[private] we were the first

[Elliana]

- ✧ -

I

t is almost how funny how girls follow their mothers. Even those girls like Elliana, like Aela who strive to be everything but their mothers’ daughters. There is something inescapable about blood, there is some hard-coded fate in the double helix. Too small to see, but if you feel for it, fumble in the dark like like teen lovers, you'll find it if you're lucky.

(and maybe
when you hear the river say your name,
it is just your blood babbling in your ears)

But even if you feel its presence you can't escape it, the strings of fate. The fork in the road is an illusion. All paths lead here.

In the other story, in the worlds that are hidden in the dark places between stars. Forgotten and half-swallowed. There is no Elliana because in this other story, there is no Tenebrae. In a perfect world, a perfect universe, there can be no Tenebrae and Elena because they were anything but perfect. And incapable of making a perfect daughter. Aela instead knows James. She knows James and Ava and Altair. They romp and play and chase and laugh. They run through the glistening lake until near dark, until they shiver and shake, and wind up where they always do, nestled together as family.

But fate is fate and it will do as it sees fit.
And even in this perfect world, Aela may stare into the shadows just long enough to see a pair of blue eyes that look all too much like her own—staring back at her.

Elliana spends most of her time alone. She likes it this way though. But being alone is the perfect opportunity for fate to find you. So it should not be strange that Aela finds her in the woods, so like how the wolf finds little red riding hood. But Aela bares no fangs and Elli wears no cloak.

She smiles, an odd, brief smile when the older girl blazes at her like blue flames.

No.

Is all she says.
Because Elliana has seen fire before. Had seen it the night she met her father. Had leapt into it, and raced it, had cast flower petals from her godfather’s crown into it. She learned something from that night—

Fire is no foe.


✧

..but nightmares are dreams too.

« r » | @Aela