[open] the photographs know i'm a liar, any

[elodie]

elodie

She could not have known to anticipate the question.
It slips between her ribs like a blade and her breath goes thin.

Why?

She had not even glanced back as she’d disappeared into the darkness, as if called there by something. And Elodie had watched her with a kind of foolish smile on her face, head tilted as if it were some private joke between the two of them. Even though her mother had never been the sort to make jokes. The heart will do everything it can to protect itself from the truth, Elodie had learned.

“No,” she says and shakes her head slow, frowning softly. “No, I don’t know why.” There is a sadness in her smile now, a kind of despondence as she averts her gaze. She had never thought about it. She could not bear to think that perhaps her mother had gone to find some happiness without her. 

“It was like the darkness just called to her,” she muses quietly, an afterthought, almost as if she is unaware she’s even saying it out loud. There is no reason for her to admit this to a stranger, but there it is all the same. It comes spilling out of her before she can stop it and she makes no effort to call the words back. “I don’t think I could have made her stay.”

Even if she had known.

Elodie had never wanted to be alone.

But Syrine had.

Is it guilt that spreads through her like disease? Guilt for having disturbed her aloneness? No. It cannot be because Elodie moves closer and closer still until she can feel the rain, too. Until it seeps into her skin, too. Until it glues her forelock to her face. 

“You like being alone?” she asks. “Why?”

and if i go, i’m goin’ shameless
I’ll let my hunger take me there

@[syrine]

@[The Monsters] please mess with her ethereal appearance and her fairy dust!