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Cold's room had no door, just two sheets of leaves that dangled weightlessly, suspended from a rod. The leaves shuddered and danced in uncertainty as thuds of footsteps arrived, the ground quaking under the larger bird's talons as they contacted the floor. From his nest, Cold sat patiently, watching the entrance as it soon framed the silhouette of his visitor.
Smitten bursted into the room, the leaves at the entrance threatening to tear right off, the ground squeaking at irregular intervals from his talons scraping against it. Cold remained fairly motionless, save for a tilt of the head.
"What might bring you to see me in such a state?" Cold inquired, summoning what he assumed came off as curiosity.
Smitten's feathers were puffed up, his shoulders hunched forward, making his body appear wide and wall-like. His face glowed red, tears staining the skin. His wings shook with erratic energy, sometimes unravelling for a split second before curling back. He stared at Cold with what could only be described as indignation. His fiery pupils lit something in Cold's mind, something he could not pinpoint. (Embarassing - he wanted to dissect that, but didn't have the energy. Or maybe the scene before him was changing too fast.)
After having stared at the composed bird for a few successive seconds, Smitten finally replied, voice coarse from a throat thick with mucus. "He did it- he killed our beloved."
Cold raised an eyebrow, crossing one leg over the other like a disengaged parent might do. The gesture prompted Smitten to continue.
"Could he be more heartless? More cruel? He has sunk to the depths of depravity, swinging his murder-weapon around like there is no tomorrow!" Smitten paused for breath before continuing, "And- and it was you, wasn't it? You were the one who he turned to when he- when he plunged the knife into our beloved's aching heart!"
Smitten stepped forward, the walls reverberating with the step.
Cold considered the accusation for a second.
"He took the blade with him when he entered. Seems like using it was not out of the question."
"You- you! You may as well be the devil incarnate! You probed him to kill her!"
"Maybe I did."
"How? How could you?" And with that, Smitten's eyes swelled, tears escaping with ease. His voice quavered, stretched thin and beaten by hammering betrayal.
"A decision had to be made," Cold replied, slightly tilting his head upward to Smitten, taking in his enormous, heaving figure. "And, you were steering us off into the path of delusion. Something had to be done about it, that's all." Cold's skin twitched in perverse excitement. Curiosity wriggled in expectation of the reaction this final line would provoke.
Smitten blinked, eyebrows twitching with anger. A thousand questions strung themselves around his tongue, leaving him wordlessly staring at Cold as seconds passed. Sweat trickled down the corner of his eye as he stepped forward.
"Is this what you wanted? This- all this Feeling in me with nowhere for it to be poured into?" Smitten seemed to have snatched one of those questions fluttering about in his head. He breathed heavily and closed the distance between him and Cold. He was so close to Cold now that he could see the way specks of dust nested on Cold's tangled feathers.
Cold wanted to point out the slope of the argument - the point where it changed from being about the murder of Smitten's so-called beloved to now, instead, about Smitten's purpose. He shoved the thought aside, he'd pursue it later.
"I didn't want anything then and I don't want anything now. I made him do it to get him to move it along a bit." Cold leaned back, a motion Smitten might've mistaken as involuntary, yet Cold had done it in complete awareness. He was always aware of the body. He just rarely ever did go out of his way to create dramatic gestures, or position himself in a way to prioritise comfort - no, none of that. If he did do anything with his body, though, it was deliberate.
"You.." Smitten started, "you don't care, it doesn't even affect you one bit."
Cold stared back at him, unimpressed. He had just stated the obvious, after all.
Smitten then shifted statures, a switch turned off or a candle blown, his body crumbling uncannily. His shoulders slumped as he sank to his knees, fists pressed into the ground. His wings hung dejectedly, looking like an exposed bunch of wires. Cold shifted in his nest, moving his legs out of the way to give Smitten some space. "The thing is," Smitten spoke slowly, in alarmingly clear voice, as if clarity snuck its way in after a fit of rage, "the thing is that I've always believed in things, in the depth of love and emotion, but somehow after what the Deciding one did...I..I just don't know anymore. I can only wonder if, by believing in these intangible things..I have hopelessly devoted myself to worshipping an idol that has never shown me a sign of its divine power."
Cold watched the beaten bird silently. Smitten finally looked up, meeting Cold's pale blue eyes with his own dulled ones. The dimmed colour struck a spark of intrigue in the silent bird. Smitten sighed,
"you view desire as a liability. I'm starting to fear that you may be right."
Something about that statement made Cold's gut squirm. Was it the fact that Smitten was saying such things that go directly against his nature? Was it the tone of his voice? Was it something that lurked underneath that truth that had the ability to affect Cold in ways he did not imagine?
The most important question of all, however, was constricting him like a cage shrinking into a captive bird.
Did Cold really think that? (Of course he did. No big deal.)
Smitten's tired eyes searched Cold's, eyelids heavy and at the brink of exhaustion. Cold swallowed, attempting to clear his thoughts. This scene in front of him was strange, stranger than anything else he had been presented with. Why had his flockmate's demeanour been flipped completely? He couldn't fathom the Feelings and the intensity with which one would have to experience life for this result. Cold shoved aside the curiosity, the questions (those always filled a void in his mind, irritatingly difficult to herd, and yet always welcomed). He risked a sigh. He couldn't believe he almost trapped himself in some form of worry.
"So you see what I mean now."
Smitten's eyes fell to the floor. His fists came undone and he enclosed his arms around himself loosely. "I suppose so."
Cold reached out a hand to stroke Smitten's cheek feathers. The latter retracted slightly, in surprise, before losing some tension. Cold entertained the wondering in his mind - was this what Smitten looked like once finally silent and removed of all petty emotion?
...Or was this the look of someone who had given up? (Was that not the same thing?)
Cold reached out his other hand, both now clasping the other bird's face in between.
"So you understand," Cold said.
Something warm and alien creeped around his gut as he stroked Smitten's tensile feathers. The pair sat silently in the moment. Cold observed the bird in front of him.
(How fickle the flame of emotion was. Illuminating the entire room, leaving shadows exposed, roaring in the air supplying it. Growing bigger, and brighter. It scaled up to the ceiling, burning the walls, charring the floor. And the next second it was gone. Like dousing out a candle, the flame flickered and vanished. In its departure it left smoldering ashes on the floor, a mark. Ashes, the only remnants of a blazing flame. But rest assured, it was gone.
The ashes, though, grew cold and succumbed to the comfortable reality of time - awaiting eternity.)
At the end of Smitten's suffering was his flockmate sitting in his nest - a pile of ashes, and nothing more.
Cold's thumb grew tired of brushing the feathers on Smitten's face. He would've continued the motion regardless, but his thoughts were overpowering him. He let his arms fall down on his lap. Smitten had closed his eyes under the soothing motion of cool fingers caressing his burning face, and in the absence of said fingers, was returned to reality and forced to open his eyes.
There was little to be said between them now. Smitten seemed to understand Cold just a little bit - that was a development. But something was writhing in Cold's bloodstream. Somewhere, his stomach curled in on itself in disgust or something alike - Cold didn't know. Somewhere, he had discovered something he didn't want to provoke, in fear it might awaken. Somewhere, in the pit of who Cold was - was designed to be - laid a fact coated in thin layers of dust. The fact was that if nature would allow it to be, Cold's mental fortitude would be worse than even Broken's.
Though, Cold never had to worry about that. He didn't feel everything - the crushing weight of hopelessness, the bleak reality of circumstance, the gnawing hurt of a slick wound. He was safe from ever having to fall into the pathetic despair that Broken suffered everyday. The safety promised to the unaffected, that Cold knew (was it the only thing he'd allow himself to know?). That was the distinction.
Cold sighed. Smitten raised himself from the floor and perched himself next to his companion. The latter's feathers warmed subsequently. Cold turned his face to look at Smitten. None of this mattered, but that wasn't it.
"You saying all of this doesn't sound right."
Cold was never shy about his thoughts.
Smitten's face contorted slightly in hurt and confusion.
"What do you mean?"
"You were made to feel things to a greater degree, and I was made to feel nothing at all."
"I.. I don't know. I don't know about being made to feel certain things. I have always done as my heart desires. And I dared to assume that things having little to no effect on you was something of a cheat- somehow making all of this easier for you. Is that not true?"
Cold didn't need a second to reply.
"No. It isn't."
Smitten remained silent to the response. He looked back at Cold warmly, hoping the bird would elaborate.
Cold understood the cue and somewhat begrudgingly did as expected. He didn't have anything to lose in explanation (nothing at all).
"There is a strange sensation in my stomach. It tells me that I am not whole, that I am missing something." Cold allowed the words to settle before he continued. "I only know what I am, and in that case I cannot tell you if I am missing anything if the only way I've ever known myself is as what I am."
He breathed. Smitten's face relaxed into an expression Cold didn't understand.
"That is a familiar tune."
Cold took time to form that realisation, his face brightening slightly (as much as it could, anyway).
"The feeling of being incomplete," Cold muttered.
"A younger version of me would perhaps burst into song and lecture you on the philosophy of love, or deliver a soliloquy on how romantic it was to have someone who would make you complete, showing you what it meant to be whole." Smitten chuckled, voice imbued with melancholia. "But you and I know better than that."
Smitten's words had a way of creeping into spaces in Cold's mind he didn't bother to venture into. The spaces where feelings about his Self stayed, sealed away, still as a pond. He imagined it would need pride or self-loathing to unlock the gates to those spaces, but he didn't have either.
Smitten and Cold spent a few seconds in silence. A soft smile marked the bigger bird's face. Cold had been looking everywhere other than at Smitten.
(Smitten hurts because he has no one to share himself with, and I hurt because I have nothing to share with anyone.)
Had Smitten forgiven Cold for inticing the thought of violence against the Damsel to the Decider? He wasn't so sure, but it seemed to fade away. His raging heartbeat had calmed. That he was sure of.
Smitten hadn't realised the extent of his exhaustion until drowsiness blurred his senses. He found himself curling up in Cold's nest, the other bird still sitting by his feet as he did so. Smitten soon drifted into a soundless sleep, wings tucked behind him to leave space for his flockmate.
Cold looked over his shoulder at his companion. Sighing, he leaned back until he came in contact with his nest. He didn't fall asleep, though. He simply stared at his ceiling, listening to Smitten's breathing.
Silence stalled, but it somehow mattered. Cold sensed that this silence meant something, where it usually didn't. It was difficult for him, then, to not feel a flutter of satisfaction in his chest. His thoughts receded, far into the crevices of his mind.
Cold may be incomplete or lacking in some way (broken, if he wanted to be dramatic about it), but it didn't mean he had to fill the void or fix something he never had control over. It mattered that there was something meaningless about his existence, and it mattered that somehow it was still welcome in the company of another. Cold allowed himself to be plunged into the world of dreams. He had an eternity to think about things and if they mattered, but for now, this silence was enough.
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