"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
when I was a bird I could see where the moon had turned
She is not surprised to find herself out once more amongst the evening. It is her favored time of day, the time where she comes alive. Not the dark—not really. She would not have thrived during the eclipse in the endless night. For while she was a creature of night, it was night’s light in which she bloomed. She lifted her pale, silvery head and felt the milkiness of it wash over her. She was a deer this evening, picking her way through the forest with her slender hooves, brushing aside moonlight like silk curtains.
The moon has begun to wane and with it, she can feel the darkness beginning to creep up her legs once more. The night encroaching upon the silver of her. In time, she would be entirely black—the darkest of days during the month. These were her least favorite days of the month. The ones where she was left utterly alone in the night, unable to weave light around her. Unable to call to the moon that calls to her.
She sighs, an expectant kind of noise, before she pushes it to the back of her mind for now.
There was plenty of time for her to think on the new moon. For now, she would relish in the waning light that shone above—her friend’s face looking down upon her kindly. She smiles in return before turning her deer’s head toward the path before her. It is only when she hears the snapping of branch beneath a foot that she pauses, the instinct engrained in her very bones. There’s a moment of pause, all of her muscles freezing beneath that silvery coat, before she bounds off, leaping forward in giant, sweeping motions.
05-22-2021, 03:53 PM (This post was last modified: 05-22-2021, 03:53 PM by Benjamen.)
I shine only with the light you give me
Water is incredibly heavy, did you know that?
It isn’t like the starlight James was so accustomed too, light, beautiful, easy. If starlight kisses than water can only strangle. He knows that, knows that better than most.
James is not creature of the night, how can he be when his mother was sunlight brought earth side? Neither though is he a boy of the day, how can he be when his father was not born, but shed from the stars above?
He wakes up from a slumber. Those who have never been dead, they do not know the deafening sound of a moonless light and the dark, dark, dark that accompanies it. He wanders because the sound of his own heartbeat and his feet on the ground are enough to satisfy him, to comfort him. He can remember walking the woods with his sister, he can remember how upset his mother had been, can remember his father calming her.
He cannot remember what he found in the woods though.
James can only remember poppies.
Red poppies.
She reminds him of Septimus, he and Elli’s tutor, and that alone is enough to comfort the boy and flutter curiosity in his chest like a moth cupped between two hands. A flood of advice reaches the back of his mind (a place that still splutters out ocean water and smells like salt and death) “the woods, the trees, they are not friends, James, death lurks there.” “There are no such things as strangers, Ben.” “The night hides secrets, but not all are terrifying.”
Her light cascades over him and he thinks he has never felt happier, has never felt brighter, before her movements leave him in the dark. “No, no! It’s too dark.” He says in a flush of panic. And he suddenly cannot see, it’s too dark and he is stumbling, falling, and the long grass feels all too much like ocean waves and they drag him under once more.
Benjamen; my feet knew the path, we walked in the dark, in the dark
never gave a single thought to where it might lead
when I was a bird I could see where the moon had turned
She is several bounds away before she hears the panicked cry—the sound of a young boy and not the monster that she had presumed him to be. It cracks through her like lightning across a summer sky, startling her into submission, her forward motion halted abruptly as her spindly legs find purchase on the ground once more. Her heart flutters wildly in her chest, a trapped bird beating against its cage, but she finds the courage to not flee—battles her prey instinct to turn the doe’s head backward at the source.
When she sees the small boy, made of ivory and onyx, something in her drops.
Without thinking, but not without caution, she begins to make her way back toward where she had been when she had first leapt away—her dipped legs flashing as she steps through the branches and leaves. When she is several feet away again, she pauses, her wide golden eyes set against the head of silver.
“It’s not too dark,” she promises in her breathy voice, the sound of bells and chimes. “Not when you ask for it not to be,” she glances up with a brilliant smile and pulls the light of the waning moon down on them, showering them in its silvery light. As she does, she shifts back into her normal form—turning from young deer into young filly. Her lengths have begun to lengthen, the childish curves of her beginning to find its edge, but she is still made of youth and she looks childlike in the milky glow of the moon.
When the area around them practically pulses with moonlight, she finds his gaze again.
05-28-2021, 08:12 PM (This post was last modified: 05-28-2021, 08:12 PM by Benjamen.)
I shine only with the light you give me
Benjamen is naive, seeing all the fascination in the world around him but none of the threat. (The only times he remembers the danger only when he wakes in the middle of the night and cannot breathe from the weight of the water once crushing him.) He either does not see it or he has not yet learned recognize it. If asked, Ben would tell you that he knows a good soul when he sees one— but this same little boy, closes his eyes when evil walks his way.
So when the girl, the stranger, stops and turns around he closes his eyes for an instant before dark lids slide back open to watch her. He could not think her anything but beautiful, mystical, enchanting, kind, and radiant. He has heard his mother use these words before, to describe Elliana, Maeve, Bird, Nicnevin, and so they are easy to call into his own, young, vocabulary.
“Will you bring the light back?” He asks, with a half formed tear in his eye that disappears as quickly as it had formed. Ben is too young to know who he asks (it is usually his mother, his father, his older sister, but neither are here.) So he asks the girl, the world, the night.
And then the moon, that sacred, sacred moon, is brought before him. Too young to be weary of magic, he can only flush with gratefulness. If he had just been a touch older, he might have told her how beautiful she was. “You look like the moon,” he says to her instead, an innocent observation. Ben has little life experience to compare others too. His mother would always be the sun, his father the stars, his sister the shadows. “Is that why you’re best friends?”
“I’m Benjamen,” he says before breaking her gaze, his blue eyes looking around the small area, suddenly bold and brave underneath the steady, thrumming glow. “Do you get to play with the moon every night?”
Benjamen; my feet knew the path, we walked in the dark, in the dark
never gave a single thought to where it might lead
Her heart warms in her silvery chest at his innocence—at his kindness. The world once again feels soft and protected, yielding to the childlike wonder in his eyes as the moonlight floods down around them. Her pulse, which had spiked at the sound of cracking branch, eases, and her smile illuminates her delicate features, doe eyes just as warm and wide in her equine form as they had been when standing as a deer.
At his question, she laughs, but the sound is kind. It’s throatier than her usual breathy voice, nearly delighted as the light begins to spin in lazy circles around them. She tips her head back and closes her eyes, losing herself into the rhythm of the moon’s tide. It is pull that she feels herself swaying to, the waters of it moving around her slender body. When she opens her eyes and looks back to him, there is only radiance on her face and honesty in every fiber as she answers, “I am the moon.”
It was a truth passed down from her father and her mother to her and, in kind, to her brother—the sun. It was the truth that she held close to her heart as she traversed Beqanna in evening hours, looking to her counterpart hanging in the sky and knowing that like calls to like and she would return to it one day. That she was just a piece chipped away and molded to live on this land. That she would go back soon.
But she doesn’t expect him to understand, to know, the way she does. So she just smiles again. “You can call me Cressida though.” She sends a ripple of light his way to weave around his legs and up his back—the only answer that she gives to his final question.
