[P] between the bottom of the climb and the summit

[Elena]

It's always a matter, isn't it, of waiting for the world to come unraveled? When things hold together, it's always only temporary

Y

ou look like my dad, did you know that? His name was Royal Legacy.’ Her grandmother, Aesop, told her. ‘He had skin as brilliant and golden as the sun and locks white as snow.’ Elena looks down at her own leg, golden, like sunlight. ‘He was a great king,’ she tells her granddaughter. “Maybe I could be a king one day!” The little girl had said in that high soprano voice. ‘My dear,’ Aesop said, ticking her behind her ear. ‘Why be a king when you can be a queen?’

It is not a pigeon that comes to her—but a dove.

Meet at Veneror Peak tomorrow.

She thinks the other rulers must have received the same, it could not just be her, could it? King Andras of Dawn. Elena herself had once strewn lights within his mane, had once bantered with him. She knows too, he is no Po, and though she has met the new Dawn King, she is unsure of where they sit with one another, and therefore, how their courts align with one another. King Adonai of Day. Another king she had met, once she had gone to treat him. She had found him to be strange, different, and frankly unstable. Day and Dusk once held an alliance, through that of Orestes and Marisol, but Elena does not know if it will hold as the torches are passed and crowns are placed atop different heads. King Ira of Night. Now him, Elena knows nothing. She has consulted her advisor, Rhone, but aside from him having been raised in Night Court from an early age, he is relatively foreign to her.

And then there is Queen Elena of Dusk. Do they know her? What do they actually know about her? Just that she is Dusk’s golden girl, a new leader. The girl that smiles like sunshine with eyes of summer skies. She stands as the only queen of the realm, though she is certainly not the first by any means, her predecessor being one of the most formidable female leaders that Novus has ever seen. Everyone knows of Marisol’s military mind, stone-like stoicness, and her beauty, especially the elegance she harbors when she takes to the skies. But Elena, what do they know of the previous Champion of Community?

What relationships does she hold with all of them? What would this mean for Dusk? Though Elena loves all the landscapes Novus has to offer her, it is her Court and her Court alone she will fight for. But she would not be so mad with power to extend the fight beyond what is hers. It is unfortunate when borders and power blind so many from what truly matters. Valerio’s voice rings true inside her head.

She practices her words s during her travels in the hopes that repeating it enough will allow her to speak with both confidence and strength.

She feels him before she sees him and something stirred in her. Curiosity, much like she was feeling inside her own heart. He is slightly taller than her, and she is suddenly all too aware of her sex as she comes to stand by the statue of her own goddess. Perhaps, when she was a younger girl, she would have grown fearful, would have shattered in the presence of the kings that would come.

Maybe she would have dissolved before them, meek and humble and shy. She would have grown quiet, averted their eyes, unable to hold their gaze or stopped the tendrils of nervous energy that raced through her stomach. But she is not a younger girl now. She is not even who she was. So she doesn’t shatter or bend or even crumple before him; she stands, quiet, thoughtful, proud—strong.

She angles her lovely head, her calm eyes studying him. “Did you also receive a letter?” Elena asks in place of a greeting before remembering her own decorum. “I am Elena—of Dusk, as you might have guessed,” she speaks calmly, elegantly. “You must be Ira, for you are the only face I do not recognize,” she openly admits. He is a stranger to her, more than the others. She blinks her blue gaze away from him and glances to the two statues that remain with no one beside them, just waiting to be filled.

@Ira @Adonai @Andras
Code by rallidae
picture by cannon