"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
His heart pounds as he races through the thick trees, the stink of pine and sticky sap stinging his nose. The enormous wings at either side of him seem to catch on every rough section of trunk and low hanging branch that he passes, and he imagines a trail of white and golden feathers swirling behind him like dirty snow flurries. He chances exactly one glance back to check on them, but his goldenrod eyes are drawn immediately to the snarling face of the dark brown bear lumbering behind him.
He is very disappointed to find that she seems just as angry now as she had been moments before when he accidentally stuck his nose inside her den. Benji hadn’t realized that the odd cave was her home though, or that those strange sounds had been a pair of cubs playing together. Okay, and maybe he shouldn’t have stayed to watch them once he DID realize, but they were like harmless little murder machines rolling around together playing and there was something undeniably adorable about it. At least until a louder snarl had found him from the shadows and sent him retreating backwards with a slowness that might’ve implied he thought it would make him hard to spot.
That was not the case.
He does wonder why she is so determined to chase him though when he is so clearly retreating - and isn’t it not a good idea to leave the cubs unattended? But bad mom bear chases, and so he runs along a familiar path, knowing it leads to an open meadow where he can gain more distance from her. Except that his sense of direction is possibly worse than his common sense, and when the trees thin and disappear, it is to reveal a dead-end ledge with a very steep drop.
His legs lock and brace, and he slides to a clumsy stop as he whirls around to face the bear again, who is somehow STILL chasing him. “Who is watching your kids?!” He half-shouts in exasperation at the angry bear who very much does not answer him, of course. She just thunders closer all teeth and claws and bad attitude, forcing Benji back until one hoof slips on the loose dirt at the edge of the cliff. He tears his gaze from her reluctantly, perhaps even more reluctant at the distance to the ground below. His wings lift, but as always they feel made of stone instead of feather, and the lowest feathers don’t even lift off the dirt.
But they’re wings, right? And that is definitely an angry bear - a stinky one, too, now that she’s close enough to smell. So he turns and leaps, throwing those gold and white wings wide open. Kind of. A little open. Or just kind of a haphazard desperate flapping as he half falls, half glides into the tangle of forest below. He plummets, and by the time he lands his wings are half-wrapped around him and he most resembles a tossed, feathery stone.
Treetops bend beneath him, and the thickest branches full of green leaves are enough to slow his fall, but the thinnest limbs whip across his skin and open narrow slashes edged with welts along the sleek black. He lands with a crash, one wing pinned beneath him and the other stretched out above him where the bone caught and wedged between two large branches. All the air is forced from his lungs as he deflates with a strangled groan, splaying sideways in the wild undergrowth all knotted beneath the trees.
harbinger
the current is strong, my arms are weak
but you are the branch within my reach
— just let me hold you while you're falling apart, just let me hold you and we'll both fall down —
This part of the forest is quiet, though she doesn’t know why she always seeks it out. Everything about her is already quiet; her mind, her eyes, her heart. It’s not like she needed a sanctuary from a chaotic life. If anything, she needed the opposite of quiet. Something to shake her world up just enough to spark life into her dull veins.
But she has gone for so long now that the quiet has started to feel like security, and every time she dares to venture closer to the meadow the sound of so many voices and the sight of so many bodies makes her chest feel tight. She never knew what to say to any of them. She would watch them sometimes, from the safety of the trees that fringe the meadow. Their colors were all so bright and vibrant, and so many different kinds of magic that it seemed impossible.
She was so plain in comparison to their brilliance. She is lovely in her own way, she does know that. With a coat the color of faint, silver clouds, and wings full of downy-gray feathers, she is everything soft and mild, with placid, deep brown eyes to match. But she is not striking. There is nothing about her to catch anyone’s eye, and even if she might she is not witty or smart enough to hold their attention.
It’s ridiculous, she knows, to walk this secluded part of the forest and expect to make the kind of connection she craves. She knows she would be better off in the meadow, or even the river, because it wasn’t like companionship was going to just fall out of the sky—
The sound of something crashing through the tops of the trees just ahead of her makes her start, and she stumbles backward into the brush. She is prepared to flee until she realizes that it’s a boy that fell in front of her. Taking a hesitant step forward, with her gaze cautiously cast upward as she tries to figure out just, exactly, where he had come from, she finally turns her attention to the young stallion that now hung by a single wing within the vice-like grip of two branches. “Um…” she starts softly, wanting to ask if he’s alright even though it’s fairly clear that he is not. “Do you….need help?”
His heart still carries on thundering wildly in his chest even though the fall is over and there’s no sign of an angry bear falling into any of the other nearby trees. Admittedly, he can understand why she didn’t leap too, probably intimidated by how completely graceful he made his descent look.
But now the world is upside down - the sky, the trees, the grass and dirt. From this angle it looks like the uppermost branches are green roots buried in an eggshell blue sky. He blinks, and when he opens his golden eyes again he is disappointed to find that he is still stuck in this unbecoming predicament. To be completely honest, he has exactly one idea to get himself free, which is to flap his wings desperately until something happens. But the only happening is shooting pain in the pinned wing that stills him meekly almost immediately, and a tiny whirling tornado of three leaves on the ground beside his other wing.
He hasn’t even noticed the sound of approaching hooves, or the silver-storm girl who pauses nearby to watch his struggle, so when she speaks it does not matter that the voice is softer than flower petals and definitely not a sound a bear would make. He still thrashes wildly with a yell that is decidedly not masculine, though once his golden eyes find her and recognize her shape as girl, the sound deepens before he cuts it off abruptly. “Ahem,” he snorts like he definitely hadn’t been yelling, looks a shade sheepish but definitely not nearly as much as he should. "You," and he grins lopsidedly, a soft light adding new depth to his golden eyes, “are a very quiet walker.”
Then he’s remembering belatedly the question she had asked, and he has the gall to hesitate a second and try to rifle through his brain for a single excuse to explain this situation away. Apple picking? Not an apple tree though, so that’s not really a better reason. Or maybe he saw an injured bird in the tree ..are there even any birds in the tree? He realizes he’s been quiet longer than necessary to answer such a simple question, but she is so pretty, the color of the sky before a storm and with such soft uncertain eyes that the urge to impress her is overwhelming. “Well, there was a bear.” He says, and at least maybe that will make him sound brave. Except that he’s dangling from a tree like an apple. That crooked grin reappears again, more bashful this time, and he shrugs awkwardly. “I swear this tree wasn’t here when I jumped.”
And he forgets all about her question, to which the answer is very much yes.
harbinger
the current is strong, my arms are weak
but you are the branch within my reach
— just let me hold you while you're falling apart, just let me hold you and we'll both fall down —
She knows she should not, but she cannot help but to laugh a little at him. She tries to mask the sound, but her amusement still shows plainly in the smile on her face. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.” Her head tips sideways, as though it might allow her to get a better look at him from that angle. He’s handsome – even upside down and clearly in an uncomfortable position. It makes her cheeks feel noticeably warm, as she is suddenly overly aware of everything about her – the tangles in her mane, her soft but plain coloring, her unremarkable eyes. She probably looks better like that, all upside-down and not really in focus.
“Walking quietly is one of my strongest skills,” she says, light and teasing. “It’s how I find guys hanging from trees, before they can fly away.”
Her jesting tone fades at his story, and she glances up worriedly, beyond him. She can see, then, the face of the cliff that rises up from behind the trees. She looks back at him, her face one of confusion but still suitably amused. “I want to ask you why you didn’t just fly after leaping off the ledge, but I know that isn’t going to solve your current problem.” She walks a half-circle around him, staring intently at the way his wing is wedged between the branches. “I think I might be able to get you out though…” Her voice trails off thoughtfully, still looking upwards before her own wings spread for balance just as she rocks herself back. She is just tall enough to reach close near the top of his wing and, grasping it gently as she can manage, pulls it free of where it had been caught.
She winces at the feathers that pull loose and flutter to land near her front hooves that have just touched the ground again, grimacing apologetically. “I tried to be careful,” she says with a timid, unsure smile, stepping back to allow him room to stand. Her own wings pull tightly against her sides, the strange feeling of heat again washing over her as she says in a nervous rush, “My name is Keepsake.”
