prayed to keep my soul
H
er mother told her that she had constellations trapped in her heart. They would stare up at that so impossible, infinite night sky and she imagined those same nebulas swam in her veins and expanded across her chest—that she was nothing but stardust. She wonders, if she were stardust, where she would go. Across galaxies, across time, across worlds, and across universes. Away, away, away. In some ways, Elliana has been robbed of her childhood. She has seen death, has heard the way they face it, some bravely, some clawing at their life until they tip over into the abyss. There is not the carefree childish quality of imagining that this world she lives in now stretches on and on for eternity, unchanging. She knows the faces that are here now were once not, and will one day not be again. She is all to aware of time, when she should be free of it in youthful bliss. Instead, it weighs on her, the chills she feels when someone is close, when she knows they are going to leave. Another face, here, gone, and then another face gone, then here. Faces, faces, faces.
The ghost girl, the quiet girl, the almost invisible girl. She has only known snow, only known the endless alabaster blanket that covers the earth. She likes the way it makes everything look the same, uniform. There is comfort in the expectedness of it. Elliana walks in the fields where she has painted before, grabs a piece of snow already slightly rolled and begins pushing it against the ground. Rolling, rolling, rolling.
Elena had agreed to let her daughter attend the playdate by herself, but her mother had warned her that not many in the world were kind – that most wore a facade, that they pretended to be whatever they needed to be to get what they wanted. But Elliana could not help it, despite the ghosts, despite the demons, Elli was being raised in a world far kinder than her mother’s, and because of this, she was not jaded. Her heart saw things, and she wanted to love them. Love, love, love.
Jack, her companion animal thought the snow to be too cold and so he remains hanging on her neck, occasionally running those strange hands of his through her short, blonde mane. He chatters in her ear, telling her how big to roll the snow and what she should do to make the best possible snow pony out here. (He also chatters about how he is somewhat hurt that she was not building a snow lemur.) Build, build, build.
It is then those too blue eyes find an older girl also standing in the snow and Elliana, so free of doubt that this stranger could hurt her, walks up behind her. “Are you Maybird? Do you want to help me build my Snow Pony?” She asks, her lemur clinging onto her neck, watching carefully and settling himself in a position ready to spring. “I’m Elliana.” Elliana, Elliana, Elliana.
@Maybird speaks
elliana
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