[P] It could be mine to keep [raglan]

[Elena]

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

“Elena.” Even now she can hear her choking on the darkness. 

“Lilli.” she had breathed back, wanting to cry but not remembering how to. 

And they had found each other once again. 

Elena has first come Murmuring Rivers with her head held high, knowing what she was: an orphan. She didn't want anyone to see her cry. She wouldn’t give Frostbane the satisfaction of her tears. She she cried silently under the moonlight when no one but the stars could hear her. She would stand, bold and brazen in the sun, asking the fates to fight her again Elena had nothing else to lose. Until Lilli that was, the little sorrel girl who had seen Elena’s walls and barriers and merely waited outside them with the patience of a saint. And then there bond was born in fire, to melt the ice that had come to freeze them. 

Maybe this is why she cannot settle, cannot find any warmth in this winter. Alone Elena is no flame, she thinks, but just a glowing ember that waits for something, something else to make it grow. 

So Elena continues to do her due diligence, still collecting her herbs, doing what she can for her court and the goddess that she has pledged herself to, still working to help those she can. There is some silly, naive, stupid part of her that still believes there is good in the world.

Elena is not broken yet.
But she has gotten more fragile as time has gone on.

Today though, she finds herself in another setting entirely. She places feet steadily upon the rocks below her, reminded of the evening when a rock slide had nearly killed her. Aerwir had saved her, but in the end, his bravery came at too high of a price for Elena. Her heart thrums with the expected view at the top of the cliffs she has heard throughout the whispers of the capital. Elena left the city behind and traveled to the country side, beyond the fields and upwards. 

Shoulder muscles work to pull her upwards, back legs pushing in unison, until she feels herself rise over the cliffside. It would seem the hearts of Dusk have not lied to her, and the sunflower girl is rewarded for her efforts. “Wow.” Her voice is a pin dropping, quiet and breathless. She decides in this moment as she stares out over the cliffs, the sea crashing at its doorstep, that maybe, maybe Dusk can truly be her home just as Hyaline was, Culloden, Woodlands, Paraiso, Murmuring Rivers, and Windskeep.

But, Elena has been wrong before.



* 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.

@Raglan