[P] birds of a feather [quest]

[Elena]

Elena Daray

let us live like flowers
drenched in sunlight

P

anic. Elena knows the feeling well, and it falls away from Maeve and into Elena’s own skin. She is strong enough to bat the emotions away, but not before the girl is strung up bare to Elena, all her emotions on display. “Maeve,” Elena says almost sternly to the girl, but there is no mistaking the kindness and affection she already feels for the child. “I know it is hard, but you have to calm down,” she says gently. “Keeping a clear, quiet mind is so important in healing,” she says again. Elena continues to try to push waves of quiet peace towards the girl, it is weak, but if it can even steady her pulse, slow her down.

Elena listens intently to what Maeve says, what she describes. “Yes,” she responds with a nod of her golden head. “I think something must have hurt him and that is why he seems to be favoring that wing,” Elena comments only briefly before setting off to work. “Easy, Maeve,” Elena says to her. “Try talking to him, tell him we are here to help, I think he will listen to you,” Elena says. This is not the first time she has witnessed an almost magical connection, she had seen it with a boy of stars and an owl once on a night that felt like years ago. “We can fix it,” Elena says. There is a small plant with some leaves, and though she would have preferred gauze to wrap the bird’s wound, they have little options out here. “Okay, Maeve, hold the leaf to the wound and I am going to wrap it,” the palomino gently instructs, remembering the kind, guiding hand Lovelace had offered her when she had been learning. Elena wraps the wound carefully as to not injure the creature further.

“I think,” she says when she steps back from her work. “With your care and dedication, I think he very well will fly again, Maeve,” She says and offers a gentle touch on the girl’s shoulder. “He would not be alive if it were not for you and your skills today,” she says, the same statement an obsidian unicorn once said to her in a time that feels eons from this one. “You would make an excellent medic, if you wish to pursue that path,” she says. Elena sees skills in the girl that she had when she had been her age, if Maeve wished to do it, she very well could, and she very well would succeed. “Come, carefully lift him, he will need to held, and I will walk you home,” she says. Her mother would be worried, and Elena only knows this because that baby inside her, if that baby were missing, she knows she would be feeling just the same.

She walks with Maeve home and she watches her from the corner of her eye, imagining. She imagines is this what it will be like as a mother? Calming the worry, encouraging skills, and fostering confidence? She will worry again, later, about becoming a mother and what it means, but as she walks with Maeve, she thinks for the first time, maybe she can do this.

code by rallidae
picture by cannon
@Maeve