[P] Through the Looking Glass .:Elena:.

[Liatris]

Walking through Novus was... disorienting. It was like he had looked into a lake, and seen the reflection of Elysium and walked through to the other side... and on the other side was Novus. It didn't look the same - Then again, he had never seen much of Elysium aside from the waste, with its red barrens and towering sandstone - But it felt... similar. Elysium had always felt alive. As if the air itself was humming with life. Novus felt like that too. But that wasn't why he was lingering in these lands.  

It had been short and fleeting... but upon entering, he could have sworn, that for just a moment he had caught a whiff of his mother. He knew that it was probably just his imagination, a small piece of him holding out hope that maybe she was alive out there. That was impossible though. Even if she had made it out of Elysium alive, which he doubted she had (He had seen the woods, as he'd fled, impossibly large trees all crumpled on top of each other, The giant Artax fleeing, crushing anything in their path), she had been healed somehow through Elysiums magic, and he had no way of knowing if it would hold up afterward.  In short, he was rather certain that she was dead. And gods knew where Cavalier or Eremurus had fled to. He narrowed his eyes thinking about it, still bitter about how they could have left him and his mother without a single word.

Even still, it had been there and he couldn't help but linger, if even just for a little while. And maybe it would be nice, to explore for a little while. He had spoken to a few on his journeys, but he had never gotten to know anyone. Perhaps here would be different. The field around him seemed to go on forever, the wild grass coming up just past his knees in places. It was vast if nothing else, but also beautiful.  He was so lost in his thoughts and his admiration, that he didn't notice the mare up ahead. 

@Elena

[Elena]

every day it feels like I’m holding back an ocean

Elena has been both the moth and the flame.

She has fluttered her wings to go towards the light that others offered her, even as she knew it would lead to her own demise. She had fallen for those sickly sweet words. (“I think I might be here for you Elena.” “You don’t want to be alone.”) She had been drawn to the mystery, igniting her wings for the sake of satisfying her curiosity, her desire.

She has danced and twisted as the flame. Flickered bright in the night, drawing them towards her, even when she had been young and small. He had taken her to be his mate, and Elena had scorched his body. And still, another, she had only left ash behind.

Blue eyes, blue eyes that still don't feel like her own, find themselves gazing at Dawn. She has found solace in this land, bravery, finally able to walk amongst the trees without her throat tightening. No one is coming to get her, no one is hunting her.

She remembers too well what it is to be hunted.
She remembers with aching clarity the way she had peered around trees in the forest, under rocks in her mountain home. An awful, insidious thing, living in the periphery of her vision, in shadows, always seen in the corner of her eye and nowhere else. It left her with a jitterbug heartbeat and a tendency to spin on her heels.

He almost would have had her because she had looked back, like Lot’s wide, she had looked back, but not to a burning city, but to the one who has always been there for her.
(Truth be told, a burning city would have been easier, even if it had been Hyaline in ashes.)
But rather than turn into a pillar of salt, he had found her before she left, the final face she would see before leaving Beqanna behind.
But he hadn't killed her. She doesn't know why.
She doesn't like to think about these things.

There is much she doesn’t like to think about, from the particular grief she has felt, to the laughter she had traded with Lilli for another silly story. There is so much she does not want to think of.

A stallion, Elena had said to Lilli once night under the stars of another Hyaline night with a crimson girl cuddled beside her. She knew better than to name him. “Naming things gives them power,” she had said to Lilli when Lilli had implored her to speak the name who had given Elena the bruises she so carefully had tried to hide. It was one of the few things Elena ever refused her cousin. 

She walks through the tall grasses, letting it tickle her legs like butterfly kisses. It is beautiful here, in the day, in the light, in Dawn. But she knows she can only stay among the grass for so long before she begins to ache for the ocean that sits at Dusk’s backdoor. She could never leave Dusk or its hospital, or her newfound friends. Dusk has wedged its place into her and Elena likes to look to the setting sun with navy blue skies and know that Terrastella is home.

She doesn't expect to see another, but there he stands all the same in blue grey, with eyes like the sea that her mind has started to drift towards. A son of Dawn if she ever saw one. “You should be careful out here, you know,” she calls in lilting tones. “I hear that dangerous bunnies lurk beneath the grass,” she chides before moving towards him. “And they are just waiting to pounce.”



* e l e n a
in the dark I’ll pray for the return of the light
the sunflower daughter of benjamin and beylani
medic of dusk.

@Liatris

[Liatris]

Sometimes he wondered, where Eremurus had ended up. He didn't think much about mama-cav. He wouldn't have left him behind if she cared. But his brother... they had always been side by side, Ere, and Li.. He was certain that he must be a knight somewhere. he had always been the brave one.  Wherever he was... Liatris hoped that he was okay, that he had a life and was happy.  At the very least he hoped that he was alive.

He perked his ears in surprise at the mare's voice, not having been paying attention at all. He silently reminded himself to be more attentive. A pretty palomino mare stood up ahead. She had blue eyes to match his own, though had he been any closer, he would have had to look down to see them. He cocked his head slightly at her words, his bun flopping slightly to one side. She had a pretty voice, and he had to admit... he was a little enamoured. 

"I... uh..." he stammered slightly over his words for a moment. "Guess I should watch out then?" he finished, smiling in attempt to cover up his embarrassment. He hadn't spoken to someone for so long. Did he remember how? What if he had already made a fool of himself?  He shook his head slightly, trying to get over himself. He had lost the scent now, he must have imagined it in the first place then. 

"I... Sorry" he started again. "I'm Liatris. New here I guess, I don't really know what I'm doing at this point" He laughed lightly "Are you from here?"

@Elena

[Elena]

every day it feels like I’m holding back an ocean

Once, she loved mountains.
Once, she followed a boy into them, and the lightning raced and the thunder splattered, and maybe it was there that she fell in love with him. Maybe it was there the stars aligned, the pieces were set into motion, that first love story that had ever happened, that matters to no one except her because she is the one who lived it. Survived it.
She could write books about what happened after the mountains, the years that followed of loving and leaving and finding and loving and leaving and wildflowers and fire and blood and lighthouses and shipwrecks and all the metaphors of the love she has had that ended up not mattering in the end because through all the metaphors not a single one saved her.
But, Elena doesn't want to write books, so it’s shortened: Once, twice, more—she loved.

Her heart squeezes painfully in her chest when she thinks about them, but she did her best to think around it. She did her best to breathe around it. Because what good would it do to admit that she had been wrong? Or, rather, that her instincts had been right? With each passing moment, their words, all of them infected her mind, poisoned her thoughts. She had been such a fool.

There is something kind about him, sturdy.

Something so wholly different from the darkness that consumed and ate away Underworld, even at his most restful. She sinks into the depth of his voice and finds comfort, just smiling gently when he stammers for a moment.

“Not quite from here,” she says with that smile continuing to stretch across her face like a slow burning candle. (Not quite from here at all she forgets to say, though whether it is on purpose or not cannot be said). “I am from Dusk, I’m a medic there,” she says. “But Delumine has caught my interest more than once,” she admits. Though she was content to live in Dusk, with new found companions who offer her kindness and conversation, she could not help the curiosity for other kingdoms. “Where are you arriving from Lie?” She asks with that curious tilt of her heard that makes her look like a filly from so long ago that chased a boy into the mountains as rain chilled her bones. “Are some sort of lost prince who just escaped the vicious dragon?”

If Elena loved anything, it was a good story.

(And flowers, and her family, and her friends, and summer sunshine, and lily pads, and…)



* e l e n a
in the dark I’ll pray for the return of the light
the sunflower daughter of benjamin and beylani
medic of dusk.

@Liatris

[Liatris]

He was still a child in some ways. He hadn't seen love blossom between anyone, hadn't had peers to tell stories and jostle around. By the time he had been born most had left Elysium for better things. It was no secret that the firstborns always had trouble brewing. But in other ways he felt older then he should have. He had lost his home by the time he was two. and before that, he had learned about so many cruel things, how nice people got punished.  (Luvena had never told him about Cavalier's tongue being ripped out, but he had heard her talking about it with others)  And traveling on his own for so long well... It made you learn to grow up pretty quickly.

So it was nice, to stand there in the fields, and joke around like a yearling.  "Oh, I haven't been there yet" he replied brightly. "Is it nice?"  He was struck by how pretty the small mare before him was, with the sun pooling on her coat, make it look like gold. "That's a loaded question" he started with a smile "Not a prince, and no dragons, though my mother used to say otherwise." after she had lost her home to one once. He wondered if that was made up now though. He had never seen a  dragon, only lizards, and snakes. But they didn't breathe fire.  He supposed he could have been a prince too, if he had been born just a few months earlier. "Just a boy running from a land whos sky seemed to cave in" he laughed. "And then wandering around in search of... Honestly I don't even know. Guess it's time to take a break from that? But what about you, were you born in Dusk? Or are you too a fallen princess running from a dragon who wishes to slay you. The great...." he trailed off "Sorry I... I didn't catch your name?" He had probably missed it, she had said it and of course, it was the one thing he would miss. Now she would think he was unattentive and cocky and...

@Elena

[Elena]

every day it feels like I’m holding back an ocean

Perhaps if she had a quieter childhood, Elena would have tamed the wildfires that burn in her chest.

She would have learned to be graceful, to be able to accept to defeat with a quiet bow of her head. She would not ignite the world in bold and brazen fire. This is not the case though, and Elena sometimes looks so bright that she can be seen glowing and burning from miles away.

There is a scar on her shoulder, but it is no match for the scars that riddle her internally. They are trivial to the way she has broken apart, the tearing of flesh a laughing matter when she thinks about the way her heart has imploded. There are ghosts in her eyes and in her chest, and she can feel them screaming with every inch of her. Their words ring in her mind, but they are not the only thing that haunts her when her mind is quiet. Memories press into her greedily, selfishly—they claw at her until she can only close her eyes and shake until all the bad things are gone.

“I would say so, but I am biased to be,” she says to the boy she knows so little about. Her words are soft and silver, etched in the light she was named for. “Shame, I have always kind of enjoyed dragons,” she says. (“Do dragons exist?” “Of course dragons exist!”) It is not the first time she remembers this memory, but it grows fuzzy under the hot sun and Elena isn't sure anymore if she can remember it just right. “Your mother sounds like a great story teller,” she says. ‘Mine too,’ she thinks, but she saves it for another day, tucked away in a pocket that she will forget about before she falls asleep tonight.

A gentle thread of regret threads through Elena when he mentions the sky caving in, but he moves on from this before has to find some kind of appropriate reply. “I think that is exactly what wandering is,” she says appreciatively. “Walking without purpose,” she says like she should know. And maybe she does, that is, after all, how Novus came into her life. “I was born far from here, in the land of my ancestors,” she says, the stories of Legado and the war with Bloodvale. She is a princess in only the eyes of her parents, their princess of sun and warmth and summer. “Elena,” she offers her name with little else. “I think if I would have been anything I would have liked to be a knight.” A knight, in theory it is grand, but Elena has seen the strains of battle written across her father’s furrowed brow and the soldier’s sullen shoulders. She was no knight. Elena was not made for battle, she was made for the broken.



* e l e n a
in the dark I’ll pray for the return of the light
the sunflower daughter of benjamin and beylani
medic of dusk.

@Liatris