[private] we were the first

[Elliana]

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S

he dreams of water, of how it falls, the plop of hot drops on the desert, the hollow pits they make in the sand; how the parched land drinks them instantly. Greedy, starving. Maybe it had not been a dream, not a dream, not a nightmare. Elliana lives in a sort of nighttime purgatory, keeping herself from both dancing through Delumine’s forest and from the walls of Terrastella. Either one brings her too close, too close to a place where her dream walker guardian could find her.

It is strange. That the thing she remembers most about Terrastella is the shadows, and not the shadows of the buildings, but the shadows that lingered out by the cliffs, beneath every blade of grass, sitting stoically beneath the trees. She remembers laying there for hours, watching them move and change, grow and shrink.

This might be a lie (she is not sure, she is never sure) because the things she may remember most is her brother. She remembers seeing James for the first time, and Elliana, beautiful, dark Elliana, she had smiled like he was a gift just for her. “Oh, he’s so precious,” she had said, grinning quietly at her mother. She bowed her head down to peer into the blue eyes of James. Maybe she saw it when they didn’t, what wild changes he would bring into their lives (what changes, what terrible, terrible, she could have never guessed), but maybe she didn’t, and if she did, she never said so. ”Happy birthday, little brother.”

It is a collision brought in gold and white and blonde and blue eyes and Elliana’s own eyes turn from a mirror into glaciers as the only thought that passes through her is her mother. Elliana is not so blatant with emotion as the blonde girl is, it is hidden behind a steadfast stone face she inherited from the shadow of her birth father. Behind that stone skin blazes a fire of blue, behind that marble mouth hide gnashing teeth, behind the granite of her brow hides a furrow so deep that flowers ache to take root, behind those crystal eyes hide glass shattering and splintering and flying in all directions.

The stone might have crumbled, the marble might have broken, the granite might have split, and the crystal might cracked.
But it held.
Because this was not Elena.

She is too relieved to notice anything else except the collision of knowledge that rattles her brain. Daughter. Lilliana. Fire. Child. Elena.

Elliana pushes through and throws blue eyes up and into her direction. She is older, not as old as Po, not as old as her parents, but older than herself, older than Aeneas, Hilde, even Maybird.

“Not yet.”


✧

..but nightmares are dreams too.

« r » | @Elliana

@Aela