"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
The autumn air is crisp and the sun is at its highest point in the sky, beaming across his back. Crowns stands at the crest of a meadow hill as he gathers the courage he needs. Failure will only cost him some scraped knees, he knows, but still, he hesitates. His dripping wings spread wide as he draws in a deep breath. Today is the day he learns to fly and he intends to do it solely on his own - no help from his grandmother or any of the aunts and uncles.
The boy gives himself a nod in some feigned sort of confidence and steps back before setting off into a gallop. His brows are furrowed and his gaze is focused entirely on the path ahead. He flaps his wings and kicks off the way he’d seen others do when they took flight, and for a fleeting moment the wind catches him. It isn’t flying, of course, but it is gliding.
Until it isn’t.
The breeze drops him unceremoniously and he tumbles the few short feet to the tall grasses and unforgiving ground. A grunt is forced from his lungs once he lands into a heap of legs. While others may find themselves discouraged, Crowns is not so easily dissuaded from his goals. He has had the faintest taste of what his wings can do and now he is ravenous for more. He rises up onto his hooves to shake the dirt from his sapphire coat, and then he begins the short trek up the hill again.
He will fall innumerous times more, but he will answer each sudden descent with greater tenacity and a wide grin across his handsome face.
Youth becomes her, but she knows it is but a shadow of what is to come.
She is striking, in the way of a rose unfurled, a viper ready to strike—walking the line of dangerous and meek as she makes her way from Pangea and into the common lands. Her face is carefully composed into the lines of innocence, but there is something beneath that speaks to more. To undisturbed bodies of water, to the ripples on the surface. It does not reach the belly of her, but it’s there if you look.
She moves gracefully, picking her way through the meadow when she catches the sight of him.
The slightest angle of her head, the sun catching where the ivory grows, her pale brown eyes studying him. She watches as he rises and then falls, crashing into the earth in a display of utter abandon that she could never imagine. What it must be like to fling ones self into the wild yonder, she thinks.
There is a moment, when she considers walking on—when she thinks of simply turning back home to where her twin and her parents await her—but she remains. Lips pursed, she feels the thrum of something closely resembling curiosity in the back of her viperous mind. Something nearly normal in its youthful hunger and it roots her in place as she watches him rise, shake the dust from his coat, and attempt again.
Finally, unable to bite down the questions any further, she moves toward him.
“Some would say this does not appear to be your calling.”
Her voice is nearly as delicate as her bones, sweet as poison on her tongue.
The smile that follows is soft, the sharpened edges nearly lost in the quiet.
Crowns has always been mystified by the things that go bump in the night. He has laid awake at night watching the moonglow catch the silhouette of some wild predator looming just outside his den. What would it be like, to meet them halfway and run wild in the witching hour? Could he also be some fearsome thing? These questions come circling back when she approaches him and he finds himself staring too long, too directly into her eyes. He is, as always, drawn to the darkness that looms in her.
He grins like the glint of a knife when she speaks. The boy folds his wings and approaches her without the faintest suggestion of hesitation. Nevermind the blood and the dirt caked to his legs.
“Then some would underestimate me. What could be better?” he asks with a triumphant laugh. He circles her loosely as he sizes her up, trying to decide if she’s the sort who could give him a run for his money if they had to tussle. But he lacks any hostility in his movements or the warm expression behind his eyes. There is only a boyish desire for violent games because he hasn’t learned to simply converse with others yet.
“Just you wait, though. In time, I’ll be the greatest at flying,” he warns her with a smirk. “My name is Crowns, by the way.”
He comes to a stop in front of her as he finishes his circle. There is a wildfire in his gaze, just waiting to be set free. He just needs to decide if she’s more like kindling or a torch.
He is wild and unending, cheerful and yet dark, and she finds herself confused by the implications. She angles a delicate head, peering up from behind lengthening lashes, petite in her youth and the hints of the woman she would become hidden in the softness of her face. Her mind whirrs silently as she tries to find the upper hand, to understand him, but she gives no such thing away, instead smiling that plain smile.
“And if they were right?” she answers sweetly. He doesn’t seem the type to bend so easily to thoughts of self-consciousness, but she cannot help but plant the seeds anyway—cannot help but wonder at what would become of the boy should the words become bombs to detonate later.
She cannot imagine that they will, but there is still so much of manipulation for her to learn.
Perhaps some would find themselves self conscious of being circled like prey, but she feels no such plucks of fear. What has she to worry in this world? Her mother’s very magic runs through the very veins of it. There was nothing in the shadows greater than those cast by Straia. She was sure of it.
So she remains relaxed, keeping an ear trained on him as he circles until he comes to stand before her again. She lifts her pretty head again to meet his gaze, to hold onto it. She feels that faint buzzing in the back of her head, that sweet rush as her newest gift expands within her, as though her very veins were flooding with it. Rosebay has little practice with the enthrallment, but she has even smaller self control.
“Crowns,” she practically purrs in her silvery voice, continuing to hold his gaze.
He throws his head back and his laugh is born anew when she asks her question. Crowns has only ever known victory in this life, even if it did not seem like it at first. But he brings his chin down quite suddenly and meets her eyes with that bright ocean gaze of his once more. Slowly, he steps closer, the sapphire blue of him reflected in her pretty eyes.
“Then they will be right for an hour, and I will be right forever after,” he counters with the remnants of his smile still holding fast to his charming face. He is unflinching in his confidence, but she will learn this about him in time.
And then she reaches into him with her gift, to stroke the strings of his heart and twist them into submission. His smile fades and he wonders if he should let her in or if he should grab her by the wrist and not let go. After all, he has learned that those who reach must mind that they are not ensnared instead. But he lets her walk through the door into his mind and he reclines to see what she does.
“I don’t mind it. Do you?” he asks her, the corners of his lips twitching into a grin like he might give up the joke prematurely. Crowns forces himself not to smile anymore, though. Quietly, so slowly that mere seconds seem to take several lifetimes over, he locks the door behind her. He throws away the key.
Something in him uncoils, but he bids it to be still a while longer, to hand her the reins and watch.
He feels of life, she thinks, and she cannot figure out if she finds such a thing intriguing or repulsive. Cannot figure out whether she wishes that he would rot into the deadened autumn leaves beneath them or if she would allow herself to be swept up into the tide of his boisterous laugh. It doesn’t matter though. So little matters in this moment where she dances within reach of the flames of his gift without knowing.
Her first lesson.
Let the singed palms be a reminder.
She does not think to defend herself as she maintains eye contact, has no reason to think that she would need to protect herself at all. Least of all against this boy with the wide smile and scraped knees.
The hum in her veins continues as she reaches forward with it, sinking into his ocean eyes.
“I do,” she says with a sweet simper, as though she was asking for directions or for him to accompany her home. Something kind and gentle and not the spilling of himself on the river floor. She doesn’t flinch though, her pretty face open, the youth clear in the pale almond eyes that look up at him.
There is a pause, an electrifying moment, as she feels herself stretch further.
She doesn’t push it though. Instead, she rests in the tension and lets it build. Forces herself to learn the delicate art of patience in the moments in between, letting the natural rhythms of disaster find them.
He watches her, the storm in his eyes building as his smile begins to return. Crowns takes a step closer when she speaks and he makes sure he’s close enough to see every microexpression that bleeds across her face. Her arm is extended to reach delicate fingers into his mind and now he takes her roughly into his grasp. He reaches back into her, thumbs through every memory like it will sate a hunger that has burned for centuries. Straia. Weed. Iris. And then there is her, Rosebay.
“Didn’t I tell you that I would be underestimated?” he asks, and the world around them goes black. There is only the sound of his childish laughter and the thunder of his pulse in his ears. Slowly, little glowing eyes open behind him, all wide and yellow. They are his favorite things - the unknown, the prowling, the gnashing monsters that dance away when he gets too close.
“If you like to play Simon says, then that’s exactly what we’ll do!” he announces as he steps suddenly from behind her to press his side to hers. “Simon says walk into the dark.”
And then he shoves her forward, still clumsy with his magic and lacking the finesse of his mentors. The dizzying wall of eyes are joined now by a chorus of chattering teeth. Crowns watches them, nearly hypnotized by his own creations until he remembers he is her puppeteer. He forces one little hoof in front of the other until she is inches from the largest set of teeth.
“Simon says don’t scream.”
A smaller mouth bites at her shoulder, then another. Their chattering is muffled as they all sink into her perfect, pristine baby skin.
“Bleed.”
Hot red blood seeps down the sharp angles of her young hips and chest, thick and slow-moving like honey. Crowns just goes on watching, grinning as he admires his work. He wonders if she would scream if he released her mouth. But then, quite suddenly, the mouths and eyes retreat and the dark is lifted. He releases her. Her wounds vanish from her skin as his too-loud laughter fills the air again.
If she is to be crushed by the display of power, it is only for a moment.
She is a bud that he presses between his thumbs until the petals bruise and come apart, but the fragrance that blossoms in its death is sweet. Her heart thumps in her slender chest as she feels the weight of his power overwhelm her own, as he snaps her spine beneath his gift—as he shoves her forward.
Rosebay takes that step, nearly stumbling, feeling her veins expand and the blood rush through her.
When she glances up, she sees the eyes and the teeth and the things that she cannot even name. She feels the enormity of it all press into her, surround her, invade her very being. She sucks in an air between her teeth and tastes her own poisonous mistake—coming to terms with the inadequacy of her powers.
The scream builds, as is only natural, but even that is muffled.
The terror whips through her and she grows dizzy with the fear and appreciation—the awe.
She feels her flesh rip apart, the teeth sinking into her until her blood spills and spills and spills. She does not try to deny or ignore the horror of it; does not close her eyes to the pounding of her heart and the way her mind screams at her to leave this place. But neither does she ignore the way she comes alive in it.
So this—this is what it means to push someone to the edge.
When he finally rips the veil apart, pulling her back into the light, she trembles from the experience, her thin legs straining to hold her up, her lips parted as she gasps for air that finally fills her lungs.
She takes several moments to right herself, to center herself, to remind herself that she is whole.
And although there is a cocktail of emotion within her—fury, terror, exhilaration—she holds it close and instead forces her young lips into the barest hint of a smile, forcing herself to meet his gaze.
He is a barely contained fire, just one wrong move from laying waste to an entire lifetime of hard work. And maybe he wants to stop biting back the urge to lose all control. His body seems to vibrate with the anxious energy but he is careful to put Rosebay all back together again when he’s done with her. There aren’t even scars to prove they’ve met today. Crowns isn’t sure she’s the type of girl who finds mottled flesh as fascinating as he does, after all.
But he is quick to feast on her fear and pick his teeth with the distilled dread that flows so freely from her heart. All of this and so much more is sweetened by the strange joy pulsating from her to him. He tilts his sapphire blue head and stifles the giddy laugh that tries to free itself from the tangles of his vocal cords.
“Do you like scars, Rosebay?” he asks, wide-eyed and grinning as he steps closer to her so their noses almost touch. How much would she let him bend her before she broke entirely? And could he ever fix it if he did manage to snap her in two? Questions abound within his mind and he’s almost tempted to answer them now. But anything worth having is worth waiting for. He will bide his time and drag their bonding out.
“We’ll take turns. Next time, I won’t stop you, and then you do the same for me,” he suggests with a gentle, doting kiss to her cheek. It is a promise, an oath that they will rip each other in two just to see what it feels like to play god. They will each be little lambs to the other’s slaughter and find a way to make a spell out friendship with the grease and blood of their games.
But for now, their fun is through. Tephra is calling his name and he has no choice but to comply.
