you're addicted to love [Cassian]

[Elaina]

I can remember a time when I was so afraid when even my shadow wouldn't follow me  “I dont like Winter,” the golden filly had grumbled to her grandmother as she dragged her feet in the snow. “Well, Elaina,” her grandmother had said in that wise voice of hers, turning her bright glacier blue eyes to face her granddaughter. “Spring will come soon, and do you know what happens int he spring?” She had asked, and the filly with the hue of sunflowers had simply shook her head adorned with tufts of cumulus. “Everything becomes born anew in the spring.” And these words, these words were the ones Elaina clung to (she carefully placed them into a box in the corner of her heart, her secret shared with no one) when her mother feel sick just winter closed. The near yearling had emerged from she and her father’s sleeping area, and her heart began to race as amber eyes look down upon those first few blades of emerald grass that shot through the alabaster flakes decorating the ground. Spring was here. Thrum of her heart is so loud it pounds in her ears and Elaina can hear nothing else except her wild hope rattling in her chest, trying to escape in the spaces between ribs. The lake. She would be by the lake, her first sight wanting to be the thundering falls.  Those spidery legs still too long for her body race forwards, prayers and dreams provide her wings.  But as she gallops over the hill, heart lurching in her chest, she does not spot the form of her mother, painted like the first light of morning, but the buckskin shape of her grandmother. Elaina feels everything in body collapse like dominos, tumbling over each other in a never ending chain. Her wings have been plucked and her hopes emptied from her soul. The box in the corner of her soul locks itself away forever, there is no key. Her steps have slowed from their wild chase into a somber stroll. She is defeated and Aesop can see this in an instant as her granddaughter comes to rest her head against that tawny shoulder. “She was supposed to be here,” and the tears are wracking her body until she shakes not from cold but from sorrow. Everything hurts. She has never felt pain like this. Aesop shushes her, wrapping her in a tight embrace as if she could take some of the child’s pain away, but, as grief is, this was Elaina’s weight alone to bear. “Spring cant bring back everything love,” is all she says, because she cant say everything will be all right, not when Elaina sobs there beside her, so unwilling to believe it. It’s winter again and Elaina stands there like the sun against the snow. She has been in Beqanna for over a year now, and it felt strangely comforting in a way. Even more so with Lilli beside her, even if she wasn't quite right beside her all the time anymore. She heaves a sigh and frost twirls around her nostrils before disappearing as if it too no longer wanted to be subjected to the cold. The sun grazes her back and the palomino is grateful for the warmth it provides her, like kisses against that golden skin. She is thinking of him, and has been avoiding the forest since, not sure what he would do if he found her again, not sure what she would do if she found him again. He would be here for her. That blue skin that had looked so inviting. She needs to stop thinking him. A hum is on her lips, she doesn't even know it. She does not even know that it is the siren song she sings. Amber eyes close, willing anything to distract her, anything.  Anything, Elaina? elaina* benjamin and beylani's sunflower-girl

@[Cassian]