08-06-2019, 09:28 AM
 I can remember a time when I was so afraid when even my shadow wouldn't follow me She is unsafe. She has deliberately crawled into the lion's den and kicked away her ladder and here, trapped with this monster (She could leave, if she wanted. She could have left earlier and, still, she can leave now but she won't.) in this open cage she feels her stomach turn and something about it, she likes it. Elaina aches to leave him behind, to go back home and pretend she had never left in the first place, to bathe in the comfort of Lilli beside her as she tells her about a new flower she has discovered. Or for Kensa to find her a new job to perform. Where Tunnel will not be there to send shivers down her spine and confusing thoughts through her head. She thinks, does he know? How she wants to run and never look back? But she cannot leave, she has found no reason to dislike him, not that she ever could, not truly. There is not enough room in the heart of her golden breast for hatred. She had hated Frostbane for so long and it brought her no closer to resolution, it only hurt her family. She has learned her heart is a tiny thing, that only holds love and loneliness and grief, often all at the same time. And, often, to such a degree that, while outwardly she may seem blissful, she feels quite desperate for something new, something to take it all away. This is what brought her here in the forest, making her way to new land. She knows, and this is why she will be a hermit if she can ever make it out and away from him. “You could have walked away,” she says then. “Ignored me,” she says, but she thinks, this is a lie. If there was one thing Elaina has learned, is that she is rarely ignored, and for all the wrong reasons. So it begs the question, why was he here? “You’ve stayed this long,” she says pointedly. The same could be said for you, sunshine child. Why is she here? “I am traveling,” she says, an honest answer, well, it was at the time. Elaina’s trip, it would seem, was cut short for the day. She doesn't like how close she is. No, she is supposed to like it. That is what she tells herself. “I’m finding,” she says in that voice that aches to brave like her father, like her godfather, she tries to hold the tremble steady. “That I am so uncertain of you.” She says it because she can, because she has to say something and she cannot say anything but. Elaina is a terrible lair, and she doesn't want to say she is so unafraid. She is filled with the scent of mountain air and pine. But there is something that stenches of uncertainty and even fear, and it turns the mountain air to factory smoke and the pine to sawdust. She wants to be brave, really she does, but she is such a young girl, such a fragile girl, and the most she can do is make it clear that she will sprint away the second she is actually threatened. (So she tells herself.) You liar. She tries to do this by looking him in the eyes (those hauntingly beautiful eyes, she sees, and finds herself interested in despite everything) when he speaks next and pushing her little body a little bit closer to him, a light step forward, head turned upwards. “My family loves me,” she says, defiantly. She was a legacy, descended from a great line all from Legado the Great. It burns hot in her blood. “They did everything they could to protect me,” she says and she feels those ears fall back in that blonde mane. She wants to cry, but she can’t, not with him. “I dont need you,” she says, it is reflex. It aches to put those words on her tongue. “You don't know anything about me,” she says defensively. But all of it melts away the moment she feels his lips against her shoulder. She realizes what he is doing and those ears fold back once more. She decides, that she doesn't like being touched, not by him, even if she is lying to herself. She shifts that golden, scarred should away from his mouth. Elaina straightens her back, some, and takes a step away from him, skin crawling where it had touched his. She is appalled at the sick way it feels too cold without him there. But she does this with everyone, craves their attention even if they mean to harm her. She trusts too easily, loves too easily, and she is so stubborn. The palomino wants him to follow her, to close that distance once more. But Elaina has not realized that she is the mouse and he the lion. “Why are you doing this?” Elaina wonders, if this the type of thing a victim says? Is she just playing a part, here, while he watches her dance? She is usually so good at reading people, at knowing what they want at a first glance. But, Tunnel, is different. And she harbors a subtle longing to understand him, to push past that growling face, the uncomfortable looking, and find something inside that tells her she was right to stay, and she believes that she can, but she is a naive girl and would search for kindness in the devil if she ever met him. She should go home, right now, but her muscles are not coiled, just tense, and her heart, while beating harder than ever, is not beating quite so fast anymore. benjamin and beylani's sunflower-girl |
@[Tunnel]