[P] birds of a feather [quest]

[Elena]

Elena

let us live like flowers
drenched in sunlight

E

lena, is it?” A boy had once asked her with a honey voice and smile made from sickly sweet candy. “Hmmm, I think Gorgeous would be more fitting.” Elena had rolled her eyes. Cassian was perhaps the only one that was able to get away with saying something like that. He was one of the firsts to talk to her like that, aside from Vadar, but it was the first time someone flirted with her for the sake of flirting, there were no ulterior motives. She found it, despite herself, refreshing. She wonders where he is now. If he is happy. If maybe he has a child or two. She even tries not think about what this child would look like if he were the father. Cassian may have been a flirt, he may have been too sly for his own good, but Elena knows he would have been a good father. He would have been here for her. Unlike Tenebrae.

This is unfair of Elena to say, and she knows this, though the thought that doesn't belong in her head still helps her stomach unclench.

Her heart beats impatiently in her ribcage, emotions stir relentlessly. So much time has passed, and yet it feels like none at all. But it had to of, because she can see the way her belly rounds with a child. Her child. Their child. No, it had to be her child. Only her child. Eyes like bruises blink away the thoughts. 

So Elena does something she hasn't done in such a long time, she walks, with no where in particular to go. She knows this is dangerous, because she moves to the mountains because without a direction, her heart leads her to him. She wonders how she is able to keep walking with all the broken glass in her chest. She knows it is there because her heart was shattered, because even though something still beats inside her, it must be an imposter. The wounds are too real to be anything else, her heart too empty to still be inside her at all.

The mountains look weathered and ancient. She feels something stir and she wonders if she can really do this. “It’s a lovely day,” she had told Nashua, her nephew. “The wind seems fair.” And he had flown. It was the first time, the first real time, even after Aerwir pressuring her, even after falling for monsters, Elena entertained the idea of becoming a mother. 

She doesn't know what brings her to the base of the mountains today. 

Perhaps it is the howling of wolves. Or the chill in an autumn air. Or maybe it is this feeling of weighted guilt that sits as a child within her. 

Maybe she should tell him. 
No, she shouldn’t. 

She doesn't know why she comes here, but the further she moves, the more it makes sense. The tug in her belly grows stronger. 

Elena finds (have you really found something if you weren't looking for it?) the little girl all alone. Her stomach flutters. A child out here alone did not seem to be the safest things. “Hi, Maeve, I’m Elena.” She offers her. “I’ve been there, once.” Once with a shed-star, that told her to breathe, to calm, who sang to her, who led her, who held her. Without thinking those blue eyes look towards them, thinking, with a bit of dumb luck, she might see him there. But, there is nothing. “What are you doing out here all alone?”

She looks upon the little stranger, and she realizes for the first time, the tug—has stopped.

code by rallidae
picture by cannon 

@Maeve