I want you to; Tephra Ponies

[Ellyse]

don't you tell me to deny it; i've done wrong and i want to suffer for my sins.

   Time had gone by, as it always does, seeking permission from none and caring little as to who it affects in the process. The sun had risen and fallen, day after day, unrelenting. The leaves on wiry branches had become brittle, dry and fallen, only to sprout anew with the delicate rainfall after an icy, dormant winter. It was obstinate and steadfast, as the days turn into months, and the months turn into years. 

   Her youth was beginning to slip away from her, leaving faint but hardened lines along the corners of her eyes, and a weary gleam within her hazel eyes – it felt as if the upheaval of everything she had ever known or loved was nothing but a forgotten, distant memory. She tried so hard to ignore the heavy lump that weighed so heavily in her throat at the thought of her own father, of her sister – so many had been lost in the wrath of the land, and so many had been lost. It was easier to pretend it had never happened, that the world had not been turned upside-down, that the lives of all those she knew had been changed forever.

  Alas, every now and then, there is something that stirs the memory from the deepest, darkest recesses of her mind, reminding her of the turmoil of a world wrought with ire and trepidation. Something that awakens the familiar ache of anxiety, drawing the stark, vivid images of the ground shifting, moving, changing just beneath her. The darkness of the incensed sky, alight with fire and ash, as white-hot magma built upon what had been too easily torn apart. The memories wrack her brain as her eyes observe something – no, someone familiar. Someone who brings back a memory so long forgotten, it nearly sets her heart alight with fury once more.

  It dwindles within seconds, and instead her brow is furrowed with an emotion that does not often come to the surface for her – pity? No. Sympathy. She knew too well how frightened she had been, and how uncertain the ground felt beneath her in the moments and even hours following her own awakening. It had been so long, though – so much time had passed; what had kept her? Ellyse knew she would likely be rebuked, and her presence unwelcome, but she knew how deeply Magnus cared for every individual that had once called Heaven their own – she knew how his heart still ached at the thought of failing anyone, of leaving anyone behind in the aftermath.

  He still hadn’t forgiven himself; he still felt the immense burden of guilt upon his shoulders.
  A guilt that he might not have, if it were not for her .. if it were not for her own temper.

  Quietly, uncertainly, ”Kena? Kena, I don’t know if you remember me –“ or if she’d even care to. ”- it’s Ellyse. I – it’s gone,” she utters, eloquence lost in the moment, her brow ridge furrowed together. ”the Gates, I mean.” And finally, ”You’re not alone.”

Ellyse

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