[center][img]https://i.postimg.cc/660ZHgx8/Elara-Moonshadow.png[/img][/center][hr][right][sub]Location: Seluna Temple 
Mentions: Katherine ([@SpicyMeatball]), Ramona ([@enmuni]), Persephone ([@PrinceAlexus]), Flynn ([@The Muse]), Amaya ([@c3p-0h])[/sub][/right][hr]
[indent]Elara had just finished arranging her final offering when the temple door creaked open once more. She straightened from her crouch, brushing her palms together softly, and turned in time to catch the arrival of another unfamiliar figure—a woman, her arms full with a bundle wrapped in soft fabric. The scent of warm food drifted gently behind her, curling through the cold air like a promise. The stranger’s voice was quiet, reverent, and polite in the way that suggested familiarity with decorum but not entitlement. It reminded Elara of how nobility sometimes presented themselves when they’d grown up on the outskirts of court life—respectful, but not ruled by it. Her gaze dropped briefly to the basket the woman had brought. Porridge pastries, spiced meats, wrapped sweets tucked like secrets among the folds of a winter blanket. It was a thoughtful offering—practical, warm, and clearly given with intention rather than obligation. Elara recognized the difference.

She didn’t linger on the gesture long, however. It wasn’t meant for her, and even if it had been, Elara wasn’t the type to reach for what hadn’t been offered. Instead, she gave the stranger a small, almost imperceptible nod of acknowledgment, then turned back to her alcove.

Elara had just decided to focus on herself and what she’d come here to do when the shift beside her drew her attention. Ramona had claimed the neighboring niche, her motions pared to a liturgy of muscle memory. Elara kept her eyes lowered, honoring the unspoken rule of sacred spaces: devotion deserved privacy, even when performed in plain sight. But the various sounds the other’s actions elicited seeped in, and the handmaiden couldn’t help but glance sideways. 

Elara’s eyes lingered on the arc traced across Ramona’s brow, the second across her chin. Another gesture of ritual, she guessed, though not one she herself had ever practiced. Her own family had spoken their prayers with softer hands—her father’s with folded parchment, her mother’s with quiet touches. But something was arresting in Ramona’s formality, something deeply... [i]intimate[/i]. As though each word and motion had been hard-earned.

But it was the singing that surprised her the most. 

Not because it was unwelcome—Seluna’s name had been carried on song for centuries—but because it was…worn. Like something stitched together with the young woman’s grief. Ramona’s voice crackled through the stillness, paper-thin yet unflinching, and Elara found herself unable to look away.

[i][color=#007BA7]“Youthful years, oh sweet youthful years,
You stay alive, here, within my spirit...”[/color][/i] 

The words slithered beneath Elara’s ribs. Her own youth had been a script penned by others, a sieve sifting her wants until only duty remained. And yet, not everything had been sifted away. One memory clung fast: Amaya’s laughter spilling across palace hedgerows, her bare feet crushing clover as Elara trailed behind, clutching their discarded slippers like contraband. They’d collapsed onto grass still trembling with midday heat, shoulders pressed close enough to fuse. A breeze had pried a strand of Amaya’s hair loose, draping it like silk over her cheekbone. Elara’s hand had moved before thought could intervene, tucking it behind her ear. It was a gesture too tender, too telling. Her fingertips lingered, grazing the shell of Amaya’s ear, and for a heartbeat, the world narrowed to that single point of contact. Amaya’s smile then had been a puzzle that needed solving, neither permission nor protest, but a door left ajar. 

Elara’s laugh, too bright, had slammed it shut.

The memory flayed her. How dare this stranger’s apparent lament resurrect it?

[i][color=#007BA7]“That little house, which I remember,
The place where I was born, and was raised...”[/color][/i] 

She’d left at twelve, dispatched to the capital as a ward of the crown. She hadn’t wept at her departure. Not then. But now, the loss rose like bile, acrid and inescapable.

[i][color=#007BA7]“And my mother, oh, how I have loved her...”[/color][/i] 

The breath caught in Elara’s chest this time. Her gaze dropped slightly, eyes burning with a memory she had no desire to shed tears over in public. She remembered the way her mother smiled when she fumbled a healing charm. The softness in her voice, even when correcting her. That death had come too swiftly. Elara hadn’t even been there for her when it happened.

It was…sort of funny, actually. How alike, [i]how close[/i] to Amaya it had made her when she’d lost her own mother a while back. When their eyes had met during the royal announcement, Elara had wanted nothing more than to comfort her in the same way her father had done for her, despite his palpable grief. But alas, even then, Elara realized now, there was a gap between them. The prince had already been there, his consolations more than likely smooth as poured honey in her ears. 

Inwardly, Elara’s mind rebranded her empathy as intrusion.

Her fists clenched, while her eyes began to water. 

[i][color=#007BA7]Whenever we clasp our hands
Be we though in distant lands
I am still reminded of their warmth.”[/color][/i] 

She was…she was beginning to tire of this song now. She willed her body to move, to flee the song’s relentless excavation of her heart and mind, but her limbs refused, as though the stone itself had rooted her in place.

[i][color=#007BA7]“Youthful years, where have you been hidden?
Family, in life we’ve been unbidden…”[/color][/i] 

Unbidden. That word sat heavy in Elara’s stomach. She had spent so long shaping herself into what was needed, wanted, and expected. Rarely had she asked for anything without weighing the cost. It had never felt like she had the right to. Not when her role was to fade, to support, to endure.

And yet she had asked, hadn’t she? At the window. 

[right][i][color=royalblue]Do you want me, or do you need me?[/color][/i][/right]

She hadn’t asked to wound. Only to be answered.

[right][sub][i][s][color=royalblue]What is her answer?[/color][/s][/i][/sub][/right] 

[i][color=#007BA7]“Seluna, guide me when it’s my turn.”[/color][/i] 

A tear fell, searing a path to her jawline. Elara swiped at it, but others followed, a silent rebellion her body waged against her will. Ramona’s song coiled around her, a serpent of shared sorrow, and she loathed it. Loathed the way it pried open chambers of her heart she’d bricked shut. Loathed the girl who sang what she could not.

As the final note dissolved, Elara’s feet miraculously stirred. 

She stood slowly, as if afraid to draw attention to the act, as if motion itself might betray how deeply the song had touched her. Though she supposed the tears that clung to her eyelashes were a dead giveaway, especially as she made no moves to wipe them away. Let them dry. Let them vanish on their own. No one would look closely enough to see them. Not if she left now.

She kept her gaze fixed ahead, refusing Ramona the satisfaction of her attention, even as the woman’s whispered prayer brushed the air like a parting hand. The alcove’s warmth receded with each step, replaced by the chill of the corridor beyond. Here, the walls bore simpler carvings of the goddess, as if the architects had deemed humility a virtue for hidden passages. Elara leaned into the stone, its roughness a balm against her trembling spine. Her lungs ached, each breath sawing through her like a blade dragged sideways.

One breath. Then two. 

The stone didn’t ask questions, and for that, she was grateful.[/indent]