I knew her for a little ghost
That in my garden walked;
The wall is high—higher than most—
And the green gate was locked.
That in my garden walked;
The wall is high—higher than most—
And the green gate was locked.
There was once a mid afternoon in Delumine, the first afternoon spent with Septimus. He had been creating maps of Delumine. He let her choose a gemstone from his antlers.
The gem she had picked had matched her eyes. She loved that gemstone. She had placed it under her pillow just as she had promised and there it remained. May remain there still. She often wonders who sleeps in her bedroom now, Rhone has no children. She likes to think the night she closed that door, it remained closed so that the shadows could sleep and all those who lived in those shadows would earn some rest, the forgotten children of the shadows that once came to her. (One forgotten, two wandered too far, three fell, four from war, five murdered, six, seven, eight.) She imagines they admire that gemstone, that they hold it dearly like she once did.
She lost that gemstone along with everything else, the night she fled from Terrastella to the Delumine forest.
There is a silence that sits between them and Elliana is vaguely aware of him watching her memories. Elliana is not one to hide, she would never hide. (This is a lie. A Blatant lie. But, she would never say so out loud.) She unfurls her mind before him. As the silence stretched between them, Elli let herself sink into a comfort she had perhaps never felt. She has been around little for such a large amount of time, aside from her family, her foster sisters, and Aeneas. Elli, the ever lonely shadow (lonely shadow, can there be such a thing?) she had become talented at the art of avoidance.
But he speaks, and she finds she doesn't mind it. Words could be poems, sentences to sonnets, questions to haikus. “One day?” She asks and hides the finalist hint of a laugh under her tongue. “So that means we will meet again, beyond this?” She asks, throwing blue eyes to the landscape to whatever—this was. “You assume much, Reave.” And she offers him a simper of a smile.
She grabs his hand and drags him into those shadows she was so comfortable, at home in. (She had once questioned it, had once cried over it, how could she not when her mother was the epitome of sunshine and fire?) “I shall keep watch then,” she says and nods her head in his direction as she begins to work.
“My father, he was a monk of the shadows,” she admits to him. “He could control them, turn them into shapes,” she says, but beyond that, Elliana had no idea. She never met her father when he had his sight, before those shadows buried theirselves in his eyes until all he could see was darkness. “The stallions that swallowed the sun they were called, but I know little else,” she tells him and glances down at the injuries she heals, suddenly weary. “But I digress.” She says as she finishes. Her blue eyes close with a tiredness she has not felt in some time, but she continues speaking to the bone boy all the same. “Tell me about these creatures with yellow eyes. What did they say to you?” She bats one eye open and points it towards him. “Any secrets worth telling?”
@[Reave]
Picture colored by star <3