Birds are singing overhead, and nothing is as it should be —
Iscariot opens her eyes and the sky has turned from the bluest, darkest night to a clear outpouring of white sunlight, not a shred of cloud to be seen; it sends a spear of pain through her eyes and into the back of her skull. The dirt under her cheek — well, it’s not even dirt anymore, it’s bright white sand burning a heat signature into her skin. Wind roars past and ruffles her thick hair. The ocean is howling a few yards away, showering her in a foam of salt. (At least she thinks it’s the ocean, can only assume it’s the ocean, considering she’s never seen it before.)
All of this could be ignored — explained, even — if not for the birds.
There have never been anything but crows at home. And so, of course, this cannot be home.
Fear spikes through her like lightning and Iscariot surges to her feet, hooves slipping in the sand, her balance compromised for the second that she goes scrabbling for a grasp — she feels her heart pounding in her mouth with the ferocity of something scared and sick, and oh she does not want to think about her marking but even the word sick makes it unavoidable, and she can’t she can’t she can’t not look—
She turns her head over her shoulder, and the marking is stagnant, just as it was yesterday. The feeling of relief that hits her is so strong it nearly knocks her off her feet.
Her whole head buzzes like a swarm of something, a song black and deep and dark in the back of her mind. The island (it is an island, isn’t it?) is thrumming much in the same way, like a heartbeat, a current parallel to the one that pulses through her brain. The air is horribly humid, presses in on her throat tight as a hand. The threat of rain is still prominent; Iscariot feels it deep in her bones and in the way there is a storm collecting on the very edges of the horizon.
The beach is empty, but footprints still reign dark in the sand. Iscariot shakes her head, loosing a shower of grains, dry leaves and partially crushed shells; the skull wrapped into her braids is too stubborn to budge, and so are the tiny turquoise beads in leather. The smell of home (something heavy, smoke and tobacco, something sort of green too) breaks into the air around them, loosened by her movement, and Iscariot’s shaky breath is somewhat soothed by it.
Birds are singing in the trees, and nothing is right —
He isn’t a fan of the island, not in the least. It is too perfect, too vibrant, too much of everything, and he often feels overwhelmed and vaguely like crawling out of his skin every time he steps foot on the picturesque beaches. Yet, he still keeps coming back, pulled back by forces he can’t quite name and doesn’t understand, making the trip across the obsidian bridge and stepping down upon the powdery sand.
Usually, he finds himself alone, the other residents of Novus having delved deeper into the island to uncover its mysteries. Today, however, his eyes are caught by a figure on the beach, and his breath abruptly catches in his chest.
He thinks of his father’s letter, the little bag of coins he and Hex had found on the tavern stoop. You boys have an older sister, Hex had read out loud, her name is Iscariot. At the time, he had been jealous of her name, of how it tasted like power and like wanting in his mouth, of how the syllables had come so easily to his twin’s lips. She is cloaked in shadows, marked with the earth, and her horns reach to the sky. She is wild, like her mother, and you will know her when you see her; I have made it so. The boys had argued for days about whether or not their sister resembled them, resembled their unknown father, and in the end neither had been able to reach a conclusion that pleased both of them.
In the end, he had almost forgotten he had a sibling besides Hex, that he had a family at all.
He recognizes her, some primal part of her, and perhaps their shared blood is singing in their veins, because he can’t help but move closer until they’re nearly touching, only a foot or two between them. “Iscariot, yes?” He names her, and his voice burrs a little against the word when he realizes how close in shade their eyes are, both of them amber and glowing beneath the sun, at the twinge of childish jealousy that still rises in his chest when he remembers how silken Hex had made her name sound.
He is, somehow, not entirely surprised that they have met here, on this strange island.
He still doesn’t trust it.
“My name is Valefor. And, I believe,” His mouth turns up in a shy smile, the very tips of sharp teeth poking out from behind his lips, and his tail sweeps across the sand behind him. “I believe that we might share the same absentee father, if the letter he sent me was any indication.” He wonders, briefly, if she had received the same sort of letter, and even more briefly what sort of magic his father had included that made recognizing her so easy.
Iscariot’s head pounds in the dark. The black sky feels like a blindfold—no matter how much she beats her eyelashes and blinks, she can’t seem to shake it out of her head, the impending shadow at the edges of her vision. Her pulse feels sort of sideways. It’s banging in her legs and her neck instead of her chest. Though she stands perfectly still against the crashing, foamy waves and the breeze that spits salt into her nostrils, she feels woefully off-kilter, like the nauseous churning in her stomach is too wild to bear.
Then she hears her name, and thinks for a moment she has lost her mind completely.
The girl turns. Her skin ripples with the impression of cold, and her movements are stilted from the soreness of her joints. But even incapacitated she can be a fearful thing, and her eyes are brilliantly lit when they turn to Valefor, looking him up and down with a gaze that burns full of suspicion. Something tugs at the knot in her chest, though it’s not quite recognition. The way he says her name—the fact that he knows it, even—it makes her eyes narrow in suspicion, and her shoulders tense as she turns to face him.
She does not miss the sharp edges of his teeth, poking over his lips, and it does not settle her nerves at all.
But none of it could have prepared her for what he says next.
Iscariot’s heart skips like she’s fallen down a set of stairs. Her eyes blow wide, her lips part, her head jerks back and the bones in her hair rattle as she moves, jaw tilting upward, nostrils flaring. Matthias—the name scrapes from the inside of her ears all the way into her brain, it makes her skull hurt. For a brief moment she is enraged that he lives and her mother does not, that she is left scraping up to save for a sickness while her brother lives well-fed and placid.
For a brief moment she is enraged, but then she notes the shy, sweet curl of his smile, and oh, how can she blame him for the faults of their father?
Her jaw tightens, and finally Iscariot forces herself to smile back, small though it is. “You might be right,” she says, and her voice is rough from disuse but not unsweet. Finally the shine of her eyes is interest and not panic. She reaches out to close the distance between them and brush her muzzle against his forehead; it’s been long enough since she was last around a family member that she can hardly hold back the desire to be close to him. “Forgive me that I do not know your name.”
He cannot help the way that he shies away from her surprise and her panic, the way his ears pin back against his skull and he tries to curl into himself, make himself much smaller than his towering height could ever allow. Even his tail tucks beneath him, almost brushing against his stomach, and he might have looked pitiful if not for the fact that the bulk of his body only made him look faintly ridiculous.
He longs for the cobblestone streets of Caeleste, sometimes, that he could be back to when he and Hex had run amongst the alleys together, back before the growth spurt that had sent him towering above his peers. They had been hungry, after the tavern owner had left them to their own devices, and they had never quite known where they would be sleeping at night, but he had still been small enough to hide away from the stares and the anger.
There is no hiding, now, not when he had shot up like a weed to tower above most people, not when he had almost eaten Alderaan out of house and home when Winnifred would bring him over to visit and it had never been enough, not when he’d been growing so fast and so much that his body basically demanded fuel at all times.
He breathes out when her lips touch his forehead, lowering his head so that it might be easier for her to reach him, and his own muzzle presses into the curve of her neck. How long has it been, since he has been shown the kindness of a family member, since he has felt like he belongs somewhere or to something other than himself and the terrible curse he carries?
“I’m glad to meet you,” He will tell her about Hex later, he decides, will tell her about how their brother has disowned them all, about how Hex had grown bitter and cruel in their homeland. “Have you -- have you ever met our father? All I know of him is in the letter he sent me… I had hoped you might be able to tell me about him.”
How long has it been? Since she’d thought of him, since she’d heard or remembered anyone besides her mother? And longer still since she’s felt anything like love. Iscariot’s breath rattles against her teeth, and her eyes drift closed. Valefor’s muzzle is blisteringly warm where it meets her neck. And yet for all Iscariot’s griping she can’t find a single thing to complain about. Not the warmth of his skin, the cool-salty breeze of the ocean, not even the thing nestled against Iscariot’s heart that still pangs for the family that hasn’t reappeared.
She sighs. A whoosh of relieved breath, an exhale that stings and grates. She squints against the sun; her swath of dark lashes flutters in protest, but she cannot, will not, look away. What a handsome brother she has! And so different from her, too. Light where she is dark and fiery where she is dull, tall and bulky as a giant when lit against her small, sharp frame. The pleasure and the pride that overcomes her as she steps back to glance at him is only partially severed by the question he asks next.
Iscariot’s nostrils flare, and her lips press into a deeper line. Perhaps her eyes darken, but that might just be the light, playing tricks as harsh as a mirage in the Mors.
“No,” she answers. With heartbreaking honesty, with just a little twinge of resentment, sharp as tacks in the tone as much as in the back of her mouth. “I know nothing of him, only that he was a wretch, and long gone from my homeland far before I was born.” Iscariot has long since gotten over her anger. But what hurts her still, twists the little knife in her heart, is the hope that she hears in Valefor’s voice and sees shining in his eyes. The same stupid, infinite hope that she had found in Magdalene, sometimes, when she prayed or begged for him to return.
It had always rubbed her the wrong way. It had always made her teeth itch, sanded her mouth to the painful pink gums. And now this. Now her brother, asking for him—the one thing she has left, ready to run. How can she be kind?
She is so much smaller than him, and he feels the urge to protect her from the harsh world around them despite the fact that she is the older sibling, the one who would traditionally do the protecting. How cruel the world could be to the parentless child; was she an orphan, as well, or had her mother at least wanted her, loved her enough to stay? The question is at the tip of his tongue, but he can’t bare to ask it, can’t face the bitter jealousy that has always lingered just out of sight when he had seen the other foals with their parents -- not when he has just found her again, not when family is just within his grasp.
“I had hoped…” It was foolish to hope, though, wasn’t it? What had he hoped for -- that Iscariot might have met their father, that perhaps she could tell him that Mathias had abandoned them through some defect of his own, and not because they were somehow lacking? He doesn’t know how true his hope is -- at this point in time, can’t believe in it. All of the evidence of his life points towards the fact that he is the burden, the mistake, the unwanted child who was abandoned the moment he was born.
Instead, he pushes a hoof into the sand beneath them, the action a little too muted to be called a stomp, but still childish nonetheless. “That’s fine,” He decides, despite the way his heartbeat flutters in his throat, despite the fact he’s spent his life dreaming of the day he might meet his father or his mother and learn why they hadn’t wanted him.
Don’t say it, she thinks, desperate, bitter. Don’t say his name.
And he doesn’t. But his reaction still startles her, like a child’s reaction to being refuted, and her eyes and ears still blink and flicker in surprise—how can he be so young and so powerful?—partially she is afraid of his stature and the power of the muscles that ripple underneath his red skin, for she knows how easily he could overpower her, if he wanted to, and she shudders to think of who he might have already stepped upon.
Blood means nothing in the face of ambition, she knows. And though he has been nothing but kind Iscariot was raised to be suspicious, and even as she smiles at him there is a cold, fearful kind of gnawing in her stomach.
They could be just like each other, Valero and his father; Iscariot had known enough of the latter to know he was a piece of shit, and if their genetic misfortunes had been shared—well, that would be unfortunate. As quickly as she’d met him, he’d be gone again. As suddenly as he lived he would be dead to her again.
Stop, she tells herself, and with no small measure of anger. Be kind for once in your fucking life. She smiles again, perhaps a little stiff, but when she speaks it is with true conviction. “No,”Iscariot agrees. “We don’t.”
And with a shake of her head that rattles the bones in her hair she steps back from him, toward the bridge. She thinks of Leto, and her mother, and the book in her back. She thinks of the ache in her ribs and the splash of brown on her side. She thinks of the rot that must be building in her teeth.
