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

“Elena! Are you settling in?” Kensa had asked her as they stood on the edge of lake in Hyaline. “Settling in enough,” Elena had responded, unsure of what she had meant when she had said such words. Elena had adjusted to Hyaline with its alpine meadows, dark forest depths that twisted out from the river, and this life of politics she had taken on. Hyaline had been the first time that Elena ever felt like she wasn't going to return home. In a way, it had been true. She had moved past Hyaline and all the way to Terrastella. 

Elena has changed here in Novus, a metaphorical death to a new life. She is no Phoenix rising from the ashes, but maybe she is the smoldering embers left behind. 

Her rebirth had been to the girl she was as a girl—to the girl who loved simply, she dreamed simply, hoped simply. The death of a girl with an unscarred heart who embraced life without fear or reservation, who had pulled it into her breast and held it there, warmed by the possibility that this world was good and all those food things were just waiting for her. She is no longer that simple girl. There are bruises in her blue eyes, an ache in her heart that she cannot shake. She has embraced darkness, and she bears its weight in the aftermath, but she refuses to give into the undertow completely. She refuses to let herself shatter wholly at the pressure.

She has learned her lesson, about the consequence of being overly happy, hopeful. You blink and then the shadows are infecting you. The creatures of the shadows thrive on happiness. Tearing limb from limb with such craft and coy, you are torn apart before you realize it. Even without the darkness, Elena always seems to find it, to destroy her own happiness with a wave of her hand. Elena is note entirely kind to herself. But, despite this, she smiles, because she knows, she knows resilience, she knew that she had to become strong. A soldier of the light. Elena is strong and she has survived. Pain had burrowed into her heart, but had not mutilated it. Agony had dug into her veins, but had not poisoned them.

It is a beautiful time of day. She had always thought the sky looked stunning during the in-between hours—the time before and after night. There was something truly wistful during that time, as if it was suspended between realities. She liked to imagine that anything could happen in those moments—as if she could somehow shake herself lose of her own truths to grasp at the ideals that she so wanted. She liked to think during those moments that she could fly, that she could fall in love, that she could have adventures of her own.

Aqua gaze looks up for a moment, and she remembers what has brought her here, to the land of worship. It was the first time she has dreamed about Terrastella, and she dreamed of it burning. 

She stands on the peak, at the alter of her Goddess and for the first time, she prays, she prays for her home, that Terrastella would stay safe and beautiful as it is. She knows that once a long time ago, Paraiso had gone up in flames, forcing her great-grandfather to move the herd to Murmuring Rivers. It is in this moment she finds her home in Terrastella, atop a mountain, at the alter of a Goddess. 

“How are you real?” Lilli had asked under a Hyaline sky. Elena thinks, as she stands there on a mountain peak, she isn't sure what answer she could give anymore.

so take away this apathy
bury it before it buries me