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+---- Thread: [P] daphne and the laurel (/showthread.php?tid=5407)
daphne and the laurel - Aeneas - 08-17-2020
aeneas.
I had the dream again.
It happens every night. I don’t know why it still surprises me. In my parade of memories, the dream walks sunken in and grayscale; it is there behind my father when he called me son in a way that melted my heart, or in the background of the first Halcyon spar I watched. It nestles alongside the evening I went to my mother at midnight with a nest full of terrors in my mind, keeping me from sleeping. It’s there in between the highs and lows of each day, of each definitive task, as if waiting—
It is the dream of the white stallion on the black beach. I can’t remember what he says, the next morning—only that he visited me again, and in that visit told me something important. There are days I can remember pieces; sometimes he even asks me about my life, as if he is a voyager, and I tell him snippets of my day, the mundanities of it. He says, every time, “I cannot imagine living without war. It heartens me to know that my--”
This morning, though, there is nothing when I wake. Only the knowledge I had dreamt again, that damning dream. My mouth is dry as a salt flat where my father took me to see mirages. The memory (that memory) is happy, and pleasant; but the association of salt and bitterness and the dream stains it crimson, too.
I wake up with the raging, red energy that seems electrical. I do not mean to burn through my tutor’s book on geography later that morning, but I do: a sudden flare of energy incinerates it, and Mrs. Murdock leapt. I apologised to her. And to my mother. And then the priest told me to go to the garden and meditate, I was not fit for studies today—
So I am in the garden beyond Terrastella’s citadel, where in summer (I have been told, at least, not being yet old enough to have witnessed it myself) the Court enjoys festivities and orchard picking not far beyond.
But today, it is cold and grey. I sit nestled in a trio of evergreen trees, beneath a statue of Vespera.
I am breathing, and that is all.
In, and out, focusing on the flow of energy around me; how I can feel myself, not a conduct but a blockage, in the world. You have powerful magic, the Priests say to me. And it is very sensitive to all that you feel, and all that you feel around you—
There is the cold.
I am that, too. And the sun behind soft winter clouds. I hear the ravens cawing in the trees above, and the distant shuffling of citizens as they walk to and fro their jobs.
But my energy stays dark, and clogged, and chaotic.
In, and out.
I wonder if this is how my goddess feels, sometimes; mama and the priests say it might be so, when I ask, when I say:
The world is trying to tear me in half.
Every happiness is the child of a separation
it did not think it could survive. And Daphne, becoming a laurel,
dares you to become the wind.
RE: daphne and the laurel - Elliana - 08-23-2020
prayed to keep my soul
S
he had been born in the middle of winter. It seemed so odd that life would be found in the middle of death. Snow had covered the ground on which her body had lain, where she should have taken her first breath, where she eventually did—only when the spirits found her. Only when they came from the shadows and kissed her brow, and pressed that heart inside her chest, and slipped the breath into her lungs. And there her too blue eyes opened and she found them gathered around, eager to see their creation. Her mother wrapped herself around her and that is when her life began. The spirits gave her that, life, but her mother was the one to give her the ability to live.
She doesn't want to be a scholar, doesn't want to be a medic like her mother, nor a politician, or a soldier. And yet she still sits here, learning the history of her home, learning medicines, learning what alliances are and the wars they faced. She learns all of this while her mind rests on the feeling of a paintbrush on canvas. Elliana cannot hear what the teacher says, only hears the roar of a waterfall in her ears. She doesn't realize she has been creating the landscape of this waterfall on her notes until the teacher comes over and stares down at the girl with a disapproving look. ‘Perhaps you should find your head from the clouds and come back to us when you are ready to learn.’ She says and Elliana is dismissed.
Her mother will be upset. Upset that her daughter is not the stellar student she wished for, that she would not be as skilled as her mother was, her mother who had already been a blossoming apprentice before her first birthday. She could heal a broken wing and treat a burn when she had been Elliana’s age. And what could her daughter do? She knew how to mix her paints just so to steal the colors of the sunset from the sky. She knew just the right amount of pressure to make snow that froze on the page.
Elliana takes her canvas, her brushes and paints when she leaves the school and walks towards the garden. She finds the pine green of the trees and the grey of the clouds a backdrop she needs to capture. She knows, just by looking there is something missing, it needed a subject, someone to stand among the trees with the clouds baring down upon them.
She hides an almost smile when she spots him in the garden. What was he doing here? She watches him breathe, watches him stand so still. It is cold out here, but Elliana has only ever known the cold, she was not like her mother, not a child of summer. She blink blue eyes, halting her painting for just a moment before—
“Have you learned to fly yet?” She asks him as she begins to the long strokes of his wings, of his feathers against the canvas. She doesn't think about what she draws, what he will think of being immortalized with such simple motions. She doesn't think, she just paints. It is the entire reason she is out in the garden in the first place. “Or are you waiting till you grow some more?” She asks him, looking away from her painting, studying the angle of his face before returning back to her work. “You look plenty big to me.”
@Aeneas speaks
elliana
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RE: daphne and the laurel - Aeneas - 09-19-2020
aeneas.
Have you learned to fly yet?
Somehow, her voice belongs there, in my quiet.
It does not interrupt; merely interludes. I do not open my eyes, or answer, at first. I keep my head bowed in quiet prayer, and allow my meditation to continue. I do not focus on internalizing myself, on drawing in all outward sensations to focus on the inward ones. I do the opposite, and know the monks would not approve. I focus on the cold; on the wind that makes the Ponderosas sing just so, a song more endearing to me than that of the sea. It dishevels my feathers; and the cold seeps in, through them, too. I focus on her voice, and they way it makes me feel warm.
Or are you waiting till you grow some more? You look plenty big to me.
It makes me blush; the heat flushes my face but I am thankful for my mother’s dark complexion. I cannot help the way I smile, a haphazard, crooked thing that barely edges my lips. I open my eyes and look at her now, and where my energy had been red and brittle before--well, it becomes a bit lighter, a bit more like summertime.
It is true. I am older, and so is she. I don’t answer, and perhaps that is a bit coy; I know it is because I am too shy to admit that I have not yet flown.
“I see you are already Elli the painter.” The comment is quiet and almost dry, except for the light suggestion of humour in my almost-smile. “I doubt I’m a very good subject.”
Not, you flatter me, by painting me
Not, I’m glad to see you again.
But I am.
Every happiness is the child of a separation
it did not think it could survive. And Daphne, becoming a laurel,
dares you to become the wind.
RE: daphne and the laurel - Elliana - 10-12-2020
prayed to keep my soul
T
here are unspoken words for him inside her chest, and they bloom like flowers in sunlight with rain kissed petals. They are not unpleasant, just as flowers are not, but she keeps them hidden away, her own secret garden that grows for him in the cavity of her chest. Roses thread between her ribs, daisies grow against her sternum, and her spine is lined in lilac. And in her eyes are those so familiar forget-me-nots, what else could they be by the blue of them?He smiles.
She likes the way he smiles.
When he does, it is like the type of sunshine that hums a soft glow that warms her soul as if the rays fold around her little heart in a careful, close embrace. He is a friend, Elli knows this, she does not need for him to tell her. She looks at him, he looks at her. A look that goes back decades, centuries. They are not the first boy and girl to look at each other like that. They will not be the last.
“Nice catch,” she says with a grin and a roll of her small shoulders. The smile that surfaces cannot be tamed or suppressed and there is a quiet glint in her eye to match the curve of her mouth. She likes being called a painter.
She hums quietly in his response and looks up at him with glacial blue eyes. He had gotten taller, much taller, she notes. She thinks too she doesn't mind being small in this moment, not when it is here with him. “You are the perfect subject,” she offers him. “What are you doing out here anyway, aren’t you supposed to be in school?” She asks, not in a way that is suspicious, but hopeful, that maybe someone else prefers the quiet and the grace of the garden as she does.
@Aeneas elliana speaks
elliana
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RE: daphne and the laurel - Aeneas - 10-17-2020
aeneas.
I wonder if she knows how her presence fills a space as fully, as wholly, as light does. The cold, quiet of my meditation is replaced by something warmer, brighter. I do not mind my solitude; but if this is the alternative, I prefer it. I do not know how to tell her this, or even if I should: and so I don’t, even as the sentiment spills from my eyes and promises a fondness I have yet to name. You are the perfect subject.
The reassurance makes me smile again; hesitantly, shyly. I know myself well enough to recognize the fragility of my gesture, the quiet gratefulness; I cannot explain the crushing pressure I feel to be more, placed upon my shoulders by no one but myself and that—
Well, only that I am a prince of two kingdoms, and belong wholly to neither of them.
I recognize I’ve been quiet too long when she moves on to ask a question; but I find myself looking almost awkwardly over my shoulder. Rather than answer immediately—because I find the answer dissatisfied, embarrassing—I ask, a whisper-question, “Are you still painting? Should I… should I stay still?” The question emerges over my shoulder, before I look back the way I had stood before.
The position leaves me strangely vulnerable; I can feel the weight of her eyes, but my shoulders are to her, my back. I remain nestled into the trees, separate and together.
I chew on her question, before answering:
“I—“
It is Elliana, however. And despite us both being older—I find that our last encounter has left me with sustained vulnerability. There is no harm in telling her the truth. “There’s a dream I have, every night. I don’t remember it, when I wake up, but I know it is the same. It upset me more than usual this morning, and—well, when I get in those mindsets, I can—I can cause accidents.” I roll my shoulders; my wings flutter in a way that feels useless.
“Anyways, the only thing that seems to help is meditation. So Vespera’s monks send me to this garden to… focus.”
I notice, now, there is a cardinal flitting through the branches of the pine. It settles on the lowermost branch and eyes both of us with thinly veiled curiosity.
It makes me glad that, for whatever reason, she is not studying. “Why aren’t you in school?” Where her tone had lacked accusation, mine is colored with it; but without heart. My tone lightens playfully, and I admit: “I am glad you found me.” I have not yet learned a man’s austerity, or a soldier’s refusal to share in weaknesses.
No. No, I am still just a boy, and she is still just a girl, and for a little while longer at least that might remain the most natural thing in the world.
Every happiness is the child of a separation
it did not think it could survive. And Daphne, becoming a laurel,
dares you to become the wind.
RE: daphne and the laurel - Elliana - 11-01-2020
prayed to keep my soul
S
he is no empath like her mother, she cannot know the powers that lurk beneath their skin, sitting under the surface. Elliana is no seeker of secrets, but she thinks, as she watches him mediate, paints the fine lines of his young face, and the marks that cover his skin, that she might just like it more that way. She likes the way she can capture how he looks now, what he offers to her in this moment (knowingly or not). But that if she wants to find out about that just what she can capture with paint and a brush, she must dive deeper into him, into the way his eyes crinkle with a smile, or the solemn set of his lips while he thinks. And then in the same breath she realizes, she does not need to be an empath to know his secrets.Elli finds them in ever stroke against the canvas.
He smiles and there is something about him that makes her think of her mother with her flowers in the window or her father with his stars in the sky. There is no words needed between them, they are like old friends, even if their friendship is still sweet, new, beautiful in its infancy. Then why does she feel like she could cradle her head on his shoulder and he would hold her? Why does she think if he asked her to leap from Terrastella’s cliffs, she would follow him all the way down? (And why is there a part of her hoping he will?)
Her smile deepens with the sound of his voice. “No, I have in my mind’s eye exactly where I need you,” she says and her voice is silver, distant, as she works. She drops the paintbrush in before lifting it up once more, when he speaks, it provides the perfect rhythm the way the brush arches and curls about the canvas.
It is her turn to be quiet for a spell. She stops painting with his final words. “They are only accidents, Aeneas,” she reassures him. She had learned from her mother that evil is not represented by actions, but by intentions. “Well, can you focus on coming to look at my painting for a second? Or will the monks reprimand you?” She asks him, giggling, stepping back from the canvas so he may come and see.
She waits for him to come to her side and watches his face for his expression. He stands on the edge of a forest (a forest Elliana knows if only because it belongs to the twins she so often dreams about.) And he stands there not like a king or a solider, but a boy, her very own Peter Pan. His wings are high and he stands as if ready to ascend in the sky, the one place he would be able to go where she would never find him. She wonders if knows this, if he thinks about it as she does.
She rolls her shoulders with his question, it is a simple enough one to answer. “I would much rather be here, painting, than learning about the great wars I have never seen, or reading about the gods and goddesses I will never meet.” If only because they can never die and Elli does not so much seek to know the living as she does the dead.
Elli turns to look over her shoulder at him. She has seen her mother turn like this towards her father, plant a kiss on his cheek, but her lips are far too innocent to think of such a thing. “I am too,” she says and blinks blue eyes. “Did you ever try to look for me?” She asks him, moving so she stands closely beside him. “I told you I would hide from you.”
@Aeneas elliana speaks
elliana
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RE: daphne and the laurel - Aeneas - 11-06-2020
aeneas.
No, I have in my mind’s eye exactly where I need you.
My mother once told me that those born in winter are born older; winter is a time of revelation, of timelessness, of cycles. It can be a season of death, or of rebirth. Some of this I read; some of this I gathered on the long nights when I awoke, restless, and went to the window to peer at the snow-covered streets. My mother once told me that those born in winter are born wise.
I think, perhaps, that this applies more to Elliana than to me. No, I have in my mind’s eye exactly where I need you. She sounds busy and, even though she frees me of my placement, I linger a little longer. I can hear the paintbrush softly working; I can hear the wind through the trees; beyond the garden wall, I can even hear the distance voices of citizens as they go about their day’s work. My voice fills the silence, too—and this is uncharacteristic of me. I cannot remember a time when my voice filled anything in the chaos of my life. For a moment, brief and flitting, it is only the sound of my confession and accompanying shame.
They are only accidents, Aeneas.
I want to tell her she doesn’t understand. That she paints, and that I once burned my sister. I want to tell her how frightening it is when what I feel can cause an external reaction, one I have no control over, and the only way to mitigate it is to feel nothing at all—
But, for now, I let what she says comfort me. I can almost believe it in this quiet alcove. I turn and offer a grateful, quiet smile, at last abandoning my post to admire her work.
“The monks aren’t here,” I respond, mischievously.
I thought we had shared our space before; but when I stand besides her, our shoulders almost touching, our world grows even smaller again. It is cold enough my breath fogs the air; and hers too. I can see the brightness of her blue-blue eyes, and wonder if mine look cold, like polished coins. My mother’s seem to, when she looks at anyone save for Hilde and I.
It is a strange thing, to see a painting of oneself. I have seen my reflection before; but this is different. I look small, and sheltered by the trees. I stand on the edge of a great forest, and I wonder if I intend to walk into it, or if I am only watching. I remember Isolt, the dark girl from the wood, and my shameful fear. More accurately, Elliana paints me as if I am about to fly.
I am quiet when I say, “You never know. You could meet a god.” I am not yet old enough to recognize my nativity; the way my voice holds a promise in it, a conviction. I feel Vespera in my life, in the threads of it, as if she stands shrouded in the shades. “But I know what you mean,” I amend. I’m not interested in half the things I am forced to study. She turns to look at me, a glance over her shoulder. It does something to my heart I don’t understand; a flutter, excited and birdlike, that is there and then gone.
Did you ever try to look for me.
I did not think she could be any closer.
But she is, now, in this moment. There are no trees or paintings or thoughts between us. Did I look for her? “Of course I looked for you.” I smile shyly again, almost unsurely. The intensity of her question, her proximity, makes me uncertain of how to respond. “But maybe—maybe next time, don’t hide?” I don’t recognize my voice, or how the silence before her arrival had been a loneliness to vast it made me small.
Every happiness is the child of a separation
it did not think it could survive. And Daphne, becoming a laurel,
dares you to become the wind.
RE: daphne and the laurel - Elliana - 11-08-2020
prayed to keep my soul
J
ust accidents, Aeneas,” she assures him once more. Accidents. “Do not blame yourself, blame the world if you must blame someone, but not yourself,” she offers. She sounds too wise and too foolish all at the same time. But then he is smiling and joking and she cannot help that a laugh escapes her like sunshine. It is bright and warm and all of the features on her turn to a light golden glow. She looks like the grandmother she will meet one evening when the moon glows bright and Elliana invites the dead things into her domain. Her laugh is small, like so much of the rest of her, except those blue, blue eyes that take up so much of her face (“you will grow into them, her mother tells her.”) But the smile in the corner of her mouth is such a tiny thing. Even her inflections are subtle, and when she tips her head up to look at him, her glacier blue eyes are soft and kind and just a little struck with wonder. His own eyes look like the cliff side rocks of her home, she can almost see the ocean spraying up behind them, and the sunshine spilling over onto them. Does he know he harbors both the warmth of the sun and the wildness of the ocean in his gaze? She thinks perhaps he does not because most people do not notice such things or wonder them.
But Elliana is not most.
Most cannot speak to the dead.
“Maybe,” she says with a tilt of her head for just a moment. “I don't think I want to very much,” she decides, lands on.
Maybe next time, don’t hide? He asks her with a smile. She thinks, staring at the planes of his face, no longer with the focus of a painter, but rather the innocence of a girl. “Okay, but you have to promise me,” she says her silvery voice is light and low, “that if you cant find me, you never ever stop looking, forever.”
Forever.
She has no real concept of it, even with immorality slipping through her bloodstream, but she knows that it is long enough that her family would miss her (and she would miss her family). She would miss camping trips with her dad, or watching flowers bloom with her mom. Or just balancing on the cliffs while the ocean crashes down below her.
But she doesn’t share these secrets of her heart. Instead, she just tucks it away, like a folded note she does not have the courage to send.
She brushes past his shoulder then, starting in the direction to leave the garden, leaving her painting behind for the garden to keep (Elli never considers her art her own, but she borrows it from places and things.) “How about, next time, I find you, okay?” She closes blue eyes to blink and she is gone and leaving before they open again.
@Aeneas elliana speaks
elliana
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