Blacktail Deer Plateau somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

✹☾❂

 

it wasn’t that she didn’t like the hushed willows, because she did. It wasn’t that she didn’t like the faeries, because she did — a lot. 

It was the ghosts.

The willows were full of spectres, from even far beyond Elysium’s days. The seraphim were not the first family to perish there, and they wouldn’t be the last. Eleuthera supposed it was like that on every inch of the face of the planet, really. Perhaps she was striding atop the bones of something long-dead at this very moment, with miles between her own animated body and theirs...

jesus, what was with her these days?

Eleuthera chalked it up to her close soul tether to the willows, but she heard the ghosts here more than anywhere else, chattering away at their endless laments. In reality, she hadn’t ever known the dead to speak before — and that’s what Scarab had told her too, but the gilded harbinger had been wrong.

As much as she loved the willows, she loathed them. It was impossible to scry the voices of her departed loved ones from those who meant nothing to her. They were all the same — had all lived, loved, and died — and all their earthly achievements mattered for naught. Sometimes, the mere thought of it made her queasy.

So Eleuthera found that she was inclined to take walks outside of the willows quite often, to calm and still her mind. It was not uncommon for these walks to be several hours long, and she’d travel far before snapping out of her fugue state and turning to head back home. Sometimes she would even pass the night out there, in some unclaimed pocket of the universe — as was the case this night.

Not incidentally, these nights were also the nights where she experienced the most restful sleep.  

As the evening began to swiftly fade into darkness, Eleuthera began to seek a fine sleeping place. There were not many trees here, and she was rather high up on the plateau around the coastal termination of the mountain range, so she felt relatively safe. A soft bed of grass would suit her just fine.

one depress-o, coming right up!
literally anyone welcome