there's a devil in my brain with a pitchfork and a flame

[elio]

elio

some say I should learn to cry but I only learned how to fight
and I know everything must die but nothing fades like the light

Nestled beneath an early morning fog, Elio dreams of Loess. Amongst monstera and flowering cacti, Lepis towers, somehow hands taller than Elio can ever dream to be. He gulps, biting his tongue until blood dribbles from between his lips. Somehow, he has disappointed her. It’s clear in the steel of her eyes and the set of her lips. Elio cowers backward, upturned chin quivering shamefully while unable to break her gaze.

“You should have tried harder,” Lepis says simply, then flicks her gaze behind Elio. “Take him,” she murmurs. A mass of variously marked gold and navy guards surround him. No coherent word is able to leave his lips before he feels so crushed that he can’t breath—

He gasps—

Uh!

Elio’s cry is muffled by surrounding fog. Chilly autumn dew drips, drips, drips irritably into his tousled, sleep-mussed mane. The panic from being awoken by a nightmare allows him to skip drearily blinking and stretching his limbs; instead, Elio lurches upward, joints protesting against such a sudden movement in a damp climate. Four young but still sizable redwoods makeup the back of the pine needle bed Elio had made, and he looks like their ruler with the roguish way he now stands in front of them. Each trunk breaks up the thick mist, giving the appearance of five tendrils of fog coming together to surge around their King.

King of the Fog suits him, actually.

So does Taiga, too.

@[Nashua]