[P] lessons learned again, retold

[Nicnevin]

YOU WATCH YOURSELF.
you watch the watcher too - / a ghostly figure on the garden wall. / and one of you is her, and one is you, / if either one of you exists at all.
☙❧

Were it any other time of the year, I think that the fields would have likely been beautiful.

As things are: the grass is dead and mostly browned. Thin and brittle and bobbing in the wind, like a second and golden sea. It’s pretty in its own way, but I’d like to see it green, like I’ve been told that it is in the spring – I’ve never seen a spring before, or green more than the last vestiges that remain as autumn ends, and almost nothing is green at home unless we make it so. It’s cold, but not as cold as it has been, and the heavy snows (I remember the first one I saw; I could hardly wrap my mind around the concept) have given away to frost again, like winter is slipping away to autumn again. Logically, I know that winter is slipping to spring – but I don’t know what spring is, so I can only think of it as another kind of autumn.

I’ve been here for months, and I still haven’t found the heir. I try not to be troubled by it – I try not to feel my heart in my throat every time I think that I see the sigil on some passing stranger, only to inevitably be disappointed when the mark is somehow wrong. Sometimes I think that I should tell someone why the heir is so important, why I need to find them so urgently; it might help me organize people to search, or something like it. But try as I might, I can’t quite bring myself to tell anyone the truth of the heir, or the truth of our rulers. The outsiders have stolen them away from us already – I am not sure what they might do if even more of them knew what they could do.

I’m not in the fields to search for the heir, though. (I’d be better off searching for them in the courts I haven’t visited yet – namely, Dawn and Night.) I’m here to search for someone else entirely.

Elena’s girl reminds me of something I only hazily remember. I had a younger sister in my second life, though I never felt quite so close to her as my elder sister in my first; but watching her grow up before my eyes reminds me of things that I’d thought I’d forgotten. I watch her, and I feel strange. I’ve only been in this world for a moment, particularly compared to how long I have lived, but I have known the girl for her entire life. (I – assume that her soul is newborn, anyways.) We have no innate relation – only one borne from the kindness of strangers. I don’t know how to feel about that, exactly. No one is quite a stranger at home.

I find her in the fields, a splash of snowy white and tawny, like owl’s feathers – like my long-dead elder sister – against the pale gold strands. A smile spreads unthinkingly across my lips, because I’ve brought something with me. I don’t think that she is much the type for it, but it will be good for a girl of her age to learn how to use. “Elliana?” I approach her, my gift nestled beneath the soft curve of my wing – hidden, for now, from sight. “I have something for you.”

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@Elliana || <3 <3 <3 || wendy cope, "by the round pond"
Speech

@

[Elliana]

There are other worlds than this one. Elliana believe she has known this since the beginning, but has never truly thought about it, just because they so rarely intersect. Though sometimes, things interfere, sometimes, doors open. And those that walk through those doors, they whisper to her, sing, cry, laugh.

Elliana is more sensitive than most, and when others hear the creek of the door opening they believe it to be nothing more than the wind. But Elliana tucks those covers up tighter around her, knowing those who were supposed to stay on the other side have come to speak to her. And visions of the bent-neck lady fill her blue eyes, and she will one day have to fight too, the urge to walk through the door that creeks and swings open, inviting her in.

Elli is nothing but bright blue eyes as she stands in the field, easy smile on her face. It is cold, but Elliana has known little else in her life. She knows snow, chilled breezes, and icicles staring precariously at her with cold eyes. She walks through the landscape, carefree, fearless, because she has no reason to be afraid, she goes from Terrastella to Denocte, from one pair of watchful eyes to the next. She has friends, her mother, her father, Nic, her companion, ever present on her shoulders, hands buried in her growing mane. She has no reason to hesitate—not in the day time—not when it is quiet. She darts in and out of shadows because she thinks she loves them just as she does the sun, but one day she will fear them—and one day still, she will come to love them all over again.

Elliana.

The name graces over her ears like the wind across the long grass of the fields. “What do you have?” She asks, quickly bounding over with childish laughter decorating her lips as Jack jumps from her shoulders, excitement making her step far too bouncy for his liking. Her response is light and airy as it is followed by her smile, full and bright. She tries to peek around to see what Nic could possibly have for her. “Is it a new toy?” She asks curiously. If anyone would bring her a toy, it would be Nic. She was perhaps the most fun character of Elliana’s life, she enjoyed her stories, watching her train—painting her. Nic perhaps made the most beautiful subject on canvas. “Nic,” she pleads like a child—because it is so easy to forget she is one.

dear friend it will be alright, please just stay by my side

@Nicnevin

[Nicnevin]

YOU WATCH YOURSELF.
you watch the watcher too - / a ghostly figure on the garden wall. / and one of you is her, and one is you, / if either one of you exists at all.
☙❧

Elliana is the first child that I’ve seen grow up from infancy.

In my first life, I spent plenty of time around children, but that was mostly to train them by the blade; they were never too young, because they had to be able to handle the strain of our training before they were enrolled. My only sister was older, and I never had any children of my own. Sometimes, I think that I would have liked to, but I had higher concerns than my personal life – I never married, or had any lovers for too long, and I never settled down. In my second – equine – life, I had a younger sister, but I was away when she was born, and we weren’t raised together. In all the lives in-between, everything was different, and none of it mattered in the same way. I still don’t recall having any children. Not in the way that I would now, or could have in the past, at the very least.

She is the first child that I’ve seen grow up from infancy – and I watch, a smile situating itself across my lips as she bounds across the fields towards me, a bit of honey-sweetness and pale gold against all of that death. Her lemur jumps from her shoulders, presumably because she is frolicking, and follows her on the ground, and she springs towards me, all eager-anticipation and brightness. Even when she reaches me, I don’t immediately show her the sword. I let her marinate for a while in her own anticipation, holding the secret just out of her grasp until she seems as though she is just about ready to burst from the force of it.

“Something like that,” I say, smothering something that is less of a smile and more of a grin, but I don’t actually show her what I’ve brought until she gives that soft, pleading, Nic. I pull the sword out from where it’s nestled beneath the soft feathers of my wing, and I hold it suspended in front of her. I’ve had years of practice at picking them, so I made sure that it was a good one before I got it for her – carved out of steady, bright oak, edges too blunt to hurt herself, still lightweight enough to be swung around by a young girl. “Here,” I say, extending the sword to her, “take a look.”

“It’s a training sword – never too early to start learning to defend yourself…” I trail off, as something abruptly occurs to me. “…that is, as long as you want to learn?” I didn’t actually ask her, and Elliana is just as gentle-natured as her sun-kissed mother; she might be disinclined towards violence, although I know she’s grown up on stories of noble knights and captive princesses. If she doesn’t like it, I suppose I’ll just have to make sure that I don’t look too disappointed about it and sneak some other kinds of self-defense training into her day-to-day life – disguise them as a game, maybe. In my experience with wayward apprentice knights, that almost always works charms.

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@Elliana || <3 <3 <3 || wendy cope, "by the round pond"
Speech

@

[Elliana]

It is only when she settles before Nic that Jack feels comfortable climbing back onto her shoulders, watching the other female with gentle curiosity. He did always trust Nic, since the first day he bonded with Elliana. If she peers hard enough, straining those blue eyes, she can almost see the secret written across the sharp cheek bones of her mother’s ward. She hangs a question of her own out for her to see and when Nic replies there is a laugh that blooms on her lips like a flower. It is quiet and calm and flutters just barely on an exhale and her teeth flash white behind her gay gold lips as she looks up behind her dark, innocent lashes. “Oh please, please tell me,” she says with a flutter of childish excitement.

It is only with that addition of that extra special Nic, that Elli saves just for her that it would seem it had tipped the scales. And like a miracle, the one she has known since birth, who has been like an older sister to her since day one, she pulls out the surprise. Elli has never seen a sword in real life, only in her story books, in illustrations. So she stands in awe for a moment, those bright blue satellite dish eyes grow even rounded in anticipation, excitement, gratitude. “Oh, Nic,” she says with a wild exhale of youthful exuberance. When she extends it out towards the little girl she takes it carefully, examining it fully, feeling the weight of it. It feels like adventure, it feels like new explorations.

“Are you going to train me?” Elli asks her with hope blooming on her cheeks like spring flowers. She has heard Nic’s stories, and she can think of no one better for the task. “Yes, yes I want to,” she reassures her, eyes falling back down to the sword and imagining herself in far off places on wild adventures, her sword pointing the way of here they should go.

This is when she leaps back from Nic and holds the sword out in front of her. “I say we start now,” comes the soprano voice, and though her smile be sweet, there is a challenge that starts to flourish.

dear friend it will be alright, please just stay by my side

@Nicnevin