strangetrip | [EP] I am made of stars

Entry tags:

[EP] I am made of stars - OTA

It was night and everything smelled like the sea.

Snow White lay spread-eagle in middle of the parking lot, staring up at the stars. Her hair fanned around her head, inky black and, seeing as she hadn’t bothered to cut it since her arrival, growing almost absurdly long.

The sun had set over an hour ago and the sky was full into the black. The moon, not quite full but still nearly so, shone down silver and cool like a single huge, impassive eye. The sight of so much sky and so little horizon left her feeling dizzy, as though if she could forget the feeling of pavement under her back she might float upward and be lost in that eternity up there. It reminded her distantly of Mrs. H’s mirror and how it had caught the moon in its glass. But not enough to spoil the view. Not enough to make her afraid.

She’d had the nightmare again last night, the one where she was caught in the room full of fire. In the beginning it came every night. Then slowly but surely, it became less frequent. She hadn’t burned through the night in months. Logically, it would be months again before the fire, but she still couldn’t quite face going in, lying down, and closing her eyes.

She thought of Sansa and--because she had never asked--wondered if the stars in Westeros were different from the ones above her now. She wondered if that velvet black had a texture, and then if it was stupid to wonder that. She named all the constellations and stars she knew, some from her childhood observations, some from books she’d read in the library. Her gaze fixed for a time on Polaris.

She didn’t think anybody was around to hear her. “It’s so far away that no matter where we are, that’s still north.” It was a wild thought.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Drina and Kennick had been like that, too. Paul. And Emma. Jag took another drag, then turned the cigarette between his fingers thoughtfully. "You reckon everyone's got people like that in their lives? Or we're just the lucky ones?"

"We're lucky," Snow said with the certainty of someone who'd spent the majority of her life with no one to care thing one about her, not really. "Or maybe other worlds just suck less than mine. I don't know."

Jag thought it over, then nodded. "I think we're lucky, yeah. I mean, either way, really." Even if her world particularly sucked. It made her even luckier. And him too, by extension.

"Ain't a word I thought I'd've used," Snow mused. Though even when her stepmother had been trying to kill her, what had it been but luck that had kept her from actually dying?

"Me neither, for a while," Jag stated, and shrugged. "But I was a bit of a wanker back then. Still am," he admitted, after a beat. "But a bit less of one, maybe."

"I dunno." Snow didn't smile, she so rarely did, but her eyes brightened. "You seem all right to me."

Jag smirked at her, then lay back on the ground, pillowing his free hand under his head. "Well, you've got the improved version."

Snow snorted, and for a while she was content to smoke in silence. It was only when her cigarette was gone and she'd stubbed it out on the ground that she asked quietly, "Ever have nightmares?"

Once his own cigarette was finished, Jag had set it down on the ground as he killed the cherry, then started playing with a lick of flame winding around his fingers, until her question made him look up at her. "Doesn't everybody?"

Not the same way; he didn't reckon his nightmares were ever as bad as Curnen's, given how fucking poignant they were when she was awake.

Snow nodded. Logically of course she knew that, but it was another thing entirely to actually talk about it. "I'm not even scared of mine anymore. Just exhausted whenever it comes up fucking again."

"Like... when you think you're doing better about something, and then you really aren't?" Jag offered, his tone a little more guarded for what they were discussing.

"I guess so..." Snow mused, as if she was trying on that idea like a new jacket. She hadn't even talked about this with Yasmeen when she was seeking solace by curling up in the other woman's bed. "It used to happen every night. I'd just find myself in a room full of fire, with no way out. Now it just surprises me. I'm not sure which is worse."

Jag closed his hand in a snap, the flame disappearing with it, and turned wide eyes on her. "You have a thing about fire."

He was going to ignore how much that sounded like where he'd woken up, that one night, on Halloween, with all that fire he couldn't do anything about. At least those nightmares were few and far between.

Snow shook her head. "No, no. Not like that. Fire's fine. It's just... apparently it's just part of this curse I was under. That room. That fire."

And now a curse. Fucking brilliant.

Jag flexed his fingers, but didn't call the fire back, too self-conscious for that, no matter what she said. He looked back up at the stars, because he'd want someone to give him that sort of space, if they were about to ask him what he was about to ask her. "What kind of curse? Just - nightmares? Or...?"

"Sleeping curse," Snow murmured. "Just like the story. I ate an apple my stepmother gave me, only I didn't die. I'm not sure why the burning, though."

Jag couldn't help but look back at her, eyes wide with horror. "What the fuck, Snow." No wonder she'd said calling her stepmother a bitch was putting it mildly. "What the fuck was her problem?" Shit. Who did that? "...was she Fae?"

Snow shrugged. "She hated me."

She could say this plainly now, having accepted it at last. It had taken her years, and Mrs. H finally killing her to make it really real. "She hated me because I was an Indian. Because I looked like my mother. And then I gave her a deer's heart and..." now she almost looked guilty. "I didn't mean for what happened there to happen."

Jag frowned in confusion, but then moved past it. Who cared what had happened with that... deer's heart. "Well, fuck her."

Truly, Snow hadn't cared about the Pinkerton who had hunted her or the heart she'd sent him away with until she'd learned what had been done with it. That it had been given to her little half-brother, and while it had let him leave the mirror it had warped him. If Mrs. H had cared at all for her boy, she couldn't entirely blame her for the attempted murder.

"It's okay. She's dead."

"Still." Fuck her, still, dead or no. He kind of wanted to ask how, but he also didn't.

He also wanted to reach out for Snow, but she didn't invite touch on a good day, so. He rubbed his hand on his pants instead, as if that would make the urge go away.

Snow was not a girl for touch, no, except for a very few people. But she felt she really should say something, so she went with, "I mean it when I say don't hide your fire around me. I like the phoenix trick in particular. It's pretty."

"Pretty," Jag echoed. After an instant's hesitation, he summoned the fire again, sculpted it easily into a small bird. "I'll take pretty." It beat its wings lazily, circling slowly above them.

"... That's also kind of adorable," Snow said very quietly, as if a touch embarrassed that she'd found something cute.

Jag smiled at that, and held a hand up for the fire bird to come and land on it. It tilted its head curiously at Snow, the movement very bird-like. The kids used to love that. "I'll take adorable, too," he said, just as quietly.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[EP] I am made of stars - OTA

Re: Jag & Snow

Re: Jag & Snow

Re: Jag & Snow

Re: Jag & Snow

Re: Jag & Snow

Re: Jag & Snow

Re: Jag & Snow

Re: Jag & Snow

Re: Jag & Snow

Re: Jag & Snow

Re: Jag & Snow

Re: Jag & Snow

Re: Jag & Snow

Re: Jag & Snow

Re: Jag & Snow

Re: Jag & Snow

Re: Jag & Snow

Re: Jag & Snow

Re: Jag & Snow

Re: Jag & Snow

Re: Jag & Snow

Re: Jag & Snow

Re: Jag & Snow

Re: Jag & Snow

Re: Jag & Snow