[open] all I've ever known is how to hold my own

[Elaina]

I can remember a time when I was so afraid when even my shadow wouldn't follow me “Elaina, it is just a story,” says her mother with that creamy blonde coat and big blue eyes that Elaina could just swim in, with a slight impatience marring her tone. But the little golden filly, who had her smile and her beauty with her father’s eyes, continued to stare up at her mother with eyes of amber, full of confusion, and, almost, sorrow, at her words. Just a story? But it couldn't be possible… “I’m confused.” She continued to stare, disbelieving, into her mother’s pale, taut face. “My little sunflower,” she sighs, shaking her head at her daughter who believed too much and dreamed too hard. “Elaina, it is a myth…a fairytale that mothers tell their young sons and daughters when they cannot sleep at night,” and then a radiant smile, not unlike Elaina’s own, pulls the sides of her face upwards. “Or to those children who refuse to sleep,” she says, tickling the sunshine painted child gently with her nose. Amber eyes close, enjoying the feeling of her porcelain mother’s touch.   So often when Elaina would close those eyes of wild amber, she would immediately be transported to a time when her mother was alive. Most of the time, the memories were seemingly insignificant: a walk to a flower patch, going down to the lake, visiting grandma, but they meant the world to my little sunflower. Now though, as more and more time has passed, Elaina finds those memories don't always come to her. She thinks instead of those faces in Beyond, and she must push through all of them to find the smokey cream face of her mother. Then, when it does come in, she finds at times, it isn't quite as sharp, her pale skin not as perfect, her eyes not as blue, her smile not as sharp. To keep the image in her mind, the sunflower girl must keep her focus, attempting to find every dip and curve of her mother’s face, concentrating on those little pieces because is so fearful that one day she may not be able to hold onto it any more. She may wake up from a dream about those sky blue eyes and wonder who they possibly could have belonged to, and what stranger’s face she had been looking into.   She has found her purchase within the meadow once more. Elaina had been digging in the snow earlier for food, but it was hardly worth the effort for the brown grass it produced. So, to spite boredom, she keeps walking, halting her steps only when she reaches a small creek that immediately brings her back to Murmuring Rivers, the place where she had grieved, where she had looked Frostbane in the eyes and told him she would end him. The place where she first met her crimson cousin.   Elaina thinks about how it must e strange for the residents here to see a new face, but in the same breath it too makes Elaina think of the story her mother had told her one night: about the gnat and the stallion. A small gnat, after flying many miles, it had found the tail of a stallion to rest upon. It was only when he felt well enough to continue on did he speak up, pardoning himself for having bothered the stallion by using him as a resting place. “You must be glad I am going now,” he said. “It is all the same to me,” said the stallion in response. “I did not even know you were there.” She remembers what her mother had said to her after. That we are often far more important in our own eyes than in the eyes of our neighbor. And with a laugh to herself, Elaina settles back, content to be another face in the crowd. elaina* benjamin and beylani's sunflower-girl