08-02-2019, 09:39 PM
 I can remember a time when I was so afraid when even my shadow wouldn't follow me She can remember that day, she had hated him, hated how much he knew. Hated the fact that Marcelo had said it to her, that Marcelo had brought it forward with such determination in his voice. She hated that he had been right. Pretending wouldn't make the pain go away, because although she fought hard to keep it from being written across her face, it was still there, making her heart bleed and her insides crawl. “What if-“ she had began, but she had gotten no further, the words had caught in her throat, and she had suddenly been thirsty. So thirsty. What if I feel this way forever? She had wanted to say. She hadn't been able to bare the thought of it, having that constant pain in her chest and never quite feeling whole again. Time, many people say, time heals all manner of wounds. But, you cant fix a broken mirror, you can only replace the glass. Maybe, there was a part of her that longed for the feel of her heart breaking, for the sting of betrayal, and for frightening feeling of being as terribly alone as she was here. It had taken time, at first, to come to terms with the fact that maybe she lost her chance at love, that she rejected the only chance she would have She has healed, as completely as she will ever heal, take her or leave her. Elaina smiles, her mother’s smile, it is etched warmly on her golden face. The stranger tells her not to worry and so she doesnt, but she cannot help but think there was something almost mythical about these two mares, and she thinks she may have stumbled upon some kind of secret. But, Elaina has always loved stories, from the tales her buckskin grandmother told her, and the stories her pale golden mother weaved. She knows the weight of thoughts, and how they may drag you down to bottom of a lake. You could let them go, drop those stones on the sandy, seaweed littered bottom, float back up to the bottom and take in the air you so desperately crave. But Elaina hangs onto the stones, greedily trying to fit them all within her arms, knowing all the while she is drowning. That golden head dips to each of them in turn. How would they each know what sort of hurt and secrets that they each harbor. Between the three of them they could fill an ocean’s worth. But even with all of it set out before them, laying bare and naked Elaina doubts the situation would be any different than it is now. All of them standing, complete strangers stringed together by silences and passing time and flowing rivers. “I’m Elaina,” she offers them, though she had nothing else to give to them aside from just simply that. Her presence would offer little comfort. Elaina hardly the time to try to comfort her strangers, she knew how to make Lilli smile, how to make Ori laugh, and she had learned how to make Alvaro look just a little less stoic than normal. But strangers, Elaina never seemed to overstep her boundaries. But something else happens, it slips from her lips like grains of sands through fingers, falling before she is even aware that she ought to catch it. “I don't think I want to be alone today.” benjamin and beylani's sunflower-girl |