[P] my cherries and wine.

[Elena]

Some girls are full of heartache and poetry

She had learned how to clot blood, she had learned how to set limbs, how to ease anxiety, how to banish infections from the body. Elena had learned so much following that obsidian unicorn around the battle fields of Windskeep, greeting the injured soldiers who managed a smile for the little girl of sunshine, hiding their pain. It was only when she grew older, healing in Paraiso and then the Woodlands and Culloden, that they stopped hiding their pain. They would cringe, cry, strain, scream, all in agony as the golden healer approached them. Elena realized in this moment that there was no grace in pain, only masks that they would wear.

In death though, now there was a sense of grace Elena can only imagine. There were the ones in agony, fighting to get better, but then there were the quiet ones, the ones with a wound that would not close, with damages that would not heal, they were the ones who looked as if they were dancing while standing still. So no, there is no grace in pain, but it can be found in death, in the ballerina turns of the grim reaper, and the elegant leaps into the gravesite. There could be grace found in death.

He moves abruptly away from her and had Elena not been experienced she may have been caught off guard. But as it were, she pushes a ‘shhh’ through her teeth. “Hold still,” she commands gently. His feathers catch her shoulder, keeping them both balanced as the sunshine girl works steadily. She can feel how harsh they are as they hold her, and had his blood not decorated them both like war paint, maybe they could be confused for lovers rather than strangers. She doesn't blame him, never blames the patient, but neither does she end her treatment.

He breathes.
She breathes.

He can hear her. Elena looks to the blood drying on his skin, looking for anymore sites of active bleeding but it all seems stopped for now. “I did save you,” she says and smiles at him. Blue eyes look into his own. “Are you questioning my abilities?” She asks him, mimicking his own tone, although there is still the warmth in her eyes of a healer when she looks to her patient.

She finishes placing the last of the yarrow on the wound as his head swivels towards her. A shrug, a wince, words. Elena moves closer to him as he leans back. While she keeps concern from the lines of her face and the blue of her eyes, she thinks she can taste it on her breath every time she breathes. “You are ridiculous,” she says in response. She had a stubborn streak with all her selfless nature. She would always do whatever it took to heal the hurt, even if it meant battling themselves. And she can see in the movement of his jaw, in the set of his shoulders, he would not be so easily won over. “You need to be monitored,” she says to him, eyes glancing once more to his injuries. “You need to be properly bandaged and I need to guarantee there is no infection of chance of.” She looks up to the sky and how far the sun has moved across it. “I am already late picking up my daughter from school, do not let me be a late mother who doesn't have a happy story to tell,” she says with a sense of finality. “Come with me,” she says and moves her golden body closer to his own, ready to help and hold his weight. “You can tell me your story along the way.”

those are the kind of girls who try to save wolves

instead of running from them