10-31-2021, 05:25 PM
Someone—Maybird, maybe—once told Elliana that a man and a woman cannot have a truly platonic relationship. Between the two sexes, there is no such thing as friendship, only the beginning of desire.
The smile disappears from her lips and it does not return, not even when his personality blooms through the somber silence that moves with her like a shadow. Perhaps it's there though, in the way she tilts her head. It is a there and gone expression. The blood and gore make her think It maybe she does not belong here, in this world, whatever one Reave resides in. A garden was no place for a wildflower. Only the meadows would ever capture their beauty the way they deserved. She was always different, never supposed to be where she was supposed to be, or what she was supposed to be. Elliana never has felt like a princess, or a daughter even.
But she thinks Reave looks very much a king in this moment. There is some small part of her that feels small next to him—and she likes it. In the end Elli isn't brave enough, real enough, to do more than close her eyes in a snowfall of glitter and pretend that he might be nothing more than any god given flesh and thought by the power of her imagination. Only the butterfly catch of the breaths though her lungs hint that there is more she might want to say at all.
Elliana is not the storm that Aela is: the hurricane and the devouring lightning. She is the wake, the aftermath, the devastation underneath which the frailest of hopes blooms.
And her hope, her frailest of hopes, is blooming with the orchids, and roses, and ferns. It blooms when she presses her nose to his like a lion to its kill. He exhales her air right into his lungs and she does not ask to be let in. If there is charm in the gesture she has lost it somewhere between the lament of the dead flower and the youthful stutter of her heart. She likes the way his voice sounds, how easy it is, how confident he is. How beautiful. it sounds to her like that wave crashing on the shore of a mortal man. It sounds like a riptide heading back out to the deep with the sand and rocks held tight as a heart.
She wishes she could sound like that, and is almost sure she doesn’t.
“Reave,” she scolds, her voice is lowered as if in reverence. “Hold still,” she says as she gathers the shadows around her and lets it knit his flesh back together. She cannot clean the blood, though she wonders if she cried a hundred thousand tears if that would be enough. “What did you do?” She asks him. “Is this the cost of a crown?”
The smile disappears from her lips and it does not return, not even when his personality blooms through the somber silence that moves with her like a shadow. Perhaps it's there though, in the way she tilts her head. It is a there and gone expression. The blood and gore make her think It maybe she does not belong here, in this world, whatever one Reave resides in. A garden was no place for a wildflower. Only the meadows would ever capture their beauty the way they deserved. She was always different, never supposed to be where she was supposed to be, or what she was supposed to be. Elliana never has felt like a princess, or a daughter even.
But she thinks Reave looks very much a king in this moment. There is some small part of her that feels small next to him—and she likes it. In the end Elli isn't brave enough, real enough, to do more than close her eyes in a snowfall of glitter and pretend that he might be nothing more than any god given flesh and thought by the power of her imagination. Only the butterfly catch of the breaths though her lungs hint that there is more she might want to say at all.
Elliana is not the storm that Aela is: the hurricane and the devouring lightning. She is the wake, the aftermath, the devastation underneath which the frailest of hopes blooms.
And her hope, her frailest of hopes, is blooming with the orchids, and roses, and ferns. It blooms when she presses her nose to his like a lion to its kill. He exhales her air right into his lungs and she does not ask to be let in. If there is charm in the gesture she has lost it somewhere between the lament of the dead flower and the youthful stutter of her heart. She likes the way his voice sounds, how easy it is, how confident he is. How beautiful. it sounds to her like that wave crashing on the shore of a mortal man. It sounds like a riptide heading back out to the deep with the sand and rocks held tight as a heart.
She wishes she could sound like that, and is almost sure she doesn’t.
“Reave,” she scolds, her voice is lowered as if in reverence. “Hold still,” she says as she gathers the shadows around her and lets it knit his flesh back together. She cannot clean the blood, though she wonders if she cried a hundred thousand tears if that would be enough. “What did you do?” She asks him. “Is this the cost of a crown?”