"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
Years ago, he had run until his legs had given out.
He had run with demons screaming in his chest and veins blistering. He had run with nostrils flaring and eyes rung with white; he had run until his black coat had frothed and his mane had tangled down the thickness of his neck. He had run wild and panicked—ever chased by shadows he could not name.
Today, he still ran, but the pace was different. The cadence of his hooves striking dirt was swift, but the beat was even. Solid. His breathing was the only thing to slice through the morning autumn air, the sound as reliable and comforting as the first morning light washing the meadow. As the sun fell over the muscular angles of his back, he rocked back, picked up his left shoulder and then cut toward where the darkness still pooled between the trees. It was only when he had become fully enveloped by the shadows, it was only when the bite of the coming winter stung his skin, that he finally allowed himself to slow.
The breakneck gallop melted into a long-stepped trot, then a brisk walk, and, finally, a stop. Dropping his head, Makai drunk in heavy gulps of air, his sides heaving from the exertion. It was easy, in this moment of suspended exhaustion, to simply sink. It was easy to forget this was but a silver strand of time plucked from the rest. It was so easy to forget the rest, to lay the memories to rest in the graveyard of his past.
It was so easy, so simple, so sweet. He could ignore the occasional rattle in his lungs, the blood that flecked the ground sometimes when he coughed. They were but faded fragments of time now gone: a disease he kept at bay by visiting his daughter’s kingdom and paying his dues. They were flickers of reality in a life that had long since had its edged softened. He was content to ignore the strings tangling above him; he was happy to turn a blind eye to the fire smoldering on the horizon.
Today was to be no different. At the snap of branch under hoof, he lifted his savage, royal head. There, cast in the half-light of dusk and dawn, she stood and the rest melted away. There, washed in the beauty of motherhood, the shining maternal head of their now sprawling family, she stood, and his heart restricted as surely and deftly as it had the first time that he had collided into her side. He took a deep breath, letting the moment sink in before the corners of his lips curled, the smile lopsided and broken and vulnerable. “Oksana,” he whispered, feeling emotion pluck at him. “I hope you slept well.”
What sweet, joyous nectar of normality.
you're the fire and the flood and I'll always feel you in my blood
you taught me the courage of the stars before you left
how light carries on endlessly, even after death
It is strange to be happy. Strange to remember where she had come from, where she had been, and to see where it had led. She was born an orphan, except not, born instead in bath of blood to a mother who had lived but had not cared enough to come find her. She was raised by a chamber king, and he was cruel and he was selfish, but he had been a father and she loved him all the same. He had given her a home in the Chamber, a place to bury her roots, and he had given her a family in Straia, in the sister she still loved most in the world. He had even given her a throne, though its people had hated her and she had disappeared almost as quickly. She had let him down, and he loved her anyway.
And still, still, it was not that life that she loved above all else.
It was the one she had made with Makai, the one that had started the day their lives literally collided in the meadow. She can still remember it so clearly, the wild way he had crashed against her, and how it had been little more than a reflex to catch and hold him despite the savage way her burned her. She had seen his wild, felt it against her skin, and she had loved it immediately. They had always been strange together, perfect in their imperfection, and even when they unraveled they always came back together. He was a knife in her chest, and sometimes it hurt to love him, less now than it had before, but without him she could not lived. He held all her pieces together even when he was busy taking them apart- even when he thought he could save her by leaving.
She wakes to find him gone, and even though things have been good, even though things are still good, she feels that echo of worry spark and spit in the pit of her chest. This feeling is reflexive, it is thoughtless and inexplicable, but it comes from the map of scars on her heart, of wounds long since healed but impossible to forget. They sit like a weight in her chest, a quiet reminder that in good there is also bad, that they cannot hide from their demons forever. A reminder that what they have is not an easy thing, even if it is everything.
But she finds him between the trees, she finds him whole and well and content, she finds him with a smile that takes shape just for her, and that spark of worry sputters out. Languidly, she rolls her shoulders, stepping out of the shadows to close the distance between them.
“I did,” she says with a smile that is soft and subtle against the red of her delicate mouth, “I dreamt of the day we met.” She slips close to him, her feathered wings a heavy emerald as they unfurl at her withers, aloft and erect to catch the morning light. And then she is beside him with that smile pressed to his shoulder and those lips tasting the sweat that dapples his dark, smooth skin. “Do you remember that day, Makai?” When her eyes lift to his they are as bright as emeralds because she knows he does, he must, and she wants to watch him remember it, too.
What they have is beautiful, but it is impossible.
They both know that—have always known that.
It is an impossible dream, an impossible love; one bought and paid for with their blood, their anguish. He still pays sometimes, he thinks. When he wakes up and feels that fear crawl across the back of his mind. When he looks at her and thinks about how much better she would be if he had not caught her in his web. What if she had found a simpler love? What if one of those honey-tongued stallions of wheat had found her and loved her right? Would she be happier if she did not have to love someone like him?
He had to imagine that she would—and that knowledge sometimes felt like it would kill him.
But not tonight. Not when the morning sun washes over her curves and angles so beautifully; not when he can smell the wine of her breath on the breeze. Right now, in this moment, the rest melts away and leaves them together in the simplicity of their love. Softened by time. Perfected by age. So he just reaches down and rests his mouth against her flesh, tangling with her surely and deftly, their bodies settling against one another with the wisdom and memory of the years spent together. He thinks he would never forget it.
“Aye,” he murmurs, his dark eyes brightening with the memory. It was not a particularly good one—not the full width of it—but it was when he focused on her. He had been running, similarly to how he had run this morning. But his demons had been there that morning. Behind his every step. He had run until his lungs had ached and he could barely draw breath, his nostrils flaring and body drenched.
His nerves had been on fire, his veins threatening to split him apart, and she had smelled of the Chamber. He had collided with her before he had even had a chance to see what or who she was. His mouth had been fervent on her neck, drinking her in—intoxicated with the pine and the fog curling around her mane—and then with the sweetness of her flesh beneath it. He had been drunk on her, and lost before he had even had a chance to right himself. His chest constricted in his chest at the memory of it.
“How could I forget that moment?” His mouth wandered up her neck to her jaw, lingering there, pressing the velvet of his nose into the softness to drink her in. “It was the moment that I was born.”
The moment that his life, his true life, began.
you're the fire and the flood and I'll always feel you in my blood
