[P] our dead drink the sea

[Elena]

take this burden away from me
and bury it before it buries me

She wonders sometimes what would have happened if Aletta and Valerio had not come to save them that day in Murmuring Rivers. When Frostbane came to claim the golden filly he had been promised in exchange for her mother’s life. A promise that was made before she was born. She knows, but she pretends to wonder so she does not have to feel the agony of even a hypothetical. At the end of it all, it hadn't been Lilli Forstbane had been after and the snow prince had little room for spares. Her coat was already such a deep crimson back then, what would have been the difference to him if he had added more to it. Elena would have laid down her life for her cousin, in those thoughts, it is so much easier to imagine herself dying for Lilli then the other way around. Then Frostbane striking her down, like the little butterfly she had been. He would have taken Elena to his snowy tundra. Valerio, Aletta, Marcelo, Ori, they would have wondered where the golden filly went, perhaps they just would have assumed she was dead too, while she stood shivering int he tundra, distraught with grief.

She would have rather have been dead.

Elena thinks she would always prefer death to her body than death to her mind, to her soul, to her spirit.

A smile blooms across her face. “I will forgive you this time,” she says. Only because it is so hard to be angry with someone who stands alone in the rain on a lonely cliff side. “No, I don’t.” It is an easy truth to speak. She likes the way it glides from her tongue. There is no effort of trying to make herself believe every syllable. She likes the way his eyes light up, even if it is a warning signal, Elena pretends they are ember sparks of a the cliff’s bonfires that had burned so bright just days earlier. “You could tell me—what kind of man you are.” She says, looking at him through long, dark lashes, like a child might. Elena, for once, doesn't make a guess.

“Well, are you a troublemaker?” Answer a question with a question. Rishiri had told her as much. “I don't think anyone has ever called me dangerous before.” That isn't true. Tenebrae found her dangerous, for reasons that are entirely his own.

His emotions are sharp and she wonders why she isn't bleeding as they scrape against her with a sting like the blade of a knife, or the fragmented pieces of glass from a broken window.

And what brings you here, besides the sea’s siren song?

She laughs. “Can I just say a walk?” But it isn't the whole truth. She pretends to send messages in a bottle, wondering if maybe her thoughts wash up on some distant shore. The golden girl likes to imagine her thoughts far away from here, where someone else can collect them.

“You have misspoken in my presence, sir,” she says as she moves to the cliff side, brushing past him like a stroke of a paintbrush against the canvas. She looks over her shoulder, it easy to forget here that her eyes are not summer skies, but just eyes of blue. “The sea beside this cliff does not sing—it dances.” There is a glint in her eye as she gathers his emotions within her like a tide in a cave beside the sea, she moves closer, the butterfly in a net, she thinks herself free until her wings are caught against the fabric. “I come to watch it, every day.” There is something wistful in her voice that would have been better (better for her) if it wasn't there at all. “I always thought it danced the tango, but in the rain, what do you think?” She turns her eyes to him, there is no ocean churning there, although there is something reflecting like light on water. “The waltz?”

so take away this apathy
bury it before it buries me

@Vercingtorix