#flash fic

Oh, this immediately is giving me Narnia fic vibes. Maybe Eustace and Edmund and Lucy between VotDT and Silver Chair. A running series of conversations they have concerning events and stories that have happened. A lesson relearned in London and being remembered.

Oh I keep thinking of my OCs instead of fics. This would 100% be an Elliot and Beck story of some brother bonding over different coping mechanisms. I keep picturing them both in the kitchen at 3am…

Once the silence took hold, there was no getting him back. They arrayed monks around the boy all the same: kneeling in a circle and repeating their chant. The circle was to both to push the silence out if they could and hold it within.

His mother said the last sound he ever made was a laugh like they chiming of a bell, so they drew smiling faces along his walls. The boy sat, and stared, and waited perhaps for whenever the lord of the quiet came back. His mother, privately, with tears in her eyes, did funeral rights in the wee hours of the morning.

His father, however, summoned more monks and more nuns and they painted the walls yellow and sang nursery rhymes that he was frankly far too old for. Outside the walls, the people tied evil eyes to the trees, some of which clinked together in the breeze like gnashing teeth. What would they do, if the silence came for their children next?

It was his nursemaid, sitting by his bed, who saw Benjamin last. His head was bowed and he was silhouetted by the light of the moon, glimmering like a bite along his spine. She loved him best, she thought, and knew the last thing he did was not laugh.

The lord of quiet seeped in from the shadow of the dark and the nursemaid forgot in the way of dreams, how to move. The lord was grand like an ocean is grand and faceless.

He bade the boy speak. Benjamin opened his mouth, a ripping tearing sound, for the first in a long time. The nursemaid felt her own mouth press shut, prickling at the edges like a sewing needle through skin. She felt it, as she went inside herself and closed the door.

The ending comes and I carry on like a numb person looking for the beginning. I keep the lead around my neck, zip my fleece up over it. It is itchy, a strange outline, like a chain. It belongs to the moment when there was a breathing dog to take it from, and as long as I keep it there, there will be a dog to clip it back onto. When the night comes I cannot keep pretending because the silence is immense, so I take it off, and I cannot cry by then.

It stays on the bed, then moves to the box with all her things, and months later I will look through the belongings that used to be more than unfamiliar shapes, invoking memories, in my hand. The collar and lead are mouldy and I put them in the wash. Strange, washing the belongings of someone dead. I let them dry and I put them back in the box and when the collar clangs in my hand I pretend she is coming through the door to see what was taking me so long.

Tonight I water the plants. There are two leads around my neck again. The new one is grey. Reflective. I think that's good but we have yet to go for a walk in the dark - me and my new dog. I keep the leads around my neck when I water the plants above her grave. There is a tree there, a young sapling tilted imperfectly to the side, and I say hello and push back the grass with my foot to expose the horseshoe. Needs tending to again, I think, almost casually; something I can do for her. I think about her lead around my neck as I walk back to the tap. It no longer hurts, because her story lived through the ending. In the life I gave my new dog, I said goodbye to wanting her back. But dogs are loyal. Her memory stayed.

As if something prized, the jacket stood by itself inside the bottom drawer of her dresser, separated from all her other clothes.

Elain's new fae nose gave her the understanding that if it sat with her other clothing, his scent, still lingering in the piece, despite the many moths away from him, would pass to the other pieces. It was bad enough that her own skin revealed the bond as she had noticed on her sisters and their significant others; she didn't need that amplified.

In those initial months, she hadn't been as careful, had dropped it on her bed that very first day and kept it crumpled on the corner, beneath the pillows, perfuming her then delirious dreams with nutmeg and campfires.

The twins knew better than to disturb its presence from its designated spot, so even as they made her bed, they'd always replace it on the corner behind the unused pillows like an adornment. She had taken it with her the day they left the House of the Wind for the Townhouse and again as they were moved to the River House. She owned so little, only a few dresses and nightgowns that Mor had purchased for her and two pairs of shoes she alternated between in the days she bothered to leave her bed --- that jacket-coat alone was the heaviest and most striking thing she owned.

Owned. He would probably never ask for it returned, so she supposed that meant she owned it.

Nuala had asked if they were supposed to pack it, and she said yes. That day, when she had learned his name, spoken it, and in doing so branded her tongue like an enchantment. She didn't know why, but she couldn't leave it behind, like a hateful little comfort blanket a child might carry around.

Seventh son of Autumn. There had been significance in that, the wind had told her, but she couldn't for the life of her remember what.

(In those first nights at the River House, the smells had been so alien and harsh on her fae nose, that she had taken the coat and covered her head with it so she could finally sleep without the assault on her senses, coaxed into that safe, warm place in her dreams.)

She had considered throwing it away innumerable times, but as soon as her eyes met the emerald green fabric, the bronze silk lining, the vines in golden embroidery, the cuffs with cosmos flowers engraved, something in her heart ached. That spot he had tugged on her rib ached, and the thought of never seeing that coat again made panic surge in her very core, something akin to grief.

Grief like bile in the back of her throat — Lucien had spoken to her father on the day of his death, yet she had not. It wasn't fair.

And then there was the scent she so wanted to avoid, of something true and comforting. A son of Autumn, he had told her, but even if he hadn't, she would know. Nutmeg, campfire, chrysanthemums, her dreams.

When in her grasp, her hands gripped, and nails dug into the fabric exactly as she wanted to do to him. Shake him, fight him, demand that he release her from this torment. She wanted to hurt him, hurt him badly, but then the mere sight of pain in that burnt honey colored eye as their gazes crossed sent a spear straight across her heart.

Ever since she left that cauldron, her heart has felt as if pierced by a hundred ash arrows.

As she carefully folded the jacket-coat, she envied Nesta. Envied her ability to face Cassian and not flinch, not wince, not break. Envied that at least she knew him and that he had been on their allied side. The male who had called her his mate was nothing but a stranger who smelled of familiar dreams.

With time, the drawer grew less empty with the gifts he had given her. On one side, the gardening gloves sat neatly, and on the other, the box with the pearl earrings. She had loved the gifts; they had meant something, meant he had listened, watched, but that love exposed her bare, terrified her so much she couldn't bear to even look at them, much less use them.

So she hides them in the drawer, as if she could hide him in there, hide this hulking ever-pulsing feeling inside of her, so foreign and inseverable. If only she could hide her heart...

i bite my lip and start to inch closer to you. i know you still love me, i know you care, i know you love how my lips feel on yours in different circumstances. i barely remember your name. all that matters to me is what She told me to do. i have to kiss you.