"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
Elain knew she shouldn’t have strayed so far.
Yet she simply couldn’t help herself.
Wanderlust was burning in her blood and she just couldn’t sit idle a moment longer, despite her sister’s warnings about leaving her sight.
But was she ever truly out of her sister’s sight?
Could she ever be, with a twin who saw everything - even things that hadn’t transpired yet?
She knew it was why her sister was so protective. However the girl didn’t want to live her life in a cage, even if the reason for her sister’s protectiveness was borne out of love. With each and every step she pushed away the guilt she felt at leaving and the thrill of the adventure of being somewhere consumed her.
The tiniest taste of the freedom she so desired left her craving more. So with each step her guilt evaporated and her joy blossomed. She laughed as she bounded along the edge of the river - splashing in the shallows. The water was cold, but she didn’t let that stop her - not until she was well downriver.
It was only then that she finally slowed and realized how hopelessly lost she was.
And how happy she was to be lost.
throw me in the water, don’t think about the splash i will create
leave me at the altar, knowing all the things you just escaped
It is the laughter that so thoroughly arrests his attention.
He is half-submerged in the depths himself, reveling in how sweetly the current pulls at his skin, when he hears it.
It is the sound as much as the current that pulls him along. Moves him easy downriver, buoyed by the light that laughter injects into his chest. It almost makes him weightless, such a terribly beautiful sound.
And it is no surprise to find that it comes from a terribly beautiful mouth when he finds her. But she has gone silent by then and it is just the sound of the river running and of him moving against it as he approaches.
The laughter is gone and he finds he’d do anything to have it back. He tilts his head as he draws closer then, studying her, letting the sight of her thrill him in ways he does not understand. And in her he sees the shimmer, too, bone-deep. How captivated he is by her.
“Are you all right?” he asks, the voice smooth, “I heard you laughing.” He admits this without even a glimmer of self-consciousness. It does not occur to him to be embarrassed that she had enraptured him so completely. But he smiles, a crooked thing, blinks those golden eyes at her. “It was such a beautiful sound, why did you stop?”
“Oh!” The sound slips from her lips as she whirls - not having expected anyone to be submerged in the frigid river. For a moment, she hesitates, but her guard falls when she sees he is young - close enough in age to her and he doesn’t look threatening. For sweet Elain, that is more than enough.
“Oh yes, I’m fine,” she says, though she’s caught somewhat off guard by the fact that he’d seen her and she hadn’t even seen him there. But she’s so much more than fine. Nervous. Excited. Happy. She is not blessed with the same self confidence, so her cerulean eyes immediately slide to the river’s edge at the compliment. Her sister is not at all unkind, but Eadaz is not one to give compliments freely. She can feel the thrum of heat run through her, but she overcomes her hesitation and returns her gaze to his.
“That’s sweet of you to say,” she says, quietly, as a smile blossoms across her lips. It was a glasslike, fragile little smile, but offered to him all the same.
“I’m not sure why I stopped. I felt silly, I suppose, laughing and splashing in the river by myself.” It feels like she’s entrusting him with a secret by admitting such a thing, but she entrusts him with the knowledge anyway. She’s hardly ever alone, and her sister is just so...serious. She almost feels ashamed at how foolish she must have looked - she knows that Eadaz would have never approved. And a flicker of worry flashes in her eyes if she wonders if her sister does know. But Eadaz’s gift is fickle, so Elain holds on to the hope that she hold on to moments like this - tucked away into her sister’s blind spots.
“I’m Elain,” she offers, as she moves closer, stepping back into the water - albeit only ankle deep. She nearly recoils at the cold. She’s not sure how he can stand it, failing to suppress the shiver that overcomes her.
“Aren’t you cold in the water?” She asks, curious but there’s concern coloring her voice too.
09-16-2020, 03:17 PM (This post was last modified: 09-16-2020, 03:17 PM by isakov.)
throw me in the water, don’t think about the splash i will create
leave me at the altar, knowing all the things you just escaped
He is not sweet, Isakov knows. Not sweet in the way she thinks him sweet, at least. But he feels no overwhelming urge to tell her this. Only smiles graciously, watching the corners of her mouth so intently that he moves toward her without realizing. Closes up more of the space between them without meaning to. Alas, when he realizes what he’s done, he’s grateful for it all the same. Because the smile is even more stunning up close. It fills him up with the impulse to reach out and touch her, to trace the lines of it himself.
Alas, he refrains. Moves himself closer to the river’s edge, though. He wonders what it’s like to feel silly. Even in his youth, he had been serious. Even when he’d taunted his sisters by hurtling toward them as fast as his young legs would carry him, frightening them with the threat of shattering, only to turn himself into vapor just before colliding with them. He had not felt silly then, only powerful.
But he had felt no want to manipulate fear since then. He certainly does not feel it now.
He does not immediately respond, distracted as he is by the notion of silliness. Until she offers her name and his smile deepens. He tilts his fine head and echoes it, smooth, “Elain.” Almost coos it. Reveling in the shape his gilded tongue makes when he says it. “My name is Isakov,” he tells her and delights, too, in the way she moves closer, too. In how she moves back to the water.
Her question is met with a breath of laughter and he shakes his head, pulling himself up onto the shore. “I wasn’t,” he confesses. He is not impervious to the cold, of course, only used to it. “But you look much warmer than the river.”
