prayed to keep my soul
S
he is no empath like her mother, she cannot know the powers that lurk beneath their skin, sitting under the surface. Elliana is no seeker of secrets, but she thinks, as she watches him mediate, paints the fine lines of his young face, and the marks that cover his skin, that she might just like it more that way. She likes the way she can capture how he looks now, what he offers to her in this moment (knowingly or not). But that if she wants to find out about that just what she can capture with paint and a brush, she must dive deeper into him, into the way his eyes crinkle with a smile, or the solemn set of his lips while he thinks. And then in the same breath she realizes, she does not need to be an empath to know his secrets.Elli finds them in ever stroke against the canvas.
He smiles and there is something about him that makes her think of her mother with her flowers in the window or her father with his stars in the sky. There is no words needed between them, they are like old friends, even if their friendship is still sweet, new, beautiful in its infancy. Then why does she feel like she could cradle her head on his shoulder and he would hold her? Why does she think if he asked her to leap from Terrastella’s cliffs, she would follow him all the way down? (And why is there a part of her hoping he will?)
Her smile deepens with the sound of his voice. “No, I have in my mind’s eye exactly where I need you,” she says and her voice is silver, distant, as she works. She drops the paintbrush in before lifting it up once more, when he speaks, it provides the perfect rhythm the way the brush arches and curls about the canvas.
It is her turn to be quiet for a spell. She stops painting with his final words. “They are only accidents, Aeneas,” she reassures him. She had learned from her mother that evil is not represented by actions, but by intentions. “Well, can you focus on coming to look at my painting for a second? Or will the monks reprimand you?” She asks him, giggling, stepping back from the canvas so he may come and see.
She waits for him to come to her side and watches his face for his expression. He stands on the edge of a forest (a forest Elliana knows if only because it belongs to the twins she so often dreams about.) And he stands there not like a king or a solider, but a boy, her very own Peter Pan. His wings are high and he stands as if ready to ascend in the sky, the one place he would be able to go where she would never find him. She wonders if knows this, if he thinks about it as she does.
She rolls her shoulders with his question, it is a simple enough one to answer. “I would much rather be here, painting, than learning about the great wars I have never seen, or reading about the gods and goddesses I will never meet.” If only because they can never die and Elli does not so much seek to know the living as she does the dead.
Elli turns to look over her shoulder at him. She has seen her mother turn like this towards her father, plant a kiss on his cheek, but her lips are far too innocent to think of such a thing. “I am too,” she says and blinks blue eyes. “Did you ever try to look for me?” She asks him, moving so she stands closely beside him. “I told you I would hide from you.”
@Aeneas elliana speaks
elliana
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