[P] and the truth is that we could [Lucinda]

[Elena]

every day it feels like I’m holding back an ocean

(What are you?)
“Elena.”
(No. What are you?)
“A girl.”
(No. What are you?)
“Benjamin and Beylani’s daughter.”
(No. What are you?)
“A child descended from Legado the Great.”
(No. What are you?)

Elena grits her teeth. She had had enough of these riddles that Hoshi offered to her. Why would she not just give her the answer? She huffs, as only a child can, tossing those tufts of cumulus atop her golden poll, pretending as if she were some angsty teen and not just a little girl annoyed with her cousin. 

“What are you, Elena? Come on, just answer the question,” she says, baiting the girl, seeing the annoyance hammer at her mind. 

…….

“Fire. Burning. Heat.”

And fire Elena has been. 

Does fire know that it is fire? Does it know it exists to burn, to light, to destroy as well as heal? The answer is no, it is a mindless entity that is created, even destroyed at times, smothered, washed away. But give this fire the ability to think, a mind, a soul, a heart. Give it this and what will it do? 

It will blaze.

Elena knows this. Of course she does. This was written across the faces of her parents as they looked upon their daughter with love in the creases of their smiles. Her parents whose love had created a fire, so much more than just the flickering flames passion. Elena could see it in the brief time she had known them. 

(They had marched into the sea where they created fire from water. A romance that Elena has come to idolize.)

Elena walks the swamp, but there is a part of her that wants to return to her perch on the sea. What would her parents think now? Was it inevitable that Elena should end up beside the water when from the water the very love that gave Elena life was born? 

Her heart patters in excitement. Just what she had been looking for. A particular herd that was quite gifted at settling pain of the limbs: Bunchberry. Lovelace had trained Elena well, but the golden girl was still learning. She wonders what secrets the desert may hold for healing. Her steps are slow, her head slumped over in a lazy fashion as glacier blue eyes remained trained on the ground in front of her, looking for any sort of the leaves, flowers, strange grasses she has been taught to look for. There is some quiet tranquility to this role of the medic, and Elena wears the job well. She is a medic, Elena thinks to herself, proud, but there are tremors underneath her skin, and worry that has sunk into the creases of her smile, and torment in the shadows of the corners of her eyes. 

If Hoshi was still around, if she had been able to ask this question now—Elena knows just how she would answer. 

(What are you?)
“Scared.”
(Why are you scared, Elena?)
“Because—after the fire—only ash is left behind.”



* e l e n a
in the dark I’ll pray for the return of the light
the sunflower daughter of benjamin and beylani
medic of dusk.

@Lucinda