Catchism: On Northern Wings, On Northern Winds

[catch]

night-dark, black-dark. an
unfamiliar summer's heat.
a dauntless-summer freezes
at night;
a dauntless-summer is warm enough for
sage
thin, pale flowers
and leaves of dusky evergreen.

where the morning sun
glints off of frost.

his dreams are vague dreams of
frost
of a northern home
not dauntless, but like
a dauntless even-colder
more grim
a product of bloody breeding.

overwhelming, he would wake
excitement, like blood
like a battlefield
COME, but not in such words.

a bold thief,
perhaps
seeing only the breeding.
seeing not the furnace within.

from darkenhold stables;
COME to his Dauntless Queen.

[Carnath-Emory]

snow flattens into ice beneath the weight of her small boots. nose to the window-pane, when she dares; even winter-chilled breath can fog fractal envy into the glass. wanting. wanting. they're dancing in there, mismatched and not much

in harmony. they're dancing in there to the tune of clashing steel, and when one of them stumbles she hears his yelp even through the glass. smothered laughter; for a moment the world tastes of damp wool and snow

they're dancing in there and she wants and wants. snow doesn't care for much but killing and neither does she

hairline fractures chasing through the sky, great glass plate collapsing beneath its own furnace heat and the snow is soft like slush beneath the weight of her small boots. the creeping shift of glaciers. ice cracks like frozen branches like your bones under an axe and she startles

awake in a rush, dead-weight limbs and gasping. This is not unusual. This is every night for years. Awake, and it was a gasp instead of a shout, and that's worth something, that's perfect, except that the world smells like Heat and she cannot shed the taste of it.

Pale limbs emerging from a tangle of tumbled bedding; she fights her way free of it all and this, too, is not unusual. But is there not something, an indefinable something - like the heart rushes for the sound of storms - so that her hand is hasty, fumbles blindly for clothes. Finds a loose shirt and some trousers, and that's how she'll move for the windows: untucked and dishevelled, with the boots still tucked under her arm, because she's not sure, really just not sure -

Even when below, a creature halfway curious and ill-inclined to admit it stretches lazily from the stables.

[catch]

he is there, the stallion black
a darkness in the darkness;
firm, familiar friend
his nose put in the hands of
another.

a man.

the man, cloaked in a
wolf's skin
in rich, warm ambers
in golden creams
dressed not for this weather, but
for a weather North.
for fractal ice and rotted snow.

man and beast stood together,
together,
like old friends. like old breeding.
but there is a time that a man
must turn his head.
must turn to gaze up at a woman.

his eyes are a startling pale-green.
his eyes are set behind a fringe of waved, sun-kissed hair

he cradles the beast's great head in his hand
and at a swordswoman, smiles.

[Carnath-Emory]

This is so far from probable.
And it is not entirely impossible.
And

"How do I tell whether or not I dream?" a man once asked, and
"When the finest things are fragile as well," she'd whispered, solemn beyond words. "Then it is no dream. When I dream, beauty is always terrible."
He sleeps right now, that man, and not far from here. Or else he drinks wordless toasts this very moment to things best left forgotten; things so scarred into blood and bone and spirit that forgetting does not begin to be a prospect. Some nights she joins him in this, for they are not unalike in the scars they wear and their opinion of remedies. This time, though..

This time, she's a narrow shape framed by a windowsill, pale-cheeked and staring. Had, shocked moments ago, straightened hard enough to make a fool of herself with her head and the window-frame; a moment already forgotten, banished by the specter of coppery furs, a bearing that borders on the militant. By the moonlit glitter of absinthe eyes, when he lifts his head just so, and this is simply not possible; she was never, in any case, much made for Belief. It must be Hrimfax, in the end, who decides the matter for her. Hrimfax, haughty under any circumstances, disdainful by nature and with the innate arrogance of excellent breeding, but -

"You must understand," the General had explained, "that he will suffer other hand but mine. And yours, now. Yours."
- his ease beneath this man's touch is unmistakable; his sudden warmth.

Should he look again, this figure, this impossible shape, he will find that window-frame very empty. But only because she is quick upon staircases, quick enough to have the heart racing by the time she's reached the doors. Quick, when she comes free of stone and glass, barefoot on the tiles because there was no time, no time for anything like boots at all, and she does not slow, does not begin to, until she's grown close enough to be sure.

This is how one very quickly renders a swordswoman wordless.

[catch]

he is horse-sweat. he is leather
and oils upon that leather, to keep
them supple in bitter winds.
to ensure that straps,
at a pivotal
time
do not shatter, do not break.

if she does not trust, then
let the nose tell her.
a military nose of
sweat
and leather.
and oils.

he, in military bearing
and wearing the crest of his House,
his eyes, his eyes, a poisonous drink
and yet, could look so warm

he does not forsake his stallion's head; that is not
his way.
but there is a hand for her, for Airy Ann
a hand, and words.

"Ariane."

His voice honey-rough from noble bearing
and parade-ground shouts, both,
and howls upon a battlefield.
his cheeks are a sword, to cut through wind
and his eyes are a need.

he holds out his hand to her, the other with his horse
and the General admits a weakness, a terrible
terrible
weakness.

"I've missed you so."

[Carnath-Emory]

It is the strangest thing. Sweet and strange, and - Is this real? she might have asked, not quite sure, if it were someone else standing here with that smile.

It's not.
It hasn't been, for years.

He will know to expect the quickness of her eyes; she makes no attempt to disguise their jarring examination. He will know to expect the long moment during which she does not begin to speak at all, for they'd been easy with their silences, all those years ago, easy with their company and their unquestioning accord. He will find that a swordswoman who'd given little thought to bare feet and shirt's loose fluttering has made a study of leather and pelts and of features that were sometimes, were sometimes

"This once. I'd have you ride with me this once," he'd said, and she'd reckoned it so strange that she was grim-faced company for a man suddenly so casual with his smile. Hidden things, that smile said, too steadfast to seem quite boyish. Secret things, that smile said, and all unsuspecting, she'd climbed into the sudden scent of

leather and horse-things; other things as well, and she'd never known the names for them but she'd learned their purpose years ago, in a single hour that scalded her mind with shock. She is eyes for these things as well, eyes for a crest which whispers horses and gilt, and she cannot find her words but there's no mistaking his name, even in the moment he speaks her own.

"Eriks?"

She is a stillness compromised by the shape of his name upon her lips, by the tangled shift of her hair when the wind catches at it just so, but when he reaches for her, when he reaches

his hand to draw her up into the saddle, a thing which they never - which they never - and even that was nothing to the sudden warmth of horse-hide and leather, nothing to the moment that a steady gallop became something far more, her hands like claws upon his shoulders as she

winds her fingers around his own, bird-bone thin and not without their strength despite it, not without the rough callus that is the cost of her craft, and her eyes are not even for that. Not even now, when she looses her breath in something like relief, like and not quite, because her eyes are for his, and what she reads there now is a thing that she has never seen.

[catch]

the cold north does not breed soft souls. he
with poison-drink eyes,
the product of breeding
the highest of breeding
was not bred to softness, but
instead
to the feel of a sword. the pattern of
a battlefield.
of armor upon a chest.

she says his name, and he smiles, and says
Ariane.
can a man not dwell in a southern land
and melt, finding there a precious
silver
bird
and sterner souls than he have perished
beneath that quickn'd blade
that mercury skin.

yet, gentlemanly, to the last
he brings that captured hand
to his lips
a sun-roughed kiss with sun-roughed lips
and he would not begrudge her, should she pull away.

For you, Ariane, says he,
I come here for you,
and Hrimfax, stallion-black
stirs,
uncertain
suddenly.

animal instinct had sang to his soul,
and now, the smell was strange.

[Carnath-Emory]

The things we want.
The things we have, never knowing.
The things we whisper to ink upon a page, when words penned in ink are all that's left, and she had. She had, when unavoidable duty called a man away to distant, frozen reaches, and she

knew, two years ago, what it was to read a letter which could not begin to fill the absence in which it was left. knew what leaving looked like, knew what it was to resent the need while admiring the man's willingness to answer it. and were the willingness less she would admire him less, but how unbearable, all the same, that a tangle of circumstance would take, and not even permit her to hate it for the taking.

Gentlemanly to the last, but she'd known him as a warrior before she'd known him for his courtesies. Upon Myrken lips he was the General, more fitting a title anything a gentleman might sport; the General, when he gathered the Militia beneath his firm hand; the General when he marshaled them like troops while the Baie wreaked its havoc upon Townsedge. And when he gripped a mosnter's elbows in these capable hands, when he held her still so that a bloodied swordswoman could put a knife through her throat -

Oh, in those moments he was Eriks, my friend.

Eight years later, she still keeps the shirts he'd lent her that day. Folded carefully in a clothes-chest, never worn but always kept. Bethau ag ngwerth is the name for these: precious things, things with meaning. Eight years later, she is barefoot and windswept and watching so closely when the grip of his hand signals its intent. She is parted lips gone unsure with their words; she is nothing like frowning but grave as winter ice, and when he lifts her hand to his lips

ink on paper. the words he'd never spoken aloud. and if he had, if he ever had, in any moment of any day, it might have come to this. it might have been

the strange, strange warmth of his kiss upon her skin. He was Eriks, my friend before he was gone, and after he'd left it was Eriks, who I desperately miss, but eight years had passed between then and now. Eight years had murdered her and started her over; eight years had built a stronghold upon these empty fields, eight years had filled her heart in ways it still struggled to comprehend.

Everything had changed.

Once she might have met his kiss with startled eyes and sudden, breathless laughter. But tonight he will not begrudge her, should she pull away, and even as Hrimfax's uncertainty crawls through the edges of her mind

she does.

[catch]

"I came for you," the General said,
for a memory plucked
from a horse's mind, a dragon's thought
in child's-whisper meeting.

from Hrimfax-words he was
created
made
fashioned for an Airy Ann
for eight years, eight years of apologies
of dying, of death
of ink set to parchment,
of forbidden words,
of cream-thick wool, smelling of
cedar and lavender
summer-mountain-smells both.

his lips, his hand, were
a firmness.
but even then, she pulled away
for eight year's wounds were fresher still
then lips were wont to admit.

and those poisoned eyes were a hurt,
a flashing of impotent rage;
how dare she? this thing he had made
this man that she loved
was it not for her, his Airy Ann?

Hrimfax, noble beast, could stand no more
and pushed his way to woman's side,
for the hand that gripped her, now, still-firm
writhed with a thousand
bodies
a thousand, hungry mouths

and skin black as boot-polish.

"I waited for you," the drow-Glenn said,
his glassy eyes a burning red,
from which maggot-eyes did peer.
"I waited, and waited, ever so long,"
his voice still Eriks-tainted, and yet
held the youth of anguished boy.
his hair is wild, full of pine-scent
leaves
and a heart ripped bare by anger'd claws
a mind that was open, throbbing,
devoured by a thousand
tiny
mouths
all wearing Rhaena's veil.

"Why didn't you come for me?
I waited
ever
so
long."

[Carnath-Emory]

"Words," a man had once said, "can be weapons as much as steel. A calm breeze in the evening, soothing its reader to a lull; a bee's sting, a killing blow. Suffering", he'd said, and she'd listened, avid student to a man well-acquainted with the dimensions of such pain. "Suffering is

a thin, cold lance through the ache of her heart. This is what it is to be haunted: eight years of apologies, of dying, of death; eight years of ink set to parchment, of horse-things and hidden things and all a girl's secret, secret dreams. Eight years' absence, fashioned into the man she had once loved, a shape come sudden onto her lawns to speak the words she'd once longed to hear. She doesn't even have her boots, that being her haste; dropped those long ago, careless in her rush to be sure of him, half-certain that if she were anything but quick she'd find him gone, like phantoms always are. Like phantoms maybe ought to be, for this is eight years of longing come five years too late -

Everything has changed.

What a silent thing the swordswoman is, but he would know, had always known, how a girl might sometimes struggle to find her words. How ineffectual beneath the grip of his hand, and hers does not free itself unkindly; never that. She is as gentle in her demuring as she knows how to be, looks long into eyes that glint like the promise of summer storms and

his rage had flattened her as surely as the fist to her face, and oh the vacant hunger of his violet eyes

this is suddenly so familiar. Like the weathered warmth of his years-ago smile; like breathing and steel and the sickness that worms through her gut even before their hands become host to his squirming disappointment. Familiar like knowing, and she does not tug her hand away; caught in the grip of the familiar she does not even try to. Her smile is a surrender to bleak inevitabilities, cool as steel and silent with its regrets, and it does not falter even beneath his scalding rage. It does not yield until his face becomes

"I'm sorry," she'd whispered at that last. When he was a drowning man, staggered and pale. When he was a dying thing,
haggard with his hunger and crushed by too much. "I'm just so sorry -"

"This is an abomination," she shouts, sudden steel from fingertips to wrist, and it is all the weight of years-long outrage. Abomination, she shouts, and perhaps in the end she does not even mean herself.

[catch]

abomination
abomination.
drow-Glenn utters a rattling hiss,
anger, and hurt,
the rage of a hundred men, a
hundred men for Airy Ann,
who bent their knee, tugged their fetlocks
hoped, until the last, for this;
a bird-boned hand,
a silver bird
shot through
with a silver lance.

for a moment, the fingers tighten,
as if to pull her closer.
as if to put those maggot-writhed lips
upon hers. a child's vain hope,
from a dream that he hardly knew that
he was dreaming.

to kiss a treasure,
forbidden kisses
not meant for one
like he.

"Like a stone-wrought hand, you pull away,"
he says, Eriks-voice, Glenn-voice,
and another that is tenor, sing-song
familiar in it's hurt.
"yet, you pull away,
as if your past is not a precious thing.
as if you hadn't a hundred men
a hundred throats to sing;
Ariane! Ariane! noble knights
and poison-eyed general -
and what is a Mapmaker, compared to
that? a man who tried, and could not
ever
fight."

hours in a salle, steel upon steel
and she had vowed, never again.
her hand cold steel under
maggot-hot hands.
Hrimfax a throaty hiss, but did not strike
as he ought; for this thing was
a tamer of
Caliir.

a cancerous growth on a simple man
a lie take by a thrice-twined beast
it gave him this, a power, to stretch
to Airy Ann in his dreams.

for a moment, he is there,
and her hand grasps nothing, for there are no hands
to grasp. mad eyes filled with
silver tears
undefined.
a human face on
the neck of a beast.

then it was gone, apparition
and Catch, eventually, may wake
from his dream. but for Airy Ann,
this was no dream. naked feet on
summer-warm earth
a hot Hrimfax trembling next,
and, at her bared toes,
a single,
winking
maggot.