"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
s she has gotten older, she has been able to wander farther from Islas. They have been two intertwined pieces of seaweed drifting in an empty dark sea for as long as Kamaria can remember. Loess and its darkness swallows them whole, showing no signs of spitting them out. The shadows’ weight feels heavy in a way she cannot quite explain — as if the dark were pulling her down into the red clay of her home and turning her bones into stone. Kamaria has fought against the pressure of the darkness so she can stand up every time she wakes up and so she can convince her mother she is strong enough to wander alone.
And one day, Kamaria decides she is strong enough and old enough.
She still hasn’t fully learned how to control her emotions, but she can send enough comfort to Islas so she can slip away quietly. How long had she been dreaming about this plan? Kamaria cannot count the number of times she has fallen asleep with thoughts of something other than red rock and sand under her feet. She has seen the mountains looming behind her eyelids; she has heard the roar of northern waves on granite cliffs in her ears; she has smelled the sweet greenery of an island jungle in her nose. Kamaria’s sleep has been plagued by the wonders of what lies beyond Loess — beyond her mother and those melancholic dark eyes — and she feels the heat of excitement warm her legs as she walks through the darkness.
It doesn’t take Kamaria long to wander beyond what she knows of Loess. Although they spend their sleeping hours within the walls of a cavern, she has explored almost every inch of the red kingdom. The perlino girl might feel tired (sick, even) beneath the pressing eye of the dark, but that has not limited her childish playfulness. Her navy-striped legs guide her to the east of her home, where she knows the mountain range looms like a great sleeping beast in the darkness.
When she crosses the border, Kamaria feels something like a sigh slip out of her lungs. A weight lifted — or perhaps more like a door opened.
( THESE DAYS I DON’T PRAY WHEN I CLOSE MY EYES
I JUST BITE MY TONGUE A BIT HARDER )
Each time he comes back he thinks it will be the last time.
He thinks he will be found out.
He thinks there will be someone waiting for him at the border.
They will turn him around, send him away.
Will his mother be there waiting? Will she weep as she watches him go?
Will Este?
He sticks close to the border each time he comes back so, if they do have to watch, they will not have to watch him long. But there is some comfort in knowing that they share the same space, the same air. They are here somewhere, his mother and his sister, and they are probably together. Because Este is shrouded so horribly in the stench of death and his mother so rarely leaves her side because of it and he wishes he could stay, too. But it stings his nose. It makes his eyes water. He wishes he were strong enough to fight it, but he is not.
This is as close and as far as he can get.
The darkness at the edge of the forest where it meets Hyaline. Perhaps they will never find him here. Perhaps he can leave here indefinitely, skirting between the shadows. But he is such a brilliant white, laced with the most brilliant blue. There is no hope of remaining undetected.
He is deep in thought when he hears something and he thinks, finally, they have come for him. He searches through the dark for the figure that has come to take him away. But it is a child he finds in the dark instead. His heart leaps up into his throat and he hurries toward her.
She does not smell like death.
But there is still so much danger here.
“You can’t be here,” he tells her urgently, though there is no way for him to know just by looking at her that she is not a shifter. “Please,” such a mournful plea, “please, you have to go.” Or what? Will they kill her? How terribly it bothers him that he does not know if he has only been spared because of who his mother is.
lthough Kamaria was born into the darkness, it does not call to her. It is all she has known, the inky black illuminated only by the soft glow of her skin and the strange, thin halo of light in the sky. Yet there is something about it that doesn’t sit right with the girl. The darkness is mysterious. Kamaria is aware of what it has taken from her and her mother. She has watched Islas’s haunted eyes stare deep into the shadows, lost so completely in its depths that the girl wonders if her mother will return. She has heard stories about her father, how the darkness has pulled him away from them and turned rocks into beasts.
She knows she is forbidden from visiting the northernmost lake. Kamaria also recognizes the worry that creases her mother’s face when they travel beyond their cave. While the darkness is more familiar to her than the sun, she knows that she should be afraid of it. The perlino girl should cast looks over her shoulder every few steps, especially when she wanders alone. She should return home when the darkest shadows dance and crawl closer to her pale legs.
She isn’t afraid. She doesn’t look behind her or return home. Even when the darkness outside her soft glow shifts, Kamaria plants her feet and lifts her chin to stare harder into the shadows. Yet the dark parts and reveals a boy so purely white he could never be a monster. At first, she is excited. This will be her first time meeting someone by herself (her very first friend), and he is close to her age. But the urgency in the boy’s face and the tension lining his face dim her excitement.
“What? Why?” Kamaria’s voice is surprisingly aggressive for a pretty pale filly. The air around them feels empty and thin, reminiscent of the mountains surrounding them. It usually feels colder when there are Hunters (for that is what she calls the slinking, dark shadows that Islas hides her from) nearby. Her navy eyes flash with frustration, though she just barely manages to keep the emotion from seeping out. “What are you so afraid of?”
THESE DAYS I DON’T PRAY WHEN I CLOSE MY EYES
I JUST BITE MY TONGUE A BIT HARDER
He is gasping with his need to protect her, his narrow chest heaving, his pale blue eyes wild with urgency.
She does not smell like death but that does not mean no harm will come for her if they find her here. There is a biting edge to her tone that cut into the crevasses sunk into his skin but he does not let it deter him. He will see to it that she is spared from whatever fate awaits him, regardless of whether or not she thinks she needs his help.
“Only shifters are allowed in Hyaline,” he tells her. He has only seen Breach from afar and he has no desire to venture any closer so he doesn’t know exactly what she is capable of but he suspects that it’s ugly.
She asks what he’s so afraid of and he doesn’t immediately know how to answer. He’s afraid of so many things. There are so many things to be afraid of, doesn’t she know that? His brow furrows in confusion and his chest continues to heave with his ragged breathing.
“Everything,” he tells her, though this isn’t entirely true. It feels like it sometimes. It feels like the truth now. It feels like the world is crashing down around them. It feels like the darkness is closing in on them. It feels like something catastrophically bad will happen if they don’t get her out of here right now.
Does this make him a coward? Does it make him weak? None of that seems to matter as much as seeing her to safety.
amaria begins to wonder if the boy’s heart is about to fly out of his chest. Her dark eyes watch as his flared nostrils anxiously suck air in and then expel it. Kamaria feels no deep level of concern for the boy’s evident fear, merely an interest in the way his body heaves over something that seems minuscule to her. Could he die if he keeps going on like this? What happens if his lungs get tired from breathing like that? Kamaria has watched her body heal itself over minor cuts and bruises, but Islas had told her everyone did not share that ability. Does this white colt have that capability?
She is tempted to prod his anxiety further, just to see how long his body can handle it.
But he says only shifters are allowed in Hyaline, so Kamaria decides to avoid an experiment. Instead, she lets her navy blue eyes peer into the darkness. Islas had told her that the world used to explode with light — that they could see for miles, that there used to be bright colors and life — and the girl pictures what the mountains might look like. It’s an abstract image, not entirely like the reality of Hyaline’s western borders, but it’s pretty enough that Kamaria wonders why anyone would want to hide it.
“Well, that’s not cool,” she responds shortly. “Also, I’m just visiting. I don’t want to stay.” Her pale, dumortierite-freckled face turns back toward the colt. A cool expression lies on her delicate features, but beneath it, she tries to figure out what it feels like to be afraid of everything. She can’t imagine it feels very nice. Perhaps it even feels like how Kamaria’s mother feels lately (fatigued without her galaxies, unprotected without Tiercel, concerned for the life of her daughter).
A soft sigh leaves Kamaria’s nostrils, a sound that feels much sweeter than any of her previous words. Simultaneously, she clumsily gathers tendrils of peace and sends them in the boy’s direction. Perhaps they will hit too softly; perhaps they will hit too hard. She has only had her mother to practice on, but lately, Islas has been turning each happy emotion into something sullen and sad.
Regardless of how well her emotion works, Kamaria steps further into Hyaline and looks at the boy over her shoulder. “So, are you planning on showing me around, or are you going to go tattle on me?”
THESE DAYS I DON’T PRAY WHEN I CLOSE MY EYES
I JUST BITE MY TONGUE A BIT HARDER
Her lack of urgency does nothing to soothe his troubled nerves. In fact, her lack of panic merely compounds his. He feels it like an ache in his ribcage. A blade slipped into the meat of his lungs each time he draws a breath. He cannot make her understand the danger she is in and she does not seem to care. If not for the conscience gnawing so viciously at his brainstem, he could just let her go. Let her walk blindly into whatever violent fate awaited her at the heart of Hyaline because it’s evident that she does not care what dark things lurk there and he should not care either.
But he cares.
He cannot help himself.
It doesn’t matter that she doesn’t have any interest in staying, he doesn’t think, but he sees no use in arguing. (He is a quick study, Sela, and understands that whatever argument he comes up with will fall on deaf ears.)
And whatever peace she scrapes together and projects onto him is only enough to take the edge off. It slows his heart rate but only just barely. His chest still heaves with his desperate need for her to understand that there is nothing here for her.
He watches her venture further into the kingdom with a helpless expression, his brow furrowed fiercely, his heart hammering. He will not tattle on her, as that would be the quickest way of ensuring that harm found her. But he’s certain they’ll both be punished if they are found together. He swallows thickly, torn, anguished. Finally, reluctantly, he follows.
“Do your parents know where you are?” he asks, voice strained, “there’s nothing I’ll be able to do if Breach finds you here.”
amaria feels a quick flash of frustration spark in her chest when her emotion does little to soothe the colt’s anxiety. Islas told her that she would master her projections once Tiercel comes home. While this would be a pleasant thought, the pale girl isn’t sure if her father will ever return from whatever pit he was sucked into. Sometimes she catches herself molding an emotion into something so big she hopes he’ll feel it — usually, it’s a massive, writhing ball of anger.
It hasn’t worked so far.
Though she usually restrains herself from actually sending the anger out.
Despite her frustration, there is a quick sort of pleasure that runs through her when she hears the boy’s steps follow her. Yet Kamaria is curious if he would have stayed at the border, lungs heaving, if things were truly that dangerous. Or is it a sign that things are worse than she thinks, that the boy would follow her into a place he is scared of?
Though he is a few steps behind her, Kamaria does little to slow down her pace. She has gotten past the border patrol (as she thinks of him), and now Hyaline is a new world to explore. She can’t slow her momentum now or risk getting dragged back to the beginning by the nervous boy. Her navy-tipped ears flick back toward him as he asks about her parents, and she thinks of her mother resting quietly, perhaps still trapped in Kamaria’s faux-peace.
“They know enough,” she responds, turning her head slightly to catch the colt’s expression. Could he maintain his panicked state while they walk? Kamaria wonders (and briefly hopes) if he will topple over from the sheer torment on his body. “Breach? Is Breach really bad enough to kick out a girl visiting from a neighboring kingdom?”
He feels only a glimmer of her frustration as it spirals through the both of them, weakening as she moves to abandon him in favor of exploring the territory despite his warnings.
It is plainly evident that he will need to regroup, figure out some other way to convince her to go home. Should he tell her that other monsters lurk here? That they will snatch her up and carry her away? He doesn’t want to frighten her, he only wants her to be careful. His vision strobes with his own worry as he follows her into the darkness, heart pounding.
She walks purposefully and he struggles to keep up, tripping over roots that he ordinarily would have known to avoid. (He has moved quickly through these woods in this darkness many times, working hard to remain unseen, and knows precisely where to put his feet and the only reason for this clumsiness is distraction.)
He asks about her parents in the hopes of slowing her down, turning her thoughts in a different direction, stopping her and turning her around. Perhaps if he can get her attention back on him he can coax her back to the border and away from the heart of the kingdom.
But he is more easily manipulated than she is, it seems. He swallows at her question, nodding. “I think so,” he says and he means it. This is not a scare tactic. “I think it’s only a matter of time before they’re going to tell me I have to go.” There is an edge to his tone when he says it, like he’s not certain if telling him he has to go will be the end of it.
Would he be able to smell his own death coming?
“Why do you want to see it so bad anyway?” he asks.
he boy seems to think this Breach is dangerous, that her power is enough to keep a wandering girl away from the mountains. Kamaria rationalizes his objections with each statement he makes. Although she isn’t very knowledgeable on the various territories of Beqanna, she hasn’t heard of anything bad coming from Hyaline. And Islas has warned her about venturing too far from her side — but Kamaria had attributed that to the darkness, the monsters crafted from shadows, and the disappearance of her father. Her mother hadn’t mentioned staying away from Hyaline specifically, just a blanket statement that covered the world altogether.
Kamaria slows her steps when the boy mentions having to leave, and suddenly it occurs to her that he is living here, despite his fear. He knows who Breach is, what she might be capable of, but the star-girl had found him in Hyaline anyway. She becomes more interested in him, beyond wondering how long he can maintain his panicked state. Kamaria’s navy eyes look closer at the boy, and she quietly hums as she studies his face.
“If you’re so scared, why are you still living here?” Her question is stated plainly, but there is no ill-intention or mockery behind it. “And what’s the big deal if they tell you to leave?” Based on the anxiety that already tightens around him, Kamaria imagines the boy would leave without a fight.
At his question, the girl’s head swings around to observe what she can through the haze of her soft glow. They are enveloped by trees, so different from the stark spindly ones of Loess, and she pauses to touch the leaves with her nose. They’re brittle in the absence of the sun, but their shape is unique from what she is used to seeing. “This place is different from my home,” she says, “and I’m tired of being watched all the time.”
Has she never loved anything?
A better question perhaps might be: has she never loved anything enough to let it make her stay?
He can feel her scrutinize him, even through all of this terrible darkness, but he does not let it make him feel self-conscious. He is not embarrassed by how fiercely he loves the things that keep him here. The sister who reeks of death and the mother who works so diligently to sustain whatever life force remains.
“My family is here,” he tells her, his panic still thrumming wildly in his throat. A caged thing, wild. Unhinged. Worse than nothing, he would be lost without them. Aimless. Simply a wandering thing. Adrift with no direction. They are the tethers that keep him grounded. The only things in the world that give him any kind of meaning.
“I don’t want to leave them.”
Never wants to leave them. Except when he is driven away by the stench of death, when he cannot stand it anymore.
Finally, she stops and he abruptly does, too. He folds his wings tightly against his sides and sucks in a sharp breath, still trying in vain to steady the erratic beat of his troubled heart. But she does not look like she is any closer to leaving as she brushes her nose against a leaf.
She is tired of being watched and it occurs to him that he is the one accustomed to doing the watching. He shifts his weight, swallows hard.
“I’m watching you,” he points out, as if this realization might annoy her into leaving.
