In her dreams, she dreams of her crimson cousin. Of afternoons spent lazing by the lake and curled next to each other, placing flowers in their manes. She dreams too of her daughter. The beautiful blue eyed girl with her grandmother’s smile and a birthmark like her mother. Her bright eyes and curious mind and beautiful grace that she is already moving through life. She dreams of Azrael, and the way her heart both raced and stilled around him, his quiet strength always just below the surface, of the happiness he had brought into her life. And, of course, she dreams of Tenebrae. Of everything they almost had, of the almosts and the ifs and the possibility that had once lived between them.

She says their names now, soft whispers as they float in her mind like clouds over blue sky.

Lilli.

Elliana.

Azrael.

Tenebrae.

She stirs if only barely when she feels her daughter’s lips press against her cheek. Her eyes remain closed, her mind still trapped beneath the net of her exhaustion, and she murmurs incoherently. She shifts, and she aches for all that lies within her breast. “Mom, come on,” she says.

And that is how it begins.

And it ends, at the party.

She is looking for her daughter. She had sent her to play with her friend when they arrived to keep her from knowing him. Elena did not know why Torix was a secret—but he felt like one. She looks for her now though, not trusting her daughter with all that wanderlust hot in her blood to stay where she ought to. She doesn't know where this love to wander comes from, to pull her roots from the ground whenever she felt them evening beginning to touch.There are other things about Elliana that remind Elena of herself. It is in the softness of her smile, the blue of her eyes, sometimes Elliana tilts her head in such an achingly familiar way that Elena thinks she might have seen it in a reflection a time or two. The problem with looking for herself in her daughter though is thought she undoubtedly finds Tenebrae as well. Something that makes her heart wrench.

She wanders to the bar, knowing Elliana has a way of ending up where she is not supposed to. There is someone there then, over her shoulder.

A look.
A second look.

An apology, and a smile, an Elena smile.

“Sorry, you just..” she says staring at the blonde woman with blue eyes. Blonde and blue eyes. Blonde. Blue eyes. “Sorry,” she says shaking her head and turning away before looking back at her from underneath dark ashes. Maybe it was selfish of her, to think this woman looks like her. But Elena cannot help but think how much they truly look alike at even first glance. Is her heart breaking too? Are those blue eyes just as tired as her own? Has her golden skin also been touched and then left more times than she can count? Elena pushes past the reflection that she sees in the woman and tries to see only Bexley before her. “You haven't seen a little girl running around have you?” She asks almost guiltily. Elena, so new to motherhood, has no idea what she is doing. “She said she was going to find her friend, but some how—I get the feeling she wasn't entirely honest.” Elena says looking away once more. “I am still learning how to be a mother.” Not a good mother, not a great mother, just learning how to be a mother. She has accepted she will never be good, will never be great. But she can be a mother—something more than she ever had.

bexley
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