[P] and the marsh became her mother,

[Elena]

Elena Daray

let us live like flowers
drenched in sunlight

E

lena looks at her with blue eyes and she feels…hunger. It is a familiar feeling enough, she had felt it with Tenebrae, with Sereia. Elena knows hunger, but she flutters the emotion to the side, not wanting to dwell in it too long and risk letting it settle into the pit of her stomach. There are shadows under her skin, but Elena cannot bring it within herself to be scared, she can only sympathize the girl. Still, she calls sympathy better than pity.

Oh and that god awful want comes to find her in her bones. Elena tries her best to eradicate it, but it is too difficult when she knows that she feels the same most times. The girl does not face her, instead Elena follows her eyes up with her own of blue and spies the outline of the creature in the woods. The antlers are a give away, and her stomach sinks when the hunger and need are still there, and she knows it is not her own. “Not when you know where to look, where to step,” and those blue eyes point downwards. “It is an underwater garden.” Elena moves closer to the girl, knowing her steps as easy as a dancer on the stage in a ballet. Where to step, where not to.

And then she meets her eyes, and Elena feels her own sorrow drown out any emotions she may have felt before now. Gods she is so young, so, so young. “No,” she says in response, watching her carefully. She is a Champion of Community, maybe she should be more weary of the Denocte girl who has a desire to feed lurking in her very blood. But, she cannot bring herself to. If someone found Elli like this—Elena would want her treated with compassion and kindness. We cannot always so easily control our desires. “I suppose I should not.” She adds, coming to her side. “You found the mushrooms,” she says, bring her golden head closer to the water. “I hope you were not intending on eating them.” Despite herself, she laughs.

Elena too picks up on the sound of the stag that the girl is so intent on. “Is what you intend to do truly what you want?” Elena asks her, narrowing blue eyes, but it is not with the frost of winter, but instead spring skies of concern, like storms coming. “The swamp is not a place to spill blood,” she does not scold, but her voice is losing its summer warmth. “The water will remember what you do.”

code by rallidae
picture by cannon
@Avesta