Selenophilia

Fifteen

I have an empty feeling coming from within

The feeling of loneliness the seeps from under my skin.

I don't want to drown alone in my sorrows.

I don't want to admit that the darkness isn't so shallow.

I don't want to cry.

I don't even want to try.

But I just couldn't stop the feeling of loneliness I now unconsciously rely.

______

Elise didn't remember her own mother.

She remembered those memories vividly. Everything about her biological parents were a blur. She never felt loved, never experienced the touch of a mother's gentle caress or a father's tough love.

Never had the experience to feel yearned for, to feel like she was wanted, to feel like she's something, to feel like she's not just a nothing.

For all twelve years, she had called herself nothing.

And she believed she was, maybe she was.

Elise had believed she was incompetent, and weak and unworthy in the presence of people who were better, who were smarter, who were braver, who were cooler, who were people who Elise just wanted to be like.

And she tried.

_____

"She is unworthy of the family name."

"Darling!" His uncle's voice boomed impatiently.

"She will taint it, honey. She will taint it and it will be a catastrophe!" Her aunt's words had made a six year old flinch as she cried at the corner of the room, watching them glaring at her.

"She is weak and unworthy." She said glaring at Elise like she's some sort of bug. The woman then grabbed a shot glass.

"Honey, what are you doing?" The man asked his wife in worry.

The woman smirked and looked back at her husband. "I am only disciplining the naughty."

______

You want me to be someone who I feared to be.

I fear that I will be someone who I will regret to be.

I fear that I will be turned into someone who I will not recognize.

I fear that I will be a monster like you turned out to be.

_______

"Eli."

Elise turned to look at Alice.

The man, with a gentle smile and the warm touch that Elise had learned to welcome, smiled at her while he braided her hair.

He had suggested it in the first place. He said that he had wanted to brush her hair after she had taken her bath, wanted to play with it because it calms him down and Elise was very tired and was honestly very fine with it.

Elise knew that she had wanted to escape the mansion before, had wanted to leave them be, but everything turned out differently and staying there became unexpectedly  lovely.

Kieran had started being lovely.

Lucian was funny as hell.

Alice was gentle and nice.