Elle Darling

Memories of You Being Beautiful: One Hundred Years Pass Elle Darling

Most of the time, Briar Rose thinks she's still fifteen, even though it's been two thousand, one hundred, and eighty six days, and if she wasn't stuck in this dream she'd be twenty one already.  She hasn't changed since she's been here, not that she can see. There aren't any mirrors or even reflections, so she's not sure if her face has matured, but her voice still sounds young and sweet and her hair hasn't grown at all, still golden and hanging to her elbow in baby curls. Her frock still fits and it's not stretched out or faded or worn, just wet with the scent of her blood. She feels old though, older than fifteen or twenty one or even one hundred. Sometimes she feels older than an entire millennium, sitting here in her dusty, dull castle in the middle of her cloudy, lifeless dream world. Sometimes she wonders what's going to happen when she wakes up after one hundred years and finds everyone she'd ever known has left her behind. She pictures herself kneeling at her parents' graves with clean fingertips on their headstones and a kingdom around her that doesn't remember.  But mostly, she wonders what it'll be like to no longer bleed.