06-06-2021, 12:17 PM
I knew her for a little ghost
That in my garden walked;
The wall is high—higher than most—
And the green gate was locked.
That in my garden walked;
The wall is high—higher than most—
And the green gate was locked.
She dreams of fairytales her mother has told her. Of a dragon that destroyed a herd, and a great many knights vanquished trying to slay him. Until there came a girl who befriended him instead of fighting him. She hears stories of girls following wolves into the forest. There is a story about flowers that bloomed magic. Elena tells her how, at the heart of it, dreams are magic.
Now she dreams of many things. Many of him. Of days that are not so long ago but still feel like oceans away. Time steals far too easily, leaving only memories in its wake. Elliana can no longer remember how old she is, she no longer remembers. She feels older than she is and is older than she looks, but if she had to choose she'd say a hundred - sometimes the seconds feel like years, passing.
When Elliana had been little she had been too sensitive to the world around her. She had ached for places she had never been and she wept for people she had never met. She had been meant to stretch herself across the earth and maybe she has done just that. Worlds away from what she had known for so long. There is a chasm of exploration that has opened wide in her heart and it flies freely now with the walls of her childhood home far, far behind her.
Elliana has always found forests to be a strange place. It lacks the flowers and tall, butter-soft grasses of meadows. Instead there stands those trees, giant on ancient and gnarled trucks. She feels a strange sort of heaviness in her bones as she walks.
What do you see? Something silent asks her.
Blood. She tells it so.
What do you feel? Something silent asks her.
Pain. She tells it so.
What do you hear? Something silent asks her.
Hurt. She tells it so.
Where is it? Something silent asks her.
Forest. She tells it so.
Who is it? Something silent asks her.
Leo. She tells it so.
Elliana is as compassionate as one can be when one is as headstrong as she is, but sometimes, it isn't enough. She admits her defeats with dignity, even if she wanders alone, sulking, for some time after. She knows where Leo rests, hurt and she wonders if she can get to him. She knows the answer is yes, without knowing how she knows this. Detangling herself from the limbs of trees, she travels through the forest, knowing she would reach him, passing between branches until there he sits.
“Leoniidas,” she says, her voice like a balm to any wound. She presses blue eyes towards him, there is little emotion behind them—no one will tell her so, but she wears the same look her mother did once when she healed Marisol. Something in her shadowy skin, her stoic expression, she looks more statue than girl.
And to think, she was a princess, once.
@Leoniidas
doodle colored by star <3