[private] shook like some old souls when our bones broke

[brigade]

I was a poor boy; you were a bright light
I was a sinner and you were a snake

It was for the best that he had removed himself from polite society.

For the best that he had let them all go. Those who he only managed to hurt. Those who he disappointed. Those he chased and then drove away. It was the one thing in life that he was truly, deeply good at—the only thing that he had ever succeeded at. He was as messed up as anyone had ever guessed about him and he was tired of proving them right—so very tired of always being the thing that they knew him to be.

He was as much a failure of a father as he had been a son.

As much a fuck up of a friend as he had been a brother.

So he leaves. He follows the wolves into the mountains and tries to overcome the terrors that come every night when their howls splinter across the evening sky. He doesn’t, of course. It’s a fool’s errand to think that he can expose himself to the terror long enough that it becomes something else entirely. But he is nothing if not a fool and so he spends the years waking in a cold sweat, eyes ringed with white.

He spends the years not sleeping at all, some nights.

Until the loneliness eats at him and his heart aches for something other than the yipping of the things that had once been guardians and then killers and now reminders of everything he cannot name.

Until he drives himself back down the mountain and out into the meadow.

His antlered head rises as the sun does and, for a moment, its light is caught between the proud prongs before he dips it down to the grass below. His belly is already full but it gives him something to do other than just sit here and wait for ghost to once again find him and claim him as its own.

shook like some old souls when our bones broke
swallowed the sickness, a fever, a flame

BRIGADE