prayed to keep my soul
T
he dead slumber, and they rise. They rise and they like to tell her stories.
There was a story whispered to her as she fell asleep, it was of a woman who was cloaked in magic to be a man. She had crimson eyes the story goes, and she was dressed in red and ebony, with obsidian horns spiraling up and away (‘like staircases to heaven,’ Elliana thought one night upon a retelling.) She was a solider, a glorious, brave, wild soldier. Maybe someone would think her cowardly for hiding, but Elli listened with wide blue eyes at her courageousness. She would listen to the story and when morning came, pick up that wooden sword and fight with all the beauty and recklessness she believed Bondike had possessed.
Elliana did so love this story. She asked for it again and again. Until she could picture Bondike so clearly in her mind that she painted her. This was the second time in her life she hid a painting from her mother. That ghost told the story again and again, and it was only near the end that she realized who it must be speaking. Only the love of a parent could speak such tales and in such beautiful and delicate detail. And so she painted a picture of a father’s daughter, for the daughter’s father that was no longer here. A present to them both, even if it was a present she could never give.
She wishes she could peel herself away from the swirling shadows on this rainy day. But the fog, the way it drifts around them, she thinks it beautiful. Her mother taught her sunlight, her father taught her starlight, but who oh who could teach her about these shadows and why they stand there breathing.
Elli wanders the dead streets. Everyone is tucked neatly away (‘like bodies in graves,’ comes the voice of Isolt inside her head, it is something she thinks that she would say.) They lift their heads to kiss raindrops at the same time, though they will never know this, and maybe it is this that triggers such a chain reaction, like water finding the ground, the ghost story finds Elli.
It is in the form of crimson eyes.
Like blood?
Maybe.
Or maybe like roses blooming where they shouldn’t.
She smiles and turns, those blue eyes sweeping underneath shadowed eyelids before the woman’s voice reaches her. She stops. Her voice breaks and Elli is disappointed if just for a moment. But she remembers there is courage in showing the crumbling pieces along with those that stand steadfast. Elliana stands before the war hero now, peering up at her, having imagined this moment for so long. Her words still flutter inside her ear. How is her father? They look so much alike. She thinks it is a lie. She has found many faces staring back at her in the mirror, but none were ever her father.
“It is nice to meet you,” she says, too calm, too easily when the woman reaches her. She does not reveal what she knows. It is not her duty to tell the secrets of the dead, no matter how many stories they tell. And the dead, oh they were such eager story tellers, to those who will listen. She should smile wider, offer her some warmth her mother was so good at providing. Though, Elliana offers her only a simper of a smile on her face. She looks a lot wiser than she is, than she will probably ever be when she speaks to Boudika. “We should probably get out of the rain. You look cold.”
@Boudika elliana speaks
elliana
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