05-11-2020, 11:32 AM
Every moment she is left in Beqanna feels stolen, because she knows it will not stay this way, she knows this is not permanent, only till the magic wears out. She will leave before Lilli returns home, and she will leave before Nash and Yan see their second birthday. Fate had watched Elaina, had seen her stare up into the sky with open arms asking for some sort of give and Fate had laughed in her face and offered not even a constellation prize. So each moment that is offered in the Taigan forest is seized before it can slip away. She spends as much time as she can with her nephews, memorizing every detail on their faces, from the shape of their eyes, to the tilt of their mouths, even to the way they shrug their shoulders.
Though these are not the first of stolen moments that Elaina has taken. How often had Elaina ran away from Hyaline in the dead of the night to venture into the Redwoods of Taiga, all to find a mare of crimson with eyes like the sky. She shares these trees now with her sons, and there is no Hyaline for Elaina to return to this time. It still stands, but she would not recognize the land without Kensa’s face to greet her once inside. As far as she concerned herself, that land was as empty as the hollowed out tree stump Nash had shown her.
It was beside this same tree stump that Elaina struck up a conversation with her her nephew, talking the way adults do, who forget they were once children, expected to listen to reminiscent memories. “Did you know Nash, that you have green eyes just like my grandpa?” A grandpa she has never met, would never meet. If her parents are six feet under, than Tan Daray must be twelve. Green eyes that were not gifted from Elaina’s side of the family, but from Nash’s father, but eyes that reminded her all the same. “And that face you make, right when you are about to tell a joke, you look just like my Uncle Soren.” She says and laughs. “I pray to whatever gods are out there that you two never meet. You and Soren together would be downright dangerous.” She laughs again because the image is all to clear. Elaina has not thought of Soren in quite some time, and though it aches, it feels tender next to her heart. She has Nashua to thank for that.
It is Nash that those glassy eyes of blue are seeking out today. He had promised her a tour (a tour of a land she knows too well) and Elaina was eager to have it. She spots him easily enough through the trees and presses her way through them. “Nashua, you were supposed to meet me by the—” her voice cuts of as she realizes it is not just her nephew she has stumbled upon. A girl of gold and beauty stands in the presence of her family. (A girl of gold and beauty that wrings Elaina’s heart as she is thrust backwards in time to when she was not an orphan, but a girl with a mother who looks so much like the girl in front of her). “Oh,” she manages to say in surprise without bursting into tears or laughing with joy. “I didn’t know others were joining us on the Tour of Taiga today,” she says, upturning that face of surprise into a smile that is so hauntingly Elaina, to feels as if for a moment she never left Beqanna. “I hear Nashua is the greatest tour guide in all the forest, if you would care to join us,” she offers with a tilt of her golden head. So quick to trust, even when she stands once more in the land of monsters and beasts. (She shouldn't be here, she keeps reminding herself.)
A beat.
A smile.
A name.
“I’m Elaina.”
tried to keep her quiet, but she's screaming inside me
( I dont actually remember how to tag on mybb :/ )