08-30-2019, 07:56 PM
 I can remember a time when I was so afraid when even my shadow wouldn't follow me She doesn't know the hurt that Cordis knows, she does not know that sort of violation, taking the very thing that is yours and in many ways, most sacred. He took her body, and Elaina does not know this sort of hurt. So many of the men in Elaina’s life have been courageous and kind, brave and loving. But she knows the horrors of the world. Knows that she has her own type of hurt that burrows in her heart like a virus, content to live and spread. Sometimes, in the beginning mostly, it would spread to her legs so she felt like she couldn't move, paralyzed by grief. Or to her lungs, until she was left gasping for air, drowning on her own tears. To her brain, where even blinking hurt too much to do. Elaina has learned now to corner that pain, to leave it in her aching chest and look to the world with eyes free of tears, a smile on her face. She has learned to keep the hurt from showing, even if it was always there, breaking her apart. Some day she will be nothing but dust, gone with a single breeze. Cordis. Brinly. Elaina. Are they all just sitting here until they crumble to nothing? Are they all broken creatures rewatching their hearts in ways that they are not quite as they were before? Elaina has no advice to give in the face of grief. She has never been able to fight that dragon back its cave. It lingers nearby, smoke in its lungs, fire on its tongue. The sunflower girl takes their misery and covers her own until she breaks with heartache and shudders with anxiety because anyone’s misery is better than her own. Elaina feels the words on Brinly’s tongue, but she doesn't understand them. There is that lurch of conversation and golden amber eyes shift towards her own of brown. Brown eyes so soft, they remind her of Marcelo. How she had forced herself upon him, to take care of her when she was nothing but a crumpled piece of paper, her wrinkles so deep that couldn't be straightened back out. But there is nothing from her, only silence. A sound Elaina knows all too well. She has found Cordis’s own face, looking to the silver mare with a reflection of Brinly’s self loathing and Cordis’s selfishness. Elaina has always been too much of an empathetic being. Emotions slipping into her own too easily. She has flourished with Lilli’s smiles, but broken with Aerwir’s insecurities. Brinly speaks the question Elaina was wandering. Back from where? But she has another one. “Why did you leave the first time?” She asks. Because Elaina knows what it is like to go and return, she has done it, with two places. Arrived, left, arrived, left, arrived. A vicious pattern. Elaina thinks the end in Beqanna, in Hyaline, that it is in sight. She doesn't know if she can pull out that suitcase, put on her raincoat and step out into a rain soaked city that always feels a little stranger when she leaves than when she arrived. “Do you think we always return to where we started?” And she hasn't realized she has asked the question out loud. And now, she doesn't know what answer she would hope for. Yes and no each bear their own weight and Elaina can never tell which will be heavier until she loads herself with it and blazes the trail ahead of her. benjamin and beylani's sunflower-girl |