She sees him change, but Elliana has never been so concerned with those who are living.
But those who are dying.
She feels the flowers.
Or rather, feels their deaths.
She wants to scream at him to stop, to get away from her. But there is something in the back of her mind that tells her he cannot control this any better than she can stop the voices that lurch and creak in the dark of the night.
And this, only this is what steadies her, and allows her heart to open, fully turning her attention to him. He shares his name and she holds
“Why cant you use them?” She asks, not thinking maybe she should not ask these things, maybe it was something he did not want to answer, but her mom answers all her question, as does her dad. Why wouldn’t he? it like a marble on hew tongue. Rolls it against her teeth. Tests its weight and its shape before she repeats it back inside her head. She presses it against the roof of her mouth and prays that her tongue will remember the shape of it, the specific way it felt.
And then he says it.
Elli.
It sounds different coming out of his mouth.
Because she has only heard it from her mother, her father, her aunt, family. It sounds like a song from unfamiliar lips and she thinks she likes her name a lot more when it comes from lips of strangers. It makes that heart swell to fill up all that space at the base of her throat and she swallows and grins and tries not to let it choke her. She wonders how it feels in his mouth, if the it rolls from top to bottom. If it fits neatly on his tongue or if it takes some effort to hold its shape.
And she wonders why she is wondering these things, when she has never wondered them before. Maybe it is the chill in her bones from the way the plants wilt around him, but her heart starts beating harder, so hard it makes her head swim, but she feels no trepidation. “I don't like falling.”
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