take this burden away from me and bury it before it buries me
Elena has begun to realize that she no longer can hear the whisper of the mountains. It used to be, that every where she went, even beside the ocean, in flat plains, those mountains built a cathedral in her heart and she could hear the way they built their wild stones around her. Elena used to love nothing more than the fresh mountain air of Hyaline, of Windskeep, of Paraiso. She can no longer hear the crashing of their waterfalls when she closes her eyes, instead she hears only the cries of gulls and the thunder of waves.
She always thinks this is the worst, when the heartache is fresh. She always imagines the this is the kind of pain that she wouldn't be able to come back from, the kind of venom that cant be cured. It takes everything she has not to gasp for breath when she drowns in emotions. Something is crumbling and she cannot feel anything but heartache and regret. She barely knows him, she understands, but Elena has always given herself far too quickly, never remembering that she so often dances on the edges of cliffs, believing she would never fall.
But Elena has shattered, she has broken, she has been fragmented. She rises every time, not like the Phoenix, but like the wounded soldier who just wants to go home.
There is a painful flip in her stomach, and Elena knows then that all she wants to do is go to Dawn and love their festival season. ‘Lets go to the river,’ she hears the calls of others and so Elena goes, picking up a steady trot she tosses her head of flaxen locks and races towards it. The soft glow of the meadow it would seem, would not be enough for this evening. Elena was after something a little more difficult to tame—the river.
She felt wild tonight, wild with jealousy (she will deny it, but it still burns hot in her veins) and wild with emotions that run high and sweet in the festival air. The music surround her only fuels her further, and her feet feel like dancing, the fireflies igniting as her audience. The high pitched flute snickers in her ears and Elena lets out a whoop of laughter, unable to contain herself. It was a beautiful night, she was in Dawn, and the air felt cool and soft against her skin. The river continues to try to wash away her concerns, her worries, her heartache. By morning Elena will go to the river bed to fetch them, so comfortable in her own misery because it has been so long since she has been without it.
She finds someone, someone younger than she, but she looks to be about the age Mina and Maren would be had Elena been around to watch them grow. “Hey,” she says brightly, approaching her. “I could use a firefly catching partner, and that guy said you were the best.” Elena smiles while gesturing to a stranger she had never spoken to. “You’re not going to let me catch them all by myself are you?”
so take away this apathy bury it before it buries me
@Maret
let's light this house on fire
we'll dance in the warmth of its blaze
pixel made by the amazing star
06-06-2020, 08:22 PM - This post was last modified: 06-13-2020, 12:09 AM by Elena
and i must pour forth a river of words or i shall suffocate.
T
he night felt cool against her skin, when she left the glow of the lantern-light and took to the forest. The trees closed in around her like so many hungry things, waiting things, watching things — each dark knot scarring their pale trunks was an eye, each firefly darting between the trees a witness.
She wondered what they thought of her, the girl who made her own way to the river by following the sound of its voice, rather than the trail all the others followed.
But oh, oh, oh —
Tonight —
tonight she did not care what they might think.
Tonight the very air felt alive, like something living working its way into her lungs. It was a wonder she felt like herself at all still, with the magic humming so loudly in her veins she shone in the starlight, like she was just another ghost haunting the forest. She could feel it, the way the world was stretched thin — the way she was stretched thin alongside it.
There was another world tonight, brimming just below the surface of this one. And there was another Maret, one draped in sunlight instead of diamond dust, ready to rise.
It was the light that called to her (it always did). It was the way the river glowed beneath the weight of all those fireflies, the way the other horses danced through the water like they were nothing but flames drawing moths to them. The way they drew her to them, the way the line between moth and flame was blurred so that Maret was not sure which of them she would rather be. She, too, was compelled to jump into beautiful things even if they set her aflame (perhaps because they set her aflame. This feeling, this fire racing in her veins instead of frost — this was something immortal, she knew. And she only hoped that after tonight she would remember it long enough to write it all down.)
But first, she wanted to live out the story.
She had not been at the river for long before the girl with the high and sweet smile came to her. Maret watches her through the fireflies, and lets her own smile shine like the stars in turn. Something about her words feels like a lie — but she pretends to not notice. It was more interesting that way, pretending to not know something (to not be herself). Sometimes, it felt easier to imagine herself as someone smarter, taller, older, prettier — anyone other than herself.
"Of course not," she says with a flip of her hair and a look that says I know I am (even when she knows, she’s not.) And just like that, the game begins.
The fireflies feel like sunlight when she leads the other girl through them, brushing their wings like silk against her skin. The flutes whisper like a lullaby in her ears, the river singing along to its melody when she steps into it. "But you can’t just catch them, they’ll fly away if you try—
"You have to convince them to come to you."
For a moment, ankle-deep in the water and surrounded by specks of gold, Maret thinks she knows what it might feel like to be the sun.
take this burden away from me and bury it before it buries me
Elena has grown since her childhood, both figuratively and quite literally. She has found her own path after straying down wrong road after wrong road. She has found her own sense of gravity not bound by the earth. Elena has both let her heart soar and tried to bind it within a cage. She has blazed a path and followed well worn trails. The path she stands on now is not easy, and Elena isn't sure what sits ahead, there will be things that trip her, cut her, wreck her, but she has found the road.
She looks at Maret, with pale blue eyes and a smile on her delicate features. She wonders where she is, if she found a path early on, if she forged her own, or if someone has marked down cobblestones in the grass for her to follow. And if there is a trail, is she following it?
The sun is setting, a soft hazy pink and orange tints the meadow. The trees are changing colors like a storybook before night bathes everything in navy blue and black, the glow of the stars mirroring the vibrant light of the fireflies. This makes her smile, something small and maybe a little broken. She cannot remember how long it has been since she has chased fireflies. She cannot remember her final days within Murmuring Rivers, before it was the start of the end of the happy times. They had thought that this was only the beginning, leaving behind the river and the lavender to the waterfall and the willow tree.
Fireflies kiss against her, as if they sense a kinship in the way her golden skin shimmers even in the dull light the night offers her. Blink. Blink. Blink. They ask are you our sister? Blink. Blink. Blink. Where are your wings?
They aren't the first to wonder.
She follows the girl through the fireflies, the way they dart across the water—she can taste the nostalgia on her tongue. It should taste sweet, but it bites inside her mouth like something sour. She joins the young girl in the water, and it is only when the fireflies join her and she can spot their reflections that she feels the laughter in her bones, pale and violet and warm.
And she dances.
And how her mother smiles from beyond the grave.
She looks so much like Beylani, in another land, her father cries rain as his tears.
She shortens her stride, prances in the water, tucking her chin into her breast and she dances. Her heart races with excitement as the light joins the pair and she dances. Blue eyes open as the fireflies come to them, as the pair is illuminated in the dark and water no longer looks as it should, but like drops of sunlight, always having been so jealous of the night it finds its way into the darkness through other means.
And she dances.
“Stop,” she finally says gently as they are surrounded by the fire kissed creatures. “They came,” she said before turning blue eyes to the girl. “You are a good dance partner.” She praises her, before Elena stares in awe as more fireflies come. “And now we wait,” she says moving closer to her. “Perform too long and they will get bored.” She pauses. “There is power in stillness.”
so take away this apathy bury it before it buries me
and i must pour forth a river of words or i shall suffocate.
I
t’s easy to lose herself in the night, in the fireflies, in the water. Firelight dances along her skin, drawing patterns in smoke and shadows. She wonders if it makes her eyes look gold, if it spins the brown in them to sunlight and makes the look, for the night, a single tone instead of a blend of mismatched colors.
The thought — the idea that she was someone else tonight, not entirely herself — makes her bolder.
And so, she dances.
She dances the way she once watched the gypsies of Denocte dance, sliding one foot in front of the other and weaving between the other dancers like smoke. She dances like she is coming alive, like breathing — like each pirouette and leap is a heartbeat, keeping her going. All around her the fireflies are darting back and forth, landing on her skin like shy kisses before spinning away.
Maret laughs, and presses closer to Elena. She matches her reflection in the water — every step the palomino takes, Maret takes in turn. She shortens her own stride into a prance, tucks her own chin against her shoulder and weaves back and forth in the water.
She dances.
Until —
Stop.
She freezes, lungs trembling like twin butterflies in the metamorphosis, blood racing in her ears. And through the hazy twilight, she sees them coming to them.
Fireflies alight on their skin one by one, crowding closer and closer to the two horses standing knee-deep in the water. A smile blossoms slowly across Maret’s face, as she reaches her muzzle out to them. Her reflection stares back at her in the water, sparkling and crowned with light. She turns back to Elena, laughter making her eyes shine.
“They did,” she whispers, her voice low and filled with emotion, as if afraid to speak any louder for fear of scaring them off. The gentle praise makes her blush.
As the circle of fireflies grows tighter, she steps closer and presses her shoulder to Elena’s. “How do you know these things?” she whispers, still watching the light grow brighter, and brighter, and warmer around them in awe.
take this burden away from me and bury it before it buries me
She once, when she had been little, had stood in the ancient valley of her brith land. And she dreamed that was a blade of grass and she knew all the stories they held as they grew taller and taller.
They withered and died.
And she along with it.
She wonders what happened to that blade of grass. If it ever grew back. Or if it sits beneath the dirt, waiting for better days to grow, when the sun may be brighter, and the rain may be gentler. She wonders how long it may wait. If a blade of grass can wait forever.
Fire alights her skin, but it does not burn even if she glows like embers. She wonders if it is only because she dances, dances amongst the bright flames of fireflies, that she does not turn to ash like Paraiso once did a half century ago. She dance with moving hips (so much like rolling waves), and flowing legs (like smoke in the sky) and a smile on her face (like sunshine.) And they prance together in the water, like synchronized dance partners, their reflections and themselves melding into one.
Dance.
Dance.
Dance.
Stop.
Her entire body feels like butterfly wings against flower petals.
More and more come, drawn to the pair and their beauty and their dancing. Elena watches as Maret reaches out to touch them, like sunlight slipping through the trees. “Where did you learn to dance?” Elena asks her, because she knows her own story, but she thinks the steps of strangers are far more intriguing, far more deserving of a story, a story that she wants to hear.
And how does she know these things? How does she know? “When fire travels, we run, but when it stills, when it sits their flickering and glowing, we gather.” She says, thinking of bonfires and summers. They continue to come, to gather, to glow.
so take away this apathy bury it before it buries me
and i must pour forth a river of words or i shall suffocate.
I
f Maret only knew the way the rest of the night would play out, oh, then she might have turned then and gone back to her room.
She might have gone back to the few stray sunflowers that had managed to stay alive in the flowerbed outside her window, to all the unfinished poems waiting like promises on her desk. She might have hugged her fathers and told them how much she loved them, and would miss them, and how terribly afraid she had been when she thought she had lost them and herself.
She might have trembled when she heard the music, and seen the fireflies leading her to the water (the same way they would lead her later to the ghosts.)
But she does not know. Oh, Maret does not know how terribly things can hurt when she misplaces her trust in them.
She would learn.
But for now she is only laughing as she feels the wings of the fireflies flutter against her skin. And she is leaning into them like sunlight, like warmth, like growth when she arches her neck and dances a circle alongside Elena. And she does not stop to wonder if she is a ghost or a girl, or if Elena is real, or if the strangers watching them and smiling are smiling because they, too, are ghosts who know all the things she does not.
“My fathers taught me,” she said, when she leans against Elena’s golden shoulder to catch her breath. “Eros told me once that it was the way Aion danced that made them fall in love.” It does not feel as strange as it once did to call her parents by name. And Maret tells herself it is a sign that she is older now, that they should come so easily; but if she were being honest with Elena, with herself, it is because she has yet to know who she is when she is apart from those things in life that she trusts.
Their steps are slower now, gentler, kinder — Maret flicks an ear towards the girl and together they gather even as the fireflies gather around them.
She would laugh, if she were not so terribly afraid of scaring them all away.
“I always thought of fire as something destructive,” she whispers. “How can something be both good and bad at one, how can it destroy as easily as it gives life?”
How can the world be so full of opposites?
She thinks she can see the answer there in Elena’s eyes. Later she will write about it, the painful duality of a soul, the sparks that can thaw as easily as consume. Later, later, later —
take this burden away from me and bury it before it buries me
Maybe if she knew how the rest of this would go, maybe Elena would never have left the fireflies. Maybe, if she knew, if she could see into the future like Marcelo could, maybe she never would have left Paraiso. Would have stayed, for ages and ages, and never have left the bowing trees, the fragrant flowers. And something, something else—
Something lay buried in the ground there. Under grass. Under five years of June rain and five years of December Snow.
A small forgotten thing.
Nothing that the world would miss.
It is a stone, a crystal from the cave they had once found and taken. “Do you think it’s magic?” A little girl of blonde had asked once. “Probably.” A little girl of red had answered once.
No, nothing that anyone would miss.
Least of all the girls who let it get buried in the first place.
And forgotten.
A small thing—but forgotten all the same.
They say time is a flat circle. If that’s true, then Elena and Maret are standing in the very middle of it. She inhales, holding the breath in her lungs. As if her very breath could send them hurtling forward into time, into the very places they did not want to be. It is a mistake. It is a horrible, horrible mistake, that she cannot stop herself from leaning into.
Elena is truly what her cousin says she is, that daring cliff dancer. She twirls and she laughs. She has fallen before, has fallen down, down, down. But the love of the dance so outweighed the fear of the fall.
Her blue eyes linger on Maret as she giggles—she thinks if the fireflies made sounds it could be Maret’s laughter. Elena holds Maret there, against her shoulder, feeling something like kinship with the girl. (Who else would dance in sunlight with her so beautifully?) “That is how my father fell in love with my mother,” she says, remembering the story her mother would tell. Sometimes, if she lies still and lets her mind clear, she can remember the sound of her voice. Her words were sweet like summer berries and she smelled the way she remembers home smelling.
She thinks on Maret’s world. Elena does not think herself wise, she had once, when she had been young and foolish. Maybe she is still foolish, chasing shadows and starlight. Good and bad. The summer rains in Paraiso that flooded the quiet burrows of the rabbits. Destroy as easily as it gives. The snow that paint a picturesque landscape for two fillies to build snow animals. The same substance that froze her father’s blood. “I don’’t know,” she admits. “If you find the answer, you'll let me know?” She asks, turning a golden head to the girl with a smile.
The sun goes down.
The music begins to die.
The fireflies move towards the stars.
Elena reaches out to Maret and pulls her closer to her. “Thank you for the dance,” she says. And the girls depart. One to find ghosts and another to listen to voices she has not heard in so long, so so long.
so take away this apathy bury it before it buries me
and i must pour forth a river of words or i shall suffocate.
T
he sun is beginning to set. Maret can see the longer shadows it casts on the ground, the way the fireflies grow brighter, brighter, brighter around them. They make a halo of golden light on her brow, so that when Maret tilts her eyes up the brightness of it s all that she sees.
It is right, she thinks.
If there is a part of her soul that is stirring at all of the light, she does not feel it. If there is a little bit of her father’s sunlit magic trapped in her veins it is lost in the dance, in the music, in the rushed beating of her heart. The reflections are following her, the ice is floating like bracelets at her heels instead of shackles, whispering like stories that have been waiting to be scribed.
Later, she will. Later, she will sit herself beside her window (the one against which the maple tree taps) and write until it hurts. She will write until the only magic she knows flows out of her like acid-water, burning her along the way.
She will write, and then she will leave.
But as the sun sets she smiles at the girl, and echoes her when she says, “thank you for the dance, Elena.” The hug they share is fleeting, but she will remember the warmth of her skin (and the gold — always, she will remember the gold of it.)
And then with the fireflies still dancing in her mind long after they have departed from her skin, she turns from the river. She knows she should return back to the castle, that her parents will be looking for her as the night falls —
but instead she lets the forest consume her as she steps into it.
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