[P] Winters end

[Elena]

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

”What kind of monster would I be if I was uncomfortable with daylight? It’s a much more terrifying thing to know that what you fear can’t be stopped by anything.”  

But it hadn't been said by a monster at all.
She knows this now.
He was just broken, burned by fire, choking on ash.

And it hadn't been fear what she had been feeling towards him at all.
She knows this now.
It had been desire, to take the smoke from his lungs and cool his scorched body.

”I don’t need to leave in order to find flowers…Elena.”

Icy blue eyes look to Luvena with sympathy. “I could not imagine being in a position of power like that,” she says with a shake of her golden head. Elena listens with a sort of stillness as the mare speaks. While she could not entirely relate to the emptiness (though she has felt it internally), but externally, well, Hyaline had been anything but empty, teeming with the life of Kensa and her champion, and the other residents who called the mountainous land home. And before that, Paraiso had been overflowing with childish laughter and families huddled close together as winter grew cold. Still, she understands what she means, Novus holds something else, and Elena feels a calming aura as she realizes she is not the only one who thinks so. “I know what you mean,” she reassures her. “Does that mean I am tired too?” She then jests, smile brightening on her face with humor. “Hopefully you can find some much needed rest in Terrastella.” And she so wants to help her in this moment, but the sunshine child isn't sure how. Elena gave herself wholly to those who needed her —without barrier or reservation. It was simply who she was. It was how she had her heart so terribly ravaged by those who she let in, in the first place.

She had given her love to him and he had not cherished it.

A heart can only break so many times before it no longer pieces back together (there are pieces of her scattered everywhere, pieces of her carried by others that she will never get back).

The learning never stops. It isn't the words she wants to hear, but the words she hears all the same.  Elena listens like a dutiful child would there elder as Luvena speaks, her wisdom coming to rest upon Elena’s golden shoulders like a shawl. Falling. Falling from grace. She thinks of the phrase and she thinks of her mother. Elena does not have to pause to wonder if she would be proud, she would look to Elena with something akin to pity at the choices she has made in her life. ‘But then you should have been here to help me. To stop me.’ Is the thought she so bitterly thinks, hoping Beylani cannot hear her covered in dirt and soil and lilies.

“Twins,” she says in awe, unaware in a land far from here, underneath towering red woods where they carved out a tree fort of their own, her best friend had just given birth to twin boys of her own. “I’ve left before too.” She bites her lower lip, the confession felt treacherous on her tongue. Unaware again that her own land had fallen under Kensa’s reign, as another takes its place, a darker shadow, as the force in Pangea grew stronger.

“They sound like lovely children,” she says. “I am sure they will remember those stories for years to come,” she offers. “I just never pictured motherhood as my path,” she admits, thinking of the way Aerwir would talk, about raising a family, settling in Woodlands, but everything had crumbled when Broch had stolen her away to Culloden, but maybe it had been a blessing in disguise. Where would she be now if she had stayed?

“I am sorry,” she offers Luvena as she can offer little else in this moment. Her hands are empty, but she gives the mare the very thing she tries to give everyone: her heart.

But it wont be enough.
If there was one thing she has learned, it was never enough for anyone.



* 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.

@Luvena
Sorry she kinda got carried away from me.