[private] I think that I could die for this revelation; Elio

[elio]

elio

some say I should learn to cry but I only learned how to fight
and I know everything must die but nothing fades like the light

It’s a silly dance Elio does, this desperate attempt to escape his shadowed enemy. He gasps as he prances, first frowning then releasing his air in heavy, frightened exhales. The glittering panic in his stormy eyes catches Darkling strolling closer. The snake lifts an irritable, hooded head and Elio’s heart pumps with what he thinks might be his last moments—only to have the creature beckoned away from him. With hooded, confused eyes, he observes the snake slither lovingly over Darkling and then . . . disappear.

“Uh,” Elio says, abruptly lifting his head to peer suspiciously at Darkling. There’s something devilishly handsome about the palomino, something that keeps him from spitting a few vicious words into his charming face. He does allow his displeasure to fold creases into his face, a frown serious but adorably disgruntled clear on his face. Elio finally lifts himself to his full, straight height and peers down his nose at Darkling.

“Don’t you think conjuring fake snakes will instill the exact opposite?” Elio asks with a cock of his head to his left. He uses a stern tone he learned from Lepis, but swallows back a strange shifting in his stomach. Elio thinks that he wants this boy to argue with him, to push him to the side with his shoulder, tell him he’s an idiot for taking everything so seriously . . . because clearly this shadow-manipulating stranger takes nothing seriously—and Elio longs to draw closer to that chaos.

“Why’d you do it anyway?” Elio hopes desperately Darkling doesn’t say something like because I felt like it—he doesn’t think his heart can take it.

@[Darkling]