prayed to keep my soul
E
lliana does not idolize death, nor does she see it as a final end point. How can she when they stand there, pressing around her, pushing the air from her lungs, tightening her skin, pouring cold water down her spine, down her legs, igniting fires in her chest. They are alive. No, they are not alive, they are dead, dead things, but they breathe, shadows can breathe, they can talk, they can move. It is not an end point because there is no end to eternity. Elli did not draw any wild attention, there was little about her that would. She dances, hesitant and unsure about what she does and who she is. Just a child searching for her meaning searching for her direction, as if some sort of sign would point out the way. That is why she had been here in the woods, skipping her way through until the moon nestled itself on the tree tops, and the snow tucked itself into the once autumn ground. It would seem though, the little shadow whisperer could draw enough attention to bring grim reapers to her door. And if they are the grim reapers, then what does that make you, Elliana?
The in between.
Or something in between that even.
They are not ghosts.
Elliana knows, she would know.
But then why does that shiver run down her spine when she finds them?
When they find her.
Dead.
Dead.
Dead.
Dead. Dead.
They are beautiful. They are the only thing that can make her eyes open and when she does, the bent neck lady is gone. “Don’t leave me,” she says to them in a whisper of wicked shadows and muted starlight. They might not hear her, not when this night is so loud. So so loud. It bangs and clatters. She shouldn't be here, but Elliana is learning to love the noise the dead bring her, so much so she wonders if life is the only thing that guarantees silence, if you do not truly hear sound until your heart stops beating.
The moment the unicorn touches her forehead, Elliana erupts in invisible flames. She doesn't scream, doesn't cry, just sits there silently burning, ash piles in her stomach and she has never felt so sick before. She doesn’t realize there is a reason she would get these gut feelings — that everything her mother has tried to teach her about instincts had actually had a purpose.
Would she like to be a dead thing? “I think I already am.” She tells them. And she smiles. Elliana smiles Elena‘s smile. It had always been Elena’s smile. Like sunshine, innocence, gentle rain. Elli adopted it early on, monkey see, monkey do, but she learned quickly that the more she smiles, the more others would smile back at her. And off the in the distant, between the trees, the bent neck lady returns, staring with those hauntingly vacant eyes in the space where life is supposed to bloom. She doesn’t fully understand the wildness that creeps in her veins. The strange tightness that coils in her chest is incomprehensible to her. She still has the softness of childhood. She steps forward then, lets that horn press into her skin, blood pushes to the surface in the tiniest drops of crimson that blushes her silver skin like lovers meeting. “Take me to the dead.”
Take her.
@isolt @DANAËspeaks
elliana
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