[P] he would not ascend; he learned his lesson | party

[Elena]

It's always a matter, isn't it, of waiting for the world to come unraveled? When things hold together, it's always only temporary

S

he is thankful for sending Elli away. She doesn't trust him, doesn't trust what he would say, what he would do. Maybe there is a selfish part of her, he is a secret that only she knows, she has never shared their meeting, that night on the beach, and now this party. Though they talk in front of an audience this time, no one watches them, no one will remember them together because they will carve their own paths at this part, Torix with a prince and Elena with a girl who could be her mirror. This is only the beginning, there is so much to come.

“I will not argue with you,” she says with a roll of her shoulder. She looks to him, and though there is something she does not trust, that she does not even like about him, she thinks he might have been a good father, in the right place, with the right partner. But she bites the compliment into her cheek for fear of either giving him too much satisfaction in saying such a thing, or not enough.

Golden ears wish to fold back into her flaxen mane, but Elena keeps them tipped forward, intending to catch every single word he says. “I’m not—” she wants to argue with him, but thinks better of it. He was a mountain she did not wish to climb, so why does she keep approaching him with ice pick and rope in hand and a look of challenge in her winter eyes? “Well, it was not a funny joke,” she says brushing off his comment as if it were so easy to do so. “Thank you.” And it tastes like wet sand.

His anger punches her in the gut with the force of a rapid dog. Elena ties a leash around its neck and tries with her might to take it away, to not let it bite on her skin and cause her mouth to foam as well. “You did not claim to be good because no one would have believed you,” she says with gritted teeth. “He has no excuse, I did not give him the choice, because he would make the wrong one,” she says, spells out. “Elli has a father who loves her, if even it is not by blood.” By blood and bond we are bound. The phrase echoes in her head. No one ever said though that the blood had to be the same. It was just blood after all.

His words come as a surprise to her, she listens, listens as dutiful as he did that night on the beach. She listens to not just his words, but his silences, she paints them green and blue and pink because she thinks silences this loud must too have a color, if it cannot have words. “I cannot help you right that mistake, Torrin,” she says. “If you consider it a mistake at all.” She adds looking away from him, realizing Elliana has entirely strayed from her sight. She has a moment of panic and a moment of guilt wondering how long she had been gone so far from her. She turns back to him, stares up at him and there is no more winter in her eyes, but summer skies. The storm had passed. “But for tonight, try to enjoy the party?” She asks him, kisses each of his cheeks lightly. And she slips away into the crowd, only to find not her daughter, but a mirror—Bexley Briar.

@Vercingtorix
Code by rallidae
picture by cannon