[AW] boats against the current

[Elena]

take this burden away from me
and bury it before it buries me

She wanders with homesick in her chest. Homesick for a place that essentially no longer existed. A place that she has not seen in so long that even her dreams were beginning to forget the details. How blue was the water below the waterfall? How soft was the grass that she would lay in underneath a Paraiso sky? And how sweet was the love of her family that she hasn't seen in such a long time? Elena aches in familiar ways, but it doesn't hurt any less as she struggles to hold onto memories that try so desperately to slip through her hands. It is like trying to hold water with a butterfly net.

Elena is working in the hospital, whenever this pit rises in her stomach that is when she throws herself into work, distractions were her only salvation. And it is here that Elena is when Lyr arrives. Those blue eyes watch as he is brought in and her heart lurches. Elena swallows the nerves in her chest before steadying herself. Those eyes ice over like winter and she focuses on the work that now lays ahead of her. His hello is weak and Elena searches over his injuries. There is a cut on his forehead that continues to bleeds and no doubt, has caused some sort of additional injury such as a concussion. ‘Peppermint eases headaches, Elena, always have some available.’ The voice of the obsidian unicorn comes to mind. Elena had worked with her when she had just been a young apprentice, watching and admiring her abilities. “Don’t speak now,” she soothes, brushing the hair from his eyes with the tenderness of a mother that she sometimes struggles to remember.

She does not know his history of the hospital, the ghosts that ache in his heart (ghosts different than her own, but ghosts all the same.) She does not ask him for his story, Elena is here to serve his injuries and to heal this soldier.

Elena places peppermint oil along his temples and his forehead, an attempt to soothe the pain that most likely throbs within his skull after an injury of such magnitude. Her attention then turns to the deep cut on his forehead. Yarrow is pressed against the wound with its feathery material it stops the bleeding until only a dew bright right drops remain behind. She takes the blood ridden yarrow and it replaces it with fresh plants before placing a bandage upon it, hoping this would keep him from any infection.

Elena has always had a soft spot for soldiers, having grown up amongst a war and watching them so bravely race into battle with lion hearts and strength that she has never understood, bravery their banners. That golden head leans forward and her lips touch his forehead, away from the cut, the injury he has sustained in the name of protection. “Thank you, soldier,” she says to him with something that is not quite a kiss, but her lips touch his skin all the same. Elena places more peppermint oil along his pale temples. “You are brave.” And she wonders, what it must be like.

so take away this apathy
bury it before it buries me

@Lyr