[center][h3] Where Grief Sings and Prays
Part 2 [/h3][/center][center][table][row][cell][center][img]https://i.imgur.com/odTNjeu.png[/img][/center][/cell][/row][row][cell][sub]Location: Seluna Temple |  Collaboration with [@Qia][/sub][/cell][/row][/table][/center][indent]Ramona sighed softly. She nodded, her tight-lipped smile forming a sort of hesitant, if warm smile that suggested, whatever her intentions were, that she had scarcely expected anything like what she was seeing to come from her actions, and that this surprise was very much welcome.

Quickly, she hoisted herself up and stood with Elara, if the slightest bit behind her rather than directly alongside her.

[color=#007BA7]“Guess we’ll learn together,”[/color] she offered as they began to exit the little room, [color=#007BA7]“Want me to hang by you for a bit before I get back to work? I still got a bit of time…”[/color]

Elara paused at the threshold, shifting slightly at Ramona’s offer, feeling the urge to say yes war with the ingrained reflex to decline.

“[color=royalblue]I'd like that,[/color]” she said eventually, the words small but genuine. Rather than moving immediately, however, she leaned lightly against the nearest column, letting the solid stone cool the last of the tremor in her hands.

“[color=royalblue]You know...[/color]” Elara said after a moment, her voice low, reflective. She studied Ramona from the corner of her eye — the veil, the muted posture, the way she somehow seemed both solid and half-faded at once. “[color=royalblue]I used to think you were just another ghost in the palace,[/color]” she admitted, her thumb brushing the edge of Aliseth’s cloak. “[color=royalblue]Not invisible, exactly. Just... easy to overlook. Like you were part of the stonework. [/color]” 

Elara tilted her head back against the column, her gaze tracing the worn arch of the ceiling above them. “[color=royalblue]I think... I just never looked closely enough.[/color]” Her voice carried no bitterness, no self-reproach, but only the quiet surprise of a curtain pulled back on something she should have recognized far sooner. “[color=royalblue]I’m glad I finally did.[/color]”

Ramona stood patiently a short distance from Elara, not quite at attention, but in a position that suggested a certain awareness that was anything but casual. Truthfully, the entire thing was still a surprise. In theory, they definitely did have enough in common to reach an understanding. Ramona had herself never imagined it would have been enough. Her mouth pulled to the side in a more easy-going smirk as it all clicked into place. Neither of them had really thought. But wasn’t that the way of things, back at the palace? 

Ramona had gotten furthest by not asking questions. By pretending she couldn’t see anything in front of her other than her express duties. And maybe Elara had been the same way after all. Maybe it was just the right of the servants of Lunaris, that they should be at their best when they should know so little of others that they might barely even know themselves. And here they were, finding a camaraderie to grow so easily, as if it had been destined from the start. Wasn’t it all a bit…stupid? 

[color=#007BA7]“Heh…heh…”[/color] she let out a few little chuckles. Ramona brought a hand to her chest and snorted. Her smile grew, until it cracked past a smirk into a plainly warm, good-humoured expression, even as she shook her head, like the whole thing was all too much. 

[color=#007BA7]“I, uh, heh—I kinda figured the same thing about you,”[/color] she remarked, [color=#007BA7]“I mean, it’s the whole job, right? Sorta like, I get to be a piece of the palace that cleans itself, and you get to be a shadow that dresses the Princess. Only other real person I ever knew who worked there was my husband. Until now, anyway.”[/color]

Ramona let out a wistful sigh and put her hands on her hips, shaking her head again, like she was laughing at herself.

[color=#007BA7]“Dunno why it never occurred to me back in those days to—oh, why am I talking like we’ve been here years! And like this for years! It [i]is[/i] all that different here, and now, isn’t it? It feels like a thousand years ago when he and I watched that last sunset on the palace walls. It could have always just been us, and I would have been fine with that. I’d never really thought that much about you, or the Princess…or, if I’m being honest, even the King. It was always just a job. But now he’s gone. Now all of this is just…life. Which I guess…is the way it’s been for you for a long time, hasn’t it? And now I’m here too, because of the Princess. And I’m talking to you...”[/color]

Ramona started to trail off. As she’d spoken, her expression slowly sank, without even really realizing it. As she spoke, half to herself, she finally closed her eyes, reached up, and pinched the bridge of her nose.

[color=#007BA7]“Sorry. I’m hearing myself; that sounded kinda bitchy. I mean…it’s crazy that I never thought to do it before. And now it’s all like a whole different life,”[/color] she concluded.

“[color=royalblue]It’s not crazy,[/color]” Elara said.“[color=royalblue]It’s... easier not to look too closely. Back there, it’s…it’s different from how it is here in Dawnhaven.[/color]” 

She glanced sidelong at Ramona again. 

“[color=royalblue]In Lunaris, you learn to survive by keeping your eyes down. Everyone’s too busy fighting the cold, the dark, their own hunger, to notice anything they don’t have to. People are hard-edged and careful. Even in the palace... maybe especially there. You’re not meant to be seen. You’re meant to serve and endure.[/color]” Her mouth curved into something that wasn’t quite a smile, more a recognition of a bitter truth. “[color=royalblue]But Dawnhaven...It’s too new. There aren’t enough walls to hide behind yet. Here, everyone’s survival is tied to each other’s, and no one can pretend otherwise for long.[/color]”

A dry laugh escaped the handmaiden. [i]Endure[/i]. How many times had that word been hissed at her by stewards and seamstresses? A mantra for a kingdom built on scarcity and silent compliance. Her shoulders lifted in a half-shrug, the gesture at odds with the seriousness in her tone.

“[color=royalblue]And anyway... if it helps, I’m fairly certain I sounded much….[i]bitchier[/i] yesterday. You’d have to ask the princess about that, though.[/color]” The self-deprecation, especially with Ramona’s chosen profanity, was armour, polished but transparent—an invitation to laugh, to deflect, to pretend the admission didn’t cost her. Yet beneath the levity hummed genuine uncertainty. Had her bluntness with Amaya been necessary, or merely a reflex honed in colder halls? The doubt coiled in her chest, familiar and venomous. Old habits, she chided herself, or survival? The line blurred these days, and she no longer trusted her ability to distinguish them.

Elara shifted, the urge to say something easier tugging at her, before she pressed forward instead.

“[color=royalblue]So…you were married?[/color]” Elara asked then, changing the subject. Of course, she was not married, hence the curiosity. “[color=royalblue]I’m very sorry for that loss. I can’t imagine what that must have been like for you.[/color]” The words were careful, stripped of the court’s performative pity. Empathy, she’d found, required no embellishment, and only the courage to meet another’s gaze and hold it.

Ramona nodded solemnly as Elara responded, her expression sinking into a grim, stalwart frown that affirmed all Elara was saying. It was a different world here. One where none of the old rules made sense. In another world, perhaps that would be terrifying. But it wasn’t as if the old rules were all that worth missing. So what if things were strange and unfamiliar, then? It had to be good for everyone, save for maybe the…Princess.

And here Elara was confiding that she’d been somehow…bitchy…with that Princess? Ramona’s eyes opened wide and her mouth narrowed for a moment at the shock. Elara had done or said something, and was able to speak about it this way? Able to think about it this way? Able to stand here at all, alive? The very notion, Ramona imagined, would have been utterly insane to even fathom back at the palace. But here she was, standing before another servant, commenting that something like this had happened. It was completely different.

Ramona did not have long to sit with the surprise, however. Elara asked about her husband. Ramona’s face shifted, first to a grave expression, and then to a weak smile which bore behind it a clear, deep yearning. She let out a soft, drawn out sigh as she drifted from standing free to leaning, not far from Elara.

[color=#007BA7]“My sweet Nico…”[/color] Ramona murmured. She gingerly brought one hand under her veil and held her cheek.

[color=#007BA7]“I—mmm. Thank you for your…condolences,”[/color] Ramona responded. Her voice wavered as she spoke, crackling still more than it usually did. Ramona let out a weepy laugh as her fingers drifted up to her eye.

[color=#007BA7]“He—oh…it’s only been…a few months,”[/color] she sputtered, [color=#007BA7]“And yet it feels like an eternity.”[/color]

Her voice cracked at the word [i]eternity.[/i]

[color=#007BA7]“He was so warm. And then he…wasn’t. I hate the blight. I hate it…so…much.”[/color]

Ramona’s state had quickly deteriorated, as her voice wavered more and a contingent of hot little tears escaped her. Her hand drifted down from under the veil and pulled close to her chest, joined by the other. She started to hunch, bending towards Elara.

[color=#007BA7]“I could…I could never tell you what it’s like,”[/color] she continued, [color=#007BA7]“It was supposed to be us together. Together forever. W-we w-were going to do so much…build something together…be something…together.”[/color]

Ramona shook softly. Her voice nearly cut out as she half-sputtered, half-whispered, [color=#007BA7]“I’m sorry.”[/color]

She whimpered for a moment. Then her muscles tensed as she tried to rally. She reached into her dress roughly and shakily tugged out a small silver locket with a ring sitting atop it, threaded through the chain. Her hand quivered as she clutched it tightly in her hand.

[color=#007BA7]“I don’t know if it will ever stop. I don’t know if it can,”[/color] she whimpered. She shakily inhaled again, then concluding, [color=#007BA7]“I-If you ever find someone, promise me…as a friend…you’ll pray you won’t outlive your love. Nobody deserves this. I don’t know how my father did it.”[/color]

Ramona slumped against the wall, clutching her locket, and slowly began to sink towards the floor, still breathing shakily and whimpering.

Elara remained motionless, her stillness not born of indifference but of reverence for the unbandaged truth between them. Some sorrows defy salves. They demanded the open air, the sting of unfaltering witnesses. She lowered herself onto the stone beside Ramona, the chill of the floor seeping through her skirts. Her hands stayed folded in her lap, resisting the urge to reach out, to mend. Instead, she let her shoulder rest against Ramona’s, a bridge built not of words but weight. The contact was featherlight, a counterbalance to the locket’s iron grip in Ramona’s palm. I’m here, the pressure whispered. I won’t shrink from the shape of your grief.

When it came, her voice was quiet enough to almost be lost in the tremor of Ramona’s breathing. 

“[color=royalblue]I want to,[/color]” she breathed, her shoulder pressing harder, an anchor against the riptide of shared despair. “[color=royalblue]I want to promise you.[/color]” The words hung suspended, a vow half-forged. But the silence that followed thrummed with the unsaid, the unbearable arithmetic of love and loss.

“[color=royalblue]But I can’t.[/color]”

Her hand lifted, trembling, toward her sternum, a reflex to clutch the phantom weight beneath her ribs. But the motion aborted halfway, fingers curling into a fist as if catching the ghost of a name she couldn’t utter. “[color=royalblue]There’s someone—[/color]” The sentence splintered, sharp as a bone breaking. Amaya. The name lodged in her throat, a shard of obsidian: beautiful, lethal, hers to carry. “[color=royalblue]Someone I’d cross mountains for. Someone I’d tear the world apart to protect.[/color]” Her jaw tightened, the prophecy coiling in her veins like frost spreading through the tributaries of her blood. 

Nine months, a countdown etched in nothing but borrowed time.

“[color=royalblue]And I know…[/color]” Her voice cracked once more, fissuring with the knowledge she had and wished that she didn’t. To live in ignorance, yes, but also bliss. “[color=royalblue]I know there might come a day when all the fighting, all the wanting, won’t be enough to keep them here.[/color]” She stared at the floor. How many had knelt here before her, bargaining with gods or fate or their own failing hands like she’d done only moments ago?

“[color=royalblue]If I can’t even keep them... I don’t know how I could ever promise not to outlive someone I love.[/color]” For even she was here, and her mother was not. Amaya would simply be another love she would outlive against her will, wants, and desperate desires. 

Ramona clung tightly to her locket as Elara spoke. She let a part of her weight rest against her as Elara joined her on the ground, coming shoulder to shoulder with her. In a different state, Elara’s words might have prompted questions in Ramona’s mind. But here and now, Ramona couldn’t bring herself to think. She began to fight back against her own tears, blinking vigorously to bat them away. She fumbled again, stuffing the locket back down into her dress. She opened and closed her hands quickly, as if trying to physically grasp her thoughts. There was no strength here. There was no strength in being alone. And here they were, weeping together. Together.

Ramona didn’t think. Not really. Her spine straightened, just for a moment. She rallied, just for a moment. Her mind tried to tell her to leave. To go before things got harder still. That this wasn’t worth it. But every other fibre of her being overrode those quiet thoughts and doubts with action. She had never really wanted to leave people. Not before. And again, she was up against another person she couldn’t bear to part from. It just wasn’t right. Not to either of them.

Ramona reached around with a sudden burst of speed and strength, and pulled Elara into a tight and warm, almost bordering on hot, side-hug. She was strong, still, just for a moment. Her muscles tensed and shook as she embraced Elara. But her head needed something different than the warmth and connection of a tight hug. It couldn’t be strong, not now. Her brief bout of silence broke again as another, quieter sob erupted from her. 

[color=#007BA7]“I wish I could take that away for you,”[/color] Ramona sputtered, beginning to almost rock as she spoke, still embracing Elara as she did, [color=#007BA7]“It—it’s the worst feeling in the world. You don’t deserve it. Nobody—n-nobody in the w-world dese-erves it.”[/color]

Ramona made a little sound, like she was trying to speak more, but couldn’t get anything else out in that moment, either for failing to put the words together in her mind, or for failing to produce them from her mouth. All she could offer was a brief tightening of her hug, and a shaky inhalation through the hot tears which streamed from her face, through and past her veil, onto Elara’s shoulder.

Elara’s breath shuddered as Ramona’s embrace enveloped her, strong yet trembling, fierce yet achingly fragile. She hesitated for only a heartbeat, instincts warring again: the ingrained habit to pull away, to guard herself, against the simple human yearning to be held. In the end, it was the warmth and honesty of Ramona’s grief that won out. Her own arms lifted, slowly at first, then with some certainty, wrapping carefully around the other woman as though afraid of disturbing a fragile peace.

Ramona’s words, whispered through tears, resonated deeply within Elara, unravelling something tight and knotted inside her chest. She closed her eyes, her forehead pressing against Ramona’s shoulder, feeling the tremors and heat of the other woman's grief against her skin.

“[color=royalblue]I wish the same for you,[/color]” she murmured. “[color=royalblue]You don't deserve it either.[/color]”

The words held no illusions of ease or immediate solace. Instead, they were an acknowledgment of the shared burden, the commonality of loss that now bound them as surely as the embrace did. For the first time in too long, Elara allowed herself the grace of leaning fully into another’s support, letting her tears fall silently, joining Ramona’s in quiet, mutual understanding. She let herself be held, offering and accepting comfort in equal measure, as the warmth of their shared sorrow gradually softened the cold edges of grief. No words could erase the pain they carried, but in this moment, neither woman was alone with it. That, perhaps, was enough. It had to be.

Elara allowed Ramona's tears to continue falling without interruption, feeling the warmth seep through the fabric at her shoulder. The embrace was fierce, desperate, everything she had felt earlier but had been unable to express aloud. It was humbling, she realized, to hold another's grief, to accept it without promise or deception.

When Ramona’s breaths finally evened into something resembling calm, Elara spoke. 

“[color=royalblue]That song you sang earlier,[/color]” she began, her voice thoughtful. “[color=royalblue]I'd never heard it before. But it felt like I had.[/color]” She hesitated, the silence stretching briefly before continuing, “[color=royalblue]Was it yours?[/color]” The question was gentle, careful not to pry open wounds too harshly, yet holding a quiet invitation for Ramona to share more, if she wanted, if she needed. “[color=royalblue]It sounded... like something that came from deep inside. From somewhere that hurts.[/color]”

Her gaze flickered to Ramona’s profile, tracing the damp trails on her cheeks. 

“[color=royalblue]I’m sorry if it’s hard to talk about. But it felt important.[/color]”

Ramona was quiet for a moment, her head still resting against Elara as the stillness overtook her. She loudly sniffled, then swallowed. Another breath, another exhalation, and another breath went by, then she at last spoke again.

[color=#007BA7]“It’s…an ol’…uh…ol’…”[/color] Ramona trailed off briefly, clicked her tongue, and then continued, [color=#007BA7]“I dunno if anybody else sings it. But my folks…people in my village…it’s, uh, one of the songs we used to sing. For worship.”[/color]

Ramona sniffled again and cleared her throat as she lifted her head.

[color=#007BA7]“Some of the old ladies at temple used to say it’s a song to sing for if you have to leave home, for when the winter’s getting too cold to bear, for when you have to leave something…even if you never got a say in it,”[/color] she explained, [color=#007BA7]“I usually don’t like to sing it when there’s a full temple. It’s for longing, for grievin’ something that had to end even though you never got a say. It’s about growing up, as much as anything else.”[/color]

Ramona sighed. Her hug loosened faintly.

[color=#007BA7]“I just…never know how to say the right words. How could you say what you need to say here? So I pick a song I remember—one of the ones we used to sing—and I hope Seluna’ll take it.”[/color]

“[color=royalblue]Maybe there aren’t any right words,[/color]” the handmaiden said softly.“[color=royalblue]Maybe... a song says it better, anyway. There’s something honest about music, isn’t there? It doesn’t try to fix things, but somehow it does.[/color]” She lifted her gaze, meeting Ramona’s eyes through the gauzy barrier of her veil. “[color=royalblue]I think Seluna heard you,[/color]” she murmured, conviction gentle but genuine. “[color=royalblue]I know I did.[/color]” 

Her eyes lowered. “[color=royalblue]I remembered a moment I’ve spent years trying to forget. Amaya and I, in the gardens back home. She laughed, barefoot, and I—[/color]” She broke off, swallowing. “[color=royalblue]It was nothing. A summer day. The kind you don’t realize is precious until you can’t get it back.[/color]”

She didn’t elaborate further. She couldn’t. But her next words emerged steadier, almost reverent.

“[color=royalblue]Your song made it feel like it had just happened. Like, I was still there. And also like I’d never get to be again. I hated that. But I think… maybe that’s what makes it sacred and I…[/color]” The confession scalded her tongue, unable to finish it aloud. 

[i]And I wanted to burn it down. And I wanted to kneel.[/i] 

Her hand drifted to her sternum, pressing as if to stanch an invisible wound. 

“[color=royalblue]Seluna is cruel, to let beauty linger where joy cannot.[/color]” The words were an accusation and a prayer.  “[color=royalblue]But cruelty, too, can be holy, I suppose.[/color]”

Ramona smiled softly at first, letting a brief moment of calm interrupt the tears in recognition of Elara’s compliments. It wavered and faded, returned for just a moment, until it once again melted into the tears at Elara’s assertion about the Goddess.

Again, Ramona remained silent for a spell after Elara spoke. When she finally spoke, her voice was soft—barely above a whisper.

[color=#007BA7]“When my father died, I looked up at the sky for days. I wanted to study it. Find where he was. He had to be there,”[/color] she began. She spoke slowly, like a woman defeated.

[color=#007BA7]“I used to bundle up in the winter and lay in the snow, looking up at the sky, till my face went numb. I feel like I know it well… And now. Ever since I lost Nico. I look up. Every night. He has to be there. How can there be no new stars in the sky, shining so brightly that I cannot imagine it to be anyone so beautiful as him? I just hope he’s well. Up there. If Seluna hasn’t accepted him, then I can only hope she’ll reject me, too. I hope she’s not so cruel as to separate us when the time comes. My memories are still so vivid, I can pretend we’re in that moment. That’s why I do it. To have a moment where it’s us, even if it’s pretend. I don’t know if Seluna will let me have anything more real.”[/color]

“[color=royalblue]If Seluna has any mercy in her, as I’ve always thought she did... she’ll never let you forget what it felt like to be that known. That held. You were both…greatly blessed,[/color]” Elara conceded, the admission tinged with a envy she refused to name. “[color=royalblue]To hold and be held is Seluna’s rarest sacrament. Most of us only ever kneel outside the temple.[/color]” She paused, thinking aloud now. 

“[color=royalblue]I hope... that if I’m ever loved like that, I’ll be brave enough to let it stay. That I won’t mistake it for something that needs to be outrun.[/color]” Elara let her gaze drift upward after this, toward the window’s panes that obscured the night sky. She imagined the constellations anyway—Seluna’s Crown, the twin arcs of the goddess-sisters drawn across the heavens. Aelios and Seluna. Light and shadow. Creation and undoing.

The myths painted their schism in grand strokes, Aelios’s anvil versus Seluna’s loom, ambition versus compassion, but Elara suspected the truth was much subtler than that. A disagreement over how to mend a cracked vase. A withheld apology after a petty quarrel. Mortal failings, magnified by divinity. She envisioned them in their primordial workshop, Aelios’s hands calloused from hammering continents into shape, Seluna’s fingers stained with the ink of star charts. Partners, once. Sisters, always. Until the day Aelios declared survival demanded sacrifice, and Seluna replied that survival without grace was mere prolongation. The world bore the scars of their stalemate: mountains split by Aelios’s chisel, valleys drowned by Seluna’s tears. Elara had once read that the stars were their scattered regrets, remnants of what they could have built if they'd remained united. Another tale, called the moon’s phases, Seluna’s silent mourning for the bond she'd lost. And now the blight…whatever it truly was.  

Sometimes, Elara wasn’t sure which she was in essence, despite being born under Seluna’s waning crescent, swaddled in her mother’s lullabies of resilience. Silverglen, her birthplace, had been Aelios’s domain once, too, for a short time each year. She remembered how her father’s laborers sang as they scythed the wheat, their bodies glazed with sweat and sunlight. How the small harvest festivals blazed with bonfires, sparks spiralling upward like offerings. Strength and sorrow weren’t opposing forces there; they were the twin pulleys that hoisted life forward. [i]We honoured both, in our own way, [/i] she realized then. Until the continuous war between the kingdoms made it impossible to see anything in both light and shadow. Until the world that had demanded a side be chosen decided that reunification could be the key, no matter how arduous the path. 

Her throat tightened. Flynn’s face and the faces of his people appeared in her mind—pale, gaunt, skin starved of sun. The priests called it a necessary purification, this eternal gloaming. But Elara knew the truth, had swallowed enough holy lies to choke a saint: Seluna’s grief had swollen into something possessive, a smothering embrace. She closed her eyes, and suddenly she was younger again, chasing Amaya while their laughter unspooled beneath a honeyed sky. Sunlight had streamed through the leaves like liquid gold, dappling Amaya’s hair as she spun, arms wide, revelling in the simple and rare miracle of [i]warmth[/i]. They didn’t know to call it a gift then, of course. They didn’t even know how to pray, to want. But they’d had each other, and it had been enough. After all, time and Seluna had a way of teaching her people how to live in shadow.  

With Ramona’s grief anchoring her in the present and Amaya’s laughter echoing faintly in memory, Elara found herself staring into the space between myth and moment, between what was lost and what remained. And with the other’s grief still pressed into her shoulder, Elara wondered: 
Was it mercy that the goddesses no longer touched?
Or had they simply learned the cost of looking too closely?

And if even the divine could drift apart, what hope did mortal love have?

But then she remembered Ramona’s voice, cracked and fervent, singing into the silence, hoping for an answer. That [i]had[/i] to be it. That was faith: not the absence of doubt, but the decision to sing anyway. 

Maybe, Elara thought, that was the point.
Not reunion, but remembrance.
Not answers, but endurance.

Just two sisters, still watching from opposite ends of the sky.
Still holding the world between them.

And maybe…. that was love, too. 

The moment lingered, suspended like a breath between verses. Elara allowed it to remain this way, knowing it wouldn’t last. Grief never did, not in its purest form. Eventually, even pain had to move, to rise, to return.

So she exhaled, letting go not of what was shared, but of the stillness that held it.

“[color=royalblue]We should…really return now, [/color]” she said. She didn’t move just yet, though. She looked at Ramona, and the words that followed came without hesitation.

“[color=royalblue]Will you still walk with me?[/color]”

An invitation.

One that meant: [i]You don’t have to return alone.[/i]
One that meant:[i] I won’t pretend I never saw this part of you.[/i]
One that meant: [i]You matter, now.[/i] 

Ramona shifted her head slowly on Elara’s shoulder. She let out a gentle, tragic sigh as a weak smile returned to her lips. She swallowed.

[color=#007BA7]“Of course,”[/color] she responded, [color=#007BA7]“Of course I will.”[/color][/indent]