The meadow is gleaming. Warm light, cast from the strung lights, glitter across the icy meadow. Sereia stands upon the edge of the meadow and drinks in the sight. It is like nothing she would find at the bottom of the ocean. The glow of the festival is gentle and warming. It wards off the bite of winter and sets it prowling along the wooded edge of the Delumine meadow.
A covered walkway welcomes daters into the meadow. It is a living tunnel, the greenery frosted silver. The plants grow over metal archways, woven through with ice flowers and lights. Sereia feels the soft light dapple over her buttermilk skin. As she steps of the far end of the tunnel she sees yet more archways dotted about, between them small tables are set up, each with a flickering candle and fireflies caught in a jar.
Sereia blinks, slowly, slowly. Couples and groups are littered across the meadow. It was a blessing she had met Elena once before and Sereia looks for the sun-drenched skin of the other girl. She sees the flash of a snow-white heart and edges toward her.
“Elena.” Sereia smiles when soon they are close. It is a small smile that teases her lips. It is kept small, her makeup artfully applied to conceal the too-wide, too-sharp line of her predatory mouth. “I brought you a gift.” Shyly Sereia lifts the carefully wrapped present. Beneath the painted paper and the bamboo bow, a book lies bound in soft leather. It sings and it begs for words to fill its empty leaves.
Sereia waits until she opens it before she murmurs lightly, “I thought you might like it as a place to lay your thoughts…” her eyes trail over the soft leather, the gold leaf pattern curling delicately across its face and spine. “Did our research in the library that day help you with finding out more about the Night Order?”
Her lips curl up, “I almost wish we had met there again.”
They had called her the Gilded Cecilia when she had been blind, when she had wandered, not speaking, they had thought her to maybe be deaf, or mute. Maybe it fit, the way she was like living gilt. But her vision came back, in blue eyes and blinding sunlight.
She rolls a delicate shoulder, but a warm smile stretches easily across her face. Elena moves through the archway and out into where she would be meeting her new friend. A blind date, Elena laughs inside her heart at the thought. You would think she would have had enough of dates to last, but Elena will forever make room in her heart, an infinity of space.
Elena looks to each of the candles on the tables. It flickers and dances like summer had never really ended and the sun was not setting. “Sereia,” she says when she hears her name from the girl’s lips. “Oh, but I didn't bring anything for you,” she says in a moment of panic as she hesitantly unwraps the gift, excitement blossoming in her belly. She feels Sereia’s own excitement skipping like rocks on a lake and it feels good to share an emotion with another. “Thank you,” she says, and she reaches over in the form of a hug. “I owe you.” It is a promise of both a gift and that this would not be the last time they met.
“I think I have given up my research for now.” It is a half hearted statement. “There was a monk, and now there is not.” She summarizes the story, speaks a bullet point— There was a monk and now there is not—because nowhere in her does she have the words to articulate the story that unfolded. The dancing, the fires, the lake, the love, the water, the falling, the child. It is too much to tell a stranger. “He’s gone.” The last bullet point, the conclusion she never hoped to write but had been inevitable from the first moment they danced in the embers of the bonfire. “I am grateful we had the chance to meet at all again,” she says, and in truth, she is grateful for the beauty of the place, though a little uncomfortable by all the unbroken love. “What were you searching for in the library that day? Did you find it?”
Serea shakes her head, a smile drawing across her lips. “I did not expect you to. I simply thought you might like a place to keep your thoughts. Just don’t lose it. I have heard terrible stories of people’s secrets getting out when their journals have been found.”
Elena reaches for her, gratitude seeping into the gesture. The girl longs to not hug and yet desires the affection, the touch. Oh to be loved. It is a need, a hope. They embrace and the touch is torture and joy. When Elena steps away, Sereia breathes, a small sip of air. It still tastes warm and sweet as Elena’s body would. Sereia swallows down the hunger, the desire. Her lips fall into shadowy regret. But it is a fleeting expression. She has learned how to hide herself, disguise her wickedness, sorrow and self-loathing.
The air changes with Elena’s openness. He’s gone. She tastes pain in the air. It is static and sorrowful. It tastes like tears. Sereia watches the lines and the shadows that draw Elena’s grief upon the delicate contours of her face. A part of her longs for such love. The same part knows she will never allow herself to love. She is not worthy of it not with all the souls she has snuffed out with her unchecked, frenzied hunger.
“I am sorry for the loss of your friend,” Sereia whispers, her lips drawn down, bearing a part of Elena’s sorrow for her. Sereia does not let her eyes drift from Elena’s grief, she will not shy away from it. This is the other side to the story. The horses she has killed to feed her kelpie, they had family and friends and lovers. Sereia assumes the monk is dead. Not for a moment, not even in all her avid reading has she encountered a story that would lead her to first assume that it was a romance lost.
“Me too. I enjoyed our day in the library, even if the outcome was a sad one.” She reaches and touches her lips to the curve of Elena’s neck. Again it is fleeting, little more that a passing brush of lips. A flutter of a butterfly’s wings and then gone.
“I was searching for a good story to read. I long for other worlds to fall in love with.” because they are the only things I can allow myself to love.
Then low, a whisper, heavy with concern and compassion, “How are you fairing, Elena?”
When she thinks of her name she thinks of everyone else who has spoken it. How they have spoken it. In hunger, in love, in anger, in frustration, in adoration. She thinks about the first time they have spoken it, and the last time.
She thinks there will be a last time when she says her name, and the thought is neither terrifying nor comforting.
Elena laughs with the words of advice the girl offers. “I have learned that secrets have a way of getting out one way or another, no matter how much you keep them guarded,” she says, admits, before she even realizes what it is that she is saying. Secrets have a way of getting out—she swallows the terror that builds in her throat, blue eyes darting away if just for a moment.
The physical contact, it flares against Elena like hot coals and she quickly pulls away, the discomfort in the girl was more than normal and she watches the girl carefully, curious about the distress she caused her. “Are you okay?” Elena asks her delicately.
“It was never meant to be, it just took some time for me to realize it,” she admits. Never meant to be up to a certain point, because throughout all the regret and the sorrow, she can never feel any of that when she looks onto her daughter, when she sees those blue eyes and that heart upon her brow. “I am not alone at least,” she says and thinks of her daughter, of Nic, of Azrael. No, Elena’s life is full, full, full.
She laughs then (it feels nice to laugh with a new friend). She reaches out to touch her and Elena gladly stills, leans into it, is grateful for such a connection. “Good stories can be so difficult to find, I have been hunting high and low for stories to tell my daughter,” she says. Yes, her baby girl, who reads the words the paints and the pictures, who listens and bring tales to life of what Elena tells her. “Do you have any I may share with her?”
And then she asks.
How is she fairing?
There are a lot of answers that she can give, but she offers none that first come to mind. The blonde thinks for a moment. “I am doing what I can, my daughter and my ward keep me busy enough, they are both full of bright ideas and games to play, it is never quiet,” she laughs. No, just the other night when it was too cold to emerge from the tiny cottage they shared, they sat around a fire and made make believe stories, acting different parts and laughing all the while. Elli asked questions, Nic asked more. “And yourself? I cant help but feel there is…an uneasiness in you today, if I may be so bold to ask you.”
Elena’s words terrify them both. It steals the smile from Sereia’s lips and she swallows down the apprehension too. In that moment, in that entirely selfish moment of personal reflection, the sea-girl does not see the way Elena also flinches. The dark shadow of unspoken secrets passes between them, over them, like a rising of a wave, large and destructive, coming in to shore. Neither girl are ready for the moment their wave lands and the agony that will follow in its path.
Her breath stutters in her lungs, but she listens and lets another smile find its place upon her mouth. She wears it as if it is a shield, behind which she can hide all her pain and anguish and nervous guilt. But Elena makes it easier, so much easier, when she speaks of her daughter.
Ah, now Sereia’s smile grows wider, delighted. “I did not know you have a daughter. What is her name?”
She waits to hear, even as she is already thinking on her next question, letting all the stories in her heart spill open, their pages exposed, their tales drawn across their leaves. “There are so many. There is one about a girl who falls in love with a winter god, or another about a Velveteen Rabbit… If you come back to Delumine’s library one day soon, I can give them to you. You can see which ones your daughter might enjoy most?”
Sereia laughs. It is easy in these moments to forget that she is made for the sea and for violence. Here she feels softer, more normal than she has ever been before. “I have heard that about children - they keep you on your toes.” And one day, she might want a child. To love as Elena loves hers… One day, when she is free of her curse.
Her curse.
Elena asks if she is okay and it cuts so close. “Yes.” She lies and the smile upon her lips is warm but oh so shallow. “I am just a little nervous about the date. I am glad it is with you though, i was worried about who I might have been paired up with.”
Elena is quiet as she watches her and the air kisses her skin, sending a trail of goose bumps across her flesh. But then she smiles, despite the emotions that the empath feels, and Elena feels she needs to smiles back, has to smile back at her. It keeps the world turning, these smiles of theirs, or at least their own worlds keep moving, keep rotating.
And then Sereia makes everything easy, because Elena mentions her daughter, and she brightens and the palomino girl will never deny the opportunity to talk about her child, her light. When she had been young, she had never understood how Brynn and Aletta would waste the day away, speaking of nothing but their children. Now she understands, because she wants to share everything about Elli to everyone. She wanted to announce her first steps to all of Dusk Court. She wishes to hang everyone of her paintings in every Court. She wants to tell her everything and anything about Elliana because she wants everyone just to know how special she is.
“Elliana,” Elena says with the brightness of a mother. “Those all sound lovely,” Elena responds. “Elli loves winter, thought, it is the only season she knows,” she adds with laughter. “We’ve been growing flowers in our window, and she seems to enjoy them, so I hope she will find happiness in spring as well,” she says. Flowers, a connection between mother and daughter.
There is laughter and Elena looks at her with blue eyes from beneath long, dark lashes. “She does,” she agrees, but there is no ounce of strain in her voice, only love. “Same here, but I do enjoy your company.” Elena slides closer to her. “Elli is with her dad, but they both said to stay out as long as I could, so how about some hot cococa?” Elena asks her.
The girls are golden together, but the night takes the blue of Sereia and turns it a dark indigo. It is night crawling up her limbs, her belly, swallowing the gold of daylight. She knows nothing of how her friend’s daughter was made. She knows nothing of the lies that weave out of her mouth as easy as breathing. If she did, Sereia would ask of the weight of them, the pain of them and how Elena is so strong.
But Sereia knows none of these things and so, when the Terrastellan talks of her daughter’s father, the kelpie only smiles and laughs. “Oh, lucky to have a night off. I hope Elliana is not running him too ragged.” Impish is the smile that grows across her lips. Sereia has no experience of her own children, but she has a wealth of sisters, she knows how precocious small girls can be.
Then they talk of flowers and spring and this again is something she knows nothing of, yet. She does not know how the spring will bring tulips, how a young Dusk child will walk in them and find laughter and happiness. But Sereia can believe it, she can believe it with every fibre of her being. “I am sure she will. Who does not find joy in spring?” And oh Sereia is reminded of that first warm day, that smell of pollen and budding flowers that tells her spring is sprung.
“Yes,” she smiles, “let’s find cocoa, I do not think the night is over for us yet.” And with a smile Sereia steps on, leading her friend into the crowd and to a nearby stall, because, yes, the night is still young and there is much to still talk about.
happiness is a butterfly, we should catch it while dancing
E
lena grew up with the most magical of stories. Of kings gilded in gold, of queens who were as beautiful as they were sharp, of love between them that was as easy as rainfall and as uncomplicated as sunshine.
But she sees what these stories are now. The golden king haunted by shadows of war, the queen of swords held an aching heart in her chest, and love is never easy, even when it should be. And that breaking is easier than it looks when your entire heart is as fragile as a glass menagerie.
A girl like that is bound to get broken. Someone had said when they thought she was not around to here them.
But Elena is still here.
Still here despite the way she has always throws herself recklessly into romance
She offers a sweet calm air about her as her blue eyes are wide and watching, beautiful as she glitters in her gold skin and pale hair. Her heart swells in her chest, painfully beating against her ribs, and there is something like a smile that finds her lips. It is brief and brilliant and her thin face glimmers a little more brilliantly in the afterglow of it. ‘Glistening and golden,’ her Aunt Cherish used to say she was.
“It is more likely they will sleep the day away tomorrow,” she says with a laugh. “Those two will stay up the entire night counting stars,” she says with a slow, sweeping blink of blue eyes. Yes, small girls really and truly can be something so very precious.
Elena follows the girl (her friend, she likes to think now) in stride as they search for the warm drinks that wait for them. “Perfect,” she says with a warm smile that melts snow and ice. “Nothing is better than stories over a warm drink,” she says as she reaches for two mugs and the two settle in. “And I have one for you,” and she smiles wide, unable to harvest her joy inside words. “Have you heard the story about a king who could bend the wind to his will? It’s a good one, I promise you.”
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