we're knocking knees in a traveling breeze; brigade

[brigade]

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

She touches him and it’s like breaking the surface of water—like finally cracking through the surface and finding that first breath of air to expand his lungs. He inhales and finds that his vision clears even as his mind swims with it. Without thinking, reacting as he always does, he reaches down and runs his lips over the curve of her neck to her jaw, breathing in the scent of her that concentrates there—the perfume of it.

He closes his eyes and rests his head for a second, pushing his forehead against her.

“Wolves,” he manages the word and wonders at the way that it feels like broken glass in his throat—how a concept that used to comfort him could be so cruel now. “I didn’t stand much of a chance,” he says with a bitter laugh because he had always dreamed of being a soldier when he grew up and although he is rangy and strong, he is no soldier now. He is a vagabond more than a warrior. A traveler; not a fighter.

He wants to tell her more. Wants to explain to her what it was like on the other side of the veil and how it was nothing like their time in her self-constructed dreamworld. How it was just grey nothingness until it wasn’t. How he was sucked into a quest that he had no interest in being a part of; how he had died again and again. How he had to relive his death and then give up a chance of life because he didn’t want it.

How do you explain to the living that you didn’t want to be here?

Instead no words come and he just exhales low and slow, not stepping away from the warmth of her.

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

BRIGADE