[P] we could be beautiful without our war paint [fire]

[Elena]

Some girls are full of heartache and poetry

Motherhood left Elena with a longing for her own mother, to be here, to see Elliana. She would have adored her granddaughter. Could only imagine what sort of tales and adventures she would have indulged her granddaughter with. Elena’s life was built on moments where she thought she was getting better, only to be reminded that you would have better luck escaping your own shadow than your grief. She had been getting better, truly, and then Elli came with those heartbreaking blue eyes and Elena fell to pieces all over again, was once more that little girl who stood stoic only to be screaming in agony inside her chest. And she thinks even now, she is getting better, until questions she wishes she could ask come to her and she wants to know what does she do next? Her mother, her angel, she would have known.

If only angels it were not so hard to hear amongst the roar of the living.

Dancing with Po would be a wonderful thing, she thinks as she twirls around them after such a breathless run. She reminds herself one day to ask him for a dance. Perhaps amongst flowers, letting petals catch on the wind. They would have danced together in another life, yes. (Maybe beside an ancient waterfall, or maybe in the sands of the desert.) But there is room for dances in this lifetime too, even with unicorns and shadows nipping at their heels.

“Maybe I’m the ghost,” she muses, tipping her head back to look at the stars that peek through the great trees of the forest. More stars than she had remembered since she had last looked up. There is a faint quiet of the twinkle of them. “Or maybe I’m so haunted that I just don’t know the difference anymore.” She laughs, but it is a hollow sound on her tongue. “I want to believe in them,” she says and looks at him with blue eyes that still some how manage to burn even in the dark, like lightning across sky. “But it hurts too much to think they linger there without being seen,” she admits, and questions if it was in her head or out loud that she said it. Either way, it was meant to be. Heard or not.

Elena has been fire since she has been young. Since she had stood hot and tall against the Snow Prince at such a young age, desperate to protect her cousin and her home against his wicked chill. Elena had been so unaware of her own bravery that day, or how Aletta had thought the child had blazed, and how she had admired the golden girl’s bravery. But today Elena feels anything but brave. But in the company of the king of flower crowns, Elena is not so worried about being brave.

Elena is all contradictions. She is soft and hard, smooth and yet rough. She loves with her entire heart, yet keeps it buried beneath barb wire, for fear if someone tries to lay against it. She says she forges her own path and yet she looks to the fates and her ancestors to guide her. Elena accepts his thoughts willingly and without judgement, only love. The kind of love she has for Po, is the kind of love that makes her glad to be alive. Because she has a friend and he is beautiful in his quiet motions, in the way he is so strange to her, but familiar all the same. And he coaxes laughter out of the very center of her and his smile makes her believe in the good in the world. Because when she listens to him speak, her heart swells until it dams up her throat and she can hardly breathe around it.

“I never know how to respond to that question,” she admits, her face scrunching in careful consideration. “Could fate really be this cruel?” She asks him, both expecting an answer and nothing at all. “I think fate exists for those who need it,” she says. “Though I do not believe it to be all powerful.” Blue eyes grow a layer of frost over them. “I think you can fight it.” ‘You’ve always been a cliff dancer, Lilli told her while they shivered knee-deep in the frigid sea on a night so cloudy there were no stars to guide them. And maybe right now, she is not quite strong enough to fight against fate, but she would raise her shield in preparation for its blows. She would harness the strengths of the wind to protect herself and her daughter, and those she calls family.

She knows, in all reality, her daughter would be safest with her, always, or with Nic, locked away in their cottage, unable to see the world, unable to explore. But that would never happen, not when Elli’s heart beat with such vibrant wanderlust. Elena could feel it whenever Elli stared out the window for too long, or when she would walk right up to the edge of the cliff’s—their cliffs. (“Cliff dancer, edge-walker,” Lilli’s voice rings again.) This is when she thinks she needs another set of eyes, someone else to bare this burden with her. “Po,” she starts, turning to look at him, his name taste like wine. Her eyes are still glowing with fire. “I wanted to ask you something—rather ask something of you.” If anyone should share her daughter, she know her daughter’s love as she does, as Azrael does, it should be Po. “Elli, she speaks fondly of you and your daughters. Should anything happen to me, to Azrael,” she tries not to choke on her words but it is so hard. “I have a cousin, who would take her, her godmother, but she lives so, so far. She may not be able to,” she is rambling, can hear it, tries to stop the boulder of her words rolling down the hill. “I want you to be her godfather,” she finally makes it to the bottom. “I want you to be a part of her, a part of our family, because I would hold you as such in my mind,” she says to him with a sweeping blink of blue eyes.

“It is good to see you, Po,” she says, although the words feel too plain to explain what it is like to be beside her friend again. But, there is a pleasure that she basks in of the simplicity of their setting.

those are the kind of girls who try to save wolves

instead of running from them