10-01-2021, 09:53 PM
L
et’s give them all quite a scare.”These are the last words echoing through her head as she awakes with shakes rattling her bones. A costume. The woods. She thinks of parties. She thinks of Solterra and the garden she had painted on a man named Dune and the constellation he had painted on her in return. A constellation, a garden, much the same in the eyes of the right person.
She starts to walk towards the woods, wondering how she may find herself a costume, or make herself a costume. Is there time? She thinks before blue eyes dart to a red cloak hanging from a tree. Red cloak. How fitting for a little girl lost in the woods, with words of warning not to stray from the trail.
Little girl, little girl.
Don’t you hear the wolves howling?
The cloak sits over her shoulders and falls along her body, it is shiny, even in the dark. The hood slides up and over her head, covering her face in shadows. Shadows, shadows, shadows, was it always her fate to be shrouded by them? First by her father, then her mother’s grief, then the ones she calls to herself to heal and to aid. Her life is so darkened by them it is a miracle she does not go blind when she steps into the light. The hood settles against her head, covering her blonde hair, only the blue of her eyes can light the darkness she now sits in as she makes her way to the tree line.
Elliana thinks she should go, tells herself she should go, wasn't worth the racing heart and chilled spine, but Elliana’s favorite stories that Isra had told were not her stories of dragons or conquerers—but the ghost stories she told round the fire, embers flickering towards the shadow gold of her skin.
She is filled with the scent of lavender and saltwater but she reeks with fear, and it turns the lavender to wet grass and the saltwater to sewage. She wants to be brave, really she does, but she is such a young girl, such a fragile girl, and she tells herself she will sprint away the moment she senses trouble.
She tells herself.
She tells herself.
And just keeps telling herself.
Even as those branches start reaching for her, even as the spider webs are ready to ensnare her, and those specks in her visions begin to look like the eyes of wolves…watching her.
She speaks like this.
some are ghosts before they are dead.