[AW] tell him the fire's out

[Elena]

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

“Are you looking for someone?”
“No.”

He had been ragged: dirty skin, angry edges, violent shine to his eyes. Of course, she had seen worse, had seen so much worse, yet she hadn't been able to shake the feeling of discomfort that found her, tucked beneath that golden skin when he looked at her, saying the very nickname her own parents ad given to her when she had been so small on stumbling, uncoordinated legs.

And there she had stood, clawing at his chest to let her into his heart until her fingernails were ragged and bloody. Even after Frostbane, after Underworld, after Ostere, Elena had never learned to keep the door closed to the monsters that crept at night. She would pull back the covers and invite them into her bed if it meant she didn't have to sleep alone under the stars.

“Not everyone can be expected to smile so prettily all the time. Some of us are content to be more sedate.” 

Did I make the right choice?
She wants to ask not for the first time in her life. But she holds back.

“It seems like a lovely place,” Elena settles on instead, words that are meant to be small talk, a cover for the questions that quiver beneath blue eyes. She cannot be so quick to let go of her secrets, her thoughts. Elena has made this mistake time and time again. She likes to think that maybe now, maybe, she has learned her lesson.

“The gardens,” she says with something of a breath of fresh air. “That sounds lovely,” she exhales. Elena is still sometimes that little filly made of golden sunshine staring out at the tulips that surround her feet with her mother beside her. Or the little girl that picked flowers with her red haired cousin and decorated the manes and tails of all the residents of Paraiso. She is silly hoping she could do the same here, although the little girl inside her wriggles with excitement and eagerness. “Thank you, Anandi,” Elena says as she follows the mare down the dusk court path.

As they stroll through the court, Elena’s blue eyes rove left and right, taking keen interest in the areas the other mare points out to her. And then that familiar scent of florals and color reaches her nares and Elena’s knees nearly shudder with memories and hope. She hardly knows where to look first, and with a stuttered beat of her heart, she thinks of Lilli again for only an instant, and how much the butterfly child would love this garden and if she ever felt just as satisfied with the taigan trees.

An apple strays before her, a command on its red skin. Elena is hardly in a place to disobey, either the mare or her own stomach. In a few bites, the apple is gone and Elena’s glacial gaze is now locked onto the mare. “Thank you,” she repeats, and there is something more to it. “How long have you called Dusk home?” She asks. “Were you born here?”



* 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.

@Anandi