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

“Oh, these?” Elio replies, the warmth of a cozy campfire glowing in his gaze. He turns so that his side faces Nashua just a little more and then stretches until the tip of a feather barely touches the forest floor. The smile that stretches his lips also manages to reach his eyes and here, shrouded by his birthplace’s mist, Elio looks like the sweet-faced and troubled child he was—so opposite the boy before him.

Nashua’s interruption isn’t expected but it does not entirely come as a surprise. Elio has always known Taiga to be fruitful and laughter-filled, despite the memories his father left behind. The flaxen tangles and boyish eyes look so natural among the pines and the redwoods—Elio thinks, for a bare moment, that he is six months old and this new face is actually just a boy he gets to grow up with. Memories of tossing and bucking over the bouncy soil and memories of stumbling over vicious pine cones shine like a fresh spring sun across his mind.

Elio is not there, smelling a damp Taigan spring and falling in mud, though.

And Nashua is certainly not his friend.

“They’d be cooler if they were actual fire,” Elio finally adds, deciding these intrusive false memories are weird and he was certainly acting strange. At least it was a smooth attempt to make up for it.

“Have you seen those? Wings of fire? They’re awesome,” this Elio says while stepping closer to Nashua. He holds his wings loosely to his sides and peers down at the boy.

“I like your gold feathers.”

@[Nashua]