just smoke

[elodie]

elodie

‘My mother loved the dark.’
She remembers this still, the last thing her own mother had said to her before she’d turned her head to the shadows and went. As if something had called to her from the darkness and she had gone, just that simple.

How foolish Elodie had been to believe that her mother was teasing her when her mother had never been the sort. (And why would she choose all that darkness to start?) Elodie had waited too long to start looking for her. By the time she had resigned herself to the fact that it was no joke at all, there was no trace at all left of her mother. It was as if she’d never been there at all.

It was then that Elodie had begun to understand that she was the sort of thing meant to be left. Her mother had told her once that she had been meant for leaving, too. That her father had left her before she was ready and that Elodie’s father had never really belonged to her but he’d left, too. Long before either of them had ever been aware of the child.

This child, Elodie. This child who’d been born antlered like the father she’d never met but who had done nothing but save her mother from herself (something Elodie had not been able to do because when the darkness came calling there had been nothing Elodie could do to stop Lilian from going). This child who was such a perfect combination of the two of them, so fiercely righteous. So soft. Their colors blended perfectly down the middle.

The colors remain now, but the antlers have gone. Replaced instead by a ring of fire that casts no heat, no spark. Constantly it burns but it never sets her ablaze. And there is a flurry of fireflies that follow in her wake, as if drawn to the flame. Kindred spirits and it is nice not to be alone, it is nice that they never see fit to leave her.

And it’s not that she’s lonely. But how wonderful it had been to hear from a stranger that the moon had missed her, even though she had insisted that she was not the kind of thing made to be missed. Even though she was not the sort of thing made for leaving but the sort of thing made to be left. Just as her mother had been. (Though her mother had left in the end, hadn’t she?)

It’s not that she’s lonely, it’s just that it’s nice to have company. Sometimes she thinks about taking them to the meadow, asking them to help her find her mother. (But surely one creature can only stomach so much disappointment before it becomes too much and she does not know how much more she can take). She always thinks better of it, though. She can’t remember the last time she went to the meadow. Each time she considers it, she remembers the stranger she’d met in the rain and how she’d said she hadn’t been alone long enough. There is some comfort to be found in the idea that perhaps her mother simply wants to be alone and that’s okay.

She never goes anywhere in particular, Elodie. Tonight it’s the forest where she lays herself down to sleep, nose to knee. There is no telling how long she is asleep before her mother finds her in a dream, the seal brown mare smiling sweetly at her daughter. And she touches her mouth to the crown of Elodie’s head, kisses her so gently. ‘I love you, my girl,’ she whispers, ‘but you have to go.’ And Elodie, in her dream, tilts her head, confused. There her mother is, smiling softly and she says again, ‘I love you but you have to go.’ And when Elodie still does not go, her mother begins to cry. Quietly at first and then more urgently.

‘My girl,’ her mother whispers, ‘please run.’

It is the fireflies that wake her, bound together by a common goal: to shake the sleeping mare from her dream. (She had not wanted to wake because she had not wanted to be separated from her mother.)

And when she lifts her head and smells the fire, she thinks it must be coming from her. But it is not. It is some independent magic (or perhaps it is not magic at all), some fierce thing that comes charging through the darkness. Just like that, she is awake -- wide-eyed awake -- and on her feet. Please run, her mother had begged and so she does.

But she is not quick enough, this little mare. She is not nimble enough. She had clung too fiercely to the mother in her dream. The fire swallows her up whole.

When dawn breaks again, there is nothing left of the girl but ash and the fireflies (which had ascended wildly, above the flames) come back down to mourn her, hovering quietly above the earth where they had last seen her. 

And then, curiously, the ashes begin to stir. The fireflies buzz wildly, ascending again as the ash begins to rise. There, as the sun casts its first rays across the charred landscape, the girl is reborn. She springs forth from the ashes fully formed, but different. Gone are the colors of her parents, replaced instead by the color of the flames that had consumed her, devoured her, reduced her to ash.

This, the color, the only evidence of the fire, the death, the rebirth and she stares mournfully down at the legs which had once bore the deep red color that had belonged to her father. She turns her head to glance at her barrel, which had once been the same dark brown as her mother’s. She had loved the fire but it has taken her mother from her, too. Her throat tightens and she exhales a shuddering breath.

The fireflies descend again, hesitant.
Until she turns her face up to them and smiles.

She will begin again, anew. 

and if i go, i’m goin’ shameless
I’ll let my hunger take me there

this is an auto quest for a color change for elodie!! 
technically it's just an autoquest but if somebody feels compelled to reply they can!!!

[Elliana]

Tonight, her heart is electric, like the bolts she once watched launch itself off of Andras’s inky black skin. It is the very thing that keeps her from settling. She does not realize that the path she is walking is one her mother once walked along. Maybe, if she looked hard enough, she could find strands of golden hair caught on a branch. Or maybe, she would find the crimson hair of her namesake that too walked through this very forest to reach the river.

It could be that Lilli and Elli were not all that different, but where the river sang to Lilliana, Elliana longs for the deafening surge of the ocean. She had tried to distance herself from her childhood hero, but when the time comes that she faces Lilliana, Elli will realize too many things at once. That a namesake may be more than just a namesake. Elliana is strong-hearted, opinionated, social and mysterious. And she likes to think it all belongs solely to herself.

It is the fireflies she notices first, they remind her of the dancing embers that had erupted when she threw a flower into the fire beside the blind man she would come to learn was her father. She misses the transition, misses the journey this girl goes through in the span of an evening.

“You must be special,” she says in a voice that is solemn but sincere. “I’ve heard fireflies can make fickle dance partners, but when they find one they like…” she pauses, blue eyes are enamored with the girl’s coat, the fire of it, it reminds her of Morrighan, it offers a strange moment of comfort. “Someone once told me the waltz is their favorite.” Someone. No, she wasn't told. It was decided on in a secret meadow in hushed tones with a boy beside her as they watched them dance. Elliana offers the firefly girl one of her special smiles, not the one she usually reserves for strangers.

“I’m Elliana.”

She ends it there, at least she thinks she does. Ever since she boarded that ship, since Dejya, she has always ended it there. Elliana, but she feels the reflection of a firefly in the corner of her eye.

“But please, call me Elli.”

« r » | @[elodie]

[elodie]

elodie

Her pulse has an echo.
It thunders through her head, shudders through her limbs.

What a strange thing to be, reborn from ashes. (And she had thought she would not mourn this new, second loss of her mother but she cannot help the way the heart spasms and twinges still, even when she smiles for her companions.) Alas, even if she had wanted to surrender to grief, she does not have the opportunity. Because she is alone and then, quite simply, she is not alone. 

Just as it had been when she had awoken to find the fireflies gathered around her the first time. Drawn to her as if aware that she thought of herself as an alone thing, drawn to her as if hell-bent on convincing her otherwise. 

But the sudden company does not alarm her. How could it when she had just been consumed by fire? No, Elodie only turns her head to gaze imploringly at the mare who comes swimming out of the shadows. But she is not special and she does not know why the fireflies have chosen her except that maybe they harbor some certain fondness for the alone things.

Still, Elodie smiles. There is a tremble in this new skin, a tremor in the muscle, it is a strange thing to emerge from the ashes something fully formed. “I’m not much of a dancer,” she admits, the smile turning sheepish as she rolls her shoulders in a kind of shrug and glances up at the flurry of their activity, “I think they chose the wrong partner.”

There is no self-loathing in her tone, though, only a kind of plain observation. Elliana. Elli. She likes the sound of it and her smile softens around something more sincere again as she shifts her focus back to the mare’s face. “My name is Elodie,” she offers and then frowns, “or at least, I think it is. Something strange has happened.” The frown remains but she offers no explanation. 

and if i go, i’m goin’ shameless
I’ll let my hunger take me there

@[Elliana]

[Elliana]

A child was snatched away in the middle of the night by predators, eaten alive, and then thrown back into the clearing where the parents stand, silent, in shock with their yearling son and wonder what to do. The mother stares curiously, broken hearted, at her man and wonders what he will do. The man is bent forward, nose pressed into the bloody carcass of his baby girl, and his woman is wondering if he'll break. Everything will be okay as long as that boy doesn't break.

And, then, as if nothing at all happened, the man lifts his head and moves on, his family following behind, the mother clutching her last remaining child's neck in her gentle grip, sucking tearful gasps through the thick, short hair of his floppy yearling mane.

The stars twinkle in absolute silence as December sky eyes look up at them. And they return downwards in time to catch the smile of the girl of fire. Fire. It would seem the two have more in common than they would think. Elliana was born from fire, which seems strange as she took her first breath surrounded by mirrored snow. But her story started in bonfires and the heat of summer. The first wisp of Elliana was in the twirling of smoke towards the stars and the heat of the flames presses itself against her parents’ skin.

“My mother told me that stillness and steadiness is as much a dance as twirls and sashays.” She says to the girl as if she were wise when she knows so little. (As the young and foolish so often behave.)

“I am Elliana, Elodie,” she offers the greeting with a gentle smile. “Your blaze—I am grateful to have witnessed it.” She says and dips her head, peering up with blue eyes. She frowns, but Elli doesn't mirror the expression, instead she parts lips to speak once more. “Tell me everything,” she says with a steady gaze of blue, taking a step towards her. “Or only what you wish to.”

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