11-20-2021, 11:49 AM
Her death hit in waves. Not a flood, but water lapping steadily at her ankles. You could drown in two inches of water. Maybe grief was the same.
Her restlessness on this mountain was an animal; a beast that tore through every chain she tried to ensnare it with, only for her nervousness to burst forth and break through regardless. She comes to stand with sharp movements and strained grace. Her impatience was mailable, and thinning; like a lake that had not completely frozen over, and she was desperately trying to balance herself over the icy surface. What brought her here? Why was she one of the ones called?
The wind rushes in and the humid curls of her hair move with it. And when she tosses her head, like wolf just waking up, sharp needles of feeling make her quiver as the knots pull and snag.
She tells herself that's why she's trembling like a leaf-- the pain and nothing else.
Are you lost little bird?
It is his voice that snaps her out of whatever hunger had settled in her stomach and was slowing encasing her golden, shadowed skin. Reave. If he’s fire, and flint, and things-to-quick-burn, she’s the smoke and shadows rising up in them. She’s the jasmine, and cedar, and petals curling up into prophecy and magic. She’s everything that has ever begged and grew for the sole purpose of smoldering, and smoking, and drifting back into the night in motes of ash. “Not at all,” she tells him. If she notices the way her own voice trembles or her heart stutters, it doesn’t show. Even when her heart is leaping into her throat like it can’t bear to be trapped within her ribs any longer she is swallowing it back down, like she doesn’t know what it’s like to be any less fierce than a she-wolf fighting for the right to live.
This is when she turns to see the face of the moon-marked soul-walker and she—she just....breathes.
The air taste like stardust, ash and salt.
“Oh.” The word comes out like a sigh, both heavy and confused and dark enough to drown out every star in the sky.
She turns blue eyes away and to the one who called them as he begins to speak. It takes her a moment to figure out what is it that makes her shiver while she watches him. Her heart trembles like a caught butterfly, frantic and tender winged. Each of her bones feels full of snow and winter, instead of blood, runs through her veins. There is a storm inside her. She doesn’t know the story he speaks of, but she can see flashes of it, here on the soil. There is the roar of ages in her ears, the steady thrum of tired blood. There could have been horror here, profane as any rabid and desperate meeting of monsters. It is then she thinks, she has never paused as often as she should to wonder at the secrets of the earth.
All that magic.
She feels her mother’s heart shaking, wherever she may be.
Maybe if her head was clearer, maybe if there were not two boys here that—, maybe if she were not so knew, she would have backed out there and then. Though somehow, she does not think he would allow that even if she had thought of it.
The others go to work and Elliana stands there and feels a rush of heat at how foolish she may look. What is she capable of? She has no brawn, no powers to control the way the earth moves, cannot transform herself into anything useful to burrow her way through the dirt and soil. She thinks of her mother, and when she had been little ‘Ask for what you want, but do so politely.’ She had teased the daughter who had begged for an apple. “Can you show me where to go, please?” She asks, and images appear before her, of quakes, and faults and plates that have shifted. She hits in just the right spot and the earth gives way, only slightly but enough to fuel her confidence.
She continues the pattern, asking and receiving (Elliana is reminded of Denocte’s mountains and maybe this is enough comfort to keep her pushing forward.) Dirt piles onto her coat, covering the long, white foreleg that reaches forwards, hitting, and thrashing against the tunnel she has created. Mud streaks her cheeks. And she feels dirty, and savage, and anything but pretty. But there is another thought that raises, as she pushes through the soil. Elliana does not think she wants to be pretty. Tame things are pretty and she feels so very, very far from tamed in this moment.
Inside her chest her heart trembles like a caught hawk, almost like a warning before she rams her shoulder forward and finds the give is far too easy. And Elliana pirouettes like a reluctant dancer into the darkness.
The wind rushes in and the humid curls of her hair move with it. And when she tosses her head, like wolf just waking up, sharp needles of feeling make her quiver as the knots pull and snag.
She tells herself that's why she's trembling like a leaf-- the pain and nothing else.
Are you lost little bird?
It is his voice that snaps her out of whatever hunger had settled in her stomach and was slowing encasing her golden, shadowed skin. Reave. If he’s fire, and flint, and things-to-quick-burn, she’s the smoke and shadows rising up in them. She’s the jasmine, and cedar, and petals curling up into prophecy and magic. She’s everything that has ever begged and grew for the sole purpose of smoldering, and smoking, and drifting back into the night in motes of ash. “Not at all,” she tells him. If she notices the way her own voice trembles or her heart stutters, it doesn’t show. Even when her heart is leaping into her throat like it can’t bear to be trapped within her ribs any longer she is swallowing it back down, like she doesn’t know what it’s like to be any less fierce than a she-wolf fighting for the right to live.
This is when she turns to see the face of the moon-marked soul-walker and she—she just....breathes.
The air taste like stardust, ash and salt.
“Oh.” The word comes out like a sigh, both heavy and confused and dark enough to drown out every star in the sky.
She turns blue eyes away and to the one who called them as he begins to speak. It takes her a moment to figure out what is it that makes her shiver while she watches him. Her heart trembles like a caught butterfly, frantic and tender winged. Each of her bones feels full of snow and winter, instead of blood, runs through her veins. There is a storm inside her. She doesn’t know the story he speaks of, but she can see flashes of it, here on the soil. There is the roar of ages in her ears, the steady thrum of tired blood. There could have been horror here, profane as any rabid and desperate meeting of monsters. It is then she thinks, she has never paused as often as she should to wonder at the secrets of the earth.
All that magic.
She feels her mother’s heart shaking, wherever she may be.
Maybe if her head was clearer, maybe if there were not two boys here that—, maybe if she were not so knew, she would have backed out there and then. Though somehow, she does not think he would allow that even if she had thought of it.
The others go to work and Elliana stands there and feels a rush of heat at how foolish she may look. What is she capable of? She has no brawn, no powers to control the way the earth moves, cannot transform herself into anything useful to burrow her way through the dirt and soil. She thinks of her mother, and when she had been little ‘Ask for what you want, but do so politely.’ She had teased the daughter who had begged for an apple. “Can you show me where to go, please?” She asks, and images appear before her, of quakes, and faults and plates that have shifted. She hits in just the right spot and the earth gives way, only slightly but enough to fuel her confidence.
She continues the pattern, asking and receiving (Elliana is reminded of Denocte’s mountains and maybe this is enough comfort to keep her pushing forward.) Dirt piles onto her coat, covering the long, white foreleg that reaches forwards, hitting, and thrashing against the tunnel she has created. Mud streaks her cheeks. And she feels dirty, and savage, and anything but pretty. But there is another thought that raises, as she pushes through the soil. Elliana does not think she wants to be pretty. Tame things are pretty and she feels so very, very far from tamed in this moment.
Inside her chest her heart trembles like a caught hawk, almost like a warning before she rams her shoulder forward and finds the give is far too easy. And Elliana pirouettes like a reluctant dancer into the darkness.