[P] you're oh so pretty when you stand on the edge

[Elena]

elena

I've hidden memories in boxes inside my head before. Sometimes it's the only way to deal with things.

“Look Mama,” Elena says, standing with long foal legs splayed, and her teeth grinding together. “I’m a dragon,” she says and exhales loudly, and surely had she been, fire would have leapt from her throat onto unsuspecting enemies. Back when she did not believe monsters could exist. Especially not inside herself.

She is not a monster.
She is broken, but she is not a monster.

She is not a monster.
She is not bloodstained, but she feels that way, like she is marked in a way for them all to see, a scarlet letter drawn across her chest, a proclamation that there is something wild and dark inside her. That the girl who once lay quivering with heartbreak has since grown fangs.

She is not a monster.
No, but the things that kept her mortal – her lover, her children – they have felt so distant, and she has felt so alone alone. She is alone with her terrible thoughts.

She is not a monster.
Ah, but gaze too long into the abyss and the abyss the also gazes back into you.

He is not dead, he would not feel as he does if he were dead, Elena would not be able to feel him if he were dead. “You look well, but tired,” She asks him, taking a step closer. “Have you been sleeping?” She asks, as if she is not guilty of the same action. The sharp pain cuts from him to her and she tries to ignore. Instead, her smile is kind as she regards him, her laugh breathy. “I know better than to think a crown on my head could cause you to listen to a thing I say.” Despite the cool ice in her voice there is a bemused smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. She is silent for a moment as she takes her place beside him, but she breathes deep and asks him a question. “It is that resolve and strength that I ask you to become my Warden—when you are well again,” she says and pierces her blue eyes into his own. “I need those I can trust around me,” she says. And that Torix, is the closest Elena will ever come to saying she hopes you’ll keep her around forever.

It is his turn now, to speak, to tell, to talk. Elena knows when to listen. But the name that passes from his tongue pushes a shot of irony through her veins. Boudika. Of course, it was Boudika. It wraps like a vice around her heart. Of course, her friend, one of her best friends, would some how be connected to the shape shifting girl. Her one ounce of freedom from the reminder is suddenly snatched away from her in an instant. It is difficult not feel anger (at Boudika, at Tenebrae, at Vercingtorix) in this moment. As unjustified as it was. Was this always how her story was to go? Was she always meant to be reminded again and again, how other’s affections extend beyond just herself? To be continually reminded of how she was not enough? She swallows, feeling shame at the greediness of her heart, of the selfishness of her thoughts. She has so much in her life. So much love and life and joy—was she really going to keep this from a friendship with this man? Was she really going to make this moment about her and the shattered heart in her breast?

Because in the end, could she really blame Boudika for loving that man they shared and all of his darkness? She fights back all of the other emotions that collide in her breast, that wage war against one another. She loves him, she thinks, but he is no longer hers to love and she lets that go, lets that fade in her chest until it is just an echo of something. And she is fully here—with a man she met on a stormy day beside the sea.

The simple truth of the matter was that she loved him, a piece was in there that still did, that always would. It was the kind of love they write in constellations. But it had not been a painless endeavor. Although, she supposed, she only had herself to blame for that. Their love had burned bright, and it had singed them both. It had both splintered their bones and then knit it back together again. It was the kind of love that was too hot to hold for too long, and they hadn't been able to—only finding peace for moments before the turbulence tore them apart again and, eventually, led them to their demise. “You still could have gone.” The words fell hard and solid between them, the thump of iron at their feet.

Would you run away with me, Elena? If I asked? Leave all this behind?

“What you are asking of me sounds dangerously close to a promise,” she says to him, blue eyes narrow like clouds obscuring a summer sky. But then water jets against her skin and she turns that blue eyed gaze away from him. It is there, ahead that she feels it. A thrum in her chest, and suddenly her veins are on fire, but it doesn't hurt, it burns, but it doesn't hurt. “Torix,” she says under her breath. And she takes off, splashing through the water, her skin burning hotter and hotter and hotter. Her chest pounds so hard and she realizes that it is not her heart racing, but her soul.

Then silence.

She pears down in the water, and what sits there—an egg.

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