to be brave [wishbone]

[Elliana]

kissed my penny and threw it in
prayed to keep my soul

A

re you ready for your grave yet, Elliana?

Graveyards and gardens.

There has never been that much of a difference. Both bloomed, one six feet below, while the sparked colors above. Isolt said she had never seen the difference, and Elli had not understood such a thing when the unicorn first told her. Had blinked blue eyes in her direction. She learned soon enough though. As a grave that was not her own filled with flowers and buried her brother beneath it.

Are you ready for your grave yet, Elliana? She heard them whisper.

Not yet, not yet, not yet, she whispered back to them.

Please, not yet.

Do you like my flower, Elli? she had asked her.

And she slipped its petals beneath her tongue and wondered if a garden or a grave would bloom in caverns of her chest.

Blue eyes, too blue eyes, forget-me-not blue lock onto the peak in front of her. She promised Leo they would meet again soon, but for now, there was a path she wanted to follow. Her mother was here once, before Terrastella, before the lies, before the crown, before the death. Before Elli left her in search of something she still has not found. She knows the land is called Hyaline, and it was surrounded by mountains and a great lake. “Like Paraiso,” she had said in story about a queen with unmatched beauty. “Or like Denocte,” she had retaliated.

It is only when she grows closer that this mountain…it was unlike one she had ever seen before. Smoke bloomed where there should be snow caps, there was heat where she expected cool breeze, trees stood tall and bright instead of the pines she was so accustomed too.

She passes a large dip in the ground.

Are you ready for your grave yet, Elliana?

She grows closer, ever closer.

Blue eyes linger there, they spot a flower that has pushed through its dirt.

Graveyards and gardens.

Both bloom as if telling here, even here they wait. She wonders if Danae and Isolt can hear her heart racing realms away and if they do what happens. Do Isolt’s eyes grow wide? Does Danae’s nose start to bleed again?

Or do their unicorn hearts just simply beat in time with her own?

She watches the stream of smoke rise and she forgets why she is here at all to begin with.

@[Wishbone] elliana speaks

elliana
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[Wishbone]

it's a mystery to me

we have a greed with which we have agreed. you think you have to want more than you need; until you have it all you won't be free. and when you think more than you want, your thoughts begin to bleed.

Wishbone hasn’t had a dream since the twins’ arrival. It isn’t that she’s having nightmares, or that she sleeps so deeply that her mind puts itself in the darkest corners of her conscious. It’s the fact that she sleeps lightly, waking easily at any movements in the undergrowth. When she’d accepted Mazikeen’s request, Wishbone hadn’t anticipated the exhaustion that would come with raising the twins. She’d remembered the fatigue that came with her own daughters years ago, with raising two children and trying to settle their rambunctious bodies when the night came. But Sickle and Malik bring an extra challenge — one that is evidenced by the long, thick scar across her chest.

Ever since she found the Curse in the healing falls, Wishbone’s found sleep an even rarer thing than it was before. Mazikeen had told her that Gale was controlled by the Curse at night, and the purple queen had been too comfortable with the promise. The iridescent stallion had shown up during the day, and his threats have snatched the scattered pieces of sleep she had once found. She could practically feel whatever protection she felt she had flicker and die, leaving the twins vulnerable and fragile.

The only times she sleeps now are when her body gives up. It’s happened on this late-spring day; Wishbone had been patrolling the border when she’d stopped to soak her feet in the river, letting the warm water ease her soreness. It had felt so nice, and it had been too easy to drift off. The purple mare isn’t aware she’s fallen asleep until she startles awake, hearing a body move through the jungle. Wishbone’s head jerks up, nostrils quivering as alarm begins to fill her. It’s a stranger’s scent, someone who hasn’t been claimed by Tephra’s smells, and the queen feels her mind grow sharp in the wake of her drowsiness.

She steps quietly out of the river’s shallows and heads toward the stranger, slipping through the undergrowth with the practice of a Tephran native. When her eyes land on a chocolate mare with pale hair, Wishbone’s defense softens. Her heart still jumps in her chest, hesitancy lingering at the edges of her thoughts. She hasn’t seen Gale shift into any animal without keeping his iridescent blue patterns, but the Curse could be taking an opportunity to trick her.

Still, Wishbone remains friendly (just like she’d been toward Gale, in the beginning), and pushes her way through the remaining bushes to make herself known. “Hello, stranger. Welcome to Tephra.” Her dark mouth smiles brightly, and though her glowing amber eyes are warm, there’s a sense of mistrust hidden in their depths. “I’m Wishbone.”

credit to eliza of adoxography.

@Elliana