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

[Elena]

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

“Someday,” she had said so long ago when they had been small and able to fit in their tree house with ease. “I’ll learn how to build worlds. And then we can leave everything else behind.”

There is no undoing, but there is renewal, there is creation.

It would be easier, to exist in a vacuum, without the weight of all their experiences. And if she thought it would save them she would do it in a heartbeat, create a world for them somewhere, somehow. (Ah, but she is not a god. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Even if Lilliana had made her feel like one at times). Instead they were grown now, stained, dripping with all these experiences, history a thick and leaden tapestry on their backs. Death and family and betrayal and leaving, always leaving, everyone left.

(But then they always looked back at each other, always caring, always loving).

Always. Always. Always.

The sun has always adored Elena. The way it curved and caressed around her golden skin. It has always turned her to fire and made her as bright as summer and as warm as flames. But then again, perhaps this man before her has felt the same with his russet skin that wears the waning sunshine so well. The arches of colors across the sky sets a fine tone for a first meeting among the boy and the girl on the wild cliffs of Dusk.

Her laugh is near instantaneous with his words. A seagull, the perfect imagery for the man before her with great wings that makes Elena think of Rishiri. The mare had been more akin to raven, with her sneer and her hardened eyes, but Elena could not think of her as anything more than her caring aunt. “If you are not a gentlemen than I suppose the sea has no reason to fear,” she says and peers out at him with those eyes as blue as early morning frost. “But should I have reasons to feel dismay?” She questions him with an impish grin that twitches the corners of her lips. She looks silly there, with that smile on her face, and young and childish. There is something refreshing in the humor.

“Have you seen the fish that scurry away when a shadow passes over?” She asks looking first to the water before turning those blue eyes back to Raglan. “I believe those are the souls of the men who scorned her, who now live in fear the sea may finish them off,” she says in dark, low tones before that bright lilt returns to her voice. It would seem Elena is unable to remain dark and for longing for more than a few moments.

She likes the way the ocean fills the silence, it makes her comfortable and calm standing here with a stranger in a land that still feels strange. “Hey, don't thank you me yet. There is still plenty of time for me to push you in,” she says with that same impish smile. “I am not quite as dainty as I may seem.” A beat. “I’m Elena, Raglan. And I would appreciate the company this evening,” she admits. Elena could never be one to turn away company, no matter the sort. It may very well be the reason why she often finds herself embracing those who would be much better of (better of for Elena anyway) if she had just left them alone.

“You say your memory is bittersweet,” she says, settling herself closer to him and in position to where she can gaze with glacial eyes out across the sea that lurches and sways. “Care to share with me the sweetness of it?”



* 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