"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
Her bones remember this place. Fog and shadow meld into familiar shapes. Her steps do not falter as her eyes slide over all she once knew. If only the trees could tell her what they had seen.
What she had missed.
There was a time once where she could tell where she ended and the smoke began. It used to bend to her will. A soft shield. A comfort in the dark. But in time, things had shifted. She didn’t know where or when or why, but something had changed.
Over time she began to fade.
Death didn’t frighten her. It never had. She couldn’t imagine a world where it ever would. But the thought of disappearing - that frightened her. The idea of losing herself piece by piece, thought by thought, until all that remained was smoke and mist and want.
It’s what had driven her from this place. A quiet exile. A mercy, maybe.
She drifted. The years blurred. Mera’s steady heartbeat had been her only companion. She didn’t know how long she’d wandered. For a time, the ground seemed to forget her weight. But time had provided her with much needed solace. Again the smoke seeped into her bones, leaving her whole. Leaving her wanting.
So she returns. The fog that follows her is thick here. It feels heavier, familiar in a way that aches. This place hasn’t changed, not really. It’s just grown quieter without her. Her tongue slides across pointed teeth, remembering those early days. Days spent with Jamie and Beyza in the smoke and the shadows.
She can feel the burning of regret deep down, churning like bile. She hadn’t allowed herself to wonder what she’d left behind. But she hungers for answers. Hungers for something left behind in the past.
Before there had been anything else, there had been her.
Before the fog, before the smoke, before the darkness.
There had once only been Livinia, his beloved sister.
Something calls to him now. There is something in the rattling of bones that beckons him. The ghosts bend close to murmur in his ear. Livinia, Livinia, Livinia, they chant. And he follows them to the meadow and there she stands.
For a moment, he merely studies her. This is not the first time he’s seen her since the darkness had descended over the world and left them all aimless, frightened. But it has been so many terrible years since then. So many awful, lonesome years.
He has wondered, of course, what became of his beloved sister. Had often thought to send some winged thing after her but had instead chosen to respect her need to be gone. And here she is.
Or so it appears.
There are things in this world darker than him. He wonders, briefly, if Beyza might have created the illusion, knowing he might be drawn to it. Because they are no longer friends, the shrike and the reaper. Because they have not been for a long time.
He dips his ugly head and closes those terrible eyes, searching the surrounding woods for a hare. Nearby, there is a corpse and he calls it to him. It stumbles past him, then, as he sends it in her direction. A gift, perhaps. He opens his eyes and presses a message into her mind without opening his mouth.
The corpse stumbles to a halt a few paces from her. She watches it sway, watches the fog and smoke coil around its legs, then unravel again. Mera, from her perch above, chitters her displeasure. The large bat, despite her appearances, is the vegetarian of the pair. Livinia pays no heed as she observes the creature.
Her eyes immediately lifted to find him in the shadows that the pair had always called home. He looks the same and not the same. He still carries the same eerie stillness, but there is something different in the edges. For a heartbeat she wonders if he is real. Liv doesn’t have to account for the considerations of magicians and their intent. Of the consequences of fractured friendships. She worries only for her weary mind. Perhaps something had splintered and broken.
Time had not passed cleanly for her in her absence. It had stretched thin, then folded in on itself until the years were unrecognizable. The days had been swallowed by smoke and mist and dark. Sometimes she thought she’d been gone a season. Other times, she feared the world had forgotten the shape of her entirely.
The thought passes as his voice threads through her mind. Welcome home, sister. She can feel the sound in her bones more than she hears the words.
Home.
The word settles somewhere deep and unwanted. She tastes iron on her tongue, not from blood but memory. The fog ripples at her feet. Hunger churns.
“Home,” she repeats aloud, the sound hoarse from disuse. It sounds foreign to her own ears. “Is that what this is?”
She steps closer, slow, deliberate. The fog and smoke tightens around her ankles unwilling to let her drift too far. Keeping her grounded in its own way.
“I didn’t know what I’d find if I returned,” she says quietly, her eyes still studying him - her brother, her other half. “If there would be anything left at all. Or anyone.”
Her gaze seeks his, steady and unflinching. “I suppose I came to see what remains.”
She tilts her head slightly, the faintest ghost of a smile curving along her mouth revealing the barest hint of a fang. “And to see if you still would.”
The fog presses closer, ever present, but her eyes remain bright through the dark and the haze. She can’t help but think that for the first time in a long time she feels terribly alive.
How his heart aches to hear her ask it! To think that she might not consider anyplace where their paths converge home! For him, home meant the shadows just as it meant anyplace tucked against her side. For hadn’t that been his very first home? Hadn’t he always found himself most at peace there? He had sought refuge next to her just as much as he’d ever sought it in the shadows.
“Ah, Livinia, you must know that you will always find me.” Where it might have been a threat spoken to anyone else, it is a promise to her, his beloved sister. “All you ever need to do is call for me and I will find you, no matter the distance.”
But she has never needed him the way he has needed her. She has always been the stronger of the two, confident, self-assured. He is the one who sought solace, who needed protecting, who used her to shield him from the light. And he had never resented her for her strength when he’d had none. He’d have happily given it up willingly to her, as she had been more deserving of it anyway.
He had been nothing. And in some ways he still is. Just an idea. Just a shape. He helps to close the distance between them while the fog writhes with excitement around their legs. How it has loved them both, these dark things.
“Where have you been, sister?” he asks then, smiling at the glint of that fang, remembering their childhood, remembering Beyza giving them to her. “What things have you seen?”
jamie
