Maybe Lilliana’s problem came from that she did all her dreaming during daylight. She had looked up to the clouds and crafted monuments in her mind, had created worlds above her head where she could not go. She filled her waking hours with dreams and so when night came - as it always must - her mind was quiet. Her dreams didn’t come with the dark but the daybreak; her world, the one she knew with Elaina, woke with her and was ready to be explored.
Lilliana’s blue eyes go dull as she looks down, watching the waves that crash past the faint outline of her ankles, that go crashing right past her.
"I do,” she murmurs and blinks back unshed tears. Sometimes, she thinks, that’s what makes this so hard. Lilli can see parts of Malachi in her eldest boy’s lopsided smile; the piercing depth and quiet intelligence sparking behind Yanhua’s blue eyes that remind her so much of Jay, a somberness he has that she longs to tell Elaina about that makes her remember all those lost days trying to make Alvaro smile.
It had been the part of motherhood she hadn’t been prepared for - to look at a child and not only see parts of yourself but others, of the generations that came before.
An ear flicks to her golden cousin before she looks up and it surprises her. Lilli finds it a comfort to know that Marcelo had nightmares too. She has them often enough. There are plenty of nights she wakes up with all those shadows pressing against her throat. What little comfort she found in the revelation leaves quickly enough. What a weight that must have been on his shoulders - to dream about the things that could come for them and the inevitable in knowing that there was no stopping it.
(Was knowing worse than braving the unknown?)
"Poor ‘Celo,” she says quietly. He had been the first lesson of Magic from Aletta - that while it could be considered a gift, it was more apt to be a curse. Her father, if he lost control, could have stripped Paraiso of her trees with his gales. Marcelo could see glimpses of the future but he never knew the precise path taken to get there. Ori was gifted with the sight of things gone, unable to change to things already written in history. Lovelace was timeless, cursed to rise and rise again while the mortal hearts she grew to love would wither and die with the seasons.
Aside from the gift of healing, what about Magic could really be proved a ‘gift’? For everything it gave, it had to take and that rendered equal in the end: nothing.
"Do you think Windskeep has been kind to them?” Lilli whispers over the sea, hoping that it has. Hoping that it still stands and that whatever it suffered during the wars, it thrived now. That they found peace.
At her confession (because what else can this be but an altar? Where else would she ever dare to admit such a thing? Elaina has been the very reason that she has learned to fear love and to know what it is to burn with it), her expression parts to reveal a haunting pain. The journey has been a terrifying one; every bit as tumultuous and wild as she is.
(Thats what happens, though, when you grow a girl instead of raising one. Lilliana had been allowed to bloom alongside the gentle hills of Murmuring Rivers. There had been no fencing that child in. So nobody should be surprised when the May Pole turned into a pyre.)
What Elaina says is the very thing she struggles with. The copper mare had grown up looking at her reflection, looking at the angles and planes of her face for a father she hadn’t known. Now when she stares at herself, there is only the sin. "So that's it, then?” Lilliana asks dryly, "That’s all there is? Doom?” The anger rises briefly - inflecting on the last word before she softens. "Are we the sin or is the sin us?”
She buries the last of it - that rage, that anger that has been festering in her since the night that Lilli went into the Forest and Lilliana came out - before she just buries her face into the warmth of her cousin’s blonde neck. A place just as immortal and beloved to her as the Redwoods that loom behind them. ”I love you,” she croaks, ”I love you so very, very much.”
Assailant -- Year 226
"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
[private] stranger than your sympathy;
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but it's all in the past, love
it's all gone with the wind
05-10-2020, 12:25 AM
“The child wouldn’t be here if things in Windskeep were going well.” No, she wouldn't have been. So what does it mean as she stands here in Taiga? She wouldn't be here if things were going well. But this time, Elaina knows as she looks to her cousin. It is not the War of Windskeep, but whatever rages inside and around Lilli that she is here for. This time Elaina does not run away from battle—but straight towards it. “Perhaps one day, Elena might be the fiercest of warriors but she needs to reach adulthood before that can happen.” This is what Lilli had thought of her cousin. But, in the end, Elena was not the ferocious warrior, because it is not bravery to look the things you hate in the eyes, but to stand beside your loved ones as they stare them down knowing you would do better to run. “I can’t leave you with him.” She had said when Elaina had refused to leave. Even then she had been foolish, why had they not been able to see it? Elaina has broken down more times than she can remember, and she had grown so sick of having to put herself back together for everyone else. How often had she looked to the sky asking where they were when she needed them. Of course, in the next heart beat, it was Lilli who turned up beside her. “What is it like?” She asks curious. “Being a mother?” She wonders because she has never had children, she never wanted to children, when Aerwir had asked, she shut him out, when Aerwir had pushed, she had left. She wonders if it is hard to longer be able to just consider herself when she makes her decisions. The hardest part in all this, that Elaina doesn't realize, but in a way, Lilli has, is that one day she will have a daughter and she will look into her eyes and her heart will break a thousand times more than Aerwir, Underworld, Tunnel, or her shadow man ever could. Because when she looks into those eyes, she will see only Lilli staring back at her. She toys for minute with the crimson of her mane.”Celo carried so much weight with a future and a crown. I never realized it until I was older,” she admits. The boy king, who ruled alongside Aletta with shaking hands and a trembling voice. “Your mother was a good leader,” she finishes with the truth. Aletta had protected them. Pride flares in her chest for her heritage. Aletta was not of legacy blood physically, but spiritually…and Elaina would always look to her as a second mother. “Everyone seemed happy, when I was there.” Everyone except herself, seeing it in the way her face looked solemn, her eyes dull, Elaina is still not sure at which point Windskeep stopped being home for her. (It is was when her mother gave her eyes of blue because she lost her father’s, when she tried to manipulate fate and fate punished her instead.) “I want to show you it one day,” she says, curious why the idea never came to her before. Maybe because she was too busy thinking about boys with brown eyes, boys of blue, and boys with scars on their chests and death in their eyes. “Lilli!” She says, letting the mast fly open, to steady the ship about to dive off the waterfall. It is then the golden girl looks to her with matching silver blue eyes. “I don't know,” she admits. She is not Jay with his stars, nor Valerio with his wisdom, or Aesop with her immortality. Elaina has always been aware of just how little she has to offer. “If you are sin, then I should have been cast into the fire’s of Hell a long time ago,” she admits because Lilli has always been the better pieces of herself and when she looks at Lilli, looks at her eyes and her smile, sometimes she can almost make herself believe that only those better parts exist. Here, with Lilli at her side, every shield she defends herself with, every thought that brings an ache deep in her chest is left far behind her, out of reach. Make no mistake, it runs, sprints, fights its way to get back to her, but for now Elaina can feel the atlas that rests upon her shoulders lifting. One day she will return to this moment, to Lilli, to Taiga, and think that maybe she should have stayed among the trees and the fog. And then her shadow will come, on a night beside the lake (“If you want to remember…) and she will remember different things (distant things), while forgetting this one. “Tell me your happiest memory. Something that always brings a smile to your face.” She asks, begs for. They deserved this, this moment, they deserved a moment of smiles, of joy. They deserved this.
tried to keep her quiet, but she's screaming inside me Lilli presses her face into the curve of her cousin’s neck, lulling herself with the soothing warmth that came radiating off Elaina in waves. but it's all in the past, love
it's all gone with the wind
05-14-2020, 03:42 PM
They hadn't always been close. Back when Elaina had been small, all wide eyes and dancing legs, she had come into Murmuring Rivers with Marcelo at her side, new to the land and new to life without her parents. She and Lilli had exchanged quiet words, shy glances, but little else. But, Lilli, with all her grace and kindness, had nestled herself inside Elaina’s heart without her golden cousin even noticing. And there she has stayed, a piece of her heart that Elaina will never be able to lose. Time, troubles, terror, it can try all it wants, but the girls of gold and crimson have proven their resilience over and over and over again. Unbreakable, unstoppable, eternal. Elaina has tried so hard to shed her past like a snake sheds its skin, but Lilli haunts her like a ghost (a beautiful, warm, welcomed ghost), but a ghost of her past all the same as she presses into her neck with all familiarity and love. There are so many memories pushing the confines of her mind that for a moment that golden head with a heart shape upon her brow thuds with a headache as she buries them underneath layers of trying apathy. Sometimes she wishes her brandished gold guardian angel would come again. To vanquish her tears and demonstrate his strength. But, it would seem, after so much time, he has forsaken her. Though Lilli has not, Lilli has never. Terrifying, she says. Elaina’s eyes widen slightly. She has never sought motherhood, and maybe it is for the very reason as the very word Lilli has just spoken to her. “I believe it,” she responds, thinking back to her wandering back inside Murmuring Rivers to Valerio’s stern gaze, it had not been anger glinting there, but fear. “Did you feel it right away?” She asks Lilli now. Or only when she remembered the wickedness of the world? Elaina thinks. She laughs then. Of course they are, of course they are perfect. “Oh, Lilli,” she admires. “I would never have thought otherwise,” she says adoringly to her cousin. Her cousin who now stands as a mother. A mother who is still a daughter, but Elaina is finding it harder and harder to believe as she watches her. “Can I?” The autumn breeze pushes her words and the waves seem to quiet just for her to ask. “Meet them?” She asks, and there is a shine to Elaina’s eyes that are so happy, so bright, because she knows there are pieces of Lilli out there besides just the one in her heart. Living, breathing, beautiful pieces. Wars could calm and peace could grow with Lilli’s touch, Elaina has always found this to be true, and she feels it in the touch of her cousin along her cheek. Nightmares gather beneath both of their skin. Where did this come from, in their family? Had Legado given it to them? Had he been so good and pure that the darkness that everyone has had to find its way somewhere? And so it was birthed into his offspring’s slumbers? They dream of shadows, with faces, with hands that grab them, that taunt them, but then why does Elaina find herself in much the same way dreaming of dancing with them? She buries the thought. (Did her crimson cousin know— that while Lilli awakes with demons, Elaina falls asleep thinking of them? That shadows tuck her in instead of starlight?) A huff of laughter pauses on her lips. “Yeah, would have led my kingdom right over the Hyaline cliff side,” she says. (“Would you catch me?” She had asked him.) Any advice, is what Lilli asks for and Elaina laughs again, because the answer is obvious, so obvious as it stares at them from across the empty ocean like a lighthouse, drawing them home. “You are your mother’s daughter, Lilli,” she says sincerely. “And your father’s too,” she adds watching her with sky blue eyes. “You are descended from great leaders,” she pauses, wondering if Lilli has noticed where Elaina leads this conversation like a child running with a kite. “I’d say it is more than just your destiny, Lilli—it’s your bloodline.” She sees herself in Lilli, sometimes, that longing, that wishing, and it terrifies her. Because that glimmer of hope, of promise, is dangerous. It is more dangerous than any of the monsters she has ever given her heart to. But she says nothing, because dangerous as it is, it is that look in Lilli’s eyes that has gotten Elaina through so much in her life. Selfishly, she stays quiet about such things. “There has been one lately,” she says, almost dreamily. “Do you remember a night in Hyaline.” (Were there not so many nights?) “When we found each other again?”
tried to keep her quiet, but she's screaming inside me
05-16-2020, 09:01 PM
"I always thought it would be you,” Lilliana admits quietly, looking away from her cousin. They had spoken of this once before, when the chestnut mare had teased Elaina about waddling through winter and babies come spring during one of those visits to Caunion’s country. The autumn before Broch had stolen her away to Culloden - before the beginning of the end of their time in Beyond. 'I missed you, if even it was for a short time,' the golden girl says. 'Did you find any adventures while I was gone?' When the memory recedes (like the midnight mist won't - it barricades them from the outside world, envelops them in an embrace that Lilliana has become familiar with over the years), she asks, "Do you remember that day?" but it's all in the past, love
it's all gone with the wind
05-27-2020, 05:44 PM
She caught sight of herself in the water once. She looked just like her mother. There is a part of her, a quiet part of her that Elaina hates to acknowledge, that found it terrifying. A mother who would stay forever young, forever beautiful (death is so kind in that way, leaving that sense of immortality) is suddenly aging on Elaina’s face. If they were seasons, Elaina would be summer, bold, bright, fiery. Her mother—winter, soft supple, a quiet snowfall. Her father autumn. Bursting with colors, the season that arrives to protect the harsh heat of summer with cooling breezes, but a warm enough sun to keep winter thawed. But autumn has always been far too short, but always long enough to fall in love with wonder of it. The wind plants frigid kisses along her spine. “Well, that would be a foolish decision now wouldn't it be?” She jests. “That kid wouldn't stand a chance.” Elaina’s life has not aligned for children, she thinks if it didn't happen with Aerwir, it most likely would never happen with anyone. It was not in her fate to have a child. Just as. Elaina was never destined to be a leader, she knew this, she could not command the masses, could not disregard her compassion for a single person to better a kingdom. She is thankful though that is had happened for Lilli, in the end, it should have always been her. There is no one, in Elaina’s eyes who deserved a beautiful life, a beautiful family, more than her cousin. Her sister, really at the end of it. Almost instinctively, Elaina can feel her mind drift away from her, out onto the water, something more sinister lurking below the surface. She touches her, and wishes she could absorb any pain she has away. Elaina would take it all, carve it into her very skin if it meant that Lilli could be happy and whole. The sunshine girl would wear every scar, bleed herself dry, and break every bone in her body. Underworld had scolded her, had shamed her once upon a time for such behavior, but Elaina hasn't never regretted a moment when she has stood in the line of fire for Lilli. Lilliana always pulls her bruised and shattered body from the ashes to rise and rise again. “How many twins in the family is this now?” She laughs. Hoshi and Hikari, troublesome, the two of them. Jay and Brielle, as different as the sun and the moon. Kylo and Kalinda, ebb and flow of pain and illusions. Tarian and Liam, a sword and a shield. Maren and Mina, two halves of a whole, wild and tamed. “Do we say if it is a blessing or a curse?” She jests, knowing that each of the children in their family have been undeniably beautiful. “By blood and bond we are bound,” she says, unable to help the way she touches her forehead to Lilli’s own for a brief moment. Elaina has never known if she favors her mother of her father, they hadn't been around long enough for her to find out. Aesop had always laughed so gently, telling Elaina she reminded her of her mother greatly, in her laugh, her smile, the gentle crease of her eyes, the compassion of her heart. But the temper that releases out with an outspoken and stubborn attitude, Valerio has told her he expected nothing less from Benjamin’s daughter. “Your heart is fickle,” Aesop had told her one day when Elaina had ventured back to Windskeep. “Your great-grandfather was much the same way. Royal Legacy loved more women than he ought to have. Love too many, too fiercely, and you risk losing them all.” She had spoken wisely about the great-grandfather Elaina looked so much alike, sporting that palomino coat. “I don't love multiple men, Grandma, you describe me like some harlot,” she defended herself against her buckskin grandmother. “No, no Elaina, you just…too often, it seems give your heart too freely and too strongly.” Elaina had simply narrowed her eyes and turned away, signaling an end to the conversation. Her parents had always been so wholly devoted to each other and only each other and Elaina pains that she would never be able to say the same. Elaina would never allow Lilli to follow for long. She pulls her ahead and places the kite string within her hand, desperate to watch her soar. She smiles wide, like a little girl at her words. Even if Elaina doesn't believe them, Lilli believes in her and the golden girl finds this to be enough—for now, anyway. “You,” she says. “Are so very wonderful.” The joy in the memory is contagious. It is beautiful and Elaina knows, oh how she knows. It was a beautiful day, a beautiful moment. ‘Honey Bee to Butterfly. Honey Bee to Butterfly.’ ‘Best friends forever.’ ‘Forever and a day. Forever and always.’ And suddenly she is back in Taiga and the tears wont stop flowing from her eyes. Elaina who is strong, who has bitten her lip when she wanted to scream, who has held her breath when she wanted to cry, who blinked tired eyes when she wanted to sleep away the pain. She would never be weak, not with Lilli, she could always be strong and suddenly she doesn't know if she can be anymore. “That was the last time,” she aches, weeps, the words are strained against her sorrow. They fight through tears like a canoe upstream. “The last time anything made sense, the last time everything still seemed like it was going to be okay,” she says. “Nothing else was right after that. I was never right after that.” She turns blue eyes away to keep Lilli from seeing the truth swimming back and forth within them like fish in their childhood lake. She presses her forehead into Lilli’s shoulders, her body shaking with the sobs she so desperately wants to hold in.
tried to keep her quiet, but she's screaming inside me
05-28-2020, 08:56 PM
Memories live her, between them. They glow as bright as the stars above them, as firm as the steady ground beneath their feet. They press against her, working their way up her throat, behind her eyelids. They rest in her forehead and they are shared with Lilli as her own brushes against her. Oh the memories they share, that they hold. Oh the memories. There is a voice that hammers at her head. It is his voice, and she silently begs the ocean to crescendo drown out the sound of it: ‘Everyone you meet, everyone you get close to...they will break you in ways you can't even comprehend yet. Even your precious little friend, Lillian, was it? You'll be a distant fond memory someday.’ “Lilliana. Her name is Lilliana. And we will never forget each other. Ever.” The promise has held true, Elaina has thought about Lilli every day since she has known her, an ever present face in her life, even if they are not right next to each other. Lilli is there for her in ways that Elaina cannot even begin to thank her fore. “Did you ever doubt it, Lilli?” She asks then. “That we wouldn't be friends, best friends, forever?” She breathed with a touch of fear. Elaina nuzzles close to her cousin, needing her because all of this uncertainty makes her feel so fragile. She turns then to find Lilli’s own eyes, eyes she loves so much. Blue for blue. As she speaks of her sons, her wonderful, perfect, beautiful sons. Elaina has not met them, but she didn't need to in order to know this. It is written in the smile on her cousin’s crimson face. “They sound like they compliment one another,” she says with a smile. Nashua the storm and Yanhua the quiet just before and after. She wonders about them, she cant help herself. She had seen them in a memory, such a brief, brief memory that left her with more questions than answers. Which one of them smiled like Lilli? Did they have her eyes? Who had Aletta’s fire? And which had Valerio’s large heart? She doesn't think it now, but she will when she returns home, one evening in her home beside the sea. She will think about what her own child would be like. If she would have her own smile, if she would have Benjamin’s bravery and Beylani’s eyes. But for now the image of the twins holds her captive. And how beautiful it is. She laughs. “Could have fooled me, Lilliana,” she says drawing out her full name in a way so childish it takes Elaina back to days of being scolded for wandering too close to the borders, or swimming in the lake when it was far too cold to do so. It is only when she sees the expression brush against her chestnut face that Elaina’s own changes. There is still a smile, but it is one of compassion and gentle love. “Well,” she says exhaling. “Fires always need a spark,” she says turning to face the ocean for a moment. “And you’ve always been mine.” She plants a kiss upon her shoulder before blue eyes catch her own. “You remember that,” she says, and it is not a friendly offer, it is as much a command as Elaina can give to the Taigan girl. And the memory comes. And the memory goes. Tears flow like a waterfall in an almost forgotten childhood home. Lilli is reaching for her and it is only then that Elaina allows her to see. To see her in all her weakness, the way she is crumbling, falling apart. The truth of it being that it was all an illusion, she has never been strong, she was made from far too fragile of things to be so. It is only when Lilli touches her that suddenly Elaina can steady herself. Her breath still shakes and her eyes are still damp, but she no longer feels blinded by this woe that aches inside her chest for things that cannot be changed. “Here,” she laughs and it sounds like she is choking on poison. “For now, but how long will that last?” She asks because it is never enough. Her eyes flash with guilt. “Sorry,” she apologizes as quickly as she had spoken. “Marcelo once told me everything happens for a reason,” she says. “I’ve looked, Lilli. I’ve looked, but I don't think I have ever found one.”
tried to keep her quiet, but she's screaming inside me
06-06-2020, 03:53 PM
She does not like this cold that sinks into her bones. As if Lilli knows this, her words instantly warm her. That she has always felt the same way, that they have always known how much they would love and care for each other. “I can hardly remember a time without you in my life.” A statement that both lifts Elaina up and tears her down in tiny fissures roaming over her heart. It is so comforting to know that Lilli has been such a large part of her life, but she only gained Lilli in the end, by losing her parents. Maybe, somewhere, in another universe, where Elaina’s parents walk above the ground instead of resting beneath it, she still mets Lilli. Years later, after the War of Windskeep was won, and the rebuilding had ceased. She and her parents travel back to beyond, back to Paraiso. She is young still, though nearing adulthood. She has become both strong like her father, with the compassion of her mother. There is a confidence, this assuredness to her the Elaina we know now does not have, it comes from being raised in the arms of two loving parents, to the safety net they have provided her. Elaina has still fallen, fallen more times than she can count, there is always the gentle feel of their hands on her back, ready to guide her. “I have someone I want you to meet, Elaina,” her brandished gold godfather says after they have arrived. “This is my daughter, Lilliana.” And Elaina smiles politely at the crimson girl as she had always been instructed to do so. They meet, they talk, they have the perfect childhood and they grow up alongside each other. Best friends. But in this universe, they never become sisters. “We always find each other in the end,” she says because it’s true. She teases and that is enough to make Elaina laugh, that silver chime, the tickling of high keys on the piano. She laughs so little now in life, real, true laughter. When was the last time she laughed until her stomach ached from the effort of joy? Was it so long ago under a Hyaline night sky? Or walking through the redwoods? Or maybe it hasnt been since they sat in their fort or beside the river bend. Elaina looks back at her with blue eyes when she senses a change in cousin’s posture. “Lilli?” She says under her breath, before the chestnut girl tugs her mane. Elaina reaches out with all the gentleness of a mother she isn't sure she quite remembers anymore and pulls back. Okay, a silent reply. Butterfly then. The butterfly and the honey bee. She hates not knowing. She doesn't know whatever holds her here will last, eventually she will have to leave. Nothing lasts forever, it had been a difficult thing for Elaina to learn, that everything in this life is transient. Even death is not such a permanent thing. Had she not see the way Ori speaks to spirits? Anger rises from the flames that flow underneath her skin, through every vein in her body. “Well, why not?” She asks, fire grows in her eyes as she is ignited. She is extinguished as quickly as it was built. An explosion, then desolation. Elaina stands there, golden amongst the ash and smoke, maybe a Phoenix in her own right, but altogether she looks like something else entirely. There have been many great friendships within Paraiso, but everyone knew of the friendship between Aletta and Brynn. And Elaina doesn't realize the words she says next echo those that once belonged to Aletta, said at another place, another time. “I’m so angry, Lilli.” And it is said in the hushed and quiet because Elaina cannot bare to let her emotions go again. “I fail at everything I do.” She admits, she doesn't know what brings on these thoughts. “To make my parents proud,” she chokes before gaining control. “To start a family.” It had been there for the waiting with Aerwir, but Elaina had left. It had presented itself again in the form of Altair, but again, she rejected him. “Being a politician—protecting you.” This hurts the most as she turns to her with too blue of eyes. She falls into her again, wrapping herself around Lilli because right now she feels like the only thing that is solid, that if she doesn't hold on tight she may just crumble atop those cliffs she dances upon and into the sea she that she loves so.
tried to keep her quiet, but she's screaming inside me |
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