"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
05-31-2021, 03:14 PM (This post was last modified: 05-31-2021, 03:14 PM by Elliana.)
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.
« r » | @[ratty] To meet whoever you are dying to post!
06-06-2021, 01:00 PM (This post was last modified: 06-06-2021, 01:00 PM by Wherewolf.)
Let's be better strangers
The dappled buckskin knows something about that particular sort of anger fueled by family. He knows something about running away from a name, even as it rests across your shoulders like a set of wings or a brand across your face, and if you cut them away they just leave scars on your skin that remind you of what you tried to escape, anyway. Running away and lashing out are well-versed tunes playing out in his heart.
He knows less about the weight of expectations - nobody ever had any of him - and he doesn't know anything about Elliana, so when she happens on him suddenly in the meadow, his ears fall flat, disappearing against the curve of that dark poll edged with bristling silver. He has inherited his mother's penchant for attracting strangers when he would prefer to be alone. The relaxed blue-green of his eyes turns steely, stormy, as mare and stallion stand in silence for longer than might be considered polite, for longer than anyone usually goes who comes to challenge his isolation. There's a memory here, another palomino (lighter than this one, and also less golden then than she is these days,) another willowy young thing staring at him in silence, and he can feel the way he already wants to hate this girl, too, picking its way up his spine like electric fingers. It makes him bare his teeth at her, flashing those bloody, bright, fangs growing in where his canine teeth used to be. They're short still, those new teeth, their points not yet obvious until he pulls his lips back in that characteristic sneer so the sunlight gleams on the wet curve of them, and they click softly against the others as if to snatch her unspoken questions out of the air and bleed the life from them.
Instead, in the pressure of the silent stillness between them, he exhales sharply, dismissively, irritation crawling across his face, hardening the edges until they're knife sharp, and he turns away. It is not so dissimilar to the other time, though there is no litany of curses staining the air blue, no unearned insults pouring unstoppered from his tongue. He does not turn to leave, though - why should he, she is the one intruding - and those blue eyes are burning holes through the mottled feathers of his wings. Without turning back to face her, he pulls his head up high, thick neck curling as he draws his chin to an imperious height.
"What?" He nearly hisses the word, speaking into the emptiness ahead of him rather than the girl behind him.
What happens when a child finds a wolf who has been hungry for a century too long?
There is the thrill of danger, the headiness of feeling skin and tooth and fur. And perhaps the wolf's eyes glimmer softly like it's only waking up from a long slumber. Perhaps there is innocence too in a beast driven by instinct instead of cruelness.
But that hungry wolf will still open its mouth and swallow the child. It will not taste the sweet sweetness of smiles or pleasant greetings, it will not grow heavy with guilt or lament at the fragile crack of too young bones. The wolf will only growl with the feeling of its hunger finally satisfied. And then that wolf, will curl into its den, a paw tucked under its nose and sleep for a century once more.
The curl of her mouth bows into a smile. What makes the forest remind her of home with the sun dappling over her skin like puddle of molten light, is the weight in the air. It grows heavy, heavy, heavy. She wonders if his shoulders bend and break.
What. He says. She feels like there are wildflowers caught in her throat and they are blooming so tightly that the words she wants to say settle into the roots. She almost forgets that she was a princess—once.
Her smile bends and bows to a deeper look, a feral look, a look that she has stolen from the face of a unicorn that once slipped blood red flower petals between her lips. Still, it feels strange on her face, but she wears it anyway, because for just a moment, she thinks she feels the bristle of hounds at her ankles, and she is both terrified and enthralled.
Which terrifies her only ever more.
“Are you talking to the trees? Or to me?” She asks, because she is not her mother’s daughter.
