I say : if the heart is a muscle I will train it to be sinew.
I say : the heart is a muscle and it will resist. / I say : because I am master of myself, I will not be weak.

Some girls are full of heartache and poetry

It had been like a punch to the gut and she had felt dizzy with disappointment, with regret, with the pained way her heart threatened to punch clean through her chest. At times, she had wondered if she had made him up, if she had some how dreamt of him. She wondered if she had carved out the sharpness of his jawline from the ache in her heart and if she had imagined the way that he had told her that she was in his soul, the way he had held her like it mattered, like she mattered.

But the longer she wondered, the more it hurt and the feeling grates down her spine like a knife in her back. (Though Elena now knows betrayal sings its way deeper, far deeper than any knife could).

The more she felt the vicious loss of him as a tangible thing.

Finally, she did the only thing she knew how: she built a wall around her agony. She lifted herself up from the cold ground and shook herself off and she went on living because it’s the only thing. The only thing.

There is a simplicity in the ocean, for all that it can be so wild and unpredictable. Perhaps that is why Elena had found herself a clifftop home that stares across the crashing waves. And why she finds herself by its shores today. Elli is sitting with Nic as she teaches her daughter what it means to be a knight and Elliana imagines herself discovering new places, new lands, new friends.

The day is windy, it whips against flaxen locks of hair, letting it circle about her head like an undeserved halo. She pushes against the wind, it is cold, so cold against her skin, but Elena has always been a glutton for punishment.

Elena sees so many, at least once, beside the sea. There is something about the sea breeze in their hair, the smell of salt that makes a meeting so much more intimate, meaningful. She has seen Michael, Tenebrae, Azrael, Torrin, and Anandi. So many of them. The sea has broken her heart and rebuilt her so many times already while in Novus, and Elena, the foolish lover she is, keeps coming back for it.

She finds Seraphina, and she will join the list of others she has seen with crashing white caps dancing as wolf and fawn in the background. Elena finds her, grey like storm clouds, there are pieces of her, of her coloring that remind her of Elliana, remind her that she really should be going home, should leave all this behind. But Elena stands there, hanging between speaking and staying silent as she looks at her with eyes of glacial blue. “You are bleeding,” she says finally, quietly, voice sad and silver, molten when it spills over such soft, sweet lips. Elena walks towards her, her chance to leave, unnoticed, unmet, leaving her with every step she takes towards the mare. “I am Elena,” she says. Her eyes rove to the cut, superficial, but a cut all the same. “We should clean that.”

those are the kind of girls who try to save wolves

YOU SAY: SOFT.
You say: tender. / I say: there is a hole in me that needs tearing open.

Some girls are full of heartache and poetry

“Come here Elena. Come here and tell me about your scars…or leave.”

And she stayed.
He asked if she was alone.
And she said yes.

He held her close.
And she told him about her scars.

Sometimes Elena wakes up and she cannot breathe.

The air feels as though it is too tangled, too heavy, too smoky, too thick. No air can come in, and the air in her lungs, just as heavy, just as matted cannot leave. There is panic in her veins, and she cannot move, so she silently screams, her lungs burning. It is the dreams, of empty, dead things. All of it, the whole world, going to ruin around her, decaying in front of her eyes, inside her mind. All of it gone. She is the world, and that world is dying.

Elena dies too.

There is something between them that is bred from a shared sadness—a kinship that comes from having felt the same pain. A pain not caused by the same faces, not caused by the same circumstances, but they have known the weight, have known the agony, and Elena can feel it leap off her skin. It would seem Seraphina’s telekinesis was able to push more than objects towards her. There is something nostalgic about this mare, something dangerous that sends her thoughts drifting back to ruinous homesickness. There is a depth, an awareness to the mare, beneath her eyes, her coat, there is a deep strength, a hidden purpose. Elena studies her for just a moment with dazzled awe. The indescribable want, Elena knows this too, and she is just as useless putting words to it. She came to Novus a women without roots, if only because she so forcefully yanked them out, but Novus brought her new soil, and here, Elena has bloomed, but like the sunflowers, she moves towards the sun, even as it never holds still in that blue sky.

The emotion does not show on her face, but Elena can feel it as clear as a single white cloud on a blue summer’s day. Elena is vaguely aware that the girl smells so much like flowers, that the golden girl could almost believe it to be summer. But the scent passes with her next words, and Elena knows she only imagined it. Elena only then moves towards her with graceful caution, and unrestrained compassion. “I don’t need to, but I think I would like to trouble myself,” she replies thoughtfully. “Come with me to the water,” Elena says then, as if it will offer them both salvation they may or may not seek. The golden girl knows it will not, but there is a beauty in pretending it may. Elena starts to walk before looking over her shoulder at the grey woman. (Grey like ghosts she tries to forget, grey like storm clouds she tries to ignore). And now she wants the grey to follow. Elena has always been a fickle creature.

“Do you have any stories worth telling?” She asks, eyes sparking like blue lightning. “I love a good story.”

those are the kind of girls who try to save wolves

YOU SAY: THAT ISN'T HOW HEALING WORKS.
I say: I know.

Some girls are full of heartache and poetry

When she was little, she got lost.

She had not meant to. One moment she was walking through the sunflower field with her mother and the next moment she was all alone, looking in between green stalks of the flowers, trying to find where she might have gone. She called out for her in that small, baby voice, but it felt like ages that she wandered in that field. Flowers that once made her so happy, now a cause for panic. She wondered if she would ever see her mother again.

And then she was there. Appeared before her with a heavenly halo wrapped around her head, at least this what her daughter pictures her to be.

“Elena, never do that again. I don’t know what I would do if I lost you,” her mother had wept into her blonde mane. And Elena wondered what would her mother do without her, but she never stopped to think, what would Elena do without her mother?

Elena feels something tuck beneath her breast bone, an emotion, it is strange enough that Elena knows it is not her own, and so she shakes it off as easily as a leaf blows on an autumn breeze. “I should thank you for the company,” she says and smiles, as she leads the woman to the salt water. Salt water: a healer that Elena could only aspire to be. “I have been trapped in conversations between my daughter and my ward, it is pleasant to speak with someone closer to my age,” she says like Nic and Elli are such a chore, but the way that smile sits on her face says they are anything but. She wonders for a moment though, how old the woman is. If they are close in age, or decades apart. Elena no longer knows what age means. Immortality has made her forgetful.

They reach the water and Elena splashes it against her, cleaning out the wound. It is shallow, superficial, but infection has bound itself to smaller wounds than this. The golden girl wears the woman’s sorrow and loneliness as her own. It doesn't feel as heavy knowing part belongs to someone else. It is better than feeling cold, closed off. Elena knows she still has a heart. It’s in pieces, little bits of shredded and tattered paper that lies in a cavity of her chest. But it’s there, beating feebly.

She thinks for a moment. “Tell me a story that has not happened yet,” she says, craving something new. “If you were brave enough to do anything, what would you do?” She asks her, voice of silver. She pauses, hanging in the silence. “Be brave,” she says, and those blue eyes melt into her own.

those are the kind of girls who try to save wolves

I SAY: I AM AN OLD DOG LICKING ITS SORES JUST AS THEY SCAB OVER.
I say: I want to be raw flesh and no hurt.

Some girls are full of heartache and poetry

If she were made of moments and not atoms, she would be a beautiful kaleidoscope of all the pretty things she never said, and all the times she was too afraid. If she were made of moments and not atoms, then her eyes would reflect all the waters and the sunsets she has known. She would burn like galaxies burn, all fractured light and tangled stars, and the moments instead of atoms would string together a constellation that always drew out the lines of those she loved.

She has wondered what it would be like to disappear. To melt into a sunset like a candle, to lay between the petals in floral wallpapers, to become a single star amongst a constellation. To become the background, the edges of rivers, the peripheral.

You cannot hurt if stay on the edge, she thinks.

If she were made of moments and not atoms all of this might have killed her by now.

Atoms live even if you don’t want too.
Atoms live even if your heart does not.

Atoms live even if all you are is bones.

Elena focuses on the healing, cleaning out the wound. There has always been something so comforting about these healing tasks. She breathes, listens for the sound of the woman’s breath, if it will follow.

“That is okay,” she murmurs in her breathy voice of reassurance, even the syllables of her tongue wispy and soon forgotten on the breeze that winds and wraps between them. Elena is brave, or foolish. Very brave, very foolish. To fall in love again and again. But what is she now when she has another chance and she is so, so terrified? Scared or clever? Very scared, very clever.

Elena wonders what she would have done differently if she were brave. But all she can think of when she thinks of bravery is her father. She smiles. “I would like to be brave enough to swim to the bottom of the ocean, or to fly into the stars,” she says, almost peacefully. “I would never make it,” she says, blinking a moment. “But I would love to be brave enough to try.” And she places her forehead in the crease of Seraphina’s neck before turning away. “I need to get back,” she says, blue eyes darting to her injury. “Take care of that shoulder.”

those are the kind of girls who try to save wolves