"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
She is a million shades of red and bright, a tiny living ruby curled quietly in deep green grass. There are flowers in her mane, pale pink and with petals that look almost velvet in the right light, but they are just as the girl is, hard and cold and unmoving. Alive and yet somehow not. There is a peal of laughter from somewhere nearby, a few children running together through tall grass and bounding over winding streams, and though she scrambles to her feet with the sound of silver chiming, they are already gone by the time she is up.
Her gold eyes go quiet again, big and round and so sad. She knows she’s not supposed to play with the other kids though, they’re too big and too rough for a little girl made of glass. For a girl made to break. But when they laugh and race and tumble together, she can feel her gentle heart fill with yearning. Maybe mom wouldn’t notice if she snuck away just this one time - she doesn’t even have to be gone long! Just one game of tag across the criss-crossing streams of Tephra.
She takes a few steps, a few brave bounding leaps as her little glass tail flicks excitedly behind her. Mom will never know, it’s totally fine, totally not a big deal. But she lands from a bounce and her delicate body groans with the sound of splintering glass. It’s not quite the same as something breaking, there’s nothing cracked along the surface of her cool skin. But when she pauses to look down at her legs, there are tiny fissures twining up just barely beneath the surface of her iridescent legs.
The tiny girl wilts at the reminder, the warning buried inside her own body. “It’s not fair.” She says aloud, though only the flowers are near enough to hear. Instead of laying back down, she wanders quietly beside the babbling stream, sharing flashes of sunlight between the water and her skin.
She’s only just barely paying enough attention to realize there’s someone up ahead, but it isn’t until she glances up that she realizes that someone is her brother. “Thorn!” She cries out, suddenly a hurtling comet in shining red colliding helplessly against his side. “I missed you.” She accuses, burying her little face in the warmth of his dark shoulder. Though she would absolutely never admit it, Thorn has been the easiest to love.
It was his violet eyes that were waiting for her when she opened her eyes for the very first time.
It is because of him that she lives at all.
“Will you stay with me today?” Those gold eyes are so gentle and so full of hope as she sneaks forward to curl against his chest - a chest broken open and bleeding. “Oh my god, Thorn, what happened?” She’s nosing at it helplessly, trying to close the hole or stop the bleeding, anything. “Why can’t you fix it like you fixed me?”
Many things cause Thorn pain now, but the way he avoids his family is the most crushing. Alone, cowed by his own thoughts and constant pulsing of others' pain in his chest, he languishes. The sabino hardly lives anymore - he hardly survives, in fact. He is thin, his movements marked with shakes and his face marked with the creasing of aches. Most days he remains curled beneath a copse of Tephran palm trees, wondering if the coconuts above his head will finally fall hard enough to strike him dead.
It is rare that Thorn finds the strength to go more than a few feet from his bed, but when winter strikes just hard enough to bite him with a weak chill, he rises on shivering limbs to find the source of Tephra's steam. He is frail enough to be roughly affected by a thin Tephran winter, so he reminds himself of the family that will mourn him if he dies, and searches for relief.
Thorn is numbly tracing the line of a creek that leads to the hot spring when he hears the hurtling body of Flower. Panic, healthy and painfully clear, widens his eyes and empties his mind. The sabino draws on what strength he was using to travel - and strength he feels imbued in him by Flower's love (strength that beats proudly in the gift his mother's magic gave his heart) - and heals his weakened muscles and shrinking stomach. The jutting rib cage cannot be helped, but now he can stand tall (can withstand the crashing girl leaning so lovingly into his side).
"Flower," the sabino mumbles, craning his neck around to peer at his shiny sister. She marks the first time Thorn fully understood unconditional love. Before his curse, he used to like to think that when he healed her at her birth, a little piece of his heart became a part of hers. "I missed you, too, my little ruby," he murmurs, though the affection in his voice is slightly strained.
He thinks he doesn't deserve to feel this happiness. Doesn't deserve to feel anything other than her pain as it forces more blood from his chest.
"Wait -" Thorn says as Flower curls around his side. He frowns, then sighs, then closes his eyes to fend off the impending exhaustion. She was bound to find out, he tells himself, though it certainly doesn't make seeing the look on her face any easier. "It's a long story, Flower," he begins, settling his best version of a calm gaze on her golden eyes, "It won't heal with just my magic." He thinks about explaining, about amending his absence to her, about setting in motion that which he must do to heal his chest -
But then he spots the fissures in his sister's legs; and instead, he balks.
"Ruby!" he gasps. "Let me fix those."
thorn
under your skin, over the moon
don't let me in, I don't know what I'd do
roses are fallin', roses from fallin' for you, ooh
05-13-2020, 03:30 PM (This post was last modified: 05-13-2020, 03:30 PM by flower.)
There is sunshine in her smile when he calls her ruby, because in those moments he makes her feel so beautiful. She is instantly no longer glass and strange and defined by her frailty, when he calls her ruby, she becomes like a shining treasure in his beautiful lilac eyes. She becomes his, if only for a moment.
But it is hard to keep that smile on her delicate red face when there is a hole in his chest and all the skin around it is stained the color of her, of red. It is a shade that becomes instantly ugly again. She doesn’t understand how it is that he can walk or even stand, but it explains the new hollowness in his eyes she had tried to not see, and the way his body is a mountain range of bones that seem too sharp beneath his skin.
Her heart breaks with love and worry and so much fear for him, and there are streaks of damp that spill down her cheeks and leave a trail of fogged red behind. “Then we’ll find magic that can heal you.” She promises him, gazing up into his face with those luminous golden eyes. But she dances back when he notices her cracks and the thin fissures that stretch up through her legs, causing strange prisms of light to arc through her translucent body.
“Don’t you even dare.” She warns him so lovingly, cuffing him gently with the side of her muzzle. “I’m fine, still in one piece, see?” She does a spin for him, smiling when the sun casts a red shadow through her and against his side. “We have to fix you first.” She is so gentle when she closes the distance between them again, tracing those cold glass lips over the new hollows of his dark figure. “Tell me your long story so I can figure out how to fix this, okay? I love you, Thorn.”
She breaks his heart, that little Flower. So fragile, so different. Thorn knows she belongs to him, to their whole family, but he knows no amount of love and affection will remedy her delicate body. She'll be stuck as glass, forever, and even if he loves doting on her - he knows one day she'll grow tired of it, and his love won't be enough.
Flower's face could be the sun when she smiles, and for a moment, Thorn doesn't feel even a bit of her pain. The bleeding in his chest slows, but - it quickly picks back up, stronger than before, as the glass girls sees what the curse has done to him. The cursed man's own pain amplifies within hers. He'd always known Flower would find out but no amount of preparation would remedy what it feels like watch AND feel her heart break.
"Not even Mom's magic helped, Rue," the sabino whispers, closing his eyes but attempting a soft smile. His mind plays over finding Nightlock, over his worried, heartbroken parents' faces. They are why he has gone into hiding: Thorn can't bear to feel the rest of his family's pain. He knows it, inside and out, and knowing his hand in it might actually kill him.
"Hey," Thorn says, a frown passing over his lips, "come here." He presses his muzzle to Flower's shoulder in insistence, flashing a wave of healing into her and sealing the cracks. He grows tired instantly, then murmurs, "Fine, but let's lay down, okay? I'm tired."
Thorn doesn't wait for his sister's confirmation before slowly gliding to the earth. He turns his neck to lay it comfortably over Flower's back, her glass cool and comforting to the touch.
"I don't remember much of it. Just travelling into a cave, and a monster, and so much hate . . ." He doesn't tell her what Mom and Dad had said to him. He doesn't tell her he killed Tamlin. He can't. He can barely even think about it. "I did a lot wrong, Flower. I -" he stops, chokes, tired from his magic and the weight of their suffering. "I deserved something, and the monster knew what."
thorn
under your skin, over the moon
don't let me in, I don't know what I'd do
roses are fallin', roses from fallin' for you, ooh
She is stunned when he tells her mom's magic can’t fix it, fighting a wave of emotion that threatens to overtake her and drag her to depths she can hardly even imagine. “Okay well, mom isn’t the only one who can do things, you know? There are others, and there’s the mountain too. Maybe we could try the mountain.” But she still feels unsteady when he closes his eyes and bows that beautiful dark and bright face of his. “I’ll keep you safe Thorn, I promise.” She’s whispering when she steps close to press her cool muzzle to the curve of his cheek, promising things she has no right to.
Which means she is perfectly positioned when he reaches out to fill her with his perfect healing light. She sighs as she always does, weak-kneed in that moment of bliss as she leans into him and his magic fills every crack and fissure in her skin, erasing everything that makes her feel weary. But she’s mad too because she knows what it does to him on a good day, and this is certainly not that. It’s so far from that it scares her. “You dummy." She accuses, but she is so much softer now, so gentle and full of love as she lays down beside him, smiling sunshine at the familiar weight of his head over her back.
She is quiet as she listens to his story, reaching over to nuzzle his warm neck beneath his mane. She would clean the blood from his wound if she could, but when she tries ever so gently, the red just smears in new tear-tracks across his chest. Her heart feels so heavy listening to him wrestle with his thoughts, and she kisses his neck in a gentle way, taking a mouthful of his mane to pull him closer so he knows how much he is loved and wanted. “It’s okay to do the wrong things.” She tries to assure him, twisting her body beneath his head so that she rolls more onto her side, more beneath him so she can turn her face the other way and reach around to press it lovingly against his cheek.
“You don’t deserve this,” she promises, closing her eyes and leaning into him, lending him strength in the form of her quiet love. “Monsters only know how to be scary, they don’t get to decide your worth. And I don’t know, maybe you did do a lot wrong, but you did a lot right too.” Her eyes open again, pale gold like melted ore, and she pushes her nose into his cheek. “You are the only reason I exist at all, and that feels pretty right to me.”
Thorn tiredly shakes his head at Flower's protests. There is nothing, he thinks. Nothing. He knows how to fix it, but does he really? The rare times that he catches his reflection in a still pool of water, he isn't sure who he is looking at.
Is that Thorn, son of Wonder and Nightlock, gangly boy with a heart of meant to surge over insurmountable mountains?
Or is that Thorn, wretched bearer of curses, naive fool too simple to understand what a true apology is?
Amends, is what the monster had spat at him when it finally vomited out the pegasus. Make amends, it had said, but it had also laughed - because a creature of that magnitude understood that amends is exactly what Thorn will struggle with. The stallion has always been quiet and apologetic when need be, but he grew into the kind of man that merely stepped into normalcy hours later in the hopes that whatever tiff from before wasn't a big deal.
I hate you, Thorn had hissed.
I'm sorry, is what he can't whisper.
"Gahhh," he says under his breath, closing tired lilac eyes.
Flower is showering him in love, tugging at his mane and rolling her cool, soothing skin into his. A smile, loving like it should be, finds Rue when she looks up. Thorn feels the strength of her love steady his heart and breath new life into his bones. The nearly inaudible groan from before turns into a relieved ahhh. Thorn presses his cheek tightly to his sister's, basking in love so bright it could be the sun.
"I only healed you, Ruby," the sabino says on a long, relaxed sigh. "You are here now all by your own doing." He finds this to be a deep truth, and the bitter part of his mind dares Flower to argue with him, just so he can show her how much he does deserve this curse.
"Maybe one day we can try the Mountain, but for now, humor me. Tell me when you felt most loved. Things like that help ease the ache of my chest."
thorn
under your skin, over the moon
don't let me in, I don't know what I'd do
roses are fallin', roses from fallin' for you, ooh
She loves moments like these, when the world shrinks to just them and she doesn’t need to feel guilty for the wild way she loves him. The wrong way she loves him. He never seems to notice that her love is too much and too bright and too big, which means it is safe when no one else is around to see it either.
It means it doesn’t count.
“Yeah, because I was only dying.” She says, leaning her cheek against his and then laughing, nipping at his jaw with those impossible smooth glass teeth. “No big deal, right?” She rolls her eyes and bumps her shining nose against him, closing those golden eyes as she basks in his beautiful warmth. “I’m here now because you continue to make me whole, every chance you get.” But she says it more gently, reaching down to touch the places her cracks had stretched across until he healed her moments before.
She leans back into his embrace, so selfish and full of an impossible love as she reaches up to nuzzle his cheek again. But his request surprises her, and she pauses a moment to examine his handsome face, searching every hollow and valley to see if he is teasing her some more. But he seems serious.
“You make me feel the most loved.” She whispers, leaned just a little back and feeling fragile. “From the very first moment I saw your violet eyes, and every flower I see that matches them, I know exactly where I belong. I know exactly where my home is. I know exactly what it is to be loved.” She touches her lips to the corner of his mouth, and it isn’t quite a kiss because she will not take more than what he’s willing to give, but it’s just barely more than the nudge she meant for it to be.
Her face heats and she glances away from him, letting the racing of her heart slow in her chest before it leaves behind a web of ugly cracks. “And the ocean. I love that something so vast and beautiful exists.” It is a weak attempt to take the focus back off of them again.
