Private you used to be such a lion

I knew her for a little ghost
That in my garden walked;
The wall is high—higher than most—
And the green gate was locked.

There is a legend, told in the scriptures of constellations, that the end begins in a rain so bright, so furiously full of flame, that nothing after the sight of it will ever be considered beautiful. The legend is told to the new-gods and the newborn stars. It is brewed into the ambrosia upon which galaxies feast. Battlefields are so thick with an echo of it that a million armies cannot dim the way it turns itself not into language but into dragon form, and snake form, and shark form.

She is running, but she does not feel it.

Her hooves are carving moons into the frozen earth.

Running from the end, from the beginning, from something.

Her mother? Or at least thoughts of her.

She was Elena’s crutch when she needed one. She was the one Elena coddled. She was the one she loved, because she was—is—the first, and because she had a special kinship with Elena’s soul-brother, Po, just as much as she did… if not more. She had gone out of her way to accept Nicnevin into the family when Elena brought her home, and she was the one who, when she needed her most, abandoned the empathetic queen because she could no longer hold her up, not when she was just as bruised and lonely and tired.

So, understandably, Elliana tries not to think about her mother
The worst part is that Elena is getting better, and she’ll never know.

Elliana and Lilliana have more in common than just a name and blood relationship. They both walked into Redwoods and found that the tighter the trees around you, the greater amount of freedom you felt. She slows her running only when she reaches the Taiga. Sometimes, to her, the entire world feels like a garden in a low-fog and a sickle moon. The night is no longer young; the moon hanging nearly full high in the skies above the slumbering land. A silver ornament amongst the backdrop of the beautiful shadows; the inky black and subtle indigo the most lovely between every bright, shining star.

She doesn't find her, to find her would suggest she had been looking, and she hadn't been—not for her. But there she is all the same.

Suddenly, she doesn't know what to say. She tilts her head to peer at the red-haired woman. The dusk streams through the canopy in long beams of light, emphasizing the stillness that surrounds them. The world holds its breath- or is that just Elli?

There is a moment in which her heart seems to hold its breath.

And with a patience she did not know she possessed, she waits.

And moment by moment, the stars gleam brighter.

"Speaking."