"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
It is more difficult than he would have expect to watch her walk away.
You would think—one would think—that after decades, centuries, of living alone in the afterlife that he would have gotten used to the dull ache of her absence. He would have been able to make himself content with the silence. With the memories that he carried with him and with the brief moments that he was able to share with his, and their, children. (Although it was a stabbing pain to realize that they were here.)
But he had not grown satisfied with these moments.
He had not learned how to become content with his death, with the endless eternity stretched before him where she survived and he watched from behind the veil when he could. Instead he grow impatient and wanting and felt his greedy heart snapping behind the usually gentle prison of his ribs.
And seeing her?
Holding her?
It had made the ache so much worse.
Because he could never ask her to stay and he could not go.
That is, until he could.
It was but a moment’s time between when he saw the fading silhouette of her and when he felt that sudden shift in the atmosphere. It crackled like lightning and he lifted his plain head to stare at it, his soulful eyes furrowing with concentration and then hope as it exploded within him.
He was running before he even knew what was happening.
Legs that had nearly atrophied with time broke apart from their restraints. Eagle wings snapped open at his sides and he practically flew through the rift, tumbling out and into the bright light of day. He blinked against it, shaking his head, but unable to stop his momentum. Instead, he soared, feeling a thrill as the icy winter air bit at his lungs and his body protested against the sudden, violent use of it.
But he had never felt better.
He flew for hours. Rejoicing in the ability to do so, even as he felt himself growing more and more confused with the inability to recognize so much of a land that he once loved. When he finally did land, it was in one of the few places that he knew—that he could put a name to: the meadow.
His coat was darkened to nearly black and his breath came in shuddered gasps.
But he was alive.
He was alive.
PLUME
but my heart, it don’t beat, it don’t beat the way it used to
Although her body had left him, her mind had not. She had spent some small time wondering what memories had been taken from her, but after running through the roster of her family she had ceased worrying that she had lost something important. And then she moved right on to worrying whether she had done the right thing in leaving him.
It did not feel right. Last time, she had left with a purpose – had abandoned their peace in the afterlife to return to create balance.
She’s so absorbed in these thoughts, that when she looks up and sees him she’s not entirely surprised. At least, not at first. She just gives the bay, winged figure a passing glance – heart painfully constricting the way it does whenever she sees someone with a similar colour sporting a set of wings.
But then…
Could it be?
Every fibre of her body snaps to attention with the realization and she freezes where she is for a few heartbeats.
There’s a memory she no longer has of a reunion just like this, of a magician that wore his likeness – stealing it from her thoughts. Using it to toy with her, to hurt her. They were in this exact same meadow then. But those memories are gone, absorbed in the afterlife – and she does not even know they are gone.
All the same, there’s a part of her that cannot believe her eyes. It was one thing to see him there, but she had been so certain that she had come back through the gap between worlds. Had thought this ground beneath her hooves was the real, true ground and the air she was breathing was not just an illusion for a body that remembered breathing.
He is slick with sweat and looks so wildly alive that hope ignites within her like a wildfire. It’s enough to force her forward, to take steps she does not notice she is taking. There’s a few strides between them when she finally hesitates, her muzzle twitching with the desire to touch him again.
Their reunion in the afterlife wasn’t enough.
Midnight blue eyes are burning into him, as though she can somehow see whether this is true or a falsehood. Has she crumbled so far into decay that her mind is playing tricks on her?
There’s a dozen things that rise to her tongue, questions to ask and jokes to make. Her eyes begin to glisten as she searches his face for answers even before she tries to speak – her voice little more than a whisper. “Did I die again?” She cannot say she would be particularly upset about that – what’s a third time? And she had been debating staying with him, after all.
She comes and it’s almost like he had known that she would.
He glances up and suddenly the rest of this Beqanna that is not Beqanna bleeds away and it’s just the two of them. It’s just the two of them and he feels his heart that is suddenly beating so fiercely (has he always had a heart that beat this loud?) that he feels that he cannot hear his own thoughts. His throat is dry and the nerves that he had not felt while sedated in the afterlife suddenly spring to life in stark relief.
She comes near him but doesn’t bridge the gap.
He doesn’t mind because he does.
Life has been too long, and death too infinite, for him to do anything but reach for her and pull her close. She feels so similar beneath his touch and he aches with the memory of their life together before. He feels it like a third being between them, but he doesn’t care. Doesn’t care about anything than the fact that the two of them are standing here together and are breathing and the air is so cold and crisp that it hurts.
Plume presses kisses, fervent and fevered, across her forehead and down the arch of her neck. He lingers and nips and laughs throatily as he relearns the shape of her in this new world, in this new body, in this new chance. Between the kisses, he whispers breathlessly. “I don’t know,” he says, his voice husky and hoarse and tinged with the rust that can only come from spending decades in a world of the non-living.
“I don’t know or how long it will last and I don’t care, Agetta.”
He kisses her again before pulling back so that he can stare at her, study her, soak in every moment.
“I don’t care because we’re together. We’re here.”
PLUME
but my heart, it don’t beat, it don’t beat the way it used to
11-05-2019, 08:49 AM (This post was last modified: 11-05-2019, 08:50 AM by Agetta.)
He’s right, of course, it doesn’t matter. And although her worries never truly fade, (they have been a constant companion for a good century after all) they are brushed aside in this moment. Every kiss, every nip, every time she can hear or feel his smile is another push against her concerns until she can think of nothing else except for him. Her eyes slide close at his attention, the battle against the tears already lost, and she leans into every touch.
For the first time in a very, very long time at least they are tears of joy.
Her head feels light and dizzy when he pulls back, eyes opening once more to look at him.
We’re here, he says, and she has to believe that is enough.
“I love you so much.” Because whatever happens next, whatever the future is, she knows this is true. It has always been true – and she cannot let another second go by without saying it to him. Not murmured in goodbye, not whispered to the stars while she stood alone beneath them, but spoken directly to him.
If this is a trick, it is of the worst kind – but the longer she stands here, breathing in his familiar (and yet strange) scent, she is not sure she cares either. Even if it is a trick, even if it all falls apart in the next few seconds, she’s got this moment. She is feeling less like a ghost in this very instant than she has felt ever since she has come back to Beqanna. His touch reminding her that she is alive.
It is her turn to move towards him again, unsatisfied with even the small bit of distance between them, and her muzzle brushing against his cheek, a line down his neck.
“Have you been flying?” She asks because it’s easier than asking anything else at this point, a smile lighting up her dark eyes as she breathes gentle air to stir the feathers at his shoulder.
Plume’s heart does not clench with fear when he kisses her.
It does not bruise with his worry that this will be over soon—that this is just a brief moment in time and he is to hold onto it with all of the strength that he has. Instead, he is buoyed by it. He is strengthened by the thought that this is temporary, and he find that he relishes each moment with her more. Each moment where he can explore the new curves and angles of her. Where he can relearn this new body of hers.
Because it doesn’t matter.
Underneath it all, she is still the same—she is still his Agetta.
“I have always loved you,” he whispers into the tangles of her mane, pressing the truth of it into the latch of her throat and then the curve of her jaw. “I will always love you,” he promises because it is easy to promise the things that you know are as certain as the sun and the moon—the endless time before him.
She presses into him and he gladly holds her close. Gladly feels the warmth of her seep into him and he wonders if he will ever feel this again—if his body will ever adjust to the feel of the sun on his back and the heat of her. He has spent so long being cold, after all. Spent so long with the chill of it in his bones.
“I have,” and there’s something like a mischievous sparkle in his eye. Something like joy as he tips his head back and flares his wings just a little before settling them over his back again. “It felt so good to know that I still can. To feel that alive.” He brings his head back down to study her and his gentle eyes warm as he takes her in. “But I never feel more alive than I do when I’m with you.”
PLUME
but my heart, it don’t beat, it don’t beat the way it used to
She doesn’t know how truly unworthy of his love she is, but his words mean everything to her. Despite her shortcomings, despite her mistakes, she believes him.
There’s a part of her that almost laughs when he says that he never feels more alive than when he’s with her, she almost shakes off the incredibly smooth words that send a thrill through her. But as he says them, she knows how true they are for her as well. “I’ve felt like a ghost for so long, Plume.” Her voice cracks a little over his name out of a habit long formed. The heartbreak she felt over his death has never truly gone away and it remains with her even now, even as she stands so close to him she can feel the heat radiate from his body.
“This…” And she grazes her muzzle against his skin with a gentle, lazy movement. Like they have all the time in the world. “This is the first time I’ve felt alive since...” Since he died. Since she died. Since she came back from the afterlife the first time without him. Since she wandered Beqanna on her own. Her mind cannot even comprehend how long it has been - well over a century surely - she just knows that she had grown used to being a ghost walking among the living. Watching their great-grandchildren raise generation after generation while she remained tethered to a love and a life she could never have again.
Only, he was here now.
“I am so glad I can give you back some of the life you have given me.” Their reunion has been just a blip in time so far, but if asked the day before she would not have been surprised if someone had tried to touch her and found no substance composing her body.
Yesterday, she believed it was possible to decompose while standing. Believed she could feel her mind slipping from her and her heart and everything she carried love for shifting further away.
Today, or at least this very moment, is different. “With you, I'm no longer a ghost. I'm alive again.” Although her fears will never truly be silenced, when she looks into his warm, gentle eyes, she believes that whatever this new life is between them can last forever. That their love will be enough.
And now that she remembers what it feels like to be alive, she knows she cannot go back.
He has never had to mourn her the way that she has had to mourn him.
His grief was always a different kind of a beast. It was brutal and raw and gnawing, but in the same breath, it was experienced through a fog. It was felt though a veil and it was not able to pierce him in the same way that pain can pierce the living. He was able to mourn her from his death, long for her from the afterlife, but he was always given the option of the fade—of the darkness, of the shadows.
Still, this does not dampen his joy in the reunion. In the moments they reclaim.
Her voice cracks over his name and he can just kiss her in response, pressing his lips to the dip of her jaw in some kind of reassurance that he is real, that this is real, that it wasn’t going to fade into forever.
“You are brimming with life,” he laughs, his kind eyes studying her, seeing everything that still lives there within her. The courage and the heart and the soul that had loved their children so fiercely, that had done everything within its power to protect the Gates. She had been a wonder during his first life—a miracle.
He is so relieved to know that nothing has changed.
That she stands before him nothing short of miraculous.
“We should run,” he says suddenly, turning his amber gaze to the horizon before bringing it back to her, his lips spreading into a wide grin. “We should run. Be alive. Marvel in it.” He takes a few dancing steps back, nodding in encouragement, as if crooking a finger in her direction. “Don’t you think?”
His wings flare slightly before they fold over his back.
“I’ve flown. Now I think that I should run.”
PLUME
but my heart, it don’t beat, it don’t beat the way it used to
For now, she lets herself believe his words - believes with all her heart that she is brimming with life. She fears that it will go away as soon as she is without him again, but that is a trouble for another time. For now, they are together.
When he steps back from her, she feels the rush of cool air against her skin and wants nothing more than to close the gap again - but his smile is infectious and one begins to grow on her own expression as she nods her agreement. It is not as wide as his, perhaps, but it shines with the love she feels for the stallion in front of her.
There is nothing he could ask of her that she would deny him, and though she does not wish to be separated from him - there is undeniably a spark of joy that ignites old memories within her. When was the last time she ran? Not to escape the horrible things she had done, not to put some distance between herself and the land that had caused her so much heartache, but just for the simple joy of it? She has denied herself so much happiness since she had returned to life, finding it so easy to tell herself she did not deserve to feel anything but sadness and ever-present hatred for herself.
“Catch me.” She whispers to him before she turns in the direction his eyes had gone to the horizon and her legs stretch out beneath her. She’s tempted, so tempted, to use her shapeshifting to give herself wings. She wants to fly with him, to learn from the lifetime of experience he has when she has only tried it a small number of times. But she’s also frightened to show him how much she has changed. It's not just the loss of pigment in her coat, it goes so much deeper.
Later she tells herself. If they have a later, she can give him the chance to decide whether he will truly love her forever - or if there are limits.
Her heart is already breaking at the idea of losing him again, but when she looks back to see if he has joined her, she shoves those fears and worries and pains aside.
