[P] me against the world, leave the ocean full of pearls

[Elena]

Fire will cleanse, she once heard in a dream. And she saw Lilli’s Taiga forest on fire. The flames burned it all, all the way to Dusk Court, to the cliffs, to the swamp, the hospital. And Lilli and Elena were brought together once more, this time laying against each other in not fields of gold, but piles of ash. They wept and they wept as if their tears could build back forests and erect cities.

But she should know by now that old memories are not reborn in fire.
Only new ones.

If she knew that the other golden girl also thought of Michael, Elena might just say of course. Michael, blonde, blue-eyed beautiful Michael. Who left an impression on Elena from the first time they met. Elena can feel her unsettlement when she approaches, and she wonders what causes it. Elena can sense the emotions, but not the reason behind it. She is left to guess, as clueless as anyone else in the room.

There is something in her blue eyes that dares Elena, just like that striking cliff side’s so often do. ‘Cliff dancer.’ She has been called. Elena watches the sparking embers, wonders if just for a moment she should step back (that dream of fire growing more and more real). It is only her response that calms the fire that grows between golden skin and blue eyes. “She is quite good at evading,” she says, admits the defeat that she cannot even keep track of her own daughter.

It is a strange sensation to be viewed by something that looks like one’s own being. Elena too takes the time to admire the Solterran girl. She wonders, if she had joined Solterra instead of Terrastella, if this may be the expression she wears. Or would she still be herself? Elena can no longer tell how much her surroundings influence her and how much is her own creation. “No, though I have been to meet with the King, and once to heal a prince,” she says. “Solterra is nearly entirely foreign to me,” she says, thinks she should be going, to find her daughter, but she cannot quite pull herself away. “You are though,” Elena says, closer. “I can tell.”

picture by cannon <3
@Bexley