10-18-2026, 09:23 PM
eleria
What a thing it is, she thinks, to be chosen. Chosen by the fog. She thinks briefly of her father, who’d been made of horse-flesh, once. Or, at least, that’s what he’d told her. Until he’d become a storm, until the fog had clung to him so desperately that it had become him. Or he had become it. And how tortured he has been by it, she thinks, while she studies the fog that slides its cool fingers down her cannon bone now. She almost tells him that it had not chosen her, not really. Her father had given it to her. But she doesn’t. Only quirks a slanted smirk and nods, allows him to think that she is a chosen thing and that being chosen is its own kind of power.
He is quiet then and she studies his face while he remembers. She has heard stories of the creatures the darkness brought, their teeth, how they’d ravaged. How bodies could be there one moment and absolutely, irrevocably gone the next. How terrible it must have been, she thinks, that he should still be haunted by it now. It has been years since the light returned to Beqanna. But he is not the only one, she knows, who has found the darkness and its terrors impossible to forget.
“It’s what she wanted for you,” she says, “she would be happy to know that you survived.” This, too, stated as a matter of fact. She is not a sentimental creature, Eleria, but she believes there’s some truth to this. If his mother had told him to run, she’d wanted him to run for his life and certainly she’d take some satisfaction in knowing he’d made it through the darkness unharmed.
And when he speaks again it occurs to her that he has misunderstood her. There had been no sadness in her admitting it. She smiles then but there is no warmth in it. It’s a distant thing, heavy, contemplative. “You’re a romantic, then,” she observes and then, after a beat, she says, “it was my brother who brought the darkness to Beqanna.” She tilts her head, the smile fading. “Believe me when I say that no one in my family is anyone’s reason for anything good.”
He is quiet then and she studies his face while he remembers. She has heard stories of the creatures the darkness brought, their teeth, how they’d ravaged. How bodies could be there one moment and absolutely, irrevocably gone the next. How terrible it must have been, she thinks, that he should still be haunted by it now. It has been years since the light returned to Beqanna. But he is not the only one, she knows, who has found the darkness and its terrors impossible to forget.
“It’s what she wanted for you,” she says, “she would be happy to know that you survived.” This, too, stated as a matter of fact. She is not a sentimental creature, Eleria, but she believes there’s some truth to this. If his mother had told him to run, she’d wanted him to run for his life and certainly she’d take some satisfaction in knowing he’d made it through the darkness unharmed.
And when he speaks again it occurs to her that he has misunderstood her. There had been no sadness in her admitting it. She smiles then but there is no warmth in it. It’s a distant thing, heavy, contemplative. “You’re a romantic, then,” she observes and then, after a beat, she says, “it was my brother who brought the darkness to Beqanna.” She tilts her head, the smile fading. “Believe me when I say that no one in my family is anyone’s reason for anything good.”
oh, my head’s in the clouds
But i don’t feel close to the sun
But i don’t feel close to the sun