"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
Time is like an old friend, tracing gentle fingers across dark cheeks flecked with soft white hairs, adding invisible weight to the curve of a back dusted in the same, soft shade. She had been wild once, in her youth, with storms churning in her chest, secrets dark and burning in the backs of those quiet brown eyes. But time has tamed her. Time, life. It has traded the wild for a deep kind of weariness, stretched cracks across her skin wide enough for regret to seep in and infect her heart.
She regrets her children most of all - not having them, never that. She regrets not knowing them better, not loving them more fiercely through everything that had happened, not holding on tighter. Do they know how much she loves them? How she spends her days at a distance, watching their lives, memorizing their faces, loving them. They are wild like she is, and with all the fire of their father.
They are wonderful.
She does not watch them now though, choosing instead to stand alone at the edge of the cliff and watch the waves beat against the stones below. The monotony makes it easier to think, makes the rift in her chest wider, makes the regret louder. But maybe she deserves this pain, this wishing things could have been different. Wondering how it could be that she had managed to let each of them down. It is so easy to look back now and see the changes she should have made - so much harder in the moment to recognize the opportunities as they slip past.
Her eyes close, shutting out the glow of the sun as it sinks toward such distant waves along the horizon. She does not need to see it to feel its heat fading from where it had been pressed to the soft brown curves of her skin, to know that the shadows have begun to creep in around her legs, pool in the delicate hollows at her hip and shoulders.
She can feel them settle in her chest too, nestled in against the ache of her heart where they seem to return to each night with the lonely dark.
08-25-2018, 01:13 AM (This post was last modified: 08-25-2018, 01:14 AM by magnus.)
magnus
howling ghosts, they reappear in mountains that are stacked with fear
If he were to crack her open and spill the contents of her heart onto the volcanic soil, he would find that it mirrors his own. The same regrets. The same weight that comes with living too long—a burden that presses against his neck, a yoke across his shoulders. He would recognize the sorrow. The grief. The fractured pieces of a heart desperately trying to hold itself together. He feels the same ache, the same churning bitterness in his belly, the biting of it against his throat. Even the joy of reunions, spreading its warmth throughout him, is not enough to stave off the sadness that continues to creep its way back in.
But, of course, he cannot see such things.
He has no way of knowing that she suffers from similar ghosts—haunted by the same demons.
All he knows is that she is the one he saw from a distance with Offspring and that the fire-gifted stallion is no longer anywhere to be found. He has never spent much time with the mare, but he is still drawn to her as the sun paints the sky in magnificent golds and reds, washing the horizon with its light.
His own face, scarred and worn, is illuminated by the dying star, the golden of his hide gleaming with it as he makes his way slowly through the cragged hills. These are familiar lands, and he is not clumsy per se, but it has been a long time since he has walked each path. Time and the elements have changed enough that he has been required to relearn them, a knock to his ego, but alas, he gives in and walks slowly.
He doesn’t say anything as he draws alongside of her. Doesn’t say anything as his gold-flecked eyes peer out at the same view as she, feeling the thrum of the waves inside of him, their beat steady against his chest. He has a complicated relationship with the ocean, and even now, he feels himself torn asunder by it, both drawn to the promise of relief and terrified of the smothering silence. “It’s always amazed me how something can look so beautiful and tragic at the same time,” he wonders out loud in his whiskey voice, breaking the silence and forcing himself from his own reverie. “Life and death held in such harmony.”
A quirk of his lip but the smile fades as quickly as it arrived, bleeding away with the setting sun.
Even though she knows it isn’t him, there is still just a moment of confusion when she opens her eyes to that brilliant gold instead of black and brimstone. Brown eyes instead of red, flecks of quiet gold watching her heart break with the waves against the rocks below. Maybe the strangest part of all is that she knows him, of him, in that distant way you know the faces of those you have lived beside. That despite being unfamiliar, he is not a stranger.
“Hello, Magnus.” She speaks when he does not, touches her lips to his neck in quiet greeting, shapes his name against the dapples on his skin and then turns away from him again to look back out over the ocean. She can not tell if this is better or worse, having him here beside her now, can not decide if he is to be a friend or just another wound in her life. So she is quieter than she might’ve been years ago, wary and cautious, easily resisting any old urges to shift closer and lay her cheek against his shoulder.
It is better to be stone, these days.
But she is surprised by the depth of his words when he does finally find them, and at once her dark gaze is torn from the ocean to fall like shadows across his face. She can feel the weight of his mind pushing against hers, stray thoughts slipping through to collide with her own. It is a feeling she has never loved, will never be used to, one she has always resisted. She is quiet for a beat, a furrow appearing in the smooth white of her brow as she offers him a warning first, and then a question. “If you have secrets to keep, hold them close, Magnus. I will hear them regardless of neither one of us wanting that.”
She has to glance away for a heartbeat, steel herself against that feeling of shame that has always, always found her in these moments. That she has never been enough in this, in anything, never strong enough to control what she can hear and when. That thoughts drift over her in the same hushed way that the wind does through these rocks now.
When she speaks again it is so quiet, and her gaze does not find its way back to his face or those gold-flecked eyes. “I come here to forget.” She says finally, not acknowledging the ache of understanding his words had thrust into her chest. “Because how can anything else in the world be bigger than this.” Her eyes scan the vast expanse, the endless open night creeping in all along her periphery. She is careful not to mention how this does not work. How it only started out as wanting to forget and is now a punishment of remembering.
Then she does lift her face to look at him again, to see if she can find truths in the gold of his eyes, in the movement of muscle along his jaw. “Why do you come here, Magnus. What is it you expect to find at the edge of the world?”
howling ghosts, they reappear in mountains that are stacked with fear
He had hear rumors, once, about her own abilities—the powers that lay just below the surface. The gift, perhaps the curse, to peer into a stranger’s mind and unfold it deftly. How powerful to be able to tap into the innermost corners of a stranger. How powerful to peel back even the strongest of defenses. How tragic to be exposed to such things—to be vulnerable and receptive to the loud voices, the mental cries.
His heart breaks at what she must have experienced—what she has been privy to.
So although his sooty lips curve, the smile is sad, sorrow reaching the corners of his eyes. “Perhaps once I had secrets,” his whiskey voice is thoughtful, holding onto her gaze quietly, “but I do not anymore. I have nothing to hide from you, Isle.” Her name comes to him quickly, and he holds onto it gently, letting it rest in the palm of his hand like a fragile bird—although it’s clear that she’s anything but fragile.
She weathered the tundra ice and the heat of a love that nearly devoured her, and yet she still stands.
No, she is not fragile.
He does not attempt to lift the memories, but it’s difficult to keep them locked away. It’s difficult for them to not churn in his mind—lifetimes of anguish and guilt and regret. The faces of all those he has loved and lost, those he has let down, those he has angered. All of the ways he has fallen short. It’s difficult to not think of his Amazonian home, and then the Gates that he served—first out of duty and then out of a love. The way he tried so hard to live up to her heavenly reputation but never hit the mark.
The lifetimes of love he has embraced and let destroy him.
Joelle, bleeding out the beach while he watched helplessly—life seeping from his veins.
Minette, fear in her eyes—disappearing into the shadows with him unable to follow.
Ellyse, youthful and beautiful who wanted so much more than he could ever give her.
His jaw clenches and he tears his eyes from her, wondering why such things are laid bare before he when she has just warned him. He swallows harshly, the emotion thick in his throat. “I’m sorry,” the apology is hoarse as he pulls them back within him, locking away the pain beneath years of training. “I cannot imagine how difficult it is to live your own life while being weighed down with the pain of others.”
He is quiet for a few minutes, listening to her, watching the ocean beat against the cliffs.
“Perhaps I want to remind myself that I am bigger than my demons.” Another humorless curve of his mouth, ghosts haunting the edges. “The ocean once took everything from me,” the memory of his death, of his grave rises like a wave and crashes against the corners of his mind, but he doesn’t let it consume him, “but I refuse to be afraid of it—I refuse to give it any more than it’s already taken from me.”
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