"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
your mouth is poison, your mouth is wine. i don't love you, but i always will.
The gentle caress of summer weaves its way through her ruffled feathers as a quiet breeze touches delicately along her pale golden pelt, a long and drawn out sigh emerging from her parted, whiskered lips. It had been a long time - too long, perhaps - since she had descended into the shadows of a once familiar pathway of heavy rock and sloping foliage. The shadows beckon her forth and she falls into temptation, savoring the way the temperature drops as the sun struggles to peek through the heavy pines that shelter her.
Tightly, she draws her wings against her lithe and flexible body, grimacing only slightly as the bristling feathers scratch against the old, brittle bark that tugs and pulls relentlessly at her. She prefers the dim, dark rhythm of the night, in which she is unrestrained and able to move swiftly, yet the thick brush and tightly wound foliage of the forest is a beckoning mistress to her in the heat of the day.
At last, she breaks through the grasp and with a gentle toss of her slender neck, her eyes find the open clearing and the shining, crystalline water that moves so freely through the very center of it. Summer has begun to wane, and with it comes a taut, icy chill as dusk surely approaches - a reprieve from the suffocating heat and humidity of the volcanic land she had grown so deeply fond of. She savors it, bathing in the pale but rich sunlight that peeks through the wavering branches above - the sun has begun to fall, and yet the vivid colors of sunset still manages to crawl through the gaps above, cloaking her shining golden coat in its magenta light.
Quietly, after taking a brief moment to drink from the icy water, her hazel eyes settle on her own reflection looming before her. The gentle curve of her own cheek (including a healing wound along her right jaw; undoubtedly a scar would be left in the aftermath of battle), the faint indentation of lines lingering along the almond shape of her weary eyes - a ghost of the warrior that lives within; a shadow of her former self.
Her heart had grown heavy and weak the further and deeper she fell for Magnus (and oh, how she hated herself for it), and with it her spirit had faltered. She had allowed the barriers surrounding her heart to falter, and so foolishly. Her biting tongue and quick wit lingered, but the fire that once burned so brightly within her had begun to simmer down, leaving a flickering flame in its wake. Her life had no place for love in it; she had no time to waste pining over someone else.
Rage festers like a hot wound beneath the surface as she thrashes her own image, pounding her hooves into the smooth, flawless river stones, rippling the still water before turning away from it and tucking herself back into the tightly knit line of pine trees and oak.
clarity, paint me bright like stars in the dark of night
She hadn't expected to see her mother here—not outside of Tephra. She certainly hadn’t expected to see her so angry, so bitter, her hooves pounding into the river, the water splashing up and away from her in vicious circles. A frown grew between her brows, her pretty face creasing with concern as she stepped away from the shadows. “Mother?” Her voice was soft but steady; it wasn’t the voice of silver bells or wind chimes. Instead, it was the voice of canyons and eagles and the promise of adventure.
Right now though, it was subdued, quiet, whispering through the wind to her mother.
She stepped after her mother quickly, watching as she disappeared into the thicket of pine and oak, the shadows claiming her slender body. “Mother!” her voice was louder this time, more urgent, and her speed increased, the ground eating up beneath her as she launched after the pale gold of the mare. When she finally reached her side, she pressed herself surely into it, curling herself there without thought, without fear.
“Mother,” this time quieter, meant only for her. The velvet of her nose found Ellyse’s shoulder and then her neck, placing gentle whispers of a kiss there—the affection of mother and child. Hawke may be aging, the youth of her body stripping away to leave the more mature curves of a woman, but she was still her mother’s daughter—and she always would be. After the quest, she had come to appreciate love and family even more, the very nature of it intertwined with her being. It was now a tangible, integral part of her life.
“I’ve missed you,” a soft confession, the feather twisting around the pale threads of her mane as she dipped her head. “I haven't seen you around much.” She gave a quick smile though—always fast to find joy and never want to indulge in sadness for long.
“I have been adventuring though so that makes sense.”
your mouth is poison, your mouth is wine. i don't love you, but i always will.
The rage does not cease; in fact - it magnifies, filling every crevice within her hardened, aching soul. Her hardened, defined lines of muscle grow rigid with a tension that nearly penetrates the very marrow of her bone, as a self-loathing begins to descend upon her weary and tired mind. She had known better, she had known better - a thought that only serves to stoke the scalding, burning flames of her own fury. Emotion had always been too complicated for her; a heavy distraction from what she longed for most. She had done all she could in her youth to suffocate, drown, and mangle any semblance of amity, maintaining alliances and seeking nothing else from any forged relationship. She took little, and gave nothing, or so she had always intended. Yet somehow, somewhere along the way, there had been a misstep.
Her heart was not a delicate thing – wrapped in proverbial barbed wire, course and callous, it cared for very little. The lives of her children were precious to her, consuming the entirety of her soul, and yet still she struggled to connect with either one of them. Affection was not given generously (a quiet, gentle preening at dusk and the occasional encouraging nudge), but she would wholeheartedly give her own life, her entire existence to protect and guard each one. Canaan, with his kind smile and free spirited soul, reminded her too much of the gentler side of his father (and perhaps, a younger version of him, as well – before life had destroyed him, tearing him apart piece by piece, leaving little of his spirit in the aftermath). Hawke, with her wild and brave heart, reminded her of what she could have been - what she should have been, but the weight of war, of bloodshed and carnage had tarnished her spirit, leaving her pitiless, unfeeling and hardhearted.
It was her children that had been her undoing, leaving her heart vulnerable to loss, to fear, to a ravenous yearning for something more than violence and combat. Yet she was impossible to love – a bitter thought she could hardly swallow; a truth she had always known. There was nothing to love about her. A fierce wit, a sharp tongue, and a cold heart. She had little to offer and nothing to give, aside from skill in conflict and an innate ability to stir discontent. She had been a fool to let herself feel, to allow herself to savor those bittersweet stolen moments tucked away beneath the stars.
Tears trickle down her cheek, white hot and angry, traveling along the length of her jawline and staining the golden hair. Suddenly, a voice - a voice she knew too well, and it elicits a gasp from her throat. Her hazel eyes close tightly, purging the tears that linger along the lower lid, and she tucks her cheek away – willing the hot summer heat to dry any sign of weakness away. The voice comes closer, echoing, Mother, until it is only a whisper, followed by a delicate touch along her shoulder. A shiver climbs along the vertebrae of her spine, and she acquiesces, unable to turn her daughter away.
I’ve missed you, and oh, how she had missed her too. A lump began to form in her throat, swollen and hard to swallow, emotion welling up behind it.
I haven’t seen you around much.
At last, her eyes, which burn from the unshed tears, meet with hers, and quietly she observes the gentle curve of her smile, and the warmth of her eyes – hazel, like her own. The faintest ghost of a smile tugs slightly at the corner of her own whiskered lips, though it soon wanes. Embarrassment and frustration lingers inside of her exhausted mind, knowing her daughter had likely seen her outburst, yet altogether grateful she had ignored it – she’d sooner brush it aside, and let it be forgotten.
”You have grown so much,” she murmurs, her voice strained and raw from the emotion that had stripped it of its strength. ”and you are more beautiful with each day. You should adventure. You should see all that the world has to offer you,” a pause. ”I cannot and will not fault you for that. I was the very same way when I was a girl.”
Her youth felt as if it had been so long ago.
The delicate glimmer of Hawke’s golden skin reminds her of her own father, Elysium.
She missed him so. She wondered where he was; where he had been.
Her heart aches suddenly.
”I have missed you too, Hawke,” she confesses, words she could only share with her one and only daughter.
clarity, paint me bright like stars in the dark of night
In her mind, her mother was invincible. She was made from oceanic rock and stone, carved from the very mountains that made all of them. She was the beginning and the end, and to see her hurt, even as she hid it away, wiping her face clean of the emotion, was unsettling. Ellyse was not the type of mother to coddle her or to whisper sweet nothings or to tell her that the world was out there, just waiting to meet her every need. No, Ellyse had been tender, loving, but not soft; she had never been there to pamper them.
And that had suited Hawke just fine.
She had loved her mother for the steel in her eye, the strength to her stance. She loved that her mother was the Head of War, that she matched her father step for step. She loved that about her. Still, part of her knows that her mother would hate for her to ask about the tears that dry on her cheek, the emotion that clogs her throat, and while she is tempted to inquire about it, is terrified about the answer, she does not.
“I am practically old now,” she teases, although the youth is still so apparent in her every mild curve, in the brightness of her hazel eyes. “I don’t know if I am beautiful though.” She rolls her eyes and then pulls lightly on her mother’s mane. Hawke wasn’t as refined as Ellyse, didn’t have that same inherent grace or pale gold sheen. She was pretty, but in a much different way; she was pretty like earthquakes and waterfalls and the wild things on the air. Like the things she imagined still live in her mother’s breast.
“I like that,” she said quietly. “I like thinking we’re the same.” She liked thinking about her mother going on grand adventures, on the seriousness melting from her face to reveal something young, bright, excited. She reached over, her lips finding and resting on her mother’s jaw. “Maybe we can adventure together.”
your mouth is poison, your mouth is wine. i don't love you, but i always will.
There is nothing rigid, nothing robust about the way her heart aches, and the way the tightly stitched seams of her emotions come undone beneath his prying eyes – and it is entirely infuriating, how easily her resolve unravels from the warmth of his breath or the heat of his touch. She is rife with frustration, taunted by the weakness in her quaking knees and the boiling blood within her veins, and it only leaves her longing for the long, seemingly endless hours spent alone beneath the stars – lost only to herself and to the starlit sky.
She is entirely taken with him, though – there is no part of her that isn’t his; there is no piece of her that is left untouched by him. Though it is always something of a comfort to have him near to her, she is worn and tattered, her tenacity fraying at the edges and crumbling with each gentle murmur and fervid kiss. A deeply rooted fear unnerves her (a fear of loss; one not unlike his own – but she would not dare to confess it to him), leaving her in the wake of its infectious infliction.
As her own eyes take in the sight of her beautiful daughter, of their flawless conception – with her wild, tousled mane and bright, vibrant eyes (with the very same golden flecks of her father, though the color was entirely her own), her heart threatens to nearly burst from the sinewy restraint of her chest with pride and delight. She is reminded by her too well that he has given her the very thread of his own heart and soul; an invaluable gift. Her daughter gently tugs at the pallid tresses sewn into her own flesh, and she cannot hide the smile that has crept its way in, chasing away the wretchedness that had only just moments ago consumed her.
”You are beautiful, and you will always be so to me.” she murmurs with finality, her own teeth soon preening her tangled mane, tasting the earth on her skin. The smile soon wanes as her mouth hardens into a solemn line, a soft sigh slipping away from her. ”I like to think that you are more than I am – more than your father is, Hawke,” A pause, ”I like to think that you are the best part of us. You and your brother, both.”
She cannot remain so serious when her daughter exudes such warmth, and soon her stoicism is chased away again, and the faintest of a smile returns.
”We would have the grandest adventure,” she muses, hazel eyes alight with a childlike mischief. ”and maybe we still can.”
I don't want to wait anymore, I'm tired of looking for answers take me some place where there's music and there's laughter
Hawke has never known a tangled, difficult love. She has never known the complications of it, the knots of it. She has never known the bruises that it can cause or the way that it can rip a person apart. Her parents never let her know that ugly side of it. They simply loved her fiercely, loved one another without consequences when she was around. She didn’t know that love could cause anything but the good; she didn’t know that it could leave you bare, strip you clean with nothing but the vulnerability to show.
At her mother’s thoughts, Hawke just grins, glancing upward and rubbing her cheek against her mother’s neck, content to sit by her side, to feel her warmth. There was something comforting about being here in her mother’s embrace—the safety of it. She only felt this content when she was near Ellyse, or Magnus, or Canaan. She only felt this marrow-deep satisfaction, this protection, when she was around them.
“That is an awful lot to live up to,” she says with a smile, dimpling pleasantly. “I would be happy to be just half the woman you are.” She honestly wasn’t sure if she could live up to them, not in the traditional sense at least. She didn’t have their ambition, their desire to better the world around them or make a name for themselves. When she died, she didn’t care for her name to live on forever—for anyone to know it beyond her family and children. She only wanted to be well-loved and to love others. It’s all she wanted.
But she doesn’t linger on the thoughts, doesn’t worry about things like that. Instead she just brightens at the mention of adventure. “Where do you think we will go, mom?” A bright smile. “What will we do?”
( I don't know if I'm scared of dying, but I'm scared of living too fast, too slow )
