05-06-2020, 12:20 PM
When she had been little, when she had been small, Elaina had dreamed of castles next to the sea and princes with green eyes and intricate crowns. She had dreamed of stars on earth made from flowers and spiders making webs of silver. Her mind had churned, a library of ideas and images. Elaina’s dream had known no earthly bounds. She had dreamed of being a princess of these dreams, where her mother was queen and her father was king. She had been a little moth, flying about in search of the cold light of heaven. She should have kept flapping her wings, this little moth, and she might have found the sky.
Of course, Elaina is grown now, and she has found the sky. She has found it, and she can define it and tell you why it’s blue.
There is a shadow of a smile on her face, the only hint that she is still sorry for the bitterness that raced to meet Lilli’s concern like a head on collision. “It is nothing to be proud of, unfortunately,” she says. Elaina has made an art of leaving. She makes it look like some sort of masterpiece, when really it is just crayon scribbles on a canvas.
Elaina can see the pillars of salt behind Lilli a mile long, punishments of blue eyes looking back over her shoulder for the people who have never even tried to follow them. She wonders what sort of destruction you leave when you look to far ahead, if there is disaster ahead of Elaina as long as Lilli’s trail of salt. “It is not easy,” she admits. “Look to your boys, Lilli,” she offers.
As if she can read Lilli’s thoughts then, Elaina says something else. “Marcelo had nightmares at times, so fierce that only Ori could soothe him,” she says darkly. “He told me some, finding me in the Bridge, your mother winning the battle, but so many things he kept quiet, saying he couldn't remember, but I never believed him,” she says. “I would catch him whispering with Ori, both with worried expressions on their faces.” She furrows that heart shaped brow of hers, squinting blue eyes. She leans into her, and Elaina lets out a comfortable sigh, which floats into the too-dark sky like smoke, which is watched carefully with too-blue eyes.
Elaina hangs onto her cousin’s words as she speaks, her attention fully onto her, waiting for what was to come next, but knowing that whatever she said could never change what Elaina believed about her. Lilli is perhaps one of the most wonderful things in her world, even still. She was so unique and beautiful and interesting that she could make Elaina dizzy when she thinks about her too much. The chestnut holds a very large and very obvious piece of her heart that Elaina knows will never be replaced by anything else.
Elaina has her own secrets, like how she bites her lower lip instead of telling Lilli that without her at her side she feels like a ship without its anchor and when she looks out she can no longer see land. Up ahead is just a blue, blue horizon. She wants to tell her, but she feels the guilt from Lilli, sees it even, and Elaina cannot bare to strand Lilli with her in the middle of the ocean. Elaina doesn't saying anything, she offers all she can through blue eyes and a gentle touch to the chestnut girl’s cheek.
That is not the end of her secret. She didn't mean to fall in love with him, and oh this Elaina, oh how this is what Elaina knows. Those pale locks glow even in the darkness as she watches Lilli’s face for any subtle expressions. “We never do. You don't know it’s a sin until it’s already engulfed you. Eve thought the apple would open her eyes, only to doom us all.” Whether she says this to comfort Lilli or to comfort herself, Elaina is not entirely sure. Yes, if anyone knows, it is Elaina, she always did have a habit of flying too close to the sun even while knowing it would burn her. Elaina has tried so hard to fly with paper wings only to end up falling more times than she has soared.
“To burn to ash and rise from it stronger than before,” she says with a laugh. While Lilli has found traits of Elaina to emulate, Elaina has done the same searching for the similar kind of grace that comes with turning a cheek, the kind of resilience it is to keep holding onto hope, and what sort of strength her cousin must possess to stand here as she is.
She laughs then, feeling that freedom that she only truly experiences with her crimson cousin. Elaina knows the exact him she spoke of. The golden girl says nothing, but she flashes a wild smile in her direction. “And you,” she finally adds to Valerio’s daughter, knowing this with her entire heart to be true.
Elaina instinctively looks up as the stars appear. “Hmm,” Elaina ponders with Lilli’s request as she considers before motioning her head upwards towards a star off to the side near the clouds. “How about that one,” a pause as she moves to the star to the left of it. “And that one, so it has a friend, a cousin, a sister,” she says because in truth, Lilli has always been so much more than a friend or a cousin. Lilli was her sister, her flame.
And Elaina will look for these stars as she dances in the arms of a shadow man. She will look for these stars when her star horse sings her another lullaby, and she will look for these stars when she and her friend spent the night speaking truths and hiding wishes.
“I promise to always find you, Lilli.” A foolish promise, but one she makes again and again as she rests her golden head on her cousin’s shoulder. “I love you.”
tried to keep her quiet, but she's screaming inside me