Some days, I feel everything at once. Other days, I feel nothing at all.
They say ‘you are Elena’s daughter.’
She says ‘I am.’
They say ‘you will make a good medic like your mother.’
She says ‘thank you.’
And she breaks a little inside before gathering up her brush and paints—trying to turn that pain into art.
Her smile is a small thing, it teases at the edges of her lips but does not claim them entirely. As if her happiness is not so easily won.
Where her adoration for the sunshine and starlight comes from is unquestionable. Though it terrifies her to ask either her mother or her father why she finds herself so deeply in love with the shadows. She is terrified of them, she loves them—they haunt her. She hears them whisper, hears them rattle and shake. She sees things in them.
“The shadows, they breathe, Mom,” she says to her mother one night, huddled close in her mother’s bed. “Shadows don’t breathe,” her mother says with a sigh to tuck her in. Shadows that breathe, shadows that talk, shadows that dance. Elliana wonders what else can they do? She thinks pulling the covers over her head will keep her safe, as so many children believe, it’s like closing the closet door, looking under the bed.
That little dark filly pulls those covers down only when she hears the steady breathing of her mother. She is quiet then as she stares out across the bed, big too blue eyes looking down along the edge. She sees her for the first time, a lady with bent neck who stares back at her. Elliana doesn't scream, she learns tonight the art of silently weeping, so no one knows you are crying.
“Wanderlust, is what it is called, Elli,” her papa tells her. They camp under the stars, just the two of them. “It’s a desire to see the world.” Elliana places the name to the feeling that sears like hot iron in her veins. To see the world. She wonders how long it would take, but the thought of it makes her dizzy. Maybe one day she wont feel a pull to be elsewhere like a fish with a hook in its belly.
Her voice is a little too serious for such a young girl, but not unkind. It sounds like bound books with dusty pages, like oil paintings, and candles just blown out, the little line of smoke rising from them.
She paints landscapes—red flowers blooming, snowy mountainsides, reflecting oceans. These make her mother smile. She paints faces—those she doesn't know, her family, her court. These make her mother kiss the top of her head. She paints spirits—the one that haunts her, the ones in the shadows, the ones who murmur. These make her mother bite her lip to keep her worries inside her mouth.
Don’t ask Elliana to pick a favorite color. She has one, but she just wont tell you.
If only she had her mother’s confidence, her ability to slip into a situation like she was born into it. She could see how it would be so much easier if she had that appetite for life and the tools to meet it. Instead, Elliana is left as a dreamer on the outside, her face pressed to the windowpane.
Where her mother is the summer sun, Elliana is the winter snowfall.
They will say it is not normal for a child her age to be so withdrawn. They will ask has she been eating okay? Is she sleeping? Her mother will tell them she has nightmares often. They will discuss her, and discuss her, and discuss her. And she just wants to scream “look at me, look at me and you will know!” But they talk to each other as Elliana paints a cardinal in the snow.
She is a happy girl, she is infinitely kind, forgiving. She is just lonely sometimes, but maybe, she likes it.
I don’t know what’s worse: drowning beneath the waves or dying from thirst