[P] For I am a Sinner, Not a Saint

[Elena]

Elena Daray

let us live like flowers
drenched in sunlight

T

here is a story about how a girl became a tree.

She had wanted to touch the sky and so the gods had made her a bird, with silver wings that glistened in sunlight and shone in moonlight. She flew amongst the clouds, and she would swear she could touch that endless blue sky with the tips of her feathers. If you asked her what it felt like she would say it was like freedom.

But oh she missed the ground, the solidness beneath her feet, the steadiness. So the gods made her a rabbit, with fur of snow white, and eyes of green like the grass. She scampered through the underbrush and slept in the fallen leaves. If you asked her what it smelled like she would say like when the seasons change.

Those green eyes had looked to the sky though, with the ground beneath her feet and she wished for the freedom it provided her. She went to the gods once more. “I want the sky and the earth.” She had told them with her voice as sure as ground and as airy as sky. “You cannot have both child, you must choose,” they had told her. But a girl of both worlds did not believe this so easily. She thought for a moment before an idea struck her. “So then make me a tree, so that my roots make always know the firmness of the earth, but still the coolness of the sky, and that the rest of me may live in between.” She had said and the gods gave it to her.

Elena had sat under a giant weeping willow with her mother as she told her this story. The same weeping willow her mother would be buried under not a few months later. “Is this her?” She had asked in lilting soprano tones. “Maybe,” her mother had responded. “Do you think so?” She had asked and Elena, always so eager to believe the stories she was told had nodded. “Perhaps we should give her a name then,” she says, looking to Elena with blue eyes that one day Elena would gain from her. “Ava,” Elena says, quickly, much too quickly. “Lets name her Ava.” Her mother nods. “Ava. Life.”

Elena should recognize someone wild when she sees one, but she is so engrossed in the company in a land she is still learning, that she either doesn't notice or chooses not to see it. “Maybe not,” she says with a sunflower smile. “I don't mind staying here and having a chat though,” she says. Elena the relentless they will call her one day. Not because she never surrendered on the battle field, but because of her inability to leave someone alone.

Move.
Now.

No :)

Elena is moved aside with a brush of the woman’s shoulders as she rushes past. “Wait,” Elena calls after her, following behind like a lost puppy. She will not always be this uncertain in Novus, and certainly not in Terrastella. One day she will run through the swamp, all determination and resolve as she rushes to the aide of the one they both call commander. But, for now, she slinks behind, nervous steps and shy smiles.

Pretty, young, nimble Elena manages to step around her speeding footsteps and cuts her off. “You did not even tell me your name,” she says almost accusingly, but the smile that sits there softens the blow. “Where I come from—we usually start with that.”

code by rallidae
picture by cannon
@Dalmatia