1186. About nostalgy, 8
(Armylè)
An unexpected meeting for my tall kid.
Néphéline raised her head to meet Elyne’s gaze. The later was a little surprised.
For the first time perhaps, Néphéline wasn’t glaring at her aggressively. There even seem to be softness behind this face.
Elyne moved to let her unexpected friend come in.
Néphéline stepped in silently.
Elyne was still feeling too weird to notice the bigger change that had occurred around her visitor.
She was too preoccupied by her own filth seemingly staining everything to notice the new lack of it surrounding Néphéline.
The younger one went to sit on a chair, waiting for her host to return from the door where she lingered, absent minded. Néphéline was holding herself well, not slouching. For once she looked as dignified as her grandmother, waiting calmly there.
Elyne went to more nonchalantly sit in front of her. She wasn’t thinking about much but her lingering nausea. Only this time and for a first, it didn’t come from the usual aura.
Elyne sighed in her misery, and struggled to focus in order to have a coherent discussion.
E - Why did you come to see me Néphi?
Néphéline didn’t answer immediately, but her gaze was clear and plain. Her light green eyes, almost colourless, as if only pupils were there. There was no aggressiveness. Worse, there was this plain change.
Elyne finally felt the shock noticing it. A part of her didn’t recognise the girl in front of her. Someone calm and lucid was looking at her.
E - You’ve lost your aura...
Néphéline seemed pleasantly surprised to hear it. She was never able to fully grasp how she made others feel for all these years. And now her sharp look gave her a sense of intelligence more than aggressiveness. It was legitimate, since she understood what Elyne meant.
N - Yes, I believe I have found enough will to put it to sleep for a while. It will likely return soon unfortunately. So I wanted to make use of this time of lucidity to... Well, I didn’t come here to talk about me.
E - You came to talk about Prume.
N - Of course... You know it too, don’t you?
E - What?
N - That she is still alive.
Elyne felt eviscerated hearing it. The pain showed over her face. Her gaze turned shy as she tilted her head between pain and shame.
N - That’s weird... As her twin and as... you. I thought you would be more aware of it.
E - It’s not about awareness. It’s more about confidence...
N - Why wouldn’t you have any more confidence in you two?
Elyne tried to think about it and just began crying. Néphéline was first flummoxed to see Elyne in tears like a young child. She then found in herself the more mature response to reach out to Elyne and try to console her. Even if it was clumsy, she meant it. Elyne found her face puller gently toward a shoulder. Néphéline wasn’t a tall girl next to her but it was done without difficulties.
Elyne was melting down before her. She talked little, admitting that atrocious and permanent pain in her.
Néphéline could understand a thing or another about feeling ripped apart from the inside. It looked almost banal to her. And it looked only like common grief, even if the intensity was weirdly off normal lines.
Although a slightly different thought was floating between them this night.
The pain was less about grief, and more about longing. The absence and the enduring solitude stemmed the real wound.
Elyne had felt abandoned, from a rather heavy relationship she had not been ready to let go of. Prume disappearing had really broken down her bearings when she had been able to handle it. Elyne would not be able to address this with a smile before some time.
Her inner turmoil and struggle, in that pit, it lingered. Unable to see how much progress had already been done since the blow had come. Elyne was far nearer the exit than the deep end of that pit, but she didn’t have the perspective to realise it.
We all had seen the sister being a little too close to each other. It bordered levels worrying me at times, but I never fully dreaded an awful end. I didn’t manage to prepare Elyne any better and that saddened me.
Although as much as she now moaned against the younger red haired girl, Elyne was going to survive and get better; soon enough. Maya and Néphi helped her as well on her way up.
She wouldn’t have been able to face them at all a few months back.
Now Elyne felt she was showing the worst of herself to Néphéline. Because she was crying and feeling horrible. Because she could barely stand on that moment, and leaned over someone younger and weaker than her. Was it so shameful?
Elyne was going to resurrect, thanks to all of us as well. Sharing her pain with Néphi was caring, for both of them.
So for now she was sobbing against the shoulder and holding hopelessly over that slimmer frame. Elyne still had the strength of a young bear and probably was hurting her. Néphéline endured selflessly.
~
At the same time, Elyne was sweating something else this time.
Her muscles were nervous, her skin was sweating. And something else in the air turned slightly electric.
Elyne changed slightly something about her surrounding reality. As if her shadow was spreading over the walls.
For a moment, Elyne turned darker in her sorrow, and Néphéline felt what it was like to be near a noxious aura. For a moment of loss, Elyne had expressed something similar or even worse.
The air was turning colder. The sounds were slightly muffled. The projected shadows of everything were slightly tilting as if the refractive index of the air was changing. Néphéline was noticing these odd tricks of their minds, but focused on Elyne’s sorrow rather.
Elyne’s tearful moment lasted for a few minutes, to a point of forgetfulness. As if waking up, she rediscovered where she was and who she had been clutching onto. Feeling a little more like herself, she managed to let her go, stand up, and wipe her face with the closest towel. Her aura had vanished.
A moment of sorrow, and a faster rebound. Not as high as she wished, for now.
N - A medic spoke out in records. Prume had a liquid tumour in her head. They operated her to help. She... didn’t die in the operation. She... escaped. Likely the city entirely.
E - ... Does my mom know?
N - I’m not sure of what she knows. It’s Cheryl who has everything.
Elyne teared up a little again. But things were getting better.
She thought about me. She wondered about when was the last time she saw me.
Something amorphous like a sad omen was reminded to my daughter. Something that bound me, my friend Samanthine, the medical history of our city and Prume’s past condition. Elyne had some conflicted thoughts, but was unable to reach the end of it as Néphéline interrupted her.
N - Elyne, forgive me.
E - ? For what?
N - I... My mind is clear currently because I’m still a little in shock, but I don’t think it’ll last... I wanted to steal Prume away from you, I’ve been hating you, and I’ve... hurt her too.
Néphéline too was wounded. In this moment when she had lost all her strength, her aura had collapsed along, and some inhibitions. Her feeling of guilt had weighed on her. Her usual psyche not there to numb her feelings at that moment. Néphéline was revealing herself to Elyne.
It was perhaps the first time these two people met for real, without veils between them.
What Néphéline admitted having felt, what she confessed having done. Her feelings for Prume expressed, and even her fantasies. It related truly with Elyne unfortunately. Néphéline had allowed her desire to get the best of her, and now she confessed it in all her pain to the other sister. Néphi had gone and stolen a kiss from Prume while she was unconscious, and this had haunted her.
Elyne couldn’t hear that and remain cool headed. Not in anger, but right now in shared blame for letting something primal getting the best of them.
It was harder for Elyne to admit it than it just had been for the apologetic Néphéline. My daughter was very uneasy while the other girl was seemingly managing to free herself from some of quite the heavy and longstanding burdens.
On their way out of the well, Néphéline was a step ahead currently.
Upward toward revival as human beings. As conscious adults. The work was progressing.
Elyne listened, with conflicted emotions of shame, bits of anger, sorrow, and some admiration.
~
