S
he once dreamed she carried the entirety of a storm in the marrow of her bones. Her nerves were lightning, the thudding of her heart thunder, and her blood was a downpour.Today— the day is bright and quiet. The clouds in the sky are a vibrant white and she tries to ignore the way it feels like they are watching her, waiting. For what? For her to scream her family’s name at them? to crumple into the ground unable to continue? To wish herself back into the waiting arms of Terrastella? Or even Delumine? Elliana was allowed her hurt, she was allowed her pain, but in the end, she is still just a closed box, a bud that will never blossom, a seed that cannot crack its shell, and probably just doesn't want to.
It was still a mild shock, realizing how little she missed Terrestella and the rest of them. It was even more of a shock to be aware of that realization, and still not care. She knew homesickness would settle eventually and her soul may even grow weary enough to long for something familiar. Whether it took days or weeks, she does not dwell though. Until that happens, she decides to lean herself into Beqanna and find what it has to offer her. It was the only thing to do, and it kept her occupied enough.
Elliana would rather avoid thinking about Elena if at all possible. They are two different people, she knows; the shadow-girl is sturdy, cool and reckless, while her mother is unsteady, hesitant (these days) and fiery. She fears Elena only because once, just once, she looked into the eyes of her mother, the ex-queen and saw not her mother, but herself, and they were one in the same.
She fled to Delumine that night, under the cover of darkness, away from memories of her baby brother and Aeneas, and her parents, and little Elli, then such a fresh thing, little Elli never went back.
Her heart, a wild and weary thing, clatters around in her chest, a chickadee ready to burst from a cage made of ivory bone. She is perched like the bird statue that her godfather often referred to. She always wondered where it was going to go, before its body was entrapped in stone. Would he have flown far? All the way to Beqanna? Where Elli now stands, facing a stranger in the meadow.
If she had even been a few months younger, her first question might have been ‘what are you thinking?’ But Elliana has grown, not cynical like her mother once predicted she would, but solemn, and so her first question is nothing but silence.
some are ghosts before they are dead.