[P] we were staring at the flowered wallpaper [lyr]

[Elena]

take this burden away from me
and bury it before it buries me

Elena understands the cruelty of fate. She doesn't understand why she ever grows surprised by it anymore. She has been surprised, angry, but there have been times too, when fate has aligned just right. Like under a Hyaline sky with her crimson cousin wrapping around her closely as they reunite with one another.

Fate can give.

Fate can take away.

Oh, how it can take away…

And away

And away

and away….

Elena too knows how souls shine, and they are not each their own, but made up of others, others that they may never meet. There may be a light inside Elena’s own that once belonged to a piece of his sister. The golden girl would like to think she can do it justice, and let it burn bright. It was the only way she knew how to shine after all.

(If Lyr asked her now if she thought him compassionate, sensitive, deserving, she would say yes, yes, yes.)

(If he asked her tomorrow she would say yes, yes, yes.)

Lyr, let Elena shine for you, she would burn the whole place down with her light if it would lessen your pain. Strike the match and she will flare to life and roar like fire with flowing embers. She can almost see the burn of his eyes, if only because she has felt it before. The need to hold them back, to dry them, to harden when all you want to do is fall apart into a pill of agony and grief. You break and they try to put you back together, but Elena and Lyr are the only ones who know where each of those pieces go. They will break apart again and again, because they must build themselves back up first before they can stand. Elena has tried, she will have the bricks, but no mortar, lumber but no hammer and nails, sand, but not shovel and pail. She seems to miss a piece and her sides tumble down before she can find them. Elena, though bold and beautiful, is brittle, a silhouette of glass and spiderweb cracks. They are not so easily fixed.

Glacial blue eyes peel back to the sunset before to Lyr once more when he introduces himself. “Thank you for joining me, Lyr,” she says graciously. And maybe it is just the way he is looking at her, but Elena feels a strange sense of familiarity pass between them, like maybe she has been here before, with someone like him. She likes the way it feels with him, in this silence. (Oh it is such a lighter load with someone to share it next to her.) “I am,” she offers him back. “I have been exploring, though the capital is quite overwhelming,” she admits. “I prefer staying a little more seaside,” she laughs. “Or, in the hospital, healing when I can,” it is a gracious admission. If there was one thing Elena prized, it was her work of healing. Each physical wound she could fix, it felt like magic, like she was fighting back fate. “What are yourself?”

Silence.
Her voice returns only after she realizes a thought that presses against her mind.

“It doesn't have to be, you know,” she says almost shyly. “A pleasure that is. It can hurt,” she says because she remembers. Remembers how she couldn't look at Lilli’s blue eyes because they resembled her mother’s too much. Couldn't bare to hear the deep, strong voice of Malachi because sometimes if she closed her eyes it was almost as if her father were speaking. There is a tightness in her chest that is hard to ignore. That golden face turns from him for a moment until she can bring herself to smile again. “I don't think I could have wished for better company tonight, Lyr,” she says. “Thank you—for you.”

so take away this apathy
bury it before it buries me

@Lyr