05-03-2020, 09:44 PM
Elaina walks on ledges she doesn't even know are there. It had been seen in the way she had traced the Denocte’s face, in the way she had spoken to the tiger like a friend, and in the way she has given her heart to far too many with only expecting their friendship and their own love in return. She will insist to Lilli until she is blue in the face that she is safe, that she stays on solid ground, even as she is tumbling down a cliff side and into the sea. She will say she promises and break it in a heartbeat without even realizing it.
She knows it is an impossible request, such a difficult one for her to ask of her crimson cousin. But Elaina must ask it all the same because more than wanting Lilli to always be there with her, more than anything, she wants Lilli to leave her behind if she must. Elaina would throw herself into the shadows if it meant Lilli’s happiness and peace. Elaina would do anything, give anything, be anything for her cousin. It was never a difficult choice, it wasn't a choice at all really. It was what the golden girl always was for her cousin.
It was not Lilli’s responsibility to keep Elaina from playing with fire.
Elaina loved the burn of flames, the suffocation of smoke, and the smoldering of embers far too much to ever truly give it up.
Elaina will burn again and again. It is in her nature, it is what fires do.
They blaze.
They burn.
They die.
She remembers the good times just as she remembers the bad. They are intertwined in her, shadowing her golden coat. (Shadows, she thinks of him and her heart chills, but whether it was lust or fear, she still doesn't know.) "Such brave little fillies,” he had said, ice in voice and snow in his lungs, and cold on his words. Elaina can remember it still, had realized that monsters are too good at following you home. You did not need a basket full of goodies and red hood to tempt them. But then he had spoken again, as Valerio and Aletta had looked to him with teeth bared and muscles tensed. "I was simply collecting what was promised to me” And he had turned to her then, with frozen hazel eyes and a glacier hidden in his voice. And Elaina, for the first time felt not fear, but fire.
And she had been ignited.
Elaina will always love when Lilli smiles. She smiles like it is dawn of stolen sunshine that hums a soft glow and it warms her as if the rays were folding around her heart in a close embrace. She knows why she smiles right now, it is because of her, and the palomino is eternally grateful, the debt she owes her cousin grows another mile. She wishes she could stay in this moment, but Elaina is not Taiga, she is not Hyaline, and she is not Beqanna anymore. There is the taste of salt on her lips and summer blue sky in her eyes and wildflowers tickling her nose.
She doesn't want to be here.
Why does the coast seem so different without him? She wonders for a moment as a shadow passes over and she wishes for his chills, his shadows, those impossibly bright eyes. She wishes for him and she knows it is wrong. But he is forgotten as Lilli presses close to her side and The ghost of her mother passes over face in the frame of the smile on her face and she looks so much Beylani in this moment.
They have been many things to many people. Between the two of them, Elaina and Lilli have had many roles. Daughter, lover, healer, politician, diplomat, friend, mother, goddaughter, niece, granddaughter, traitor, liar, heartbreaker. The list goes on and on, but Elaina can only see Lilli, crimson and comely in front of her. Titles are just titles, and while they do not disappear, Elaina grows blind to them, her own and Lilli’s. It is just as they always have been.
Lilliana sighs and worry spills over her bones like cold ocean water.
“I know that,” she says, bitterness on her tongue, fire billowing in her belly as smoke fills her lungs. How often has she heard those words? Since her mother’s chest rose and fell that final time. When soldiers returned home only to die in the arms of their lovers. When her dad sacrificed himself for her. Everybody is trying to bury their ghosts. She remembers Brielle saying to Malachi and she thinks maybe that this is the only true thing that was ever said across the valley of thistle and lavender. “I’m sorry,” she says like a shattered whisper. “I’ve stopped waiting,” she admits. There is some guilt in her voice as blue eyes turn away from Lilli in shame. Always they had spoken of their family and their love for them, but Elaina has learned that she has been lying to herself. In truth, she let them go a long time ago. “The moment I left for Windskeep.” It is difficult to admit, but she feels she must do it all the same. “Have you, Lilli? Have you stopped?” She asks, in a voice that demands an honest answer. “Or are you still looking back?”
“I am not so easy to shatter.” Her voice was a soft cover of silk, smooth and quiet as it wrapped around her. Chipped, broken in places, scratched, these are all things Elaina was, is, but she is not entirely broken, not yet. “And you, I need to know you will be okay,” she says sincerely. “Malachi and Kalina may have told us to guard our hearts,” she says. “But Lilli, protect your courage, look after your happiness, and defend your kindness,” she says, lessons she needs to learn for herself. “Hearts can be such fickle things after all.”
tried to keep her quiet, but she's screaming inside me