#vbp_virgil

[incandescent-eden]

Dullahan

Desc: A familiar figure from Medb’s past returns to her in the dead of night, blurring the line between storybook and actual monsters.

TW/CW: blood, mentions of death and war

Word Count: 1486

Author’s Note: I wasn’t aware people actually cared about Medb and Virgil? As always, any mention of “Warren” refers to Warren Sutherland, who belongs to @boffinsandbeasties!

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When Medb first came to the citadel, she carried only one book with her: A book of myths and stories from the old world, stories with names like Chang’e and Medb and Orpheus and Isis. She would run her fingers over the faded pages of the Queen Medb story when she thought of her father. What had he been thinking, naming her after a cruel queen from an era twice bygone?

There was one story she always skipped over. It wasn’t that the story about the Dullahan wasn’t interesting, per se, but Medb never had much interest in monsters. The drama of a headless horseman who dragged people away to their deaths was appealing, at first, but then the conscription began.

The Dullahan, she realized, was not so different from the soldiers she watched take away her father and cousins and friends throughout the world. She would watch at the window or peek from under her sheets as they went through town, collecting all the able-bodied people they could. Always on their horses with their swords.

Now, ten years later, she sat up with a start in her bed. She watched as a shadowy figure in her doorway approached her. Her sight had gone long ago, so she couldn’t see the cruel faces she once could, but she saw the head the figure held under their arm. A fog of something wispy and eerily silver in the moonlight floated up from above the top of the figure.

She shuddered. She remembered right before she was taken to the citadel, her father telling her, “Be brave, Maevie.” She remembered how she couldn’t see the soldier’s face. They sat high up on their horse, their face obscured by the shadows of their helmet, so tall and far away that they might have been headless for all she knew.

And now another Dullahan had come. Medb closed her eyes. If this was how it would be, if such monsters really existed, then she accepted her fate. Take her awayl, she dared the monster.

“Medb?” the voice came so soft she thought she imagined it. Her breath hitched in her throat.

“Medb, it’s me.” Virgil. Medb couldn’t think. It had been a year since they left the citadel to join the army they hated on their own whim, called into No Man’s Land by some strange force. “Medb?”

“Prove it,” Medb heard her own voice escape her lips. She had dared, once, to hope, to believe naively her family would return. She would not make the same mistake now.

The Dullahan paused. Medb opened her eyes, watching the blurry figure in front of her, the way their edges seemed to blend in to the air around them. “Prove you’re who you say you are.”

“I’m sorry, Maevie. I know you didn’t want…”

“Prove. It.”

Another long pause. At last, they started to speak. “Once upon a time,” they said in that deep, rough voice Medb had played over and over in her mind for the past year until she wore it down to the smoothness of the wooden drawers in her room, “there was a tree. It was a magical tree, and it was said that if you climbed to the top, you could see all the way to the edge of the world. There, the leaves are made of gold and silver and diamonds that sparkle because of the sun.”

Medb waited and listened, her heart beating faster and faster.

“If you plucked one of the diamond leaves, and if the sun granted it, you could make a wish. But there were rules. You had to find that specific tree. You had to go all the way to the top. And there was some magic involved. I guess, in the story,” they said softly, “it was up to the whim of the sun. I, um, don’t remember the specifics that well.”

“I wrote that.”

“I know. A long time ago. You wrote it to help Chris when she first came to the citadel. It was just a story, but maybe I believed it. I climbed to the top of the oak tree every single summer, Medb, trying to find those leaves.”

Virgil, running down the dirt path leading to the citadel’s gates. Virgil, reaching over their own plate to dig into Warren’s food. Virgil, showing Chris the proper stance to hold a dagger using a butter knife. The images flashed through Medb’s mind, years and years of memories she had forgotten about since her illness.

The after. Virgil’s voice, telling her she better not die or else they might kill her themself, coming to her through the thick haze of her fever. Virgil’s blurred form running away down the path again, but then running back to make sure she was coming, too. Virgil’s gentle “We got too big, didn’t we?” right before they left for the war. 

“I thought,” the figure continued, “if I could find the diamond leaf, I would wish that we could always stay together, just the four of us. I never could find it.”

“Virgil.”

And then Virgil stepped closer and knelt by the side of Medb’s bed. “Hi Maevie. I’m home.”

Their voice cracked, just like it used to when they were little.

Medb reached out, touching their cheek. Their jaw was sharper than she remembered it looking, and it struck her the last time she had truly seen Virgil’s face was when they were no older than sixteen years old, before she got sick. She wondered how they might have changed since then. She used to be able to count the freckles across their nose.

Her thumb brushed against something warm and wet.

“Ah,” Virgil winced. “Don’t worry, that wasn’t mine.”

Medb drew her hand away, bringing it closer to her face. There was a dark blotch on her thumb and palm where she held Virgil’s face.

She looked back at Virgil, this shadowy figure she no longer knew. The helmet they held under their arm was dark, though whether that was from the dim light or blood or her own fading sight, she could not be sure.

She pictured Virgil riding away on a horse the way the soldiers in her town had some decade ago, helmet under their arm, dragging someone else to the grave. She wished that someone would be her, and that she might be the last.

“What happened to you, Virgil?”

Virgil was silent. They moved forward, sitting at the edge of Medb’s bed and setting their helmet down. After a few moments, Medb realized they were holding their head in their hands.

“It’s okay,” she said, climbing out of her blankets to sit by them. “It’s over now. You’re back. It will be okay.”

Virgil shook their head. “I’m going back. I have to find - I need to -” They shook their head again.

“Shhh,” Medb whispered, reaching over to hug their shoulders.

Virgil stood up, violently throwing her off. Medb was quiet, laying in her bed where Virgil had pushed her.

“I’m sorry,” they said tersely.

Medb nodded. “It’s okay.”

“I - I need to go.”

“Stay with me.” The last time she said those words, Virgil had jumped out the window and run, knowing she couldn’t catch them. She held her breath, waiting.

“For a little while,” they conceded, lying down on Medb’s bed, their legs dangling off the side.

“For a little while,” Medb agreed, positioning herself in the same way and nudging their leg with her toes. She folded her hands over her stomach, listening to Virgil’s strained breathing, like they were fighting with someone or something even while lying there.

She turned on her side and reached out, stroking what she initially thought was silver smoke and now knew to be Virgil’s hair, left to grow long on the top of their scalp, dyed to a much lighter color. She wondered why they wore their hair like that, so different from the close cropped dark curls they used to keep.

Virgil’s breathing stilled as Medb lightly pet their hair the way she used to when they would get sick or when they were injured or upset.

“I have to go back…” Virgil muttered, but Medb shushed them.

“Not yet,” she said softly, and Virgil said nothing else of the matter.

They lay on Medb’s bed, the two of them side by side as they often fell asleep as children. Medb didn’t drift off until she heard Virgil’s breathing calm down at last to that of a sleeping person’s. She wished them sweet dreams, memories of oak trees and diamond leaves and nights at the library sneaking behind the matrons’ backs, willing the nightmares and the haunts of war away.

She found, when she awoke alone, that it was Virgil who was taken away instead, the spot by her side where they had slept already cool, as though no one had been there at all.

[incandescent-eden]

Stay (A Medb Story)

Desc: “Can I convince you to stay?” It wasn’t supposed to be this way. They were supposed to go together, away from the citadel. Medb wishes more than anything she could change things when her siblings are torn from her one by one.

Word Count: 3596

TW/CW: Lots of mentions of war

Additional Notes: The character of Warren Sutherland belongs to my amazing friend @boffinsandbeasties, who has so graciously allowed me to co-opt and butcher her truthful, angry boy!  Alternately titled, “The passage of time f*cking sucks”, possible prologue for All The Kingdom For A Song (working concept title), RAW/UNEDITED  

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It had started with a game.

There was a tree on the inside of the gate that separated their state home from the road into town. Virgil had been the first to climb it, but then Virgil was always the most courageous. Maybe they were just the most daring. Or the stupidest. The most reckless.

Warren had climbed up after, feigning rivalry with Virgil, but he could never quite hide the adoring tone of his voice. Then, after much teasing, Chrissy followed them up, crying all the while because the squirrels wouldn’t come near, and she wanted to pet them.

Medb would have been content with sitting at the base of the tree. It was cool underneath the tree’s branches, and the day was hot. She was wearing a new dress, and she would hate to ruin it already. There were creatures that called the tree their home, and she didn’t want to bother them. Her friends’ whooping and hollering was simply too annoying and immature, and at fourteen, Medb was too old to climb trees anyway, thank you very much.

But Virgil insisted. “There’s a cool breeze up here,” they said. “The sun on your face is different when you’re high above. The view -”

Medb groaned.

“Sorry,” Virgil said sheepishly. “I can guide you up! Come up! Chrissy’s eight, and she came up. You’re not more chicken than an eight year old, are you?”

“I’m not going to dignify that with a response,” Medb huffed.

“Please?” Virgil’s voice squeaked. As of late, Virgil’s voice was changing, trapped somewhere in between that scraping squeal of a fork dragged across a fine plate and the deep roar of the river crashing against the rocks.

Medb fiddled with her dress, smoothing it over her knees. “Okay.”

She got up slowly, placing her palm against the tree. The bark was warm and rough under her hand. “Do I just? Jump? Or what?”

“Jump and then tuck the tree between your knees!” Virgil called down.

“Right,” Medb muttered. Because hugging a tree with your knees is so easy when you’re wearing a new dress.

It took several failed attempts, and a bit of bruising, and a lot of shouted encouragement, before Medb managed to catch hold of the tree and shimmy her way up.

“Reach out to your left!” Virgil called down, though their voice was closer now. “No, my left! Wait, no, yours!” A beat later. “Your other left!”

Medb grimaced. “I’m not sure I trust you to guide me up!”

“You’re doing fine, I can take over if Virgil sucks at giving directions,” came the response. It was Warren’s voice.

“Neither are you!” Virgil replied in indignation.

“Guys.” Medb’s arms were cramped up. Her fingers shook as the ridges of the bark dug into her skin.

“Reach out to your right,” was Warren’s answer. “No, a bit higher!”

Medb’s fingers grazed against a branch. She leaned further until she could wrap her hand on the corner where the branch met the tree and hoisted herself up from there.

The quartet stayed in the tree for a while, Medb comforting the crying Chrissy about squirrels and heights and getting in trouble from her branch far below the others’, and Virgil and Warren laughing and joking and trying to outclimb each other.

“I can see the whole world from here!” Virgil exclaimed, their voice faint so high up in the tree that Medb wondered whether they had flown instead of climbing. “I can see past the gate and past the river, even! I can see above No Man’s Land!”

Medb chuckled as Warren boasted of seeing past No Man’s Land, seeing the ocean, seeing the edge of the sky. As they called each other liars, braggarts, losers. She leaned against the trunk of the tree, letting the soft sunlight tickle her cheeks.

At last, however, she shivered. It was getting colder.

“What color is the sky right now?” Medb called upward.

“The taste of berries and cream and the way oranges explode in your mouth!” Warren called back.

“We better get back down, then,” Medb reminded the kids. “We’ve been out all day, and supper will be soon. We have to freshen up.”

There was some grumbling, but even Virgil was getting tired and hungry, and they eagerly leapt from branch to branch to get back to the ground, followed by Warren, then Chrissy until Medb was the only one left in the tree.

“Jump, Maevie!” Virgil said excitedly. “We’ll catch you!”

But Medb laughed and shimmied down the way she came, carefully. The tree bark was cool now, and her palms felt cakey from dirt. She didn’t want to think how badly her dress was ruined.

“Don’t you trust us?” Virgil asked when Medb rejoined the group. Their voice was heavy and small at the same time, dense with disappointment.

“Of course I do, Virgil,” Medb replied, patting them gently on the shoulder. “But I don’t trust myself.”

Virgil shrugged, placated. They broke into a sprint back toward the dorms. “Last one back is a rotten egg!”

And another day ended like that.

  Warren was the first one to go. For once, for maybe the first time, it was Warren who came in first.

They didn’t want Virgil. The war had gone on for years, but the war needed more soldiers, and good soldiers follow orders and obey without question, and Virgil never could.

Medb heard them arguing from the other side of the wall.

“You don’t have to go! Damn it, Warren! You don’t have to do anything that they tell you to do!” The wall was thin, but it muffled their voice. Medb turned over in her bed, tucking her pillow above her ear. She could still hear them.

“You know, not all of us have the advantage of being you, Virgil. You’ll wake Medb up, please shut up.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means that you can do whatever the fuck you want, you can go rogue all you want, you can always run ahead and be the best at fighting games and athletics and battle strategy and not have a single care for what anyone around you thinks, and you can get in so much fucking trouble that you get your head chopped off, and you still wouldn’t care.” A pause and a sigh. “But I care. It’s my responsibility. It’s what we’ve trained for.”

“Warren, you can’t just feed into the corporate war machine! No one from the citadel or from the dorms has ever come back from No Man’s Land. And they’re recruiting younger and younger. It’s not right!” The room shook as a thud came from Virgil’s side of the wall. They must have punched it. Medb pushed the pillow against her ear harder.

“Is it more right to let other people die in the war in my place while I run away and hide?”

“Yes,” Virgil answered without hesitation. “Listen to me, Warren. People die all the time. People get killed all the time. And that’s on them and on fate. But they don’t choose to die. Don’t be a fucking martyr just because some man in a uniform came in and told you to.”

A long silence. Medb held her breath. It was a tense silence.

“That’s horrible.” And then, louder, and with horror, “That’s horrible! How can you say that? How can you say someone else’s life is worth less because they go to war? They died for a cause!”

“What’s the cause, Warren?” Virgil screamed.

Medb shut her eyes tighter.

No answer.

“I set out at dawn tomorrow. Good night, Virgil.” There was a slam, as of a door. Warren’s suitcase, perhaps.

“I thought we were brothers.” Warren Sutherland. Virgil Sunderland. Even their names sounded similar. It was what brought them together when Warren came to the dorms, a year after Virgil and Medb arrived.

But now Warren was leaving them.

“And I thought you’d be proud of me. You’re always going on about glory, the glory of war, how you’ll bring glory to your patron and to the citadel.” Every single glory out of his mouth was a sword strike, quick and stinging and forceful. “Is it too much when I get to be first?”

“It’s too much when you might die,” Virgil snarled. The thuds falling against Medb’s wall came more frequently now, erratic and desperate as the heartbeat of a frightened rabbit. Surely, it could not have mirrored Virgil’s heartbeat, because when was Virgil ever frightened?

Medb tucked her knees up to her chest, one hand still holding the pillow in place over her head.

“Good night, Virgil.” And no more talking came after, only Virgil’s frustrated cry, and a loud crash, like glass breaking. Warren’s exasperated “By the gods, Virgil!”

The next morning at breakfast, Warren was gone, and Chrissy asked Virgil what happened to their hand.

  Virgil was much more composed when Chris left. Maybe it was that she wasn’t going to war. She was going to find her way home, she said.

She went to find Medb before she left. Medb could hear her fidgeting at the doorway to the kitchen where she was kneading dough. “If you have something to say, Chris, you should say it before you go.”

“I wasn’t…” Chris’s voice cracked. She sniffled. Medb wiped a spot of flour off her cheek.

“Is it Virgil?”

“Yeah.”

“What did they say?”

Chris paused. “They um, they said I should just go. Like Warren did. Not make it hard for everyone else.” She sniffled again. “I… this is my home. I don’t want to leave it, but… I was contacted.”

Medb carefully wiped her hands on her apron, gesturing in the direction of the doorway for Chris to come over. She heard the shuffling of well broken in shoes across the kitchen tiles.

“But your patron contacted you, didn’t they? To have the blessing of a patron, isn’t that all we’ve dreamed about since we arrived?” Medb asked when Chris stopped a little away from her. She held out her arm, inviting the younger girl to come closer still, to stand shoulder to shoulder. Chris did as she was bade, and rested her head against Medb’s, shaking slightly. Medb squeezed her shoulder. “When did you get taller than me, Chris? I still think you’re eight years old and crying because the squirrels in the tree won’t play with you sometimes.”

Medb realized with uneasiness that she couldn’t remember the last time she had held Chris or dried her tears or told her a story. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had referred to Chris as Chrissy, and though it was Chris’s preference to be called thus, it made Medb think back.

Chris laughed, the back end of a sob caught on. “I think I’ve been taller than you since I was fourteen, Medb.”

“Well,” Medb said in mock indignation, “I cannot believe not a one of you told me!” She smiled, hugging Chris. “But… you’ve really grown, haven’t you? I’m sure your patron will be pleased when they meet you at last. Write often, will you?”

“Can you read my writing, Medb?” Chris asked teasingly, her voice thick from holding back tears, no doubt.

“I’ll have Virgil read it to me.”

“Can Virgil read?”

Medb laughed, shoving Chris away playfully. Chris giggled as Medb returned to her dough on the countertop. “Of course, they can, they’re not a complete twit. But I expect you to tell me everything, do you understand? Tell me of everyone you meet, your living conditions, the cadence of your patron’s voice, every song you play and hear and sing, the color of the sky each day. Every person you fall even a little bit in love with, and the color of their eyes. I want to know it all.”

“I wish you could go with me, Maevie,” Chris said quietly, taking Medb’s hands.

Medb reached her hand upward, felt Chris place her cheek in Medb’s palm. “That’s why you need to write me. So I can be with you, too.”

Chris shook her head, throwing off Medb’s hand. She drew back. “It’s not the same. Maybe I should just leave. Maybe I really am a coward for… for wanting to,” she hiccuped, “for, to, to stay.”

Medb reached out again, beckoning for Chris to return. “You’re not a coward for not wanting to leave home,” she promised. “Who knows what’s beyond the gate, after all?” When Chris complied and put her cheek, Medb felt wetness on her thumb. “When do you leave?”

“Tonight at sundown.”

Medb balked. “But, well, sundown? Are you sure?”

“Yes. My patron will send a shining golden stag, and I am to follow until I reach the end of the world.”

Medb’s stomach lurched. The room was cold, as if night had fallen suddenly, and she was caught outside. “The end of the…? You don’t mean to say - ?”

“I’m sorry, Medb,” Chris whispered. Her voice was high. “They say no one shall harm me in No Man’s Land, so long as I follow the stag.”

First Warren two years ago, and now Chris. No Man’s Land seemed to follow Medb, hanging around her like a bad omen. A curse upon her. “And you will write to me? When you are out?”

Not if, she forced herself to remember, when. When Chris had passed through safely, she would write a letter, and all would be well.

“Yes,” Chris promised, but she hesitated before she did so. Then, “The sky is the color of tart tangerines exploding in your mouth as you bite into them in the summer. I have to go. Tell Virgil I said goodbye?”

Medb’s voice caught in her throat. “I will.”

“Goodbye, Maevie. Until I arrive,” said Chris softly as she walked away, the shuffling of her worn shoes moving away from Medb.

And then only Virgil and Medb remained.

Chris’s letter never arrived.

  “No,” Medb said hurriedly, panic rising in her throat. She pushed it down, steeled herself against Virgil’s dresser, the worn wood smooth under her fingertips from years of Medb’s anxious rubbing against it.

“It’ll only be for a few weeks. The war’s gone on for years now. They’re running out of options.”

“You hate the war,” Medb said plainly. “They didn’t want you four years ago, why should they want you now? In fact, why should you want to go now? It’s not like you.”

“I want to bring glory to the citadel.” It was a standard Virgil answer. But that wasn’t the truth.

“It’s Warren and Chris, isn’t it?”

Virgil’s silence was enough to answer. “You can’t go, Virgil. They’ll never let you out to look for them. And what if you get lost in No Man’s Land?” I can’t lose you, too.

“I’ll be fine,” they replied, brushing off her concern. Medb heard the soft thumping of clothing hitting the bottom of a suitcase as Virgil haphazardly threw their spare clothes in.

“Don’t go.”

“Maevie, I’ll be back in a year or so. I’ll write you letters whenever I can. But I have to go; can’t you hear the call?”

Medb shook her head. “What do you mean, the call?”

“There’s something pulsing, Medb. Something coming from No Man’s Land, and it keeps calling me. I thought at first, maybe I could ignore it.” They paused, and their suitcase creaked and thudded shut. “But nothing to do about it now. When your patron makes contact, you have to.” They breathed shakily. “They promised… Warren.”

“Can I convince you to stay?” the indent in the top of the dresser was tiny, it just barely fit the tip of her pinky. She used to put her thumb over it, letting the little indent suck in the plump pads. It felt like there was a hole in her thumb, and she would imagine herself a little doll made of sand and burlap slowly draining out onto Virgil’s dresser. She used to wonder if she might drain out completely, and no one would notice until she was gone, and it was too late to restuff her.

It was only she who remained now. She could hear it in the way Virgil drummed their fingers against the top of their suitcase, the agitated da-dum like horses galloping away from her, carrying Virgil with them.

“I don’t know,” they said at last, so softly that Medb’s heart shattered.

She crossed the room, the room she had crossed a million times before, and sat down quickly on the bed, her hip colliding with the heavy suitcase. Virgil had always kept a space for her before.

“Sorry,” they mumbled, but Medb heard the guilt in their voice, and she knew they knew what she was thinking. The bed beside Medb sprang up as the suitcase was removed.

“It’s alright. Come sit with me,” she patted the bed. Virgil’s bed, she reminded herself.

They hesitated, but soon Medb felt the dip in the mattress to her side. “Remember when we used to hide out here? You and me and Warren and Chris? You used to put on play fights with Warren. Chris loved them.”

“They always turned into real fights,” Virgil chuckled. “I always said I’d be like an older sibling to Warren, but some sibling I was, huh?” their voice got quiet again at the end of the sentence. Warren’s absence hung in the room even after four years. It was like he was a ghost, hanging around and haunting them, begging them not to forget him.

Medb shook her head. She couldn’t think things like that. No use thinking the worst. “Siblings fight,” she reassured Virgil. “It’s what they do.”

“Yeah,” they said softly. “You and Chris never fought the way sisters do.”

Medb laughed. “Over what? Which boys are cute?” She waved her hand over her eyes. “I would have to just defer to her opinion. Besides, Chris was six years younger than me, worlds apart as kids, what was there to fight about?”

Virgil laughed raucously, and Medb was pleased, until she realized she referred to Chris in the past tense.

“Maevie. Don’t.” Virgil took her hand, squeezing it gently. “It’s been two years. That’s not so long.”

She took her hand away, patting Virgil on the back of their hand. “Silly Virgil, I know that. Come, stay with me. Reminisce with me, so I might convince you not to go.”

“There is no convincing me.”

Medb clicked her tongue, tutting disapprovingly. “You were always so stubborn, Virgil. But I’m stubborner still, you know. Stay with me.” She laid back in the bed, letting Virgil’s bunched up blankets nestle under her neck. “It will be too lonely without you here.”

“The children adore you. You’re going to become a matron at the citadel one day, it’s what all the authorities are saying.”

Medb snorted. “I will do no such thing. I’m simply waiting for Warren and Chris to return, and then we will leave, the four of us together, off for a new adventure. Still,” she continued, sighing. “I will miss the citadel.”

“Good riddance to this place,” Virgil harrumphed. Medb felt them shift beside her. Their elbow grazed her ear as they lay down as well. “But I’ll miss climbing the big tree out by the gate.”

Medb nodded sagely. At some point, the tree had become so familiar to even her that she could climb it in seconds. “We haven’t climbed the tree in a long time.”

“We got too big for it.”

“We got too big for a lot of things, didn’t we?”

Virgil breathed steadily, their chest moving the bed with them. Everything Virgil touched got infected with, well, Virgil-ness. Medb held her breath, letting Virgil breathe for the both of them. She pretended, at least, that she was letting them breathe for both of them, as though hearing the ups and downs of their chest might trick her own lungs into breathing and her heart’s aching into dulling. “I think you’ve grown too big for me, Medb.”

Medb exhaled, shocked. She turned to the direction of Virgil’s voice on their bed. “Nonsense. You could never outgrow me. Don’t say unreasonable things.”

She felt a hand briefly brush against her cheek. Not a hand, she realized. Virgil’s lips. So tenderly she thought instantly of a butterfly that landed on her last summer. Virgil was never so tender.

“I’m sorry, Maevie,” they whispered.

She didn’t have time to react. A cool breeze blew in.

The window.

Seconds later, she heard a low grunt and the soft thump of something heavy hitting grass.

She ran to the window. “Virgil!”

“It’s not that I’ve outgrown you,” they called back, their voice getting fainter by the second. Virgil and Warren and Chris and Medb, and Virgil was always the fastest, running and whooping alongside the wind on a fall morning, racing to reach the biggest piles of leaves under the big tree by the gate before the others could. “It’s that you’ve outgrown me.”

“Virgil!”

But it was too late. She sat down, her back against the wall, her knees to her chin. A few minutes later, and she heard the creak of the big iron gate at the front of the citadel opening. She wondered if Virgil would look back. Not that she could see them. Not that she would even stand so they could see her. But she wondered nonetheless.

The sound of wind rustling through tall grasses in the afternoon, she realized, was the loneliest sound in the world.

[incandescent-eden]

Sip of Water

“Can I have a sip of your water?” Virgil leaned on the table, running their hand through the tangles in their hair. Training had been rough today. They couldn’t seem to get any jabs in, and to make matters worse, it was hot. Virgil hated the heat.

Medb took a long, slow sip from her water bottle. “It’s not water.”

Virgil laughed. “Vodka, eh? I’ve always liked that about you, Medb. Kindred spirits, you and I.”

“It’s vinegar.”

“What.”

Medb made a face, her blank eyes unmoving, as if to say it wasn’t worth her time to even acknowledge Virgil’s question. “It’s vinegar. Pussy.”

She got up to walk away, leaving the vinegar on the table and Virgil confused.

[incandescent-eden]

Warren belongs to @boffinsandbeasties! 

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             “Warren!” Virgil was screaming. It shouldn’t have surprised Medb. Virgil was always screaming, always running, always raring to fight.

              “Warren!” they repeated, more agitated. “Come back and fight me, you coward! Face me like a real son of Mars!”

              No, what hurt Medb’s ears was the pitch of Virgil’s voice. Virgil’s voice had a strange quality to it, like metal scraping up against other metal, sharp but not annoying. They spoke with clarity and surety and a confidence that bordered on hubris. But then what would one expect from a child of the war god?

              Except Virgil’s voice was not assured, not today. Medb had never heard such rawness from Virgil. Virgil who never cried, never showed fear, never gave up on their ambitious, impossible, delusional dreams… Virgil’s voice was hoarse, cracked from shrieking for hours and hours on end.

              Shrieking was not like Virgil.

              “Warren!” they screamed, and Medb tensed. Their voice was thick and choked.

              Medb felt her way along the walls, her robes sweeping in front of her, slowing her down considerably. Her heart pounded in her ears ten times within each excruciatingly slow step. The stone was cool beneath her fingers as she followed Virgil’s voice until the warm sunlight hit her face, letting her know she was at the courtyard.

              Virgil was still screaming.

              “Hey,” she said softly. She took a slow step toward them, pausing to listen for a shift. Virgil was smart, they wouldn’t hurt her if they didn’t want the gods’ wrath upon them.

              A shiver ran up Medb’s spine. Perhaps that’s exactly what they wanted, though.

              The few demigods, frozen in place by Virgil’s outburst, parted to let Medb through, their murmurs of fear turning to those of reverence. She hated that. As if she couldn’t hear them whispering. She grimaced. Virgil was the more important matter at hand.

              They were still wildly yelling, but the screams were less coherent now, having faded from threats to Warren, demanding he fight them, to steady sobs.

              Medb stopped about two feet away from them. “Come on, Virgil, you’re making a fool of yourself. Warren’s long gone. He left hours ago.”

              They were still for a moment before collapsing in Medb’s arms like the walls of Constantinople when the Turks came, crumbling and pale. She held them tightly, felt their toned arms and back turn to gelatin in her arms, felt the wetness of their eyes on her shoulder.

              “We were supposed to be like brothers,” they whispered.

              “I know,” Medb said softly. She felt her way up until her hand reached their hair, stroking it gently. The buzzed right part of their hair was prickly beneath her palm. “Vesta bless you both,” she murmured. “Our goddess of the hearth will bring him back.”

              “She shouldn’t.”

              “Don’t be foolish, Virgil. We’re a family. Our lady will protect our family.”

              Medb felt Virgil tense up once again, all vulnerability quickly retreating. Even their body went rigid, less human and more stone. No, no, no, no, please, she implored the gods for just a moment more before rage overtook her friend. Not even Vesta listened.

              “He is no brother of mine,” Virgil said, pulling themselves free of Medb’s embrace. “Warren Sutherland is a coward who couldn’t protect his family or friends. He betrayed us.”

              Dead silence hung in the air. She imagined if she could see Virgil’s face, perhaps they would be watching her, examining her expression for a clue. Daring her to react.

              Sadly, Medb nodded. “Do not let rage blind you, child of war,” she warned, but she could do nothing more. Maybe if she could see their face, they would be taken aback. Maybe a tear rolled down their cheek as the stars streaked across the night sky, and Medb could make a wish upon that tear that Virgil would not know the pain of waging war against their brother, too, just one more person to rage against in a world they already confronted with anger and pain every day.

              Sensing no answer from Virgil, though the words hung so thick in the air even a blind woman could reach out and read them, Medb turned and began to walk away.

              May Vespa keep them both.