"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
Time, ultimately, above all else, was the thing that tore her family apart. Her brother staying under that water far too long, her mother lost in her depression for such a length of time, as if she were under the water with James, that when she came up for air everyone was already gone. Tired of wait for a woman to save herself, a women who didn't want to save herself. She wishes she would stayed and waited at the water’s edge, just to speak to her mother one more time. The things that go unsaid are often the things that eat at you—whether because you didn't get to have your say, or because the other person never got to hear you and really wanted to.
When she first left Novus, she dreamed for months that Po would come and find her. No matter how he had forsaken she and her mom, she still dreamed her guardian angel would come for her. She had been waiting for some time, all the while she has been watching, that crumbling god in her toppled cathedral, as life holds its breath. She travels now through Beqanna, bouncing back forth between the Pampas and Nerine, her feet dancing as she tried to decide just where the let the wings round her ankles land.
And for all the times she has crossed over its borders, Elliana has never stopped amongst the giant trees of the Taiga. Until today, as she travels north to Nerine and its guardian.
Elliana smiles at him when he finds her, a pleasant, contradictory smile to her current mood. “You caught me.”
10-06-2021, 03:42 AM (This post was last modified: 10-06-2021, 04:33 AM by Oren.)
That thing, all things devours. Slays kings and ruins towns, brings a high mountain down. If Oren were to know about her train of thought, he would have her talking about her home and what had happened there until the very end of time. It is a good thing that Elliana wasn’t thinking out loud, in that regard. Taiga’s Explorer has a load of questions.
Yet this time, upon return, he hadn’t asked any, even if they were burning in his throat. He had found very little people willing to answer; had found no sign of Yanhua, Borderline, Amarine - or their children. Mother was gone, too, and Rosey had moved to the Isle with Nashua and dad, for as much as their father stayed in one place. Reave, he heard whisper, was in Nerine still but Oren hadn’t sought him out yet. He thought he’d smelled Reynard, but he wasn’t entirely sure. Could have been Cheri passing through; all was clouded with the scent of a newcomer and he didn’t know how to respond to the new ruler. She wasn’t related.
When yet another stranger came by, it was a welcome relief from his clouded thoughts. Trapped in circles as he was, she woke him with her smiling bright eyes. ”And you, me,” he tells her with an immediate smile to return the favour. ”Are you visiting family in Taiga?” he asks, sure that her eyes seem familiar but the rest of her is not. ”Where are you from? Have you seen the sunrise yet?” he continues; the burning questions of earlier replaced with ones concerning the new mare. ”Oh, I’m Oren.” He keeps forgetting that he should start with that.
She loved meadows once, and how they were wide and open. It was because of that, that she once led a boy into one (a secret meadow, just for them). Light erupted, fireflies danced. And maybe, that could have been the first love story that ever happened. Telling Aeneas a secret had been like whispering into a jar and screwing the lid tight.
She thinks she has fallen out of love with the meadows.
Then what of the trees?
As eternal as they are. Immortal.
Elliana has never been foolish enough to believe that anything could live forever. As a girl she had often found herself wishing so, in her naivety imagining a life the world basked in snowfall year round and her breath billowed cold smoke, and frost clung to her moonlight hair. Her daydreams had always been the opposite of her reality, the opposite of Terrastella, creating a world that was as far removed from her actual childhood as she could make it. Sometimes she isn’t sure which came first - the swamp and valley rejecting her, or her musing of another life.
“No, Nerine,” she says. Her voice is a dull whip-sharp slash of sea-water on the shore.
Then she smiles, it's a curl of bone through her shadowed lips. Deep inside her the sea is roaring, and howling, and slashing at the shore. Her heart already of the great cliffs of Nerine.
She starts to count his bones and the number of wrinkles next to his smile. When he speaks she counts his teeth and listens to the snap of his jaw as it works around so many words. She wonders how he manages to fit them all into the air. She loses track go which number she had reached.
“Which sunrise?” She offers a question as her answer into the silence that had started to grow heavy. An itch whispers down her spine.
”Taiga’s. Mother is a fan. But Nerine’s is beautiful too. Misses the fog, though. Vastly different that way.”
The bay roan continues to talk in the same way as he asked the questions, then smiles at her name when she mentions it. ”That’s much like my mother’s name. Are you by chance related to Elena?” After all, she did have something familiar about her, and although he never met his aunt (Nashua did - but she left before he was born), he remembers every little detail about his mother’s stories. Elena had been a huge part of Lilliana’s life. It wouldn’t surprise him if Elliana was named after her in a way.
Deduction at his finest, Oren swivels his ears in her direction and then nods to the west, where his mother’s favourite tiny islands look out to the Isle and Nerine. ”We could still catch the sunset, if you like. It’s almost as good as the Taigan dawn.” Plus, it gives them something to do; walking, that is. ”Have you met Reave yet? Nashua says he’s the heir to the North. I haven’t seen them in a while though. Yan named me Taiga’s Scholar, so I bounce back and forth between here and wherever something’s interesting.” He smiles, proud of his title, then lets his face fall a bit. ”Don’t know where he is now though.” He follows with a sad sigh. ”Well, that’s all my brothers in one go. I have a sister too, Rosey - Roselin I mean. She’s up at the Isle. We’re twins. But I can’t really stay in one place. Bit like mom and dad I suppose.” he muses aloud, filling the silence with his voice whenever Elliana does not. Listening to stories being his favourite pastime, he tells them himself when the other does not - assuming they want to hear it all anyway.
