Stay in Taiga, where it is safe, mama had told him. It itches and burns along the edges of his youthful mind, a warning. A dare. The world does not feel dangerous. It feels big and impossible. It feels like temptation. He had already seen so much, but he wants more. So much more.

From the moment of his birth, Taiga had felt somehow small. He is too young yet to realize why. That every corner feels saturated with his birth mother. Though he knows exactly where she rests, he can still feel her in every part of these woods.

He can still feel the guilt and shame he can’t quite express. Can’t quite understand even.

It is this that makes him restless. That drives him to the edge of the trees, staring hungrily beyond. It is this that ultimately sends him over the edge. That pushes his feet forward until he has taken one step, then two, before bursting into a trot.

The trot soon becomes a canter, a gallop, as he races towards the unknown, bursting across hills and through the trees until he tires. Still he continues, slower now. Continues until the trees fade and rolling grassland is crushed beneath his feet. Breathing heavily, he stumbles to a halt, staring around him in fascination. This place stinks of so many different horses, scent overlaid by warring scent until it is a battleground of passing strangers.

He loves it. It is delightfully thrilling, new and fascinating. So much to see here. He almost feels he could crash endlessly through the waves of vision and never find the end of it. Perhaps there is no end.

As the delight surges through him, he cannot help the wild laugh that escapes his lips. What he must seem to the others, he doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter. He truly is a mad child lost in a sea of strangers.

reave

He can feel her before she ever arrives, two ships careening towards each other on mad and towering waves. She practically screams at him, though it is not with words. But just as she is, so is he too young to understand the wildness they share. Too young to realize he is a conduit. Too young to understand the way he amplifies everything she (they) feel.

His narrow ribs expand and contract in rapid succession with his breath, blue eyes bright and feverish as he whips his head around to peer at her with an unnervingly clear gaze. Just as she sees, so too does he. But where she pushes without caution or concept, he receives. He sees it all. Everything (or so it feels to him, so small and unworldly as he is).

He understands the weakness though. The way it feels to be small and cumbersome. She radiates her loathing for it and he recognizes it. He had felt it the moment he’d pressed against his stone mother’s unforgiving skin. Without thought, he radiates his own response. The last breath of his mother, redolent with love and comfort and protection, convinced that even in death she would never leave them.

But she had. And perhaps that is why he had become so lost. Why he rages so futilely across half of Beqanna.

She asks who he is, he is confused for a moment. The moment clears however, and he replies breathlessly. “Reave.”

And it’s true, isn’t it? He had stolen so much already. He had stolen the very life from his mother. And he steals sight. Every day he thieves a little bit more.

But so did she. He recognizes it, the way she plunders his vision is so familiar as to be impossible not to recognize. “Do you enjoy it?” he asks without clarification. It doesn’t occur to him that he had not done the same to her and so she may not recognize like calling to like.

reave

What a weird thing to say. A moue forms on his lips as he tilts his head towards her, as though his piercing blue glare might somehow burrow through her to find why. It hadn’t occurred to him she might find it odd. Not until she had said it in just as many words. But as the young do, he learns, picking up the pieces of his mistakes and turning them in proverbial fingers until he understands where it failed.

It’s only when his question is tossed back at him that the pieces click.

Frown lifting into a sudden grin, the mischievous glint of his eye brightens as he quickly responds, “Yes.” And in the only way he knows, blinded by youth and naivete, he shows her. A clumsy grasp at sight that matches his own, twirling them away into the heavens on the lofty wings of a bird flying overhead. Then, as it grows too distant, his tenuous connection frays and splinters, sending them plummeting back into themselves.

He is breathless and grinning as he reaches forward, recovering from his momentary blindness to nudge at the whirling hair of her small forehead in growing camaraderie. He had never tried to share his delight with anyone else in such a manner, but surely if anyone could understand, it would be her.

“And did you enjoy it?” he asks again on a faintly impish laugh, certain she must understand him now.

reave