[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/5QbJPTs.png[/img][/center][hr][sub][color=d15e5e]Location:[/color] Amaya Selu[/sub][hr][hr]

Amaya had lived her entire life within walls. 

Layer by layer they encased her, making her small by their greatness. The border walls of the Lunaris capital, grey and distant; the polished white stone that wrapped around the royal grounds; the shining marble of the palace, walls folding over themselves in a frigid maze of hallways and empty rooms; the ice she pulled around herself, with careful practice and trembling hands. At some point it had become second nature – the ice came whether she called it or not, both prison and protection.

And she’d been contained. Held in place. Held [i]together[/i]. Small, fragile, and ignorant, she’d seen her walls and thought them the boundaries of the world. She’d felt ice against her back and mistook it for a spine, seen the distorted fractures of her reflection and thought herself whole.

There had been warmth, once. Soft and tender, it had cocooned her so thoroughly that she thought even the chill wouldn’t touch her. But warmth was a dangerous thing – it melted the ice, left the walls thin and fragile.

[color=d15e5e][i]This is your fault.[/i][/color]

The words hadn’t belonged to her. Still, they echoed through Amaya, catching themselves along her fractured edges and making a home in what remained. 

She saw soft blue eyes. Pale skin. White hair like moonlight, shining through the shadows. Blood.

Words seeped through the ice and again, Amaya stained them with her grief.

[color=d15e5e][i]I can’t do this anymore.[/i][/color]

Relief had been a breathtaking, guilty thing, when she’d learned that Elara would accompany her for the last few months of her life – at least she would be permitted to keep this last bit of warmth until the end. Her impending death, the role she’d been destined for all along, would come swiftly, and there would simply be no time or motivation for anyone to hurt her further. Why torment someone who was already dead?

But how [i]cruel[/i] of her - to find joy in the upheaval of Elara’s life, her future grief, after a lifetime of trapping her behind the many walls that made Amaya’s world. She’d just been too blind, or naive, or needy, or [i]selfish[/i] to realize how she sapped the warmth from everyone around her. That was why Amaya was alone now – not because of any torment her father had inflicted upon her. It simply cost too much to be with her.

[color=d15e5e][i]I can’t be what you want me to be. Not anymore.[/i][/color]

Perhaps she’d never lost anything at all. The warmth had been an illusion – an indulgence, too costly to sustain. How pitiful she was, to mistake obligation and duty for… what?

[i]Love?[/i]

Did she demand what others could not give? Did she [i]take?[/i] Desperate and uncaring, she’d pulled another into her prison to freeze beside her, and thought that her icy hand wrapped around Elara’s, turning her cold and numb, crystals growing along her skin, was [i]love[/i]. 

[color=d15e5e][i]I think… I’ve always known.[/i][/color]

Elara knew her, better than anyone left in this world. Perhaps even better than her mother had. Amaya used to think herself blessed for that.

Elara knew her, and it had broken her heart. 

Perhaps she knew a truth that Amaya was only just now realizing: she was her father’s effortless cruelty, hidden behind her mother’s face.

And now, she was inescapably alone, with nothing but the shards of her own reflection, her ruined echoes forming a chorus around her.

The walls of her prison were gone, and so she collapsed with nothing to hold her together. The warmth, fleeting though it had been, had melted through her careful protection until it shattered at a touch, shards of frost scattered around her. She was a long-festering wound, alight with pain in the open air.

She had nothing left – no warmth to cradle her, no ice to shield her. There was only her grief, her hollow ache, and the burning brine of her tears as they cut familiar paths.

As the salt dried along her skin, the crystals formed like ice.

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[sub][color=d15e5e]Interactions:[/color] Amaya Selu [@c3p-0h][/sub]