Chapter Six

The voice she heard belonged to Artemis. She was sure of it. The small, delicate voice that soothed into her ears as any voice would. The other, however, was left abandoned of it’s owner.

Eloise’ parent’s were long dead. They were legends in her eyes, two people that meant so little but so much. Two people that gave her a chance to experience memories, but never experienced them with her.

Artemis has stepped into her life then, replacing her parents at her birth. She had been the first that Eloise called Mother, and the last.

Eloise closed her eyes, breathing the fresh, citrus-like aura from the comforts of the fields below her. She willed herself to remember every breath, every gust of cooling wind, and every phrase from the night before.

“Her parents are stranded. And so will she be, if you are right about her potential.”

Eloise furrowed her brow.

“I understand.” A familiar, honey-like voice echoed through her earlobes. Artemis. “Oh, Eloise.”

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Eloise. That’s my name. “Her parents are stranded; Oh, Eloise.” She took a deep breath as the smell of iron interrupted the embrace of citrus flowing through her nostrils. “Her parents are stranded; Oh, Eloise.” She wheezed, letting out a gasp that invited the taste of metal on her tongue. “ Her parents are stranded; Oh, Eloise.” Eloise flashed her eyes open, her nostrils flaring as an escaping tear traveled from her eyes, to the sides of her nose, and slid down her cheek .

The smell of citrus didn’t seem as inviting anymore. The lavender-tinted sky did not seem as bright anymore. The cherry-colored trees seemed to be coated in blood. Blood and iron and metal.

“Stranded.” Eloise whispered into the wind, sounding the word on her lips before letting it dissolve on her tongue. “Dead. They wouldn’t leave me. They want me, I know it. They need me. They wouldn’t leave me.”

Eloise stared at the sky, blankly. Gradually, walking away from the windowsill, she fell onto her bed, cradling her legs to her chest. “They wouldn’t leave me. She died while giving birth. He died while on a tour of the mountains a day before. They wouldn’t leave me. They wouldn’t leave me.”

She through the night, muttering and wheezing and pressing her hand to her mouth to stop her gasps. She sat through the night, believing that her parents were dead, guilty because of how greedy she was to be praying that her parents were dead because it seemed better then her being abandoned. Guilty, because of how greedy it was for her to despise Artemis after every embrace she comforted her with. How she could possibly let them leave her if what her parents did was true. How Artemis could possibly not think to tell her.

She sat through the night, believing desperate lies.