Elchanan
some melt stars for crowns
The hospital is silent, but that’s probably a good thing.
When Elchanan lands, it is not as soft nor as graceful as he’d like; the ground is startlingly soft underfoot, and he slips through the peat for a brief second in a way that punches a gasp of surprise from him. Mud splashes. Moss flies. A frog lets out a bizarre wet croak and goes hopping away in alarm, narrowly evading the tyranny of Elchanan’s hooves as he quickly regains his footing and straightens his posture.
Thankfully, there’s no one around to laugh.
The trees here are nestled so close together that hardly any sunlight breaks through. For that, Elchanan is grateful—it’s barely sunrise, and the little bit of light that did find him on the way here has left his skin smarting with an uncomfortable, prickling burn. The shade of the swamp is a balm, cool and dark and soft like velvet, and it settles his heart into a slower beat. For a moment, he closes his eyes, breathes, and listens.
A rustle of wind. The chirping of birds. The movement-sound of animals exchanging places, frogs clicking and croaking. It is peaceful in the simplistic, peasant way that Elchanan has come to expect of this court, and it is the kind of thing that would turn him away from Terrastella completely if he didn’t have someone to visit, a mission to complete. (The smells don’t help, either.) With an abrupt sigh the priest blinks his eyes open and trudges through the dirt and moss toward the hospital, a low, clean brick building whose windows are only just beginning to fill with light.
He knows Samaira will be here. Not because she’s said anything but because he knows her, or knows her enough: she wants to help these people, who really have given her nothing. She is the poorly-raised kind of girl who will give herself up in service to a goodness that does not exist. The kind that can very easily be taken advantage of. He’ll have to warn her of that, sometime soon: watch out. There are worse men than me.
Maybe she’ll even believe it.
Elchanan stretches out each wing, in turn, to shake off the collected mud and rain and plant matter; then he folds them neatly against his back and steps into the dawn-lit hospital.
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