[P] Perfectly Wrong

[Elena]

Elena

let us live like flowers
drenched in sunlight

I

f the colors seem duller, the sounds more muted, she does her best to not notice. If she feels more edge, her anger more ready to rise to the occasion, she chalks it up to the hormones so soon after birth. It is only at night when she lets the memory of him slink past her defenses. It is only when sleep is just around the corner that she remembers the feel of his head pressed against her neck, his lips against her throat. It should be things she is forgetting, she should not try to reach back into her mind, remembering them. Elena is able to throw them into the box, but she stands there hand shaking with the key, unable to lock it.

You seek beauty but forget you already are. Tir had told her. But, right now, Elena feels anything but beautiful. She wears a look of exhaustion, the same one all new mother’s wear, but there is something different in her eyes, the lingering heartbreak she had experienced in the late fall and early winter. Elena avoids mirrors now, terrified of the face she sees staring back at her, terrified that one day she will be so taken aback at home much she has changed since the little girl who stared at her reflection in a glistening lake that she may just smash it. Shards of glass everywhere, sending sharp points bury into her skin, into her chest, into her heart. It would be easy, too easy.

If it were not for Elliana.

She can have all her light.

Every time she sees her daughter, every time Elliana paints her something new, Elena feels like her heart may burst from her chest. Those blue eyes, those blue forget me not eyes, they break her in the best way possible and build her up all over again. Maybe it is selfish of her, to rely on her daughter so much to determine her happiness, but Elena cannot help herself.

She walks her to school, planting a kiss on her head. “Learn something wonderful today,” she says before watching her go into the building where her tutors await. Elena heads off to the hospital to check on her patients, a pit stop is made to the swamp, as always. She traverses through the swampy land easily, avoiding the pockets she knows well, sticking to the driest areas to find some of her herbs. She finds Sweetflag and Red Baneberry, and just spots a batch of Green Dragon before noticing something else in the swamp. It was common to see other medics here, but this woman, Elena doesn't recognize as china blue eyes look at her, staring at her reflection in the water.

It is then she feels it. The empath melts beneath such a tiredness and such a hopelessness that it makes her skin grows chilled and she almost feels her legs give out before she manages to push the emotions away with some effort. She doesn't want to feel that way, not anymore than she already does, she doesn't want to go to her, but Elena is Elena and she cannot change what sits there in her soul, the need to heal others, inside and out.

“Hello,” she approaches her quietly. “You seem contemplative, or lost, or maybe both,” she adds with a trying smile. “I am happy to help you if you need.”

Always, always happy to help, anyone but herself most days it would seem.

code by rallidae
picture by cannon
@Csilla