Elara's POV
I knew all of this.
I held all of this.
And then I lay down on my bed and I turned my face onto my pillow and I pressed it there, and I felt the thing I had been holding since I opened the front door that morning begin to come loose.
It came quietly.
Not the kind of crying that is loud and contained, the kind that announces itself. The other kind. The kind that is the result of a great deal of compression finds its limit; it is soundless and private and that the body does mostly on its own without asking the mind's permission. The pillow absorbed it. I pressed my face further into it and felt the warmth of my own breath coming back at me and the cotton against my face and the particular muffled quality of the world when you have removed yourself from it as far as you can w
