"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
come to me in the night hours, i will wait for you
There is a broken kind of quiet in her heart that never used to be there - a bruise that never healed. You can see it in the dark that hides in eyes that were once soft and warm and full of love, full of laughter. In the absence of a smile that used to curl the corners of such a beautiful mouth. It is the weight of learning that love is not kind, and that it is not beautiful, that a heart can only be relied upon to break. It is the absence of faith, and the result of years spent festering in a pain she does not know how to step away from.
A pain she does not remember how to live without. Who is she if she is not broken?
She feels isolated from her family - though in some ways she prefers that now, because she has learned that family, too, can only be relied on to break you. To hurt you. There is so much she does not understand - so much she never will understand - and maybe, in part, this is why she cannot heal. Maybe all those broken edges just keep her torn open and bleeding, and half-hearted bandages are not enough to fix it.
But at least this pain comes with remembering someone she loved more than she ever loved anything else. Like a blade splitting open the spine of her own book, her own body, baring the beautiful and the ugly so that she may never forget it. It is a gift, or a curse, and almost certainly the seed of obsession planted in rotten soil.
She returns to the forest, to the place where he split her neck with his teeth - and she knows the exact pond, the exact curve of bank beside dark water, just as she knows her reflection when she peers down at it. But even though she knows it, it is still the face of a familiar stranger - almost right, yet still somehow all wrong. Empty eyes, no smile, no sign of flickering firefly lights nestled in that tangle of a dark mane. But when she turns her head just so, she can see that old scar he left her, a slash now marked with his black and celestial blue. The only part of him he let her keep.
She watches for so long that she almost forgets to hold on so hard to this ruinous pain, to hold so tightly to a blade that just cuts deeper and deeper into her palm. For just a second, there is almost a smile as she remembers how it felt to have meant something to him, almost a gentleness in her brown eyes as she remembers how beautiful it felt to love and be loved. Then light flares in the star markings of her scar, pinpricks of impossible brightness that she immediately turns away from, leaving the water behind so that she doesn’t have to watch those quiet tears carve familiar rivers down her cheeks.
Luster
i can't help but love you even though i try not to
and underneath the layers, I find myself asking what's left a hollowed out form, the skeleton of a ghost, the pitiful echo of what once was
Castile’s resignation was not only from Loess.
His soul bled for days.
His heart shattered.
It was his own doing; he unraveled the perfect life they had because he succumbed to temptation like a starving dog eyeing a steak. Unfairly, he thought to hide the truth behind closed curtains, but it always comes out. It was only a matter of time until Sochi found Oceane and Alcinder. A lapse in judgment, he blamed, but the tigress had no room in her heart for forgiveness. One mistake, and she was gone.
Months flickered by, and Castile enabled himself to suffer. It was only fair to immerse himself in the pain – emotional and physical – as reprimand for his flaws.
Sochi told him to find her when this was over, when he was back to himself, but that hasn’t happened yet.
He wonders, will it ever?
Alone, Castile has found a small clearing in the forest. His body just barely fits in the limited circumference; his tail curls around his claws as they knead the soil underneath him. His head rests on a leaf bed briefly until a rustling noise captures his attention. It pulls him from the trance he has fallen into; his hollowed eyes peer up to see small twinkles of light blink in and out of focus. A beautiful serenity blankets across her, but somehow, Castile senses a similar pain in her. Their circumstances are different, but their souls are both broken, their hearts ripped from their chests. Her grief calls to his own.
Slowly, his immense head snakes toward her; she isn’t terribly far. Shadows cloak him, but from the darkness his mismatched eyes gleam. ”You might fall into the water if you keep staring that hard,” a deep pull of air is drawn into his lungs only to be exhaled in a half chuckle. A feeble attempt at humor, he admits to himself silently. ”Is it the memories that hurt you most, or the broken reflection staring back at you?” He has avoided looking at himself, refusing to see how his eyes have darkened and hollowed or how his mistakes have ripped him open. His wounds are raw and gaping, but to others – especially strangers – he is calloused and distant. A mask, that’s all it is, but battered souls always find each other in moments such as this.
There had only been one tragedy in this young girl’s life so far and she had reversed it, made it so it did not happen, and though the echo of the feeling still exists it fades each time she sees her sister alive and well. The knowledge that she can use her magic to change fate has emboldened the young girl, made her believe that she will never be touched by heartbreak again.
So it is that when she sees it in others, she does not recognize it for what it is.
She stumbles across the pair accidentally - she had been chasing a frog, marvelling at the way it hurried just ahead of her hooves every time she stepped a little too close. Spots line her body mimicking those of the frogs, though instead of deepest black they are just a shade darker than the crisp white of her body.
They disappear when she notices the mare, though, and the frog safely slips into the pond. As interesting as the smaller creatures of the world are, Beyza feels drawn to her own kind - there’s always something new for her to discover in them.
She misses, or does not comprehend, the words of the dragon - though they alert her to his presence. Those all-white eyes widen a little at the sight of him - and, unconsciously, a pair of snow-white dragon wings fold against her side, hugging close. They’re not the soft feathered wings she normally summons when she needs comfort, but she’s far too distracted to try switching them now. She’s only a little afraid, she’s grown up surrounded by monsters after all, and in the end it is the mare who had drawn her attention.
Beyza stares at the scar, not quite understanding that she shouldn’t, and then as she speaks - her white skin begins to twinkle with light, mimicking the shine in that smallest of galaxies. “You’re very pretty.” She states this the way she would point out the colour of the grass or the sky, or whether it was raining - a simple fact of life.
And then bits of the dragon’s speech comes back to her - enough for her to remember the word ‘hurt’ - and her crystalline face crumples into concern as she looks up at the mare. “Are you sick? Can I help?”
come to me in the night hours, i will wait for you
There was a time where such company would have delighted her, where his voice might’ve drawn a smile across lips so soft and pale. She can remember how much she had loved meeting others - how, inevitably, they had all become friends. But she does not remember how to be that version of herself anymore, and when the gravel of a voice that seems distantly familiar winds into her ears to settle among her thoughts, she all but flinches away from it. She could leave, she supposes. There is nothing to say she can’t, nothing that requires her to answer except a dilemma of her own manners - but it still remains that this voice in particular struck a chord within old memories. So she pauses, turns that beautiful blue and white face to the silhouette that moves toward her, gliding through shadow until it too pauses and her curiosity is appeased.
You never forget your first dragon - in fact, you may never forget any dragon ever. They are remarkably large and ill-tempered, and with entirely too many teeth. But he seems different than she remembers him being - so bold and brash when he came to clash with the people of Island Resort. He, much like her, seems reduced to a shadow of that former self. Just an echo of a memory, now fleshed out with time that has been mostly unkind.
“Then I will swim or I will drown.” She tells him simply, choosing in this moment that, for now, it does not matter who he was. She knows all too well how easy it is to become something else. But she doubts her choice at his next question, those chestnut eyes narrowing with pain and guardedness. “My pain is none of your business.” The dark around her grows deeper, blacker, and she is just about to turn from him, from someone who can so easily see her heart - and oh, how that scares her - when a second voice finds them.
She turns her face again, though she feels unsettled by looking away from the dragon for too long. Unsettled when she cannot keep her wary eyes glued to him. The voice, however, belongs to someone almost equally unsettling. All white like snow, like bone, like daisy petals - and while it should make the girl almost featureless, somehow she is not. Truly, the longer her eyes search and try to understand, the more she feels that this girl is carved from pearl and if Luster were to reach out and touch her, the girl would feel cold and unyielding.
Luster blinks when the girl speaks, drawn out of her quiet musings by the surprise that registers when those words take shape. Pretty? Luster’s honeyed eyes refocus and notice the dragon wings at the girls shoulders now, and the way her skin has begun to sparkle with new, twinkling light. It causes a pang of sorrow in her chest as it reminds her of someone else who used to shine that way. Her eyes close for a moment, hidden behind pain and beneath the furrowing of her brow as she turns her face from them for just a moment, trying to remember how to be whole. How to be soft and gentle and not so full of all these sharp broken pieces. But if she is as this girl says, if she is pretty, it is only in the way glass is when it shatters. Still bright and shining, sparkling at all those jagged edges, but dangerous to anyone who tries to reach for it.
“I am not ready for help.” She tells the girl quietly, tells the dragon too. “I am afraid of what I lose when I finally let go of this pain.”
Luster
i can't help but love you even though i try not to
and underneath the layers, I find myself asking what's left a hollowed out form, the skeleton of a ghost, the pitiful echo of what once was
In the murky shadows of the forest, there’s an apparition. It’s a flicker of white at the corner of his eye, a fleeting motion, that he slowly turns his head to acknowledge. She approaches slowly, taking note of them first, but Castile has already trained his eyes back to the soulful girl staring deeply into the water. While she may recognize him, it isn’t mutual. There were so many faces lost in the crowd that day on the island. With blood spilled on the sand, his attention was sickeningly focused on victory and conquering. The opposition only angered him more, blinding him with endless rage until everything finally ended.
So, he doesn’t entirely understand the sharpness in her voice or where it stems from; nonetheless, he scoffs. ”Have fun with that,” he quips, welcoming her to sink or swim. Maybe he should – would? – join her, but then again, the jaded tone of her voice steers him from the idea. ”Well damn,” his neck retracts, barely, but enough to exhibit a feeble sense of surprise. His large eyes blink, the slit pupils contracting eerily as they rise from her reflection to the guarded wall of her face. ”Duly noted, sweetie,” sarcastic humor drips from his lips, a half chuckle rising from his throat. Before he can say more – prod her, more like – the porcelain girl has joined them with bright eyes brimming with fascination.
Funny, he notes, how the two women so drastically contrast.
Bone-white and pure, the youngest of them lacks enough life experience to darken her face. There are no stress lines carving her brow or scars webbing her slender body. Castile notices, scrutinizes, before resting his gaze on the draconic wings. The tip of his tail flicks as he sifts through the rising emotions, determining to suppress it all for the sake of conversation, even if it is still odd to hold conversation in this body.
A disgruntled moan vibrates through him, trembling a nearby tree. His scaled brows stitch together and a frown upends his previous grin. ”What, am I not pretty?” As the girl brightens herself – my, what a beautiful little star – Castile responds by rippling his own color and altering it to match hers. The piebald pattern recedes, bleaching him to all white like her, even his eyes except for the obsidian, slit pupils that contract and dilate with the fickle lighting. An eerie look, he assumes, but he doesn’t bother to look at his reflection in the nearby pond. He doesn’t change either, not yet, as he inclines his head toward the first woman, still oblivious to their names. ”What do you think you will lose?” If there’s one thing he is familiar with, it is loss.
When the dragon addresses her, she does not expect it so she jumps a little in her skin when she returns her attention to him. For some reason, she had not expected him to speak. She can sense now, though, that there is an equine mind beneath the scaly exterior - a shapeshifter then? Like her mother, but certainly not as fluffy as Agetta’s favourite form. It’s an effort to reign in her magic before it can go any further, she has no wish to probe accidentally into someone’s mind again.
“Pretty is not the word I would use for you, no.” But Beyza does not elaborate, because she’s not sure what the appropriate word would be. Something close to intimidating, though she is not truly intimidated by him. Unique? She had not met any other dragons before. Instead she watches him for a moment with her crystalline eyes, unblinking as her head tilts in her regard. For a moment she is unfazed but a small sense of delight washes over her when he changes colour too - a beautiful shade of white cascading over his body, one to match hers.
She likes him better this way, though she does not say so (it would be rude, would it not?). But she smiles.
When he responds to the twilight mare, Beyza returns her attention to her as well - her draconic wings fluttering slightly at her side when she shifts. She frowns but says nothing, her own curiosity is tied up in her inability to explain what she is thinking and her wish to also know the answer to the question posed by the dragon. What could possibly be worth holding onto pain? Nothing she knew of, to be sure. She had whisked away death once to save her sister, to spare herself and her family from pain. It has not occurred to her yet that there are people who would want pain.
