[P] only holy devotion can keep the devils away

[Elena]

Some girls are full of heartache and poetry

Aletta. Marcelo. Jay…

Their names start listing off in her mind again.

Ori. Valario. Lilli…

Again.

Aletta. Marcelo. Jay…

Ori. Valerio. Lilli….

Once they start they cannot stop.

And those names that once filled her with such joy, such love, such hope, are all crushed beneath the weight of the woman’s emotions before and the strangeness of the island. And a snarl finds perches on her lips, before she rattles them off again.

Aletta. Marcelo. Jay…

Ori. Valerio. Lilli…

Each accompanied by a screech of claws against glass and feels the broken pieces scratching and ripping her apart. “I only hear the sound of myself,” she admits, thinking the way her heart is beating like a war drum, and her blood rushes like a spear through the air. She is suddenly all battles and bruises.

A cut drags its way against her face, hard enough to cut, hard enough to leave a mark, but this island is strange and when Elena awakes tomorrow there will be no scar. But for now it settles against her lips like a secret.

She could teach her—to hear again—instead of just listening to the storms of unicorns and the battle in herself, and those names, those wretched names that she is finding she hates more and more. (There is still a piece of her unmarred by the stranger, that says ‘no, no, you love the way they sound.) And Elena says she cannot hear anything anymore. And that waterfall just keeps plundering off a cliff into silence. And she opens her mouth to speak, and she cannot hear her own voice, but her lips form the words: “So teach me.”

those are the kind of girls who try to save wolves

instead of running from them