much as the rest of her small family. When the boys lips touch her wing-tip, her face is alight with the smile that blossoms across the blue. “I can change them sometimes.” She offers with the hint of a shy, earnest smile that etches itself across her mouth. She lifts her wings again, graceful even in the awkwardness of her lanky youth, and frowns with concentration until the dark leathery wings are blue and bright and as strange as she. “Do you like them?” And she is everything that Malis is not, everything soft and kind and beautiful. All of the best bits.
The blue points of her ears tip forward in time to catch Hellbane’s words, and she cannot help the curiosity that builds and glows in the emerald of her bright eyes. “Who is Mortal?” She asks breathlessly, easing forward again from beneath the still of her mother’s mouth where it rests against her hip. Slowly, slowly she eases forward, drawing her lips across the green of his muzzle just as she had traced the colors of both Killdare and Malis. But the sound of Dacia’s voice distracts her and she lifts her delicate face to the green mare, a growing smile curling against her blue mouth. “I won’t be so little for long, there is big in my bones!” And then her attention is back on the boy and his beautiful green, her mirror image in emerald. The earth to her sky.
Malis’ eyes lift back to Dacia’s and hold her gaze there quietly. “Did he tell you?” She asks in a quiet voice, a hollow voice because she can guess by the way this woman watches her that Killdare had not. A sigh fills her lungs, her chest, and she holds it in until her throat aches and she cannot hold it anymore. “It doesn’t have to be.” She says then in a voice that must be a whisper, because she is certain she has heard the leaves speak louder than this. “Home, I mean.” Her eyes are as still and cold as stone, not unkind but certainly distant, and the longer they watch this green mare the more they swell with the shadows that drench her heart. It is in this moment that she realizes she does not want to leave again, not yet, not now. She would have to leave Victra behind because what kind of life would she have as a nomad, lost to the mountains with her wild, broken mother. Malis crumbles in the silence, her blue horned face a mask of stony fortitude. But then her face cracks and it fissures, and she is certain that if Dacia looks close enough she will finally see why Killdare felt anything for the blue mare at all. She is little more than a broken thing, little more than a crushed heart, and he must see in her a creature to fix. It is the flaw of all man, to want to fix the broken. But the broken are not meant to be fixed, they are not made to find heroes.
As so many things do, days and years, life and love, past and present. Little did he know that this day he would face trial in a most unexpected way, laying himself bare before women in his very home. On this earth beneath him, soft and giving as it was but he could not expect them to be such. Often he would traipse behind them, far off in the distance to keep a keen eye on his sons, this day he trails even further behind, mind addled with thoughts about right and wrong. Hardly seeing with his eyes as he slowly combs the pine needle forest, relying mostly on memory and instinct to take a turn here or step aside for a crooked low-hanging branch. It was impossible to ignore the noise within his head, a buzzing, racing thrum that interrupted what should have been a very fine morning walk.
Instead he is restless, even in the depths of the night when the clouds overcast the moon and steal the silver shimmer from trickling through the trees. Even on the occasion that he dens with them separately, giving them warmth and solace when the skies overhead cry with tears and shouts angrily to itself like a scorned lover. Even then he dozes in fits, uncertain if it is the dreams or the nightmares that haunt him most.
If he had known better he would have taken a lie in today but he couldn’t when rest escaped him on so many levels. No, he followed Dacia and Hellbane lost in himself as he nosed carefully the ground they had passed, inhaling their scents like sweet bread from a wood stove on cold mountain air. The second child, Mortal was off on his own, already a child of certainty in a world where nothing was known, nothing was sure. He did not begrudge the boy his independence, just as he accepted the way that his eldest son clung to his Dam’s side and spoke so very little- at least to him. As he went the path smoldered behind him, black and charred and barren in each hoof print he left, steam simmering and settling against the forest floor like fog. If he had known just where she was wandering too he could have stopped her, could have tried to lessen the blow that would surely be struck as the familiar scent of the blue woman raked it’s way up his nostrils as he brooded.
Jerking to a stop and throwing his head up in attention his blazing eyes find that they are much too far ahead to save face now. Lost is the green and bay against the forest backdrop, lost is his hope to make amends for the actions he so direly should be made to answer for. He doesn’t want to see it, doesn’t to bear witness to the interaction that was surely a knife in the chest for all but he must. Who is to decide right and wrong if not for themselves?
When he breaches the clearing he is quite as death, skin flickering like a lantern as it roiled, bright and raging against the dim light of the forest. He’d broken them, just as easily as he cracked his own blackened surface to give way to the molten magma that simmered inside. Parts and hearts trapped and bound and explanations handed out only to one side while the other was left to teeter perilously on the edge of his own shortcomings. He burns now because he is angry, with himself and the procrastination he had taken to practicing when it came to the gentle heart of the olive colored girl. Thinking her a child still was likely a mistake and one he should have moved passed so many nights ago when they had collapsed tangled over one another, in the shelter he had made with the liquid core he held tightly in his proverbial hands. What is more is the two smaller figures at their sides, innocent lives and hearts created by his own selfishness (is he not after all this time?) and his silence only grows as he feels the lumps catch his throat, leaving him mute in a time when only words are needed.
Brokenness. They all know of it. Dacia has been broken, Malis has been broken, Killdare has been broken. They step among a valley of glass shards, each one reflecting past, present, and future lives for them to consider. She cannot say what Malis or Killdare see when they turn their eyes to their own shattered mirrors, but for her it is something of a sad story, strung along in a series of disappointments and heartaches. Their world is unkind to the softhearted and Dacia has the softest heart of them all. She is weak, she knows it. It is because she is a woman - a woman in a world where men have always had the upper hand. What can she do but make the best of her situation?
So she gathers the shards, all of them, and assembles them within her to shape something of a soul - using Mortal and Hellbane as the glue. Piece by piece she molds them together until what was broken becomes whole again. A window of stained glass, bleeding reds and blues and yellows and made glorious in its rebirth. The picture is one her mother had painted so long ago when she herself had crossed the borders of the Chamber, defiant yet loyal to Straia. Astri had dreamed of a future for her children and their children, for generations she would never see. A line so strong it could not be broken by deceit or false love. When Malis’ question drifts into her consciousness Dacia’s thoughts have come to their conclusion.
He waits, their King. Silent as a deaf-mute because he cannot find the strength to speak when he should have spoken. The skin-changer hates the anger that rages inside of her now but it rises to the surface all the same. His noiseless entrance has her ears falling flat, tail twisting at her hind in a display of irritation. “Of course he didn’t.” She mutters, knowing all too well the shame he should feel because she feels it anew right now. Shamed in her innocence, shamed at her belief that she could somehow bring someone like Killdare to devote his heart to her. He’d seen the weakness and he’d fed on it all the same, taking and taking and devouring until he’d been satiated by both. What had he left to lose? He’d gotten everything he wanted and more, with Dacia none the wiser for it.
She could not stay. “Make it the home I never found.” She tells the blue woman, stepping forward to brush her nose along the indigo neck of her superior. Hellbane is wrapped up in his half-sister now, ogling over her magnificent wings and explaining his brother to her. It’s an idle chatter that soothes her as she gains the courage to finally turn around and look her King in the eye. “Killdare.” She calls, nodding softly before easing away in his direction. In all her life she’d never wondered what it was like for Lupei to shed his skin and sink his teeth into bloody flesh, but in this moment she nearly craves the ability. What she wouldn’t give to return the pain he’s inflicted upon her.
Her skin undulates as she stops abreast of him, fading to a solemn grey while her eyes flash red. “I could have forgiven you of almost anything, were it not for the deception. I trusted you, but perhaps my trust was misplaced.” She hisses, jaw snapping shut in her haste to snip her chiding short. It would do her little good now. “I cannot serve you.” She whispers, head turning away from him for fear that the shape of his face would strip her of her bravery. All that she had ever desired stood before her now, cloaked in his own magnificence and still she felt that he had never truly cared to know her.
“Save your apologies for someone who has the wish to hear them.”
