Elora Danan

[contact] voicemail + texts

Fri, 01 Dec 2023 03:39:47 GMT

Leave phone messages for Elora Danan here.

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[contact] mail + email

Fri, 01 Dec 2023 03:30:14 GMT

Leave mail for Elora Danan here.

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I dreamed of this path I walked as it was then

Fri, 03 Nov 2023 03:56:52 GMT

When Elora turns to look behind her, she feels unmistakably like something has been lost. It isn't just Graydon, either, though there's an ache in her chest when she thinks about him being left behind, out of reach; it definitely isn't whatever sheltered idea she had of the world before she followed the rescue party out of the castle. It's what she felt, maybe, that power, that potential. Even if she didn't — very much doesn't — want what the Crone was offering her, that doesn't mean it didn't feel good. Maybe that's just how life works, though. One door opens and another one closes, or something cliché like that. She left behind the safety and security of the life she'd known for twenty years and found it was all a lie in the first place, but discovered, with a lot of trial and effort, something inside her she never could have imagined. She isn't and won't ever be what the Crone would have had her be, but she's going back with some better sense of who she actually is, and with the family, however odd and makeshift, she never had. Whatever comes next, she has no idea, except to be certain that this isn't really over. No matter what it is, though, she won't be facing it alone.

"Hey," calls Kit from up ahead, pulling Elora from her thoughts. "Come on. We need you up here." Weeks ago — or maybe days, or maybe months, time on the Shattered Sea impossible to comprehend — she would have thought that Kit had lost her damn mind if she'd heard something like that. Now, she returns her friend's smile and hurries forward a few steps to catch up with the others. She steals one more glance back over her shoulder, that haunted, longing feeling whisper-quiet and yet nothing she can ignore.

And then she turns forward, and for the second time in recent memory, the world has utterly changed in an instant.

Gone is the dusty air of the Immemorial City and its eerie golden glow. Gone are her friends. She can hear and see a few people not terribly far away, but no one who should be there, who was a few steps ahead of her just a moment ago. "Oh, come on," she mutters to herself, frustrated and frightened in equal measure. Shivering, the air so much colder than it just was, she wraps her arms around herself, only to drop them a moment later and press her fingertips to her temples instead, as if trying to bring herself back to reality. "Okay. This is not right. This can't be right."

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even if the whole world changes

Sat, 18 Mar 2023 05:36:13 GMT

Somehow, the world keeps getting stranger. Elora hadn't even thought that was possible, but then, she was also having the same thought regularly before she went and found herself here, wherever here is. Darrow, apparently. She still doesn't get it. It wasn't so very long ago that she left Tir Asleen for the first time in her life, at least the first time that she knew of. She's gone so, so very far from home, farther than should even have been possible, and then wound up even farther beyond that, stuck and confused.

It's not just the trappings of all of it, either, though those certainly don't help. She doesn't have the first idea what a phone is, or why there are so many buttons on the oven in her apartment, and the first time she managed to turn her television on, she sat there transfixed, directly in front of the screen, until she wound up with a headache so bad it promptly sent her to bed. There's so much here that seems infinitely more magical than anything she's ever managed to do.

She would be fascinated by that — and she still is, really — except that it's also part of the problem. For so long, she was no one, wanting desperately to be someone; then, she was not only someone, but the someone, practically downright mythical, and wanting nothing more than to be back home in her simple life, where the most she had to worry about was burning baked goods or whether the boy she liked might like someone else. And no sooner did she embrace being that someone then she wound up no one again. She gives her name here, the one that still barely even feels like hers, and no one so much as blinks. It doesn't mean anything, leaving her relieved and desperately sad in equal measure.

At least there's still the one constant in her life: the kitchen. Confusing though her oven might be, the refrigerator is absolutely miraculous, and she knows no better way to shut her brain off when it starts buzzing with thoughts she can't manage to make sense of. This, she knows, and while it may have required some adaptation on her part, it's still the easiest thing to throw herself into. The only problem is knowing when to stop. She's already spent most of the money the city has given her on ingredients, and it's entirely too easy to let that turn into more than any one person can eat on their own. She needs all the stress relief she can get, though, and not long after her arrival, she found a place called a soup kitchen around the corner from her apartment building that feeds people who might not have the resources to feed themselves. She's already offered to go in and cook there, and to bring in anything extra she might wind up with.

There is, in fact, a lot of extra. It won't go to waste, which is the important thing, but still, she feels a little silly when she makes her way out of her building with her arms full of containers — Tupperware, she heard someone call it, which she thinks is a very stupid name — of muffins and other assorted things she's made. Abruptly, she decides that she may as well lighten her load a little. She'll still have more than enough to leave at the kitchen if she gives away some of the rest. "Hi, excuse me, do you want some muffins, by any chance?" she asks the first person she passes by, only to nearly double-take as she looks up, and up, at the man in question. "Whoa. You are... very tall."

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