[private] we were the first - Printable Version +- Beqanna (https://beqanna.com/forum) +-- Forum: Explore (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=1) +--- Forum: The Common Lands (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=72) +---- Forum: Forest (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=73) +---- Thread: [private] we were the first (/showthread.php?tid=29597) |
we were the first - Elliana - 05-29-2021 T he setting sun bathes her dark coat in lilac and tangerine orange. It flickers right like the bonfires where her mother and father first met, bonfires where she would come to meet her own father. The forest was still bright with the colors of spring, an overwhelming spectrum of green, pink, white, yellow. The forest, it would seem, compensating for the dreariness it no doubt faced during those harsh winter months. It is the sight of lilac and lilac alone that drags Elliana’s blue eyes away from the path, worn down by decades of other footfalls treading along just as she does now.Her mother had always loved how lilac only blossomed after a harsh. She said it was the earth healing itself, like she would heal those. Funny, how after all this time, all this fighting, she too would become a healer like her mother. The perfect combination between her mother and her father. The ability to fix, but only by using what her mother feared most and what her father was made from. Those dreaded, dreaded shadows. Elli has always been more comfortable in the darkness. Ever since she was small and her spidery, baby legs were too long for her body, and her face was dark and unmarked by worry. The only break in her own shadowy skin, the heart on her forehead, the leg dipped in white, and a crescent moon on her shoulder. Before her mother (torn asunder by the death of her brother) was no longer capable of caring for Elliana as she deserved then. But Elliana, she really only returned the favor didn't she? She feels lost, and yet she cannot place exactly why. It's a reoccurring feeling of loneliness that swarms like mosquitos to her blood. She cannot outrun it, but she doesn't try very hard. It’s only when the itchiness beings that she ponders actually doing something about it. She walks until it stops feeling like her feet are sinking, she hums until her ears stop their ringing, and clears her mind until she cannot remember a single moment except for now. It almost feels like Delumine here, the very first place she had ever fled to. And if she were thinking of something, if she were remembering anything, it might have been a tale of twin unicorns, who gave her both a kiss and a scar. The kiss atop her head, the cut of the horn against her heart. A rose instead of a heart she was promised, and Elliana would think it good. For rose’s have thorns. And what a fortress it would be. ..but nightmares are dreams too. RE: we were the first - Aela - 06-06-2021 YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS @Elliana sad enough for you? RE: we were the first - Elliana - 09-24-2021 S he dreams of water, of how it falls, the plop of hot drops on the desert, the hollow pits they make in the sand; how the parched land drinks them instantly. Greedy, starving. Maybe it had not been a dream, not a dream, not a nightmare. Elliana lives in a sort of nighttime purgatory, keeping herself from both dancing through Delumine’s forest and from the walls of Terrastella. Either one brings her too close, too close to a place where her dream walker guardian could find her. It is strange. That the thing she remembers most about Terrastella is the shadows, and not the shadows of the buildings, but the shadows that lingered out by the cliffs, beneath every blade of grass, sitting stoically beneath the trees. She remembers laying there for hours, watching them move and change, grow and shrink. This might be a lie (she is not sure, she is never sure) because the things she may remember most is her brother. She remembers seeing James for the first time, and Elliana, beautiful, dark Elliana, she had smiled like he was a gift just for her. “Oh, he’s so precious,” she had said, grinning quietly at her mother. She bowed her head down to peer into the blue eyes of James. Maybe she saw it when they didn’t, what wild changes he would bring into their lives (what changes, what terrible, terrible, she could have never guessed), but maybe she didn’t, and if she did, she never said so. ”Happy birthday, little brother.” It is a collision brought in gold and white and blonde and blue eyes and Elliana’s own eyes turn from a mirror into glaciers as the only thought that passes through her is her mother. Elliana is not so blatant with emotion as the blonde girl is, it is hidden behind a steadfast stone face she inherited from the shadow of her birth father. Behind that stone skin blazes a fire of blue, behind that marble mouth hide gnashing teeth, behind the granite of her brow hides a furrow so deep that flowers ache to take root, behind those crystal eyes hide glass shattering and splintering and flying in all directions. The stone might have crumbled, the marble might have broken, the granite might have split, and the crystal might cracked. But it held. Because this was not Elena. She is too relieved to notice anything else except the collision of knowledge that rattles her brain. Daughter. Lilliana. Fire. Child. Elena. Elliana pushes through and throws blue eyes up and into her direction. She is older, not as old as Po, not as old as her parents, but older than herself, older than Aeneas, Hilde, even Maybird. “Not yet.” ..but nightmares are dreams too. @Aela RE: we were the first - Aela - 09-26-2021 YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS @Elliana RE: we were the first - Elliana - 10-03-2021 I t is almost how funny how girls follow their mothers. Even those girls like Elliana, like Aela who strive to be everything but their mothers’ daughters. There is something inescapable about blood, there is some hard-coded fate in the double helix. Too small to see, but if you feel for it, fumble in the dark like like teen lovers, you'll find it if you're lucky.(and maybe when you hear the river say your name, it is just your blood babbling in your ears) But even if you feel its presence you can't escape it, the strings of fate. The fork in the road is an illusion. All paths lead here. In the other story, in the worlds that are hidden in the dark places between stars. Forgotten and half-swallowed. There is no Elliana because in this other story, there is no Tenebrae. In a perfect world, a perfect universe, there can be no Tenebrae and Elena because they were anything but perfect. And incapable of making a perfect daughter. Aela instead knows James. She knows James and Ava and Altair. They romp and play and chase and laugh. They run through the glistening lake until near dark, until they shiver and shake, and wind up where they always do, nestled together as family. But fate is fate and it will do as it sees fit. And even in this perfect world, Aela may stare into the shadows just long enough to see a pair of blue eyes that look all too much like her own—staring back at her. Elliana spends most of her time alone. She likes it this way though. But being alone is the perfect opportunity for fate to find you. So it should not be strange that Aela finds her in the woods, so like how the wolf finds little red riding hood. But Aela bares no fangs and Elli wears no cloak. She smiles, an odd, brief smile when the older girl blazes at her like blue flames. No. Is all she says. Because Elliana has seen fire before. Had seen it the night she met her father. Had leapt into it, and raced it, had cast flower petals from her godfather’s crown into it. She learned something from that night— Fire is no foe. ..but nightmares are dreams too. RE: we were the first - Aela - 10-07-2021 YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS RE: we were the first - Elliana - 10-10-2021 E lliana, like Aela, will never understand her parents. Elena had become too far gone, drowned in the waters of her responsibility to her Court and so ruined by the love that she so craved. By her adoptive father, who Elli cannot depend upon because he knew the truth and he painted the picture of the perfect father. And her biological father, who she knows so little about, but knows enough, just enough, to not be entirely warmed by the memory of him.Elli watches Aela the way a bird might watch a stranger approaching, with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension. “Watch the eyes, Elli, they tell you more than what you need to know.” Her mother told her. But Elliana can look at Aela anywhere but those eyes because every time she does an inferno lights through her skin like lightning. And one stroke of lightning does not have to lead anywhere, but to the next stroke of lightning. She should grow cold and turn to leave (there are so many times Elliana should have left but stayed, and so many times she should have stayed but left.) Aela is everything her mother raised her to hate, all the monsters of her stories. But she cannot hate her, not truly, because there is not enough room in her heart for hatred. It is a tiny thing that only holds love and loneliness, often at the same time and often to such a degree that, while outwardly she may seem blissful, she feels quite desperate for something new. And then the first seeds of ambition plant themselves in the newly turned soil of Elliana’s heart. Elli, the ocean moans and Elliana tilts her head up, eyes like mirrors to the blue sky, and feels not for the first time that this is the beginning of a thing far greater than she can ever hope to understand. Pieces of eternity line the edges line the edges of her life like tall picket boards, fencing the memories in lest they be forgotten, even if she tries so hard to do so. A featherlight breath rushed past her lips, one she had not known she was holding back. Her smile wings into a grin. She thinks of all the things she's know that are beautiful and violent enough to take the world (like her mother’s dragon, like the sea, like her heart). Something in her small chest bellows and makes her skin tremble like a leaf learning how to turn belly up for the rain. Not right now, she says coolly. Though I want to ask them just how much they can burn. If you just let them loose. Elliana was started by a flame, by a woman of light and a man of shadow. The shadows gather around her as if itching to heal all which Aela has not set into ash. I know there is someone terrified of them and all you stand for. She says and moves closer. I know there is another who admires them, admires you. She stays put. And I know there are still others who are building a defense against them—against you. She pauses and for the first time looks into those blue eyes and sees not her mother, reflecting back at her, but just blue, blue, blue fire. I know things I shouldn’t. Elliana has been raised by a queen of lambs. She wants to know now how to be a lion. Her teeth ache, her heart aches, every bit of her aches. She bites her cheek until blood blooms metallic on her tongue. The sting of iron settles her. She inhales and it’s silver. I’m Elliana. And she does not ask who she is. Not yet, not yet, not yet. ..but nightmares are dreams too. |