well, it's a lonely road that you have chosen

[priorcommitment]

Ishiah appreciated the balmy weather that was the norm on Tabula Rasa. The days were sunny and warm, but hardly blisteringly so, thanks to the shores which comprised so much of the island's land mass, graced by steady winds and cycling air. Nights served as a nice reprieve from any glaring sun, light still teasing on the horizon and painting the sky in hues of blue and purple, fireflies mimicking the stars as they hovered about in the air. Although Ishiah knew that his primary objective was far from enjoying himself that night, he couldn't help but feel the tension leave his shoulder as he made his way on over to the Halloween party, intending to act as an unofficial chaperone for the night's activities.

But if the island often graced its inhabitants with ideal temperatures and climes, it still kept people on edge with its occasional and always unpredictable whims. That evening, the Compound was surrounded by a strange fog, lingering like smoke with occasional furls twisting in the air. Brow furrowing, Ishiah looked around for any possible source or cause of the damp air, running his hand through the nearest cloud, but could find nothing of special note.

So he stepped inside, and found himself burning under the sun in a flash of white feathers, barred with gold.

Comments

[priorcommitment]

The laugh was slightly jarring to the peri's ears, mostly because it seemed so incongruous with the situation. There was nothing humorous, there was nothing to be taken lightly, and with his mind slowed by dehydration and the sheer trauma that he was reliving, he could only wonder: why? Why was she not turning around as instructed? Why was she claiming that what they were experiencing right then wasn't real, and could it really be that she was so capable of pulling a trigger without remorse? Closing his eyes, Ishiah's gaze wandered to and fro as he pieced everything together. She was...

His eyes flew open with the realization that she couldn't have been from that time, her language too modern, her clothes not at all fitting the age— and more importantly than that, he remembered now that she wasn't of his world. That they had met on a beach, a bottle of liquor in her hand. Squinting his eyes, Ishiah tried to look past the scene in front of him, almost as though if he tried just hard enough, then he'd be able to differentiate between dream and reality. He tested his binds carefully, trying to ease his hands out of the ropes and letting his wings disappear in a shimmer of light.

Meanwhile, she hit one of the attackers, his face increasingly indistinct as the man hit the ground. When the others slowly began walking in her direction, Ishiah pulled harder, until the skin on either wrist was bleeding, but in a second he suddenly broke free, wings returning in a flash and spreading in a wide arc.

[radicalize]

There was a moment of pure shock when Lucy realized that she had actually felled her target, as if she had actually expected pulling the trigger of the gun to have a different effect when, of course, there was none. More startling, though, was the sudden reappearance of Ishiah's wings as he broke free, almost enough to stop her in her tracks. Almost, but not quite. Rifle still trained on those approaching her, expression unchanging and hands steady, though the rest of her was on the verge of losing it completely, she stepped backwards slowly, allowing her gaze to travel from the group of people, assessing the potential threat, to Ishiah.

"Come on," she called to him, half-pleading, though she would never have admitted to it, the hard edge in her voice all but masking it. Unreal or not, adrenaline kept her going, kept grief and fear from becoming too overwhelming. Even now, it took all the effort she had to keep from dwelling on the sight of the bodies of her brother. There were more important things at hand, but that was going to be the one hardest thing about this — leaving him, even dead. "We can't stay here, we need to — we need to get back."

[priorcommitment]

His wings hurt with every flap, harsh salty air meeting bare, open wounds, but physical pain on its own was no match for Ishiah's resolve. Already, he could see that there were more people starting to crowd around, pulling together their strength in numbers, in a way that he no longer saw half as often in the modern world, where technology had given man the tools to act on his own— and so isolated him, unintentionally. Kicking up sand with his movement, Ishiah swept over to where Lucy was, shielding her from the view of the crowd with the impressive wingspan, until he could have sworn that he felt the sharp edge of blades digging into the muscle. Felt the warmth of blood running down his skin, although he saw none of that.

Only a mangled body off to the side, one he refused to look directly at, given the bright red color of hair which shone under the sun. Cambriel, most likely. His head severed from the body.

"How do we get back?" Ishiah asked, partially directed at himself and willing an answer to come to mind, but he wasn't accustomed to dreams. Had never quite had them prior to the island. Peri, they remembered, but they didn't dream. Couldn't lose themselves in such fantasies and nightmares.

This was new.

"This isn't real— how do you know that this isn't real? And why... isn't that knowledge enough to pull us out?"

[radicalize]

"I know," Lucy said, more of an edge in her voice than was necessary, in an attempt to mask the vulnerability below it, "because there are dozens of corpses on the ground, and they're all my brother. It isn't possible. I've had this dream before, and..." Trailing off, she shook her head, eyes closing for a moment. She could allow herself to breathe, hidden behind the expanse of Ishiah's wings, even as a part of her was itching for a fight, desperate to make a point that the people she loved were not to be fucked with. Not Max, not Ishiah; she would do anything it took to keep it that way, including kill.

She lowered the gun anyway, having no need to keep it aimed at Ishiah's back, though she was ready to use it again if she needed to, the tension in her shoulders not yet dissipating. "What's the last thing you remember?" she asked somewhat abruptly, a way of saying that she didn't know why the knowledge wasn't enough. Because she didn't know, she had to figure it out. "Before you were here, what... what do you remember?"

[priorcommitment]

There was no point in trying to comfort her, Ishiah was fairly certain. Not because he did not want to— he only ever wanted the best for Lucy, showing a level of affection for the young woman that most peri never worked up to for humans— but instead because there was a feeling in his gut which told him that there was nothing to say which could make the situation better, that the only solution was to find a way out of the dream for them both. He assumed this, because now and again he caught the slight movement of tightly-wound chestnut-colored curls in the distance, and still the occasional flash of fiery red, both clear enough in his memory that he knew. He knew that out there on the field lay a person that he'd failed, and one that he was terrified to lose, more than anything else in the world. Being told that they weren't real, or that he shouldn't have been bothered, wouldn't have worked— Ishiah was trying it as they spoke.

Lucy was well-minded enough. If Ishiah couldn't brush either out of his thoughts, he doubted that she would quite be able to either, not when the two of them had met in the first place shortly after her brother left the island. So instead, his hands simply tightened on Lucy's shoulder, gripping it firmly.

"I remember..." he muttered, hustling the both of them away. He remembered sand dunes, he remembered a pair of bright green eyes, he remembered the heights of Manhattan, the crashing of salty waves against his calves. Slowly, he filtered through thousands of years of memories, heightened as some of them now were thanks to their surroundings. Unable to come up with a response, he instead stared at her clothing. "You're dressed strangely. Why are you dressed so?"

[radicalize]

Lucy took as deep a breath as she could, slow but anxious, all but trembling as she stared up into his eyes, jaw set. There was a desperate sort of desire that she could just barely keep at bay, that to act, to find an outlet not for just a few minutes, but three years worth of helplessness. Maybe no one here was to take the blame for what had happened to her brother, to the bodies littered over the ground, but the people they'd moved away from had still hurt Ishiah, and that ought to have been enough, could have served as something at which to direct all the feelings she had tried to keep pent up. Now, there was no need. This was a fight, both to deal with their surroundings and to get the fuck back.

That she wanted to return to the island wasn't something she would fully let herself admit in those terms, not being fully comfortable with it herself.

"Halloween party," she answered brusquely, waving a hand through the air to dismiss the question. "A friend of mine and I, we were going as a pair, it's... It doesn't matter now. The island. You were there, right? It was Halloween. There was fog on the path. Then you were here. If I'm here, that has to be how you got here, too, right? God, please, tell me it was." If it wasn't, if she was somehow alone in this, she didn't have the first idea of what to do, but the thought was far more despairing than it ought to have been. She'd thought she had it bad before, but that didn't compare to this.

[priorcommitment]

He could feel her body tensing, muscles working, all signs of a fight which still remained within Lucy Carrigan and not one that could be meted out with a few bullets rained on people from ages ago. And it was enough that certain questions came unbidden to his mind— how would he help her cope once they'd returned to the island, how would he solve these nightmares of hers, ones that she clearly isn't experiencing for the first time? It made his wings shimmer from so much of the stress, Ishiah's body temperature rising in the want it was wont to when times grew difficult, light bent by the heated air around him so that it shone even more fervently than before. A couple of feathers fell free, skimming to the ground.

It felt quite real. Detailed. Natural, after so many months of being essentially crippled by the magic of the island. A part of him, irrationally almost wanted to stay and see the story played out in greater detail. Anytime now, Robin would step out and come to him. Any second now.

But any second wasn't soon enough as Ishiah wrenched himself back to Lucy's inquiries. "Halloween party," he muttered to himself, trying to pick through the haze of his mind. "There was... yes, a party I had intended to supervise. I took the shortest route to the Compound, in spite of the air being thick with fog. Yes, this is— I got here that way as well. Perhaps once we walk out of said fog, these illusions will disappear."

[radicalize]

"That," Lucy said with a short, decisive nod. "That's what we have to do." It was what she'd been trying to get him to do all along, distinctly aware that this couldn't have been real, no matter how absolutely tangible it all was. Somehow, though, as soon as the words left her mouth, she felt her face fall, eyes brimming with tears all over again. Her brother was dead at her feet and she had to leave him, and real or not, she didn't know if she could. Sucking in a sharp, audible breath, one that, had others followed in close succession, would have been an obvious sign of her hyperventilating. She was trying to hold on, at least, but had no idea how to. Once again, the goddamn island had found her weakness, and as much as she didn't want to fall apart in front of Ishiah, it was becoming increasingly more of a possibility.

She swallowed heavily and held up a hand, the one that wasn't clutching a gun to her side. "I can't — Wait," she breathed, stepping back. "I need a minute. You can go, get safe, but I need a minute, I can't —" Her palm lifted to her mouth, stifling a sob and buying her a moment's more composure, cheeks flushed from crying, the effort it took to try not to, and the heat of the desert, one that trees from Vietnam had no place being in. "Not yet."

[priorcommitment]

The fact was that Ishiah had never really shed a single tear in his life. Not in the way that humans did, anyhow— his eyes had grown wet before to fend off dry, arid air, a practical response to the whims of the weather, but crying as a source of comfort, or to work past stressors, was something that he had never experienced. Watching Lucy, however, with tears pooling in her eyes and a red flush rising to her cheeks, was painful, and Ishiah was not sure at all what to do with that pain. Most of those in his life would have done well with a spar to keep them distracted, but Ishiah knew full well that Lucy was not that type— nor did he, honestly, want her to be. Even if she'd been able to pull the trigger on other people in this dream, he doubted that the satisfaction that came from the kick back of a gun would last any longer than the moment it tore against one's muscles.

He did know, however, that he wasn't going to leave her. Even if she wasn't crying, even if she had chosen to stay there by sheer stubbornness, he wouldn't have left her there. He knew that being alone was one of her great fears, and a part of Ishiah knew that it was his own as well.

From a distance he watched, noticing how much smaller Lucy looked right then, just a small being of color standing on a desert of white and green. So small that surely, she needed someone else there to give her more weight. And so Ishiah approached her from behind and wrapped his arms around her shoulders, one wing raised to block the sunlight from hitting her face too hard.

"Take your time," he told her quietly. All else considered, she was still his top priority.

[radicalize]

For a long few moments, Lucy simply stayed as she was, leaning against him and relishing what comfort it could provide. In the months since they'd met, Ishiah had become something like family to her, making this gesture now not entirely unexpected, but no less appreciated for that fact. This wasn't real, and it probably wasn't the worst thing to happen to her, but it still really fucking hurt, and she wouldn't have wanted to face it on her own. The mere idea of having no one was too frightening.

Finally, though, unsure how long had passed, every moment feeling like an eternity, she drew in a few deep, shaky breaths, her chest rising with every inhale, and nodded once. She wasn't ready, but it was close enough. "Okay," she said weakly, her voice not much more than an exhale. She had managed, at least, to keep from crying outright, though it took more work than she cared to admit to. "Okay. I just... A minute with my brother, and then we can try to get out of here." It didn't matter that it wasn't really him, that, at his word, he hadn't been killed in the war, that even if it had been him, there was no life left in him now. She couldn't just walk away from him, never had been able to.

[priorcommitment]

Even if Ishiah felt some amount of doubt over what good spending time with her brother's lifeless body could do for Lucy, he valued choice. That she was able to look at him with relative calm in her eyes and make the conscious decision to stay by her brother's body right then was enough for Ishiah to stand and wait some distance away. Close enough that the slightest disturbance would have called him back in a second, but that she had the time to speak her words without the peri overhearing.

And in that time, he looked back out over the familiar deserts, felt his breath grow shallow as he closed his eyes. The sun was still searing into his skin, and his throat longed for even the slightest trace of water. But throughout the nightmare as it played out, there was one thing Ishiah could center on as something almost positive. He stretched his wings out again, stretching them, fanning them, that important part of himself returned for a brief while.

"Whenever you are ready," he said to Lucy.