[P] in the blur of the stars [fall]

[Elena]

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

She has considered going to Denocte many times, to see him. But there is a part of her, some distant painful part of her, that reminds her that she could never be his only one. That she would be one of many (she knows not how many women he has lusted for beside the sea.) In the end, Elena would simply be a splinter in the oak tree of his life. She could not meet all of his needs, his desires, or brighten whatever shadows he sank into. Yet, there is a part of her that aches to do just that. She ached to give him everything he needed, that he craved so he did not feel so torn inside himself. 

Elena always longs to be another’s lighthouse on the shore, to have them return to again and again. 

The pain of rejection, of jealousy, did not explode, but it did seep through her, filling all of the cracks and crevices that she could no longer ignore. All those places that other boys, have left vacant and haunted. She would grit her teeth against it, ignoring the throbs that flood through her, memories of other times, other men that she could never get rid of. The sweet, tender moments, the ones that broke her apart. 

Instead, she enjoys her time in Dusk, she feels safe within the walls of her home, delusional, sure, but Elena believes when she told him not to come back to Terrastella that he would listen this time. 

Elena has always been such a foolish little girl. 

But it is easy to stay within Terrastella this autumn night. 

Laughter manages to tumble from her lips as the night before her grows restless and she enters the dining hall. Emotions wash over her like an end of summer rain, but for once they are not ripping Elena apart, instead—only bliss can be felt. Like a summer night in Denocte that she has been trying to forget, Elena’s blood fuels with dancing and in an instant she is a flickering flame alight with movement. There are cheers for the sheer joy that another has joined the dance floor and Elena’s golden body twists and turns, hips roll and shoulders dip. Her creamy locks ripple against a neck of gold. She burns as bright as the copper flame insignia glows on her left shoulder. A gift to remind her that emotions that can glow brighter than any ember and can burn more than any fire. 

It is only when the music shifts that her dancing ceases and Elena pants with something like ecstasy and jubilation. She makes her way to one of the tables serving wine and lets out a breath. She is tired with euphoria and for a heartbeat she had almost forgotten about him and the fire that he stirs in the pit of her stomach. There was only dancing and night and candlelight. “I wish every night could be like this,” she says to no one, to herself, to everyone. Nights where she felt alive, where she could kiss a stranger, or lose herself amongst the bodies of other, or to simply watch delight streak across other’s faces. Elena clings to it tightly, and imagines for one elated moment, she convinces herself that this will happen again tomorrow, and tomorrow’s tomorrow.

so take away this apathy
bury it before it buries me

@Michael

[Michael]

“Watch carefully, the magic that occurs when you give someone just enough comfort to be themselves.”

Michael thinks, sometimes, that everything is a circle, and that things come and go as they must, and if he just loosens his grip long enough to let go it will come back to him in due time. And, like a circle himself, endlessly turning, as the year starts to wind down Michael finds himself back in Terrastella, drinking their wine, dancing to their music, admiring the cliffs and the city and the unending charm of its people. He thinks he likes them most of all.

He and Elena are so alike. Really.
And maybe that's why he's scared of her, just a little. Maybe that why when he sees her over the shoulder of a pleasantly charming stranger he worries, for a second. Michael remembers her in those water eyes, a voice so quiet and so earnest that it made Michael want to sprint in the opposite direction as fast as he could-- because, as we all know, the only thing worse than not knowing is knowing too much, and Michael has gone centuries without any sort of painful self-reflection.

He doesn't like looking at her and seeing himself. He doesn't like looking at anyone and seeing himself. Honestly, he doesn't like seeing himself at all.

Still, when he sees her, a flicker of attention that breaks the narrative of a story he's being told--something about pirates and hidden gold, a sailor entertaining the small group gathered round with tales of his life at sea--he can't stop himself. Michael looks back at the man, small but intimidating, and smiles before nodding and ducking out of the conversation.

As he slides up to Elena's side, Michael plucks one of the glasses from the table, something red and slightly sweet. He smiles at her, like he's never had a smile drop off of his face in his life. "Elena! What a pleasant surprise. Can't get rid of me, apparently."

He looks at her, warm and gold, ribs heaving, and picks up another glass to offer to her. There is that panic in him, the one that looks at her and sees only a mirror, the one that wonders how long it will be until she asks him some biting question that cuts him like glass-- because it is what he would to. It is all he knows how to do.

Michael sips from his own glass, giving her a conspiratorial grin when he's done. "You look like you've been busy. Do you dance?"

@Elena

[Elena]

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

She is warm, can feel the warmth rising beneath her golden skin. Maybe it is the dancing, the spirit of the festival, or the emotions that surround her. Either way, she tucks the warmth inside the pocket of a coat to save for the winter that would come.

For the same reason Michael wishes to run away, maybe this is why Elena her heart flutter in her chest with the grace of butterfly wings when she spies blonde men staring adoringly at the ocean, thinking it might be Michael. They are so alike. There are bruises behind their eyes, something that sits in their blood. They are not born from Novus’s soil, but from other lands, with other stories written in their smiles. Elena has not seen something familiar in so long, but she sees it in Michael. So she is not scared, but grateful because no matter how far she has traveled from home, it always finds her in strange places, on strange faces. It is in the gold of his skin, the blue of his eyes, the curve of his smile, and she can see it in the rise and fall of his breath. Michael is familiarity, and reminds her that she is not adrift on some strange island.

And like a girl who has ben drifting at sea, who has not seen land in so long, her blue eyes rise in surprise as he appears before her.

“Michael!” And maybe if they had been in a cafe in France, Elena would have taken his hands and planted a kiss on each of his cheeks and said something along the lines of ‘darling! It has been too long.’ But instead she settles for a smile on her golden face as she takes the glass from him. She looks into his eyes. Eyes like a summer sky, like the reflection in a lake, as blue as her own. “To be honest, I haven't been trying that hard.” Her voice is honey in the air between them, soft and sweet, the syllables dripping from her mouth slowly. “Though I have been trying to get my hair to grow like yours does,” she says with a note of laughter before settling before him with a smile.

She has missed him.
It was decided from the moment she left him there on the beach with sand on his toes and sea water in his hair.

“A lot has changed since I last saw you. Have you seen my new tattoo?” She asks him, directing his attention to the flame marking on her left shoulder. “I’m a rebel now, don't tell my mom,” she says with mock secrecy. Her heart twinges at her words. Even after all this time, when she speaks of her mother, even in such a fun, light hearted situation, it still causes something like a rend inside her chest. (Michael couldn't tell her mother without a shovel in hand).

His comment sends a playful bump to his golden shoulder that matches her with familiar strangeness. “Of course I dance,” she says with some sort of playful exaggeration. “Don’t tell me you don't dance? My uncle would say that’s a sin.” Blue eyes grow playful as she looks out at him from beneath long, dark lashes. “You aren't a sinner, are you Michael?”

so take away this apathy
bury it before it buries me

@Michael

[Official Dusk Account]

event roll

Night thickens the crowd of dancers in the banquet hall. Groups of horses come in from the fields, legs stained from grape stomping and lips stained from wine drinking. Some smell like smoke from the bonfires, others like apples from the orchard. As the festivities carry on around Elena and Michael, laughter and music fill the room. Someone opens the windows for some fresh air, spilling light and merriment into the moonlight streets of Dusk Court. 

There might be something strange in the cups the two palominos drink from. It starts as a pleasant tickle at the back of the throat, and continues as a warmth that spreads down the spine and across the body. If they keep drinking they will quickly find themselves at the brink of laughter, pushed over the edge by the slightest humor. It will become harder to tell a lie. Later, near the bottom of their cup, one will find themselves saying things they normally wouldn’t, releasing inhibitions like dandelion seeds to the wind. 

The night is wholly indifferent to whether or not the two horses finish the strange drink in their cups. The dancing and the drinking and the celebration carries on around them, fueled by impulsion and laughter until early in the morning.

[Michael]

H

e has missed her.

Michael doesn't see this first off; to start he is wrapped up in his drink and her face reflected in it, warping along with the scenery as she bobs with each word. She is so graceful, and warm, and open, he thinks, in a way he himself has never quite captured. Elena says his name like the sun and his heart sings and then melts and then turns cold as river water when their eyes finally meet.

He sees it, now. Michael is not Elena's reflection and she is not his. If she is anything she is a star to shoot for, hung above the horizon where he cannot hope to reach. He tells himself what a gift it would be, to mirror Elena. He does not say it but it is there nonetheless.

Michael tips the drink back and swallows the whole of it, gritting his teeth. It's sweet but not sweet enough. As are most things. "You sure about that?" he asks with a smile, one of those precious few calm ones that lulls along with the loping violin in the background. "It's heavy. Very heavy." His hair, and his tolerance, are a gift from his father-- the only gifts, or at least the only ones that matter and do no harm.

Here they are, strangers in strange lands, still lonely in each other's company. Michael cannot remember much (except for a girl like Elena but with skin like fat storm clouds and eyes like cornflower, that promised him nothing more than to stay and live and be and didn't keep any of them. She was tempestuous and jealous, and not much like Elena at all, but still when he sees her he aches in places he forgot he had).

He wants just the one thing that doesn't hurt. Just the one. She gestures to the sun on her shoulder and Michael agrees that it's nice, setting his glass on the table and looking away. Michael sees when she cringes, just barely, because it is familiar. He feels a pang of loss for her, about her, in spite of her, or anything. Sometimes he thinks he is just loss and loss and loss all piled on top of itself until there is nothing else left.

He is almost right. Almost.
Do you dance? Elena asks, and Michael turns back with a grin on his face and an uncommon fire in his eyes. There is a growing crowd funneling into the field, leaving a wake of flattened grass and laughter. One of them hands Michael a drink that he takes without thinking. "You wound me." He says, taking a sip. "While I am a sinner, my crime isn't dancing-- or not dancing, as it were." 

Still grinning, Michael inclines his head in a melodramatic bow, and gestures to the crowd with his glass. "Lead the way."

I am soft again.
There is water and it surrounds me.
There is feeling and I can feel it.

@Elena

[Elena]

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

Michael had infected her thoughts since the first time they had met. Mysterious, thoughtful, sweet, Michael. He was hard not to think about. She had missed him the moment she had left, so the next day she had returned to the beach, stood in the water, then in the sand, and then on the dunes, thinking maybe she would spot him, but it was only sand and ocean and sky and sea birds. A lonely crab had wandered by and Elena had wondered if maybe he was waiting for someone too. Elena silently hoped he would find what he was looking for.

Blue and blue together once more. It makes her ache for Lilli because she realizes she has not thought about her cousin in some time. She is altogether suddenly so grateful for Michael. If he asked her to bring him a star from his favorite constellation, Elena would pick for him the brightest one.

She smiles, oh she smiles. “Michael,” she says, the name feeling right on her tongue. She allows herself a hint of laughter with his remark. “Do you ever use it to allow fair maidens and brave knights to climb up the highest of towers?” She asks, as the look in her eyes grows like fire and air. Elena has always been more than one element, for she burns to brightly to just be air, but she dances too lightly on cliff sides for fire alone.

He looks away from her, and she tries not to question why she feels the sudden urge to touch his cheek and face her once more. Elena cannot allow Michael to be sad, cannot allow for his face to crumble apart with sorrow. It could be because it makes her feel the agony of everything, or it could be because his smile lifts it all away.

She drinks again, until he turns back to her, a useless game of cause and effect. Fire grows in his eyes just as it does in hers and she wonders if he only feels the heat of it, or if he too is suddenly hit with a rush of air. Elena follows suit, taking the glass next to his that is offered, thinking she should slow down, but wanting to do anything but. “It’s a good thing, I’m a Medic then,” she says with a drink. A drink, a sip, a taste, a swig. “Well then,” she says, and she can blame the drink for the way her voice echoes with notes of fiddles and flutes. “Perhaps a dance can be your penance.” An atonement, baptism in music notes in place of holy water.

Elena should be terrified at how easy it is to follow him.

But she cant think of anything except the way the music carries her body as if it suddenly had wings and she loses herself for just a moment as a piccolo joins in. She feels like nothing more than summer sky and clouds and hopes and wishes (the ones we abandoned in childhood). The palomino moves her body, rhythm infecting her blood. She stops only when the music grows slower, everyone cheers and the dancers are rewarded a break. Elena is breathing hard. She laughs, a moment, before it is drowned in wine. She takes another sip, and she laughs again. Again, again. She bites her lip to make herself stop, but her face is still creased in a smile. “Have you ever been in love, Michael?” She asks him. The last of her drink is gone. “If you say no, I’ll know you’re lying. And if you say yes—” She pauses, she should consider her words, she shouldn't say them, but maybe as happy as she is, she’s still bitter. “Well, I’m sorry.” Because happy love stories are few and far between. Everyone loves one that ends in tragedy.

so take away this apathy
bury it before it buries me

@Michael

[Michael]

I

t isn't surprising, that she waits on him. Michael is a man with well-meaning claws, but claws nonetheless. Michael is a man with a shovel who digs and digs and digs until all the bones are laid bare and all the ghosts are breathing again. Michael is a man who vanishes, often without a trace, always with someone waiting.

This is what it is like to love him, in any capacity: always waiting, on hills and beached and mountains-- only Michael never comes back.

She laughs, and Michael laughs with her. "Miss Elena," he says, teasing, "I can barely hold my own head up with it, let alone someone else." Something about it rings too true for his liking, and then the feeling floats down to his stomach and settles like it was never there at all.

He watches her drink, and drink, and Michael wonders just who she is. When Elena picks up the second glass and tips it back alongside him he is starting to wonder if she might actually be him, a part stripped away from the whole. Whatever beautiful and soft and caring parts he had must be with her, now. He cannot think where else they might have gone.

Michael dances with quiet concentration and a straight face. He moves easily but not gracefully, bowing and stepping in a smooth but not particularly beautiful way. By the time the music has ended and the space is filled with laughter and applause. He puffs slowly, like he is trying to hide his ribs heaving, or the sound of his breath. Michael tries not to notice that it leaves his lungs screaming for oxygen. Michael tries not to notice most things.

He especially tries not to notice Elena, next to him, full of breathless laughter and the last few dregs of her drink. He offers to take it as she asks an increasingly familiar question: have you ever been in love?

Isra last asked him this. Michael had said, yes, and that was all. He had not known, then. He had not really known anything.

"Of course," he says, surprised at the enthusiasm. It was not intentional. Of course, of course, of course. Michael has loved more often than he hasn't. All he knows how to do is love, and love, and love, to his ever-growing detriment. Michael loves when he should. Michael loves when he shouldn't. Michael throws himself on the pike of his heart and stares up at the stars from his back.

Michael loves Moira. "I love Moira." he says, even as he's scrambling not to. The words just fall out of him and Michael is trapped inside, watching in happen. It's like being in hell, saying things. He is so used to leaving all things unsaid. "and you shouldn't be sorry for it. It is one of the few things that matter, anymore."

He looks at her. Somewhere there is music but it's faded into the background, just a blur of sound to match the blur of lights. "Why are you sorry for it?"

I am soft again.
There is water and it surrounds me.
There is feeling and I can feel it.

@Elena

[Elena]

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

If Michael came to her with claws out, Elena will still open her arms wide to embrace him. He could cut her along her shoulder, scratch her across brow and Elena will hold him tighter still, saying I will not let go, because she knows how much that hurts to have someone let go, even when claws are out, she had told them just hold on a little longer, before she felt the ground beneath her feet and their arms no longer holding onto her.

She would not do that to Michael. She will emerge from any encounter with him bloodied and hurt and she will still smile like sunshine.

And if he came to her with a shovel, Elena would wait to see the hole he dug and fill it back in and plant flowers across it.

“I guess you must admire them from afar then,” she says and she cannot stop that small glimmer of humor that flashes across her delicate, golden features. That small sign of the girl she had once been and the girl she could be again if she only let herself try. It softens her face for a second, but it is only for a moment because with the next breath, her expression is quiet again. Washed clean.

She gives the barest hint of a smile, as if apologizing for the freedom of her laughter, when her world was falling apart.

And there, in that pause between words where all Elena hears is the laughter of the partying and the emptying of glasses and she pretends for a moment to join them—like she were someone else entirely.

They dance, and if Elena were to be asked, she would tell you she were drunk on the steps and not the wine. One foot, another, one hip, another, one shoulder, another. She moves towards him and away, her steps fluid, the look in her eyes flirting with the possibility of a truly happy evening. “You aren't tired, are you Michael?” She asks him. And maybe Michael sees himself inside her, but Elena, when she catches his gaze, she gasps silently, because for a fraction of time, she saw Lilli stir behind his eyes. Elena has known blue eyes since the beginning of her life. Blue eyes to Elena is the color of home, it is the color of love, it is the color of determination, of loyalty.

She knows from the blue of his eyes that she and Michael were not finished with each other, not for some time. She would tell him they would be friends forever, if the word forever were not starting to feel like a cage around her heart.

Of course, he says, and happiness leaps off his golden skin and onto her own, finding its way into her marrow, into her bones. “Moira,” she says so readily. Of course he would love her Phoenix friend, her joy, Elena had named her as such. “I can be sorry if it was never supposed to happen,” she says stubbornly, admitting it out loud. The way she coughs up her confessions to him without him needing to ask or say anything. Michael could turn her inside out and Elena would still believe her heart were beating tucked inside her chest and not in the open for the world to see. “I love Tenebrae.”

so take away this apathy
bury it before it buries me

@Michael