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

[Elena]

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

Fear is a snarling, terrible thing.

She always forgets the exact rawness of it, the way it prickled, alive on her skin, like flames licking at her bones. She was used to that more kind of subtle fear, the low and steady haunt of the traumatized. Not the raw and feral thing that clawed at every organ like some kind of vicious lion desperate to escape.

This is why she is
(maybe it is was.)

a fighter, a young woman who clothed herself in flames, who made herself untouchable. A woman with blazing eyes and a wild spirit who felt safe in her own skin —safe as she possibly could anyway. A young mare assured in her own abilities, her own strength.
A fighter now almost rendered useless, the flames had nearly been put out, smothered by defiant lands and others in her heart.  

Now, not a fighter, but a young woman still. A girl painted in sunflower yellow, with a scar on her shoulder, hidden from view.
(It doesn't burn anymore, at least. She takes a small, bitter comfort in that.)

And she should not be alone. When that creeping sensation hits her that no one is around, it is then she hears the distant baying of hellhounds that may or may not exist. Alone she could be so easily taken, so easily seduced and secluded. 

Not safe to travel alone. Elena has heard these words before as she sat among the rocky land of Pangea, traveling to the kingdom from her territory of Hyaline. Not safe to travel along to the Snow Plains where the Snow Prince sat waiting on his icy throne for what was promised to him (a girl with yellow ribbons in her hair and sunflowers clutched in her hand.) “It seems there is not a safe place to travel to any longer,” she says with careful brows knitted together in concern and challenge. “I am not,” she answers the question. Although she hardly knows where to say she is actually is from, Elena just knows it is not from here. There is some sort of comfort in at least knowing that, even if she no longer understand what home actually means.

“Anandi?” The child of sunflowers and sky blue eyes is taken aback. “How do you know her?” Elena asks. Anandi had been one of the first Elena had met, what would someone outside of Dusk want with the girl? “I do know her, she spends some time in the capital,” Elena responds. “I planned to travel back that way, would you care to join me? And then maybe we can find her.”



* 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