Stavanger Bay deixar lo sortir

if u want <3

you've got to eat at some point, cara trista, ellie remarked to the pitiful @Lestan, who may as well have been a sickly victorian child. we will 'ave to find somet'ing you can keep down.
she'd been with the two men for a few days now, and so far their search for the girl named blossom had been fruitless. the sky was overlain with pink and orange between a bloom of rather dismal looking clouds, and the sea almost seemed to be mocking them with its constant roar.
ellie sat down beside the distraught father with a sour, concerned look upon her face. when do you t'ink you will want to go inland? per'aps zat is where your luck lies.

always <3

the rosepink depths of elodie's eyes had often settled on lestan these days. he was morose, dour; he plodded along between she and shardik, grunting answers and refusing to speak unless he was addressed.
surf roiled, and the thunderheads in the distance reflected his own stormy mood. "it's been time to leave, elodie," lestan answered in the same monotone which had characterized his voice, as if only the leap of emotion made it shimmer into a hundred stammering pieces. "i am just not ready."
he trailed his paw across the wet sand. "i shouldn't be the one in charge of anything. shardik knows where the creek is."

it seemed as though he had shrunken in even more on himself as she spoke. i suppose i don't blame you, she retorts, pausing to watch the tiny trench of gritty sand form as lestan pulls it away with his nails. i don't know exactly what you are going t'rough, but... i can see 'ow much it hurts you.
'ave you ever been to ze creek? she asks next, a gentle persuasion that would hopefully get him to think of something, anything else, even if only for a second. it sounds nice.
the rosy eyes trace up the length of his slender forelimb to the seaswept ruff of his neck, focusing now on the leathery, alien object that had him ensnared. what was that thing? her brow furrows as she stares at it, watching a tiny, but rather distracting blinking light. was it rude to ask?

his laughter was a dark susurration carried off by the next briny wind. "yes. i used to live there. blossom was born in the creek."
well. almost.
"if she ever returned, she might go to that place." he sighed; the breeze caught at his ears and, caught in a restless tow, lestan rose and paced energetically along the beachfront. this place had been all he'd known for so long — how could he leave?
the thing netted in his fur had long since ceased registering to lestan as a foreign object; he stared mournfully toward the ocean for the four-hundredth time that day and heaved another long exhale.

ah, i see, ellie trills, lowering herself down so that her belly may rest upon the sand as lestan stood. i assume you moved 'ere, at some point, sí?
he was heartbreakingly pathetic to watch, so constantly high strung. it was as if she was watching somebody pull the threads from him one by one, methodically stripping him down; she almost could not bear to watch.
do you know where her, um, mare might be? something in her did not want to ask this question, and yet she could fight it no longer; the mountain term made it feel somehow less awkward, like a barrier between the question and the answer. a death? an ugly divorce? were they dealing with an unhinged trigger-happy daughter thief? was lestan on the run from her? all of these were possibilities, and the longer she looks at the man, the more tragic she believes the situation to be.

a light ringing filled the ears of the mayfair as elodie asked after the woman who had been blossom's mother. if lestan concentrated very hard, shreds of a golden voice would touch his ears — only to be replaced by a charging doe of fire which transformed into a giant, gilded bird. flames were its wings, and its talons had cut through his entire body in countless dreams.
he trembled, and rapidly blinked, and shook his head as he stared sightlessly toward the shore; "she's gone."
and his voice was filled with the finality of one who has laid another to rest. 
lestan did not know, and yet there was a severing inside him at the thought of the golden light in a way it had not been for blossom.

i'm sorry to 'ear zat.
it was a simple answer to a not so simple question, and now ellie truly began to regret asking it. she goes silent for a long while, letting the song of the ocean communicate what she could not.
i am sure that wherever your dotter is, she is 'appy, she whispers it, almost, voice feathersoft and reaching gently to soothe in a way that was simply impossible. you said she is a year old now, hm? you know how kids zat age can be. maybe-- ah, i don't know.
there was so much to say and yet nothing at all. ellie lets the silence linger like an old friend in a doorway.

"n-no. i d-don't k-know," lestan stuttered, feeling himself start to fragment again. "i w-wasn't a-allowed to f-find out." clamping his mouth tightly shut, he forced his lips into a thin line and his eyes pointedly away from the sadness and pity and wonder that resided in elodie's face.
"i w-want to b-believe s-she's happy t-too. i almost d-don't w-want to find her." after all this, what if blossom was thriving without him? the shattered figure of her broken father casting himself back into her life — wasn't that just
"it is s-selfish, m-maybe."

it is up to you, lestan, ellie shrugs her shoulders, watching him even as he casts himself away from her. do you t'ink you would be ready to see her again? or would you rat'er get yourself toget'er first? make a life for yourself?
there was no easy way to go about this. it's not selfish. you miss her. i'm sure she misses you too. but, and now she readjusts herself in the way a therapist might cross her legs and tilt her glasses. when was ze last time you did anyt'ing for yourself? maybe you need some time to recover. you have been t'rough a lot, lestan.
pausing, thinking, cogs turning inside her little head. maybe we should start to head for ze creek. it could be a good place to get your head on straight. and, if shardik and i are lucky, maybe zey will take us, too. so you-- so none of us 'ave to be alone zere.

he was a half-man, with a half-life., and he had never felt that so keenly as he did now. lestan did not know how to answer elodie's questions, and so withdrew into a heavily pensive silence. she was not wrong, of course, but her ministering voice took him to mind of bridget, which in turn reminded him of the bay, which reminded him of the little seaside den in which so much strife had taken place that he was sick to think of it —
"blood," he muttered, mind shot through with fragmented illusions; his jaws, dripping; his voice, a shout.
"m-my cousin is at t-the creek," lestan said at last with a low sigh. "h-he'll let us in, at l-least. i-i'm n-not sure h-he really w-wants to see m-me, though. i'm — i w-was — w-well. i was intolerable, elodie."
and none of this was really an answer, but lestan was exhausted now, and wanted to lie down.

had ellie known what tore through lestan's fractured mind, she would have flung herself into the sea for asking such horrible questions; but instead, all she could think to do was look at him with a featherlight softness that had not been there before. here in front of her was — a broken man. not broken in the sense that he needed fixing, but broken in the sense that he needed someone to hold the shattered pieces of him together until he could glue them back into place.
the girl visibly slumps, leaning down onto her elbows until her belly reaches the ground. she does not reach for him, but she curls her body toward him as if it were an invitation for him to come closer, should he seek it.
you are not intolerable, reietó. her lashes flutter over her eyes as she focuses on the calming pull of the ocean. the polite-therapist act now filtered through by her own hurt which blazed on this poor, sad man's behalf, she struggles over her tongue, sounds stopping at the back of her mouth before they can form into words.
queda't amb mi, she finally whispers.

the softness was something that lestan could discount as pity. but the way she extended her warm arms to him could not be transmuted or ignored. and so when his mournful glance pulled her way, it was with no small amount of surprise and wariness.
all had been kind to lestan. his was not an abused life; these strangers had rallied around him, for him, and yet the mayfair could not shake the idea that he was only a coffin to be dragged across several terrains.
"but i w-was," came the insistent whisper.
he crouched; he knelt; he did not reach for elodie, nor touch her, but in the soft presence of her curved body, lestan found a bit of respite.
he fell asleep almost at once, features slackening until he looked almost peaceful.

<3 im good for a new one whenev ur ready!

he did not come close. he is wary, like a frightened kitten one found beneath the tire of a truck. ellie does not press further.
she turns her eyes away, focus torn to the sheet of stormy gray which hung above them, darkened with the approach of evening. her breath is tight in her chest.
when she looks back over at lestan, he is asleep. decidedly, she would not leave — they would stay in this comfortable parallel for as long as the man wished.