08-03-2019, 10:29 PM
 I can remember a time when I was so afraid when even my shadow wouldn't follow me “And then, from the shadows the King of Bloodvale leaper, mouth open and aimed at Valerio’s throat!” The filly shouts excitedly as Mina and Maren sit there with wide eyes and open mouths, enthralled with the tale of their grandfather that they knew so little about. Mina even manages gasp as Elaina’s voice grows low with suspense. “It looked like this was the end of Valerio the Valiant.” Voice is somber. Elaina had a gift for storytelling, she always had. Creating dragons out of boulders, mountains out of pebbles, oceans out of streams. “But then, just in the knick of time, Valerio produced a gust of wind so powerful that he was able to blow Cazador back to Bloodvale,” she says and the fillies’ eyes light up in triumph as Elaina raises her head a little higher. “The wind was so powerful that some say it is still blowing today, and will keep blowing for all of eternity, trapping Cazador there so he may never return to Windskeep again,” she says with an affirmative nod of her head, thus concluding her story. Of course, this tale was far from the truth, but the girls had asked for a Windskeep story and Elaina certainly couldn't tell them tales about the war and how sometimes, despite her parents shielding her, she saw the soldiers come back bloodied and broken. How every time her father left she thought maybe he wont come back. She couldn't tell them about how Val returned every day looking more tired and more ragged than the day before. So Elaina tells them a story full of conquest and glory because she cant bare the truth any more and if she tells the fantasy enough, believes it hard enough, maybe it can become her new reality. The war had scarred Elaina. He had scarred Elaina. Ugly lines that have found her shoulder from where that liquid ice burned her skin, scars from the running, her knees bare the markings. A reminder that world does not love her, as much as she loves it. She is unlucky, an orphan at the age of one, and to remain one all her life. Her heart skips a fearful beat when he speaks; she had almost convinced herself she was elsewhere, could feel that he was not this dark stranger, a thing to be feared, but a clean, pleasant creature. Safe and comfortable, but infinitely less intriguing. Her heart settles into a steady rhythm again. She should have left. It was true. She didn't know him at all, but the shiver he sends up her spine is familiar, for a heart beat she thinks of Aerwir, but his face is so quickly replaced with alabaster and ice, before melding into a black and white with red, demon eyes. Elaina knows monsters, she is not so naive to not know when one looks her in the face. Even as the sunlight apples across him through the trees, she knows, daylight cannot keep out the boogeyman. Not all monsters hide under the bed. “Im…sorry,” she apologizes before she even knows what she is saying, but quickly she silences, careful amber eyes watching him like the rabbit watches the fox, wondering who is going to try to run first. His voice, it rattles her bones once more. “Tunnel,” she says, and her mouth closes around her own breath like she is afraid he may steal it. She has never been afraid before, even when Frostbane had found her, even when a demon himself approached her, she had faced them with deadly determination, asking for just a chance, just an excuse, just a reason. But those times were different, because she had Lilli. She is here, in this land, but she is momentarily forgotten in his presence. She feels so weak. He is making her weak. Ears flitter forward to catch his words before falling back once more amongst those blonde locks. “Can I ask you a question?” Her voice, so quiet already, is barely more than a breath. “Who exactly are you? Why are you here?” He was Tunnel, but Elaina had a feeling that was not the only thing he was. Tell me something you want me to know about you. There is so many things, she could tell him something vague, something that would not give him anymore information about herself than he already had. Her name. Where she lived. “I’m an orphan.” She can feel his breath against her skin. She would do well to run. She knows this. But morbid fascination fastens her to her place before him, even as his dark lips are so close to hers, his breath inching its way across the golden flesh of her face and her knees suddenly feel weaker, bend inward in an attempt to keep her standing though her entire world is fading into a dull gray-brown blur. This is terror. She doesn't like it. She wants to leave. She wants Valerio, her dad, Alvaro, Marcelo. The men in her lives, strong enough to make her go away. Strong enough to tell her that, this time, she’s wrong. None of them come. So she doesn't leave either. Amber eyes close, those long feminine lashes falling over gemstones as she steadies the shaking in her legs, finding that body almost drifting towards him, as if the slightly distance between her and him were to much. She wants to close it, like two sides of a book slamming shut, but all of her restraint fights against it. She tears at the pages, ripping each out one by one, knowing eventually she will run out, and her fate will be inevitable. benjamin and beylani's sunflower-girl |
@[Tunnel]