[P] [tulip fest] Pick a petal, eeny meeny miny mo;

[Elena]

Elena Daray

let us live like flowers
drenched in sunlight

E

lena thought she knew about heartbreak. But she realizes now she didn't know what it truly meant until her daughter looked up at her with those forget-me-not blue eyes and told her she didn't need her mom to walk her to school today. That she could do it all on her own.

She didn't need her.

So Elena finds herself in the gardens at the spring festival, with the flowers she and other Terrastellans planted in preparation. She tries not to imagine her daughter walking the familiar path from their cottage and into the court all by herself to school. She tries not to think who she will not be there to greet her outside the school’s doors that afternoon, how she will be forced to wait at their cottage for her to come home. So much can happen between now and then. She feels like she is missing out. Elli will bring home artwork that Elena did not get to see her make, she will learn songs that she will sing in class that Elena will never hear. She never realized how much she is missing. Maybe she should have realized it sooner. All of it is starting to feel too late.

Her steps are not as light as they usually are as she moves through the flowers. They are beautiful, the tulips, how they managed to plant so many colors is beyond her. She finds the ones that are her favorites. Tulips of yellow and red, mixed together, yellow and red. Her and Lilli. That is what it reminds her of and she thinks about that so that everything else does not hurt so much.

A spring gale kisses against Elena’s skin. Her head turns into it, smelling the scents of her home, of Terrastella and this is when she meets a face of similar shade to her own. “We took a guess and let nature do all the rest,” she says and smiles like the flowers that have bloomed. “I’m Elena, are you enjoying the festival?”

code by rallidae
picture by cannon
@August