05-14-2020, 03:42 PM
They hadn't always been close.
Back when Elaina had been small, all wide eyes and dancing legs, she had come into Murmuring Rivers with Marcelo at her side, new to the land and new to life without her parents. She and Lilli had exchanged quiet words, shy glances, but little else. But, Lilli, with all her grace and kindness, had nestled herself inside Elaina’s heart without her golden cousin even noticing. And there she has stayed, a piece of her heart that Elaina will never be able to lose. Time, troubles, terror, it can try all it wants, but the girls of gold and crimson have proven their resilience over and over and over again. Unbreakable, unstoppable, eternal.
Elaina has tried so hard to shed her past like a snake sheds its skin, but Lilli haunts her like a ghost (a beautiful, warm, welcomed ghost), but a ghost of her past all the same as she presses into her neck with all familiarity and love. There are so many memories pushing the confines of her mind that for a moment that golden head with a heart shape upon her brow thuds with a headache as she buries them underneath layers of trying apathy.
Sometimes she wishes her brandished gold guardian angel would come again. To vanquish her tears and demonstrate his strength.
But, it would seem, after so much time, he has forsaken her.
Though Lilli has not, Lilli has never.
Terrifying, she says. Elaina’s eyes widen slightly. She has never sought motherhood, and maybe it is for the very reason as the very word Lilli has just spoken to her. “I believe it,” she responds, thinking back to her wandering back inside Murmuring Rivers to Valerio’s stern gaze, it had not been anger glinting there, but fear. “Did you feel it right away?” She asks Lilli now. Or only when she remembered the wickedness of the world? Elaina thinks.
She laughs then. Of course they are, of course they are perfect. “Oh, Lilli,” she admires. “I would never have thought otherwise,” she says adoringly to her cousin. Her cousin who now stands as a mother. A mother who is still a daughter, but Elaina is finding it harder and harder to believe as she watches her. “Can I?” The autumn breeze pushes her words and the waves seem to quiet just for her to ask. “Meet them?” She asks, and there is a shine to Elaina’s eyes that are so happy, so bright, because she knows there are pieces of Lilli out there besides just the one in her heart. Living, breathing, beautiful pieces.
Wars could calm and peace could grow with Lilli’s touch, Elaina has always found this to be true, and she feels it in the touch of her cousin along her cheek. Nightmares gather beneath both of their skin. Where did this come from, in their family? Had Legado given it to them? Had he been so good and pure that the darkness that everyone has had to find its way somewhere? And so it was birthed into his offspring’s slumbers? They dream of shadows, with faces, with hands that grab them, that taunt them, but then why does Elaina find herself in much the same way dreaming of dancing with them? She buries the thought.
(Did her crimson cousin know— that while Lilli awakes with demons, Elaina falls asleep thinking of them? That shadows tuck her in instead of starlight?)
A huff of laughter pauses on her lips. “Yeah, would have led my kingdom right over the Hyaline cliff side,” she says. (“Would you catch me?” She had asked him.) Any advice, is what Lilli asks for and Elaina laughs again, because the answer is obvious, so obvious as it stares at them from across the empty ocean like a lighthouse, drawing them home. “You are your mother’s daughter, Lilli,” she says sincerely. “And your father’s too,” she adds watching her with sky blue eyes. “You are descended from great leaders,” she pauses, wondering if Lilli has noticed where Elaina leads this conversation like a child running with a kite. “I’d say it is more than just your destiny, Lilli—it’s your bloodline.”
She sees herself in Lilli, sometimes, that longing, that wishing, and it terrifies her. Because that glimmer of hope, of promise, is dangerous. It is more dangerous than any of the monsters she has ever given her heart to. But she says nothing, because dangerous as it is, it is that look in Lilli’s eyes that has gotten Elaina through so much in her life. Selfishly, she stays quiet about such things. “There has been one lately,” she says, almost dreamily. “Do you remember a night in Hyaline.” (Were there not so many nights?) “When we found each other again?”
tried to keep her quiet, but she's screaming inside me