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

[Elena]

Some girls are full of heartache and poetry

Forever, ages ago, when she had been blind, a child had found her, brought her to a festival and told her to dance. It had been so long since she had danced, but how could she now, when the world under her feet felt so strange. She feels him place something in her hair, she does not have to see to know it is a flower there. A lily, he says, and she smiles, and she danced, she danced in a place she has never seen, to music she has never heard, and sang in a silent voice. And then she went to somewhere quiet, where she thought she was alone, and it was only when the dancing stopped, that she wept until those eyes turned blue. 

She will always consider all of the different ways that a person can come apart and be put back together again.

She will always think of it as a strange kind of wonderful.

As bruising as it may be.

She cannot recall the last time she had come to Dawn. Elena remembers bringing her daughter here, when she had been so small and so new. She met with Po, told him she would come back soon, searched and searched that forest for her little girl until she found her all alone with secrets of ghosts and unicorns trapped in her chest. Maybe, maybe that was the last time she came to Dawn. 

It seems only fitting then that he would be one of the first faces she sees. 

The sight of him sends her into a story. About a boy who found her at a festival and picked a flower for her. About a boy who could send the entire world crumbling with a single rose. She is beside him, comes before as easily and as quietly as the caress of a spring breeze that finds itself weaving through Elena’s golden locks.

“Po,” she starts, abrupt. “Let’s run through the forest tonight, like we have never grown up.” Her voice was soft but steady; it wasn’t the voice of silver bells or wind chimes. Instead, it was the voice of canyons and eagles and the promise of adventure. She turns then away from him and points in the direction of the forest where childish laughter echoes. And she twists that golden face with an ivory heart upon her brow to look upon her friend of flowers. “Catch me if you can,” and with embers floating off her skin, she slips into the trees.

those are the kind of girls who try to save wolves

instead of running from them

[Ipomoea]

the earth laughs in flowers

---

Ipomoea can no longer remember a time when he had not felt the weight of all his flowers and sand growing a wreath about his shoulders.

He tries, sometimes. He tries to remember when he was a boy, seeing for the first time the dancing caravan that had arrived in Solterra. He tries to remember the wonder he had felt, the hope that there were places beyond the desert that were gentler, that moved in ways that did not remind him so much of violence.

But it slips away from him now, even when he stares at the sprig of rosemary he had tossed into the flames for remembrance, curling in upon itself until cracks appear, and widen, and finally shatter it into an ash that flashes brightly before his eyes. He can feel that, too, adding to the pile of memories that slip slowly through his grasp despite how tightly he tries to hold to them.

So he turns away.

And he sees her.

He does not think it strange, that she should always come to him when he feels the cracks of his soul beginning to widen and split him apart. How could he, when to stand beside her is to feel her sunlight shining through all those cracks, tugging them back together? Pulling him back to wholeness?

There is a part of him that envies her for that. A part of him that knows he has passed the point of innocence and softness, that he is now shattered as much as he is whole in the remaking. There is that darkness in his eyes now (and oh, a part of him mourns now to realize that it has been there since she met him, that she has never known him when there was only light and lightness in his soul.) And that darkness does not fade when she presses herself gently into his skin with all the gentleness of a spring breeze against a wild-eyed thing.

And he smiles at her. His teeth flash like weapons ringed in firelight but his smile, at least, is whole. “Elena.” He sighs between his teeth and the almost-soft kiss against her cheek.

Ipomoea does not tell her that he has given up pretending. And he does not tell her that he does not remember what it is like to be young, or innocent, or soft, or to run between the trees like he is only playing a game instead of racing towards some unknown that terrifies him almost as much as what he is running from. He only turns with her, and with the scent of the rosemary-smoke clinging still to his skin, he follows after her.

The earth echoes with his hoofbeats, trembling like a living thing that wants to tear itself free and run beside him (to him it has always been a living thing, but now, oh now he can feel its heartbeat beneath his hooves in a way he had never known before. And he can see the way it bucks in his shadow, the way dust rises up like a breath of smoke in his wake.) Elena disappears into the darkness of the forest, but Ipomoea does not need to see the gold of her skin to know which path she runs — the earth tells him. It presses understanding in the shape of flower petals against his legs, lets him feel the thud of her hooves in the loamy soil like they are his own.

He follows her without hesitation. As the shadows close around him like a cloak and the earth carries him to that unknown like an arrow to its target.

@Elena
”rooting / rotting“

⚘

[Elena]

Some girls are full of heartache and poetry

There exists, in her, a duality.

One is that girl who loved, who needed to see the hope, the good in the world, who thought she could bring light to it. (‘When the mists came, Alvaro wanted me to stay as did Marcelo. But I couldn’t Lilli. I couldn’t stay. Not when this is such a cruel world and I have a chance to bring light to it.’) She is the girl who stood amongst bonfires, ash strewn in her hair, dancing so recklessly with tilting hips and swaying shoulders, light feet. A girl who learned to smile and be soft, who loved with her entire being.

The other is a thing crafted by experiences, created with the last rise and fall of her mother’s chest, the look in her father’s eyes when he told her to run, that she would be okay. It has been made more vital by everything after – by love lost, by cruel words, by the anger and the jealousy she feels like punches to her gut.

Both of these beings exist within her and sometimes it feels like two hearts beating in discordance. Sometimes she feels split, torn in a way that cannot be repaired.
(But then, she has always hurt.)

And still, other times, like when he looks at her with eyes that bloom like spring, she remembers another girl, small and free, weaving flowers in manes. Elena, he says in a voice that warms her despite the chilled spring night.
She smiles.
The first real, beautiful smile she's given anyone in quite some time as he brushes against her cheek. And then they are running, running, running. There is a melody in the way in which they move. Elena might have stopped to dance.

And she does stop, turns to face him with a gentle rear upwards into the dirt. She stares at him for a moment, her heart racing in the quiet of the forest. She cannot help but feel like she has been here before. (And she has, in another forest, in another time, with another man.) “Have you ever felt like some place is haunted by ghosts?” She frowns and drops her gaze. “That’s ridiculous. I don’t know why I said that.” That blue-eyed gaze just watches for a moment, moves towards him until she has standing close.

Elena rests her head for a moment against him, he is warm, just as she knew he would be. “You smell like flowers and trees.” She tells him a voice just barely louder than a whisper, with a brow knit and furrowed and hidden away beneath tangles of blonde hair. What she does not say is what that means to her, which memories he coaxes to the surface of a heart that has felt so crumbled and confused the last few seasons. It brings with it a memory of flowers and laughter and sweet mornings still covered in dew, but a warm sun. She holds onto it like a prayer, like a promise clutched between trembling fingers. “It might be my favorite.”

She breaths him in again, comfortable beside him. It was so easy with Po, always so easy. “What are you thinking about?” She asks because she can feel him, everything about him, but she is no mind reader. And emotions for Elena, have become such a part of her, the feelings of others, but thoughts, now those are still coveted by the palomino. Prized gems she holds onto like a dragon and its gold. “And why are you thinking about it?”

those are the kind of girls who try to save wolves

instead of running from them

[Ipomoea]

the earth laughs in flowers

---

Somewhere, buried deep within the folds of his heart where two magics tangle together like the roots of two trees meeting in the forest, some part of him is turning an ear into the darkness to listen.

Somewhere, buried deep in the forest where the roots crawl like snakes across the earth and the evergreen trees block the sunlight from view, there was a thing calling out to him in heartbeats instead of words. He could feel it creeping into his chest, setting teeth against those that held him back from it — to the court, to his love, to the parts of him that looked at the sunrise each morning and dared to hope. And when it echoes in the birdsong above him he trembles, and nearly turns to go to it.

He takes one step in its direction, and sees Andras’ heavy eyes. His eyes search the darkness and he sees something moving, like the movement he has seen in the darkness of the cells beneath Delumine’s floorboards. Over his shoulder are all the people he loves, watching him go.

So he rights himself on the trail after Elena. And he runs.

He runs with the dim forest light dappled like a cloak over his back, listening to the bright and lively whispers of the spring forest, reading the signs and sounds written in leaves and footsteps the way another might read a book. A flash of green moss growing from the scar of a tree (a scar a unicorn’s horn tore into it.) The trickle of water running in the secret places, hollows collecting the snowmelt from the mountains. The soft buds of new life hidden overhead, protected from the world that knows only how to take and take until life ceases.

(that is the way of the wild — to freeze the water in the streams to prevent it from running to the sea; to drive the sap from the tree hearts until they crumble; to conquer and beat down anything that stands in offence to it. To take until all that is left — is Thana.)

So he runs. And he lets all of the life of the forest run wild in his footsteps, replacing every fallen sapling and wildflower that would never awaken from their winter slumber.

Only when Elena rises on two legs before him does he stop, sliding into a rear that spins around her in kind (like they are dancing, he thinks, the sort of dance that defies the Wild creeping in.) And he thinks in another life it might have been the two of them dancing together in this forest; in a life where there were no unicorns in the wood, and no desert that whispered to him late at night.

“It’s not ridiculous,” he breathes into her neck. “Do you not believe in ghosts? I do. I've seen them.” Ipomoea knows the ghosts in one’s mind (in their hearts) were just as real as those haunting places like his woods. Perhaps those memories were the more dangerous of the two.

He leans against her as he catches his breath, listening to her whisper against him, to the trees laughing quietly around them in the song of birds and squirrels and a forest coming awake. For a moment it is all that he hears, all that he sees, all that he feels —

he did not know he needed this but oh, he did.

But always (always) the call returns. And his eyes turn to that other world hiding on the horizon (that other-him, who he might have become in another life) when he feels the sand setting teeth to his ribs again like a monster begging for escape. His breath is a sigh that is as much as home in the sounds of the forest. “I am thinking I was a fool once to not believe in fate.”

Even now he can feel it creeping along in wake of him, reaching out to drag claws down his back, to drag him back to where he belongs. “Do you believe in fate, Elena? Or destiny? Do we have a choice even when it feels as though there is none?"

Once he might have said yes, yes, yes — there was always a way. But now, with the thing gnawing on his ribs and the call echoed to him in every wisp of wind, all of it whispering that same language —

oh, now he is not so sure.

@Elena
”rooting / rotting“

⚘

[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

[Ipomoea]

the earth laughs in flowers

---

Again and again, he returns to the desert.

It is always there, a memory waiting to surface, a grain of sand clinging to his heart. And always it comes when he least expects it, whispers against his soul like he was but a wayward son struggling to find his way home (but what is a home, to an orphan? What is a family to a boy who had none?)

Ipomoea can feel it creeping up again now, when the wind blows from the east and carries a bit of that wild scent with it. When it weaves around the trees like a song of sand and soil, a sound his heart is beginning to learn the beat of. It makes him want to follow it, this wind that curls through his mane like it holds the secret he has been looking for, the pieces of home he has never been able to find.

He knows, of course he knows that the desert is not his home, not while there is a forest that will always be waiting for him. The same as he knows the forest cannot be his home while the sand is still calling, the way he lays down in the meadows and imagines it is sand dunes rising around him instead of flowers. Ipomoea knows his home is nowhere and everywhere, and he knows —

— he knows it is tearing him apart.

He wants to pretend it is not. He wants to pretend the forest is all he will need, the way he had thought it would answer all of his questions when he was a boy. All at once he is that boy again, begging in the streets; and again he feels himself falling asleep in the sands, dreaming of clover and lavender, of trees tall enough to block out the sun.

When he looks at Elena he can see it, the golden glow of the sands in the sunlight, the fire in her eyes so much like the fire of the desert (are not all fires the same, even when they were different? Were they not all just a sign of the soul, of a passion that refused to be tamed?) And Ipomoea tries, oh he tries to believe that the family he has chosen is the same as being born into one. He holds his friends close for fear of losing them, for he has lost so many already. It was the way of the world, to take and take and take.

Ipomoea is almost tired of giving.

But when he presses his cheek to Elena’s and lets her words whisper their way down into his soul instead of laying against his skin like petals, he thinks he has a little left to give. “You are too alive to be yet a ghost,” he whispers back to her. He knows she does not see it; just as he does not see that he is still soft, when all he feels is sharp.

“Perhaps that is the blessing of it,” he says when he tilts his head back to the sky with her. “Perhaps it is a blessing, to walk through the world without disturbing it; to not cause pain anymore, or receive. To only admire what is.” He thinks he would not mind being a ghost. And sometimes, Ipomoea envies those who are still mortal, those who can see their end in sight instead of looking forward and seeing only years, and years, and years left of searching, and wanting, and aching.

And aching, and aching, and aching —

Ipomoea sighs. And when he pulls away, flowers are still blooming in his footsteps, and the loamy earth is still struggling to form itself into shapes to follow along beside him. A wood mouse with seed-eyes hops along in his shadow; a fawn colored with the earth lifts its head to regard him from a bed of wildflowers. Ipomoea feels more and more a god of this earth and he wonders if the Novus gods were right after all to abandon it.

It is a selfish thought, he knows. And he pushes it from his mind when he turns back to Elena with a smile that feels spun more of shadows instead of moonlight. “Anything that I have — anything that I am — is already your’s. You know that,” he says, bumping his muzzle against her as gently as a flower unfurling in the morning light.

And again the desert catches up to him. And again he thinks of family, of finding kin where they should have been none, of choosing the ones you love.

He thinks Elena may have been part of the family he was missing all around.

His breath is a sigh against her skin when he leans against her, his eyes closing against the night. Somewhere out there, there are still unicorns and shadows and fate circling around like wolves, but here — oh here there are only two friends in the world they have created, the world they have chosen, and Ipomoea realizes now he would have it no other way.

“I am honored you would think of me as such,” he whispers against her. “And I will look after and love Elli as my own, for you and her are as much my family already.” And secretly he says a prayer to whichever gods are still listening that fate should not be so cruel to take Elena away so soon.

He does not know if that is a thing he could bear. Not when she is one of the few left that are still holding him to this world, that are reminding him to be soft instead of sharp, a god of life instead of one carving out his pain from the world.

“Will you stay a while longer? The festival feels brighter and lighter with you here.” It feels like one more reason to stay, he does not say, when all the rest are telling him to go.

@Elena
”rooting / rotting“

⚘