[P] A dream once lost among sorrow and songs

[Elena]

Elena

let us live like flowers
drenched in sunlight

E

lena has known enough grief in her life, that it is no longer two dimensional. It had taken on an actual form, it changes: shape, pattern, color, size. It swallows her whole, plunges her into darkness, it sets her on top of the sun, drowning in light. Grief has sat on her shoulder, it has lodges itself in her throat. It has arched overhead like rainbow. But it is always there. Like the sun, like the moon, like the ground, like the sky. Like trees overhead, and flowers. It has built itself into her world.

She dreamt of him, often. Sometimes, it was so real; she could imagine the heady scent of him wrapping around her. How many nights had she thought of this exact smell? How many times had she gone to sleep with his phantom touch, the warmth of his body pressed up against hers? It had been so pleasant; so unspeakably perfect. But each morning she woke up and he wasn't there. It hurt all the more for it.

Maybe all he wanted was a night.

“Remember me,” she had told him.

Maybe if she had just given her name and walked away, everything would have been different. Or maybe this is how it was always meant to be.

She’s in the mountains. She is here before she realizes it. She has not been here since the lake, since the night. She hasn't been by these mountains though since another night, with a boy of stars, a boy she doesn't deserve. Elena blinks blue eyes, tries to forget, doesn’t, and hangs the guilt on her shoulder like a shawl. The golden girl (she is so much like sunshine) wanders at dusk. Dusk of all times, when she should be with her kingdom, thinking of nothing but Terrastella, her home. She should be in her cottage, watching the sea tumble. She should be finding Anandi or Lyr and asking them about their days. She just shouldn't be here, not now. And maybe not with him. But, it is too late for that.

He appears to her like a vision—too slow, syrupy and underwater, and then all at once. He is there, and her tongue is swollen in her mouth. He is there, and the air has been sucked from her lungs. He is there and the world tilts beneath her until she is falling.

Falling, falling, falling —

She doesn’t move.

She doesn’t breathe.

There is no warning that today will be any different than those that have come before. No warning of the pain she will feel when her heart is torn free from the safety of her small, aching chest. It is better this way, though, to be able to greet him with a soft smile and love in her blue eyes. “Tenebrae,” she greets him. She steps forward without hesitation to press her head into his strong shoulder.  “It’s good to see you.” She breathed in his scent, felt the rush of his pulse. 

Because there is no warning, no way to know.

There is so much she does not know, though.

She blinks softly and pulls back so she can look at him, really look at him.

Her heart beats sideways, as if trying to slip through the narrow space between her ribs. An echo of meetings past, enough to cause her lips to curve into a smile

At his words, her heart leapt into her throat, and she closes her eyes against the shocking power just simple words have, and a need that clawed at her. He had wanted her. He had shown that at the lake, at the god forsaken lake. He had wanted her. Like he had wanted others, she reminds herself. Not like she wanted him; not the way that she was coming to need him. She opened her eyes to study his face and lied to herself. It would be enough, she thinks, to have just been wanted for that night, for just that reason. He didn't have to share his heart.

(Lies. All lies. She hungered for that part of him, that part that felt so impossibly out of reach.)

I am yours, she wants to tell him, so desperately wants to tell. Just be mine too.

His eyes find hers when they settle against his face, drowning in the soft angles and faint hollows that are as beautiful and familiar to her as the constellations strewn across a night sky. All the things she wants to say sit like a bruise on her tongue. She wants to say me too

There is no warning that today should be any different than other days before.

Elena wont let it.

“Come on, race you to the edge of these ruins,” she says and takes off before throwing a word of caution over her golden shoulder.  “Watch you step, Tenebrae.” She calls, laughs.

“Don’t break anything.”

Don’t break anything.

code by rallidae
picture by cannon
@Tenebrae