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+---- Thread: [private] I watch them break, divide, the rich and deprived; Elliana (/showthread.php?tid=29554)
I watch them break, divide, the rich and deprived; Elliana - Reave - 05-27-2021
i am the mace, the map, the fall and the high
As the chill of winter fades into spring to mark the half-year since he had taken Nerine into his guardianship, Reave finds that his restlessness does not wane. He refuses to acknowledge why, but he knows the answer. His mother hadn’t returned. For months now he had stubbornly believed she would soon. She must. He had, after all. He had no reason to believe she wouldn’t as well.
But Lilliana is nowhere to be found.
That knowledge builds a fury deep in his chest, one he’s not entirely certain he could contain if he admitted it was there. Although why he should care if it is released, he’s not certain he knows anymore. And so he does the only thing he can - he seeks distraction.
It is a flawed coping mechanism. Even young and impetuous as he is, Reave knows that. Even if he did not, Rune would remind him. Annoyingly. But he had already tried sifting through the possibilities as he stared into Lilliana’s favorite places in Beqanna. Too many of them ended poorly, each one adding another twig to the blaze in his heart, until he could not look anymore. So today, he runs, only one goal on his mind.
He is breathless when he reaches the river, but he does not stop. Plunging into the wayward currents, he allows himself to be carried away on their swift grip, Rune’s desperate cry ringing in his ears as he swoops low over the water.
When the river finally slows, Reave is exhausted. He doesn’t leave the river though, instead settling into the shallows as he lifts his bone-masked face to the sun, blue eyes blazing fiercely from behind it as though he could take on that element too.
It is only when he feels the presence of another that he returns his attention to the shoreline. Her memories swarm around her, even from this distance, telling him tales he had not asked for. Slowly, he stands, water falling in rivulates from bone-ruptured skin, blood that had been washed away rising anew to tinge ivory bone red. When finally her memories have worn themselves away to fleeting tatters, Reave tilts his head curiously as he moves to the bank. “Don’t be shy, princess, I’m dying to meet you.”
reave
@[Elliana]
RE: I watch them break, divide, the rich and deprived; Elliana - Elliana - 05-27-2021
That in my garden walked;
The wall is high—higher than most—
And the green gate was locked.
She knows better, the shadow-girl with blue skies in her eyes and moonshine hair, knows better than to want to lead a kingdom. She had watched it destroy her mother, watched it drive her brother into the ocean, and finally watched as that same determination, that same obsession took what Elena had been desperately clinging to, that first born daughter, the only reminder of a love she had that was bright enough to banish shadows. Even if it was a love that was too bright to not burn out as quickly as it had ignited. It her Elliana from her faltering grasp, crushing her heart, her mind, and leaving her almost alone, without her children. Elliana remembers her stories of caution, and how there lie in wait ancient, dark monster that are just waiting to swallow you hole. It was only later in life that Elliana realized it was not monsters at all, but loneliness.
Elli does not think about Elena much anymore, because to think of her is to admit that she had done a terrible wrong by leaving, and that she had been only trying to save herself from her mother’s back-breaking sadness. This grief is her own and so is guilt. It’s not something that can be shared.
It is a shame though, she could have been a great ruler. Elliana is steadfast like Benjamin, she is easy-going like Azrael, she is wild like Elena, she is graceful like Beylani.
She is ruthless like Tenebrae.
It would be simple to ignore the voice calling out to her, a simple mistake, for voices so often sound like the wind to a girl who was born from those who once wielded it. But, Elliana, at her core, is sacrificial, but she is also selfish, and she craves this comfort because she never outwardly asked for it, only begged herself for that freedom.
She is not entirely kind to herself.
Elliana finds him in the river as she emerges between two trees (like an alter, like the one her mother and Azrael stood upon during their wedding, the wedding Elli missed). Elliana smiles placidly at the stranger. There is a curtain of concern that clouds her face (not like storms, but like shadows) as she looks to the stranger with blue eyes. There is some sort of emotion behind the stranger’s eyes and Elliana cannot help the thrilling shiver that travels down the length of her spine. She thinks, it would be good, to have that, whatever that emotion is that lurks.
“I am no princess.” She lies, which is so unlike her.
And why? Because you are so bold, Elli?
No, because her mother is the one who cannot speaks truths, not her daughter.
“I’m Elliana,” she greets with a voice like a clarinet, somber and low. She is sturdy, and she is cheerful, but there is an entity about Elliana that makes her appear forever lonely, forever depressed. Eyes like sky blue fall to the water surrounding him, the crimson gathering and then flowing, like Adonai’s billowing cape she once admired. “You’re bleeding, did you know that?”
@[Reave]
RE: I watch them break, divide, the rich and deprived; Elliana - Reave - 05-28-2021
i am the mace, the map, the fall and the high
Reave had been born into a world of chaos. Memory had screamed so loudly from Brazen’s dying breaths, from Lilliana’s grief-stricken tears, that everything after had seemed nearly tame in comparison. He had known crushing guilt when he realized he had been the instrument of his mother’s demise, and only Lilli’s gentle and steadfast refusal to allow him to believe in his own fault had kept him from that which threatened to drown him.
Despite her best however, he had grown wild and hedonistic, pursuing only that which could distract him best. And now she is gone, unable to drag him back this time. Perhaps in a way that is why he had plunged into the river as he had. As though the simple act of survival might prove something.
Now, on the bank of the river, he’s not quite sure what it was meant to prove.
The first thing from her lips is a lie. He knows it just as well as she does, though he makes no comment on it beyond the slight deepening of his grin. He was rather impressed that she had done so. And in many ways, it makes her vastly more interesting.
“I’m Reave,” he replies, mirroring her introduction as he pulls himself from the river and draws closer. Rune picks that moment to drop from the sky, wings spreading wide as he lands skillfully on the thick branch of a nearby tree which, despite its heft, shudders beneath the bird’s weight. Reave ignores the intrusion as though nothing odd had just happened.
He steps closer still, the blood beginning to dry on his skin now, though it still oozes where skin meets bone. “Does it bother you?” he finally asks, head lifting as he clears the wet strands of his wheaten forelock from the mask shadowing his features, the strange glow serving to highlight the sharp blue of his own eyes. He is so close now he could reach out and touch her easily if he so chose. “For someone who knows the location of their own grave, I wouldn’t have thought it would be so concerning.”
reave
@[Elliana]
RE: I watch them break, divide, the rich and deprived; Elliana - Elliana - 05-28-2021
That in my garden walked;
The wall is high—higher than most—
And the green gate was locked.
They share something in common, but perhaps this is the one memory that Elliana does not remember. While Reave was born with memories streaming into his ears like a raging river, Elliana was born with memories surrounding her. She looked at them and they were reflected back at her on their mirror surface. Where her mother saw memories of the past—Elliana was too young, and so the enchanted mirrors showed her memories of the future. She wont know this, wont remember this, but in one mirror there was a girl who looked like her, older, longer hair, more apathy in her eyes than any child could possibly.
And there was a boy of bone.
The memory both begins and ends in a river.
That Elliana is still her, and yet not entirely. She is more beautiful, older, the once little girl who decided she was no longer little. She is the dark one, dark like shadows, dark like the bottom of a shallow lake, dark like the mouth of a cave. But not as cold, and with eyes like a blue sky, free of clouds, a sky that opens wide and gaping. Elliana does not reach out to touch the world, instead is content to watch it. She is social, but prefers to be alone. Elliana is complex and sturdy, and if she were anyone else, she might have gone mad like her mother did a long time ago.
She convinced herself a long time ago that things were always meant to play out as they had (Novus had taught her early on that the gods are neither merciful nor heartless—just absent) and that everyone directed their own fate. That her mother pointed herself in the direction of her own sorrow. Elliana had played no part.
Little girl, little girl, you dirty liar.
“And now, Reave, you are wet,” she says, her voice a musing lilt like violins and laughs a quiet, tinkling laugh that sounds like bluebirds and clarinet, for only a beat before settling in the put of her stomach. For once her laugh does not taste like strawberries as it sits there, but like oak and redwood.
The bird, a companion, not unlike the bird that bonded itself to Maeve, though larger—far larger. Does it bother her? She shrugs lightly and pulls one side of her lips further back than the other, making a strange little smirk out of that cheery smile.
Maybe, if she had been a sad, little girl.
Maybe if she had not been so fascinated by the blood and the bone.
And maybe if she was just a little more homesick—the blue of his eyes would have shattered her. As mirror-like as they were.
“Does it frighten you to think where your grave may be, Reave? Do you fear it?” She says, that smirk turning into something more elusive. Elliana is grim, but she is not heartless and her words are not said as anything more that a curious question. She can still feel the heat on her forehead of the kiss Danae’s lips placed there and never took back. (Not yet, not yet, not yet.)
@[Reave]
RE: I watch them break, divide, the rich and deprived; Elliana - Reave - 06-01-2021
i am the mace, the map, the fall and the high
Perhaps Reave had not been born with memories of the future, but still they had come. If he were an introspective sort, he would have humored at the fact their childhoods had been borne in reverse. Where she had only known the future, he had seen the past. Except now, he too could watch the play of it on her eyelids, drifting over the curves and hollows of her skin so much like her memories. They are fleeting and divergent, the impermanence of the future carried as it is by whim and endless choices. The past tells him more though. Tells him which one she is more likely to choose.
If only he cared to listen.
She is fascinating in a way he hadn’t anticipated, redolent with the wilds beyond Beqanna. Reave, who had never ventured beyond the bounds of this continent, is fascinated. Her memories of her mother collide with memories he had stolen from his own. Sisters in spirit if not in blood, much like she had been with Brazen. Undoubtedly a good thing, given his own dubious ancestry.
She does not answer his question, causing him to tilt his head curiously. He eyes her with a devilish gleam in his blue eye, amused by the turn in which the conversation so rapidly takes. Impulsively, he steps forward, circling around her, gaze fixed with that impish intensity. When he comes alongside her, he presses close, boney hip against rounded, punctured shoulder against perfectly unblemished. Pressing damp against dry. Then, very close to the delicate shell of her ear, he softly intones, “Seems you’re wet too.”
With a laugh, he pulls away, eyes gleaming bright in the amused lines of his bone-shrouded features.
Though she tries to disarm him as he had attempted with her, he finds himself far more delighted than disconcerted. Truthfully he has never once considered his own grave. Indeed, if he should face death one day, he has yet to see it. His own future is as wobbly and twisted as all the others, but he has seen the length of it in a distant version of himself standing on the cliffs of Nerine, everything he had once known vanished, swept away by the winds of time. And he had seen himself sightlessly on the beach, grief in eyes that had grown ancient. And he had seen himself asleep, lost to the timeless slumber of the immortal. He doesn’t know yet if these will come to pass, but they tell stories he would be foolish not to listen to.
So he replies in the only way he knows how. “I have no grave.”
reave
@[Elliana]
RE: I watch them break, divide, the rich and deprived; Elliana - Elliana - 06-03-2021
That in my garden walked;
The wall is high—higher than most—
And the green gate was locked.
Like Reave, Elliana is not her mother’s only child. There was James—and the twins. Elliana should hate the twins, should hate how much Altair reminds Elli of Elena when Elli had been an infant herself. But she never made mention to them the leaps and bounds higher little Altair and Ava were on the scale of Elena’s affection.
To know that she, compared to the twins, that Elliana has not been thought of as much as them, should bother her. Elli should be on fire with jealousy flushed with scorn and insulted beyond measure that such a thing has occurred. Perhaps, if she were different, Elliana might have been, and maybe she still entertains a bit of bitterness, but if such a thing happens, it is either fleeting or so subtle an ache that she can't feel it.
But, perhaps, if she had not wanted to fall out of her mother’s good graces, she might not have left her when she needed her.
“I would suppose,” she says with the lightness of a bird. His closeness, it feels strange at first, it has been so long since someone has pressed themselves into her. Was it Aeneas? When they sat in their field of magic? When they promised each other they would be friends. Friends, friends, friends. Was it Aeneas last? And now Reave? She pauses, unsure, but smiles nonetheless. He laughs and suddenly she is sure, she is so sure.
Some, like Reave were meant to be cathedrals. Holy, saving, grand. Still others, they were meant to be like a cottage, quiet, quaint, hidden until found, others castles, impenetrable, powerful, intimidating. Elliana has resided herself to be nothing more than a crypt. Forgotten unspoken of, and yet a flitter of memory that fills whoever may stray their thoughts in that direction with something akin to gloom and dread. She holds caskets of her mother’s memories. Her brother, her godmother, lands she can no longer reach, a title she once held, her mother’s parents, and all the rest. Every cousin, friend, aunt, uncle, godfather. Each a casket slide carefully in-between every muscle, bone, nerve, to sit there. Occasionally brought to light like placing flowers at a tombstone.
She knows where her grave rests, but there is comfort in knowing. She was promised a rose for a heart, and for it to be Isolt to lower her inside it. A red poppy tucked in her hair. There is comfort in the unicorns’ promise. “Then you shall be left no flowers.” A silver bell voice like her mother’s. But where hers chimes a single note, Elliana’s seems to echo and echo and echo. She smiles though. “But until then—“ she says and grabs a daisy grow near the river. “You can have this one,” she says and places it in the hair near his shoulder.
“Reave—,” a question, or a statement, or a command, or a plea. “I want to—let me—I could—can I heal you?”
@[Reave]
RE: I watch them break, divide, the rich and deprived; Elliana - Reave - 06-04-2021
i am the mace, the map, the fall and the high
Mother’s are a strange thing. At least to Reave, who has twice the number of most. Lilliana is everything that is soft and kind. She had raised him to know love, and if he were not her favorite one would never know it. Brazen had not raised him, caught in deathly slumber as she had been. She had been re-born to find him a wild youth, lost to the throws of emotion he didn’t yet understand. Though she is not unkind, there is a hardness to her that Lilliana lacks. Like Elliana now, Brazen had been raised by an emotionally absent woman. Instead she had taken after her father - Reave’s grandfather. She had taken to war. And she had taught Reave this in the spare moments he was most receptive.
So Reave had been made at the hands of a woman who sewed kindness and a woman who sewed war. The ultimate dichotomy. The one that Reave would forever carry in his breast. The one that would define all the days of his future. If he is a cathedral, it is only because it is what they made him to be.
Elliana though, she had been crafted far differently. There is an acceptance of her lot in life that Reave cannot fathom. That he cannot do anything but find it fascinating. It gives her a self-peace that, though he does not yet know it, could serve as the perfect foil to the chaos in his own soul.
As she peers at him with a curious sense of lightness and surety, visions swaying like fireflies through them, he finds he rather enjoys the way she reacts to his teasing. As though he were the rain or the snow or the sun and she only had to find it within herself to accept his foibles. And so, just as she had found herself suddenly so very sure of him, so too does he of her. After all, don’t cathedrals have crypts?
It’s a curious thing to watch the story of her life in the play of her emotions. Reave had once imagined everyone had this talent, though he had long since grown to realize they most assuredly do not. Would she be uncomfortable to know he could so easily untangle even her darkest and most well-kept secrets? Though, as he watches her, he has to wonder if she truly has very many genuine secrets at all.
The ghost of a smile crosses his lips when she plucks the flower to place in the flaxen strands of his mane. He doesn’t resist, instead favoring her with a curious look. As is his wont however, he cannot seem to resist the urge for some ill-timed humor. “But when the flowers fade you will be left only with bones.” The almost-smile grows into a grin then, a strange kind of omen growing in the gleam of his blue eyes. “And those I will always have.”
Then she asks him the strangest thing of all. He had never thought much on the armor that punctures his skin. To him it simply is. He had watched the way it grew on his mother when she had woken from death and had known the same would happen for him. There is pain, but isn’t there always in life? So though he favors her with an odd look, he does not deny her desire. “If you wish.” After a moment, he adds with a faintly dismissive shrug, “Though, unless you plan to trail me like a shadow, by tomorrow it will be as it was.”
reave
@[Elliana]
RE: I watch them break, divide, the rich and deprived; Elliana - Elliana - 06-05-2021
That in my garden walked;
The wall is high—higher than most—
And the green gate was locked.
Despite everything, everything, everything, she remains impassive to tragedy, unmoved by its inherent anguish. She is steadfast by her own making. Elliana does not hold the world in her heart as her mother does. It is both Elena’s greatest gift and her downfall. Though how further she could tumble down a mountain of her own creation, Elliana does not know.
There isn't much about Elliana that would make her a fighter - her abilities more like a toy, the gentle curves of her body a little too thin, her bones a little too frail, the whole of her just shy of tall enough to be taken seriously. Were she a human, Elli's home would be on the stage, her heart beating calmly, body moving with the slow grace of a ballerina, not a warrior. But Reave’s own ability to wear armor into battle, to be made from a war born thing, she can appreciate. She once had a sword made of wood, and she relished in the feeling of having something to raise above her head and call out a battle cry. But ultimately, she is a thing of not peace of passivity.
That may be worse.
She is not a creature of secrets (except a meadow, a lion made of light), that was her mother. Elena was so in love with her secrets, with biting her tongue to keep from spilling them. Can she even remember what it tastes like without blood in her mouth? Her blue eyes depart from his, blinking once, twice, and she turns her face instead to trace the trees in the distance, focusing on the green of the leaves, silently wondering if they wish fall would come so that they may burn a beautiful scarlet before departing the branch they so cling to.
“Shall a garden grow inside those bones of yours then, so that they may bloom for an eternity at least,” she tells him with a half hidden smile and a breezy note of laughter. Fireflies cross her again. A lion of light. Goodbye. A ship. A realization.
Reave may see her memories, but oh if only, If only he could see the gentle, steady creature that is Elliana sway in the metaphorical breeze of her emotions right now, uprooted by some great earthquake the likes of which her small, lithe body never knew because it never asked. Maybe she never loved Aeneas to begin with.
Maybe she just loved the heartbreak.
And maybe that makes her so much more like her mother than she would have ever thought.
Cringing inwardly at the thought, the shadow-girl smiles outwardly and fixes a steady, blue-sky gaze on Reave as he speaks of his ailment (or his gift, might Elliana say, for not all gifts need be beautiful). “The curse of compassion,” she says with a shadow of a grin, though her blue eyes grow bright with something less than humor but brighter than any indifference. “Sometimes the right thing to do makes no difference at all, but that’s just life.” And there is a delicate shrug of her shoulders. “Come, into the shadows here,” she says and leads him away from the light so that she may make use of her father’s own gift in a way that is entirely her mother’s. “Have you ever been scared of the dark?” She asks him like the little shadow girl she is. She tosses a milky white forelock from her eyes, revealing the heart on her brow for a moment in time. “If you ever were, you would not need to be now.” She says and she begins to work, gathering those shadows and turning them into something light.
Doodle colored by star <3
@[Reave]
RE: I watch them break, divide, the rich and deprived; Elliana - Reave - 06-07-2021
i am the mace, the map, the fall and the high
They wash around her, her memories, flotsam on the tide of her life. He watches the way they shaped her, breaking on her banks as they carve new paths, slow and steady and impossible to deny. They do not always make sense, but not everything in life always makes sense. He knows however, if he is patient enough, they will weave themselves together, puzzle pieces that fit just so as they click into place.
If only he is patient enough. A hard task for a wild youth such as Reave, to be sure. But perhaps one day he would ask about the lion and the farewell that eats at her heart.
Reave too has secrets, but the secrets are not his own. He is finally growing to understand the reticence of his grandmother. The reasons she shared so little of herself. He had inadvertently walked in her very footsteps as he sought to understand his abilities. And he had inadvertently discovered that this world houses dangerous secrets in droves. Does he risk revealing them and become the messenger they love to shoot, or does he hold them to his breast like a miser, waiting for the day they might be of the most use? Or does he do neither, and hope he is not destined for Heartfire’s coldly indifferent fate himself?
This is one of his lesser concerns for the time being, overshadowed greatly by that of his missing mother. But it had stolen a place in his thoughts nevertheless, especially after his accidental intrusion into her thoughts through Aela’s unsuspected tether.
Like Elliana, he is a tapestry made up of the experience of his thus far short life. It grows by the day however, adding new patterns and whirls in the most unexpected places. New shapes to explore that he never would have imagined. Just like hers, twisting and turning in all the most unexpected places.
“I don’t think I’m meant for flowers,” Reave replies easily, shoulder twitching as he imagines them wrapping themselves around his bones. His voice is light now, full of humor. “But maybe one day you’ll convince me otherwise.”
He follows her into the shadows, curious at her assertions. It takes him a moment to find the words to respond, poetic and honest as hers had been. “That’s a lie,” he replies bluntly, his voice surprisingly melodic despite the harshness of the words. “Even the smallest things can make a difference.” A small half smile flirts with the corner of his lips as he eyes her speculatively, blue eyes glittering with unnameable thoughts. “I have seen it.”
As she begins to draw the shadows out to weave around his bones, Reave watches with an unmasked curiosity. No one has ever offered to heal him before, and the process fascinates him. So caught up in watching is he that he is almost startled by her question, causing a laugh to break from his throat. “My family has been born of shadows for generations,” he replies frankly. “The Taiga is filled with creatures made of shadows that glare with yellow eyes.” His grin widens. “They are my cousins.”
reave
@[Elliana]
RE: I watch them break, divide, the rich and deprived; Elliana - Elliana - 06-12-2021
That in my garden walked;
The wall is high—higher than most—
And the green gate was locked.
There was once a mid afternoon in Delumine, the first afternoon spent with Septimus. He had been creating maps of Delumine. He let her choose a gemstone from his antlers.
The gem she had picked had matched her eyes. She loved that gemstone. She had placed it under her pillow just as she had promised and there it remained. May remain there still. She often wonders who sleeps in her bedroom now, Rhone has no children. She likes to think the night she closed that door, it remained closed so that the shadows could sleep and all those who lived in those shadows would earn some rest, the forgotten children of the shadows that once came to her. (One forgotten, two wandered too far, three fell, four from war, five murdered, six, seven, eight.) She imagines they admire that gemstone, that they hold it dearly like she once did.
She lost that gemstone along with everything else, the night she fled from Terrastella to the Delumine forest.
There is a silence that sits between them and Elliana is vaguely aware of him watching her memories. Elliana is not one to hide, she would never hide. (This is a lie. A Blatant lie. But, she would never say so out loud.) She unfurls her mind before him. As the silence stretched between them, Elli let herself sink into a comfort she had perhaps never felt. She has been around little for such a large amount of time, aside from her family, her foster sisters, and Aeneas. Elli, the ever lonely shadow (lonely shadow, can there be such a thing?) she had become talented at the art of avoidance.
But he speaks, and she finds she doesn't mind it. Words could be poems, sentences to sonnets, questions to haikus. “One day?” She asks and hides the finalist hint of a laugh under her tongue. “So that means we will meet again, beyond this?” She asks, throwing blue eyes to the landscape to whatever—this was. “You assume much, Reave.” And she offers him a simper of a smile.
She grabs his hand and drags him into those shadows she was so comfortable, at home in. (She had once questioned it, had once cried over it, how could she not when her mother was the epitome of sunshine and fire?) “I shall keep watch then,” she says and nods her head in his direction as she begins to work.
“My father, he was a monk of the shadows,” she admits to him. “He could control them, turn them into shapes,” she says, but beyond that, Elliana had no idea. She never met her father when he had his sight, before those shadows buried theirselves in his eyes until all he could see was darkness. “The stallions that swallowed the sun they were called, but I know little else,” she tells him and glances down at the injuries she heals, suddenly weary. “But I digress.” She says as she finishes. Her blue eyes close with a tiredness she has not felt in some time, but she continues speaking to the bone boy all the same. “Tell me about these creatures with yellow eyes. What did they say to you?” She bats one eye open and points it towards him. “Any secrets worth telling?”
@[Reave]
Picture colored by star <3