from me, the moon | cordie

[Elijah Theron Fleming]

only dust settles.

fall, 2025

AS NIGHT FELL ON THE RESERVATION, ELI HID IN the stable of a wounded diricawl. Eli sidling up beside its sleeping quarter. He and Eli had forged an unlikely bound when he'd managed to untangle a piece of plastic from its leg, dodging its beak the entire time. Ever since, it had been Eli's least confrontational hiding place. And, he'd needed one that night. Waving goodbye to his colleagues and fielding his mentors scowling expression before he'd hoped over the wooden door and hunkered down until everybody had left.

When all appeared quiet, Eli ruffled the neck of his Diricawl friend and made his way out of the reserve as night begun to fall. His cell clutched close to his chest as he rattled out a stammering, clumsy text to Cordie: 'Hope u near. Don g loss'. Hogsmeade was nearby, but it took Eli back out along the gravel path. He'd told Cordie to meet him at the same place they had first met, wondering if she had forgotten briefly as he palmed his damp, sweaty neck. A knot of anxious anticipation in his gut. He was really risking his whole career doing this, but Eli couldn't bear to reconsider. He was just so bored.

The sky a mixture of midnight blue and the last streaking orange of twilight, Eli smelled of hay and tangy feed when he approached the tree he'd fallen out of that first day. Grass stains on his knees and dirt embedded under his nails. It was dirty work, but most days Eli didn't mind it. He loved interacting with the animals. There was no sign of Cordie and Eli pressed a hand to the tree, craning his neck down the opposite pathway in search of a familiar head of buttery blond hair. When he saw a shadow emerge in the distance he whisper-yelled hoarsely. "Cordie?!" A hand cupped around his mouth, "That you?!"

cordelia regan smith

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[cordelia regan smith]

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Work. That was her lame excuse in order to sneak out of her mum’s house. She really didn’t need to be like that, or even have a reason to begin with now that she was out of school, but she felt like she owed one. The stammering mess of an explanation over supper, now that she looked back on it, was not convincing in the slightest bit. And if it hadn’t been for her verbal inability, it was definitely the shaking fork in her hand as she hopelessly stabbed at a potato until it looked like a crime scene. There weren’t any questions on her mum’s end though – just to be careful once it got dark out. And that was it. Cordelia still felt uneasy when she left, her empty work bag slung over one shoulder as if to sell her lie. She even went a few blocks away before disapparating to Hogsmeade, just because it felt better than popping in and out at the front door. Normally she tried to get a tiny walk in every morning before heading off to the Quibbler’s office. Doing everything this way, in her mind, made it feel like she wasn’t lying one-hundred percent.

Hogsmeade in the fall was pretty much exactly as it always was, except she had never been there at night during this time of year. There was never any need for it before now, and she felt hesitant walking down the almost empty main street at first. Most of the people wandering around now were residents or patrons at the Three Broomsticks or Hog’s Head, both of which she had no interest in at this time of night. The location Eli decided upon was where they had first met, which was somewhere in the hills along the edge of town. Cordelia couldn’t remember the specific location of it, but she knew there was a tree near it. Only because Eli had fallen out of it when she first approached him.

Trying to find that tree in the dark was proving to be difficult, and she spent a good amount of time wandering back and forth across the top of one hill, hoping her eyes would eventually adjust to the darkness and help her spot the tree. She had pulled her phone out and was about to call Eli when the screen lit up, and an almost incomprehensible text blipped up. She wasn’t sure what ‘Don g loss’ meant, but assumed it meant Eli was on his way. Staying in one place, she waited to see if any human shapes were walking in her vicinity.

It took a couple of minutes before her vision adjusted and she could make out a gangly humanoid shape leaning up an equally thin tree. That had to be him! Stepping carefully over the rocky hillside, she approached the assumed shape of Eli, and heard him call her name out. “Y-Yeah,” she answered back, her normal volume working perfectly for this sort of situation. “H-Hey,” she raised a hand up in a wave as she moved closer. Without any light around, the shadows were doing an excellent job at hiding Eli in his spot next to the tree. “Y-You’ll have to l-l-lead. I-I don’t know this are w-well…”

Elijah Theron Fleming ● 543 ● Opal by Soen

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[Elijah Theron Fleming]

only dust settles.

fall, 2025

CORDIE'S SHORT FRAME CAME IN TO VIEW AS she loped towards him. The dark marring her features until she was close enough to touch. Prompting Eli to push off the tree he wad leaning against and sidle up against her. Looping an arm around her waist familiarly and tugging her back the way he had come. "Thought you were bailing on me." He joked nervously, taking his arm back as he lead the way.

Her stuttered insistence was met with a loose nod, already marking the way back to the hidden reservation. Cordie's persistent stutter might have been an obstacle once upon a time, but Eli hardly noticed it now. He spoke enough for them both combined, and he was fairly patient as she carefully replied. "It's just over the hill." He explained, arms swinging excitedly at his sides as he walked a half step ahead. "You can't really see it until you're in it, you know?" He pistoned his hands enthusiastically, as if they were going to squeeze through a very small gap.

Hanging back slightly, he looped his arm with Cordie's, tugging her in to his side. He had always been a touchy-feely person, unable to help himself from being over familiar around people he knew well enough. "You can feel it." He mentioned vaguely, eyes wide in the night, the whites stark against his blown pupils. "When you pass the muggle-barrier it's like-" His chest heaved with a breath, turning his face towards it as if it was a fine spring mist. When they reached the protection spell, the land became hushed. Like the atmosphere was holding its breath. And then, they were through, the smell of hay and animal droppings draping them just the way Eli liked. "See?" He told her with glee, squeezing her arm gently. 

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[cordelia regan smith]

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Even though they were barely inches away from each other, the pitch darkness of the edge of Hogsmeade made it nigh impossible to see anything. Eli moving around her and then spinning her in the correct direction was like watching a shadow. She followed his lengthy stride carefully, remembering the craggy terrain well enough from daylight hours that she knew a twisted ankle was possible if she wasn’t careful with her steps. A spill would spell doom for her knees as well, and she wasn’t keen on breaking her wand out to cast healing charms due to her own carelessness. “M-My mum eats late,” she said as she stared down at the ground, watching where her feet were being placed on the rocks. Her eyes still hadn’t adjusted, and only the outline of her feet were really visible. It was like walking blind through the edge of town, only occasionally getting glimpses from the moon peeking out from behind pillowy gray clouds.

Eli was excited. According to him, the animal reserve was nearby, though where exactly Cordelia couldn’t pinpoint. He mentioned a hill, but all she saw (or assumed she could see based on shadowed outlines) were rolling mounds. Any specifics weren’t going to help her at this point. Especially as she slowly struggled to walk. Eli must have seen her plight, and took her arm, pulling her closer as they walked. He said something about feeling it, whatever that meant. Because all she could feel was her heart beating in her ears. This wasn’t atypical whenever they were doing things, but it was different because well, she didn’t know why it was different. He clarified that he meant feeling the muggle-barrier, but Cordelia barely heard that part. It made a lot more sense once they stepped through, and everything changed. She had been through these sorts of charms before, but it always felt like stepping through what she imagined a waterfall would feel like – except without the water. “Th-This isn’t illegal, is it?” she whispered up at him, unsure if talking any louder would alert someone to their presence. Maybe she should have asked that before heading out tonight?

Elijah Theron Fleming ● 360 ● Suzie Save Your Love by Allie X, Mitski

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

[Elijah Theron Fleming]

only dust settles.

fall, 2025

FREE OF THE OPPRESSIVE BARRIER, THE SKY twinkled with life once again. The air filled with the soft ruffle of feathers, hooting owls and chuffing creatures. Eli loved it, could live in a paddock like one of the animals, sleeping on a handful of hay. He'd done so once or twice, to avoid going back home. Anything was better than home, as of late. With his brother back at Hogwarts and Calli at her own place. The atmosphere had dropped considerably since Eli had lost his sponsorship last summer.

Leading Cordie through the looping pathway, he was cautiously keeping an eye out for other staff members on the night shift. It was fairly quiet, Eli had offered to cover a few different shifts to clear the place out. Only the emergency vet and maybe a few stragglers would be found on the sprawling land. Sparse enough that Eli felt pretty safe in leading Cordie on to the grounds for a late night wander. She appeared far more rational than he was, vibrating with excitement beside her. The serious frown on her face making him laugh.

"Uh..." Eli's laugh was suddenly tinged with nervousness, giving Cordie a brief look from the corner of his eye. "It's not illegal." He promised her, though the obvious 'but' lingered in the spaces between them. "I just... I guess I could get fired." He held up a hand rapidly, to placate her. "But, I won't, cause we're not gonna get caught." Nudging her, he lifted his brows daringly and pulled her alongside the first wooden paddock in their path. "First... the Granian foals..." He preened with smug triumph, still holding her arm as he led her to the dutch door at the front, though his movements became rushed all at once. "Get inside..." He hissed in to her tangled blonde hair, ducking them out of the way as the crunch of gravel was heard just out of eyeline. 

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[cordelia regan smith]

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She could hear the change in his demeanor after she questioned the legality of their adventure. There had been a few times over the last few months where she had wandered into muggle areas that were considered off limits or illegal to enter. No security guard would ever yell at her, since she perpetually looked like she was on the verge of tears when she got thrown into situations like that and became anxious. That was the one positive of her stutter still: becoming a babbling mess really threw them off guard and got her out of a lot of stuff. None of that was ever on purpose of course, since she lacked a single manipulative bone in her body, but it did still happen from time to time. As for Eli’s job if they did get caught, well, that was all on him. There were probably other magical creature reserves around and jobs he could take up if he got fired. It wasn’t like either of them was going to do anything malicious to the animals. He was simply showing them off to her.

There were Granian foals, apparently, and Cordelia immediately tried to think back on when the last time she had seen the winged horses was. Beauxbatons had used Abraxan to fly their carriage for the Triwizard Tournament – she had made sure to ask one of the French students prior to the accident at the end of the year. Caught up in her thoughts, she felt the sudden pull of her arm from Eli as he moved them through a door and off to the side. She got the sense that someone had been walking their way and stayed still where he put the two of them. There was no way of telling if it was an animal or person through her mane of hair that was now in front of her eyes from the force of Eli dragging her into the building. Waiting for the sound to disappear, she swept the hair back to where it belonged. Hopefully they wouldn’t have to run, because she was bad enough at that without being in the pitch black of night.

Elijah Theron Fleming ● 362 ● Don't Stop Believin' by Journey

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

[Elijah Theron Fleming]

only dust settles.

fall, 2025

DUCKED LOW TO THE GROUND, ELI HAD A SOFT grip on Cordie's arm as they hid. The earthy smell of tossed hay and animal hair itching his nose as he grinned wildly in the dim light. This was all terribly exciting for Eli, even though the possibility of being caught with an outsider after hours could mean the destruction of his entire career. Maybe that was why he enjoyed it so much, the risk of it thrilling him right down to his bones.

Turning his head, Eli gave Cordie's arm a little shake before dropping his hold to her hand casually. The whites of his eyes gleaming in the dark along with his teeth as he smiled at her, shoulders shucked up around his ears. Her expression was vastly different as gravel crunched near their heads before fading at an agonisingly slow speed.

"Don't be scared." He whispered, leaning close to her tangle of blonde hair so that they wouldn't be overheard. As he pulled away a snuffling sounded by his ear, a gangly foal nosing at his head. Large eyes blinking down at him as it turned its head to stare at his companion. The foal knew Eli well enough, he mucked out their habitat most days. There was a quiet intelligence to the creature and Eli risked discovery as he lifted a hand to rub along its suede soft head. "This is Ickle." He muttered lowly, awed even by the most familiar creature. 

cordelia regan smith

NEVERLAND at ADOXOGRAPHY 2.0!

[cordelia regan smith]

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Earlier in the evening, she wouldn’t have believed that she would be crouched on the inside of an animal pen, though that could have been her naivety kicking in only just now. While she had made strides to get out of her comfort zone, with this certainly breaking many barriers (and potentially laws). Heck, she was even usually opposed to being this physically close to other people, but Eli was Eli and had been getting a pass on that for months now. Like with Lily, she was comfortable around him, even going as far as this. With either of them, getting in trouble was absolutely a possibility and she knew that going into it.

She followed his lead closer into an area that was hidden, or she supposed it was because Eli was still staying in his slumped. It was hard to tell if there was still noise of a person outside or not, her attention having turned to the fact that they were staring eye-to-eye with a Granian foal named Ickle. Her eye contact with the winged horse only broke when she felt Eli take hold of her hand from where it had been around her arm moments earlier, her fingers instinctively curling around his. He was saying something about not being scared, though really the only thing she had done so far was hold her breath while trying to listen for the footsteps on the gravel outside. Everything had happened so fast and now they were holding hands in front of an extremely curious foal.

“Hello…” she said softly and well below her normal whisper-level to Ickle, mimicking Eli’s motions to pet the other side of the creature’s head. She wasn’t sure why she assumed it would feel different from a normal horse, but it seemed fairly similar. The only difference was that it had wings, and her hand found its way further down Ickle’s neck and towards where those connected. Cordelia pulled her hand back slowly before touching the wing though, knowing that she had to follow Eli’s lead. That way the animal wouldn’t get spooked and give away that they were inside.

Elijah Theron Fleming ● 356 ● Enough For You by Maisie Peters

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

[Elijah Theron Fleming]

only dust settles.

fall, 2025

THIS WAS WHERE ELI WAS MOST COMFORTABLE. Where he felt most like himself. Down in the dirt of a paddock, an animal - any animal - nearby to care for or to just observe. There was a gentle delight at being able to show this to Cordie. A place where he didn't get stuck in her hair, or say something stupid. His hand confidently reaching for her, and wrapping easily around hers when she gently reciprocated. They stayed like that, fingers entwined and pulled close to Eli as he gave it an encouraging squeeze. When she reached out, he almost tensed with the thrill of it. Watching her tentatively reach with her free hand to mirror his petting hand.

They were shoulder-to-shoulder, hip-to-hip. One dark, with a beaming small, the other light with hair like fresh rolled hay. And Ickle seemed almost at ease as he chuffed and shifted on his juvenile hooves. Eli nodding slightly, just enough for Cordie to catch it in her peripheral vision. "You know," He whispered, his hand running smooth down Ickle's neck. Watching as Cordie's own hand edged towards the soft down of the foal's infantile wings. "He likes that." He told her with a grin. "But... if Ickle was an adult... he'd never let you touch his wings." He huffed a laugh, leaning heavily in to Cordie's side as he relaxed down into the ground with a contented sigh. Ickle seemed to shift with them, making Eli give Cordie's hand a quick squeeze of reassurance before he tilted his chin to watch. Ickle swayed, chuffed and then on gangly legs, folded down on the ground in front of them. It was an incredible display of trust, but lucky for Cordie, Eli had slept in the Granian foal paddock more than once just to avoid his father's home.

"This is..." Eli began, stopping briefly to turn on his head and catch Cordie's pale profile. He looked for boredom, or discontentment. Something that didn't fit with his ambitious dream of impressing Cordie so much that she didn't think he was a colossal, fumbling loser. "Is this okay?" He asked her, their hands still clasped between them, his thumb making loops on the back of her hand absently. 

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NEVERLAND at ADOXOGRAPHY 2.0!

[cordelia regan smith]

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Even though she physically knew that Eli existed in the same space as her and the foal, the moment of absolute silence other than Ickle’s warm snorts was infinite and lonely. Not lonely in the sense that it was usually used, but in the feeling that nothing else mattered right now. Peaceful was maybe the better way to describe it though she still felt like it was more of a solitary few seconds of space in time than one inhabited by anything other than herself. Almost like laying out in a field on her own with only the grass around her and the stars watching from above. Silent, lonely, peaceful. Realistically, there was both she and Eli, Ickle, and plenty of other Granians around them in the barn. Even a potential person walking around the exterior that was looking for those that had broken in. Yet the silence was still there, and she enjoyed it for the brief amount of time it took up until Eli spoke again.

She had been correct in knowing not to touch the wings, though was now being encouraged to do so because Ickle apparently liked it still. Her hand reached back to where it had been before, giving a scratch along the foal’s neck again, and down to where the wing joint was. Each time now it felt strange because there wasn’t supposed to be a wing there on a horse. Granian and Abraxan weren’t exactly strange to her, nor were regular horses, but being this close to a young one was. Especially in the dark. Her eyes were still adjusting to the shape of the dark fur of the creature. His nose was easiest to pick out because it occasionally nudged back against her forearm. That probably meant that he liked where her hand was scratching near the base of the wing.

Throughout this, Eli had laid out onto the hay, seemingly to watch her interaction. It wasn’t anything special by any means, as her near silent demeanor tended to fair well with most animals. She was just as quick to jump in fright at something as they were, and being skittish wasn’t uncommon. After some time, Eli asked if it was okay. “Is what okay?” she returned the question. Hiding out in the paddock wasn’t her first thought of how tonight would go, wrongfully assuming this was being done with permission from someone that worked at the reserve, nor was the possibility of getting in trouble for being here. But other than that she was perfectly fine.

Elijah Theron Fleming ● 425 ● Humanity Transcends by Creeping Death

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

[Elijah Theron Fleming]

only dust settles.

fall, 2025

TRANSFIXED BY THE DELICATE INTERACTION between foal and girl, Eli didn't realise he was holding his breathe until he had to speak and found he had no air to do so. His inhale was stuttered, quiet but frighteningly loud in the still paddock. He nodded briefly in encouragement, eyes flickering up Cordie's arm to her face illuminated by the pale moonlight. It was such a private moment that Eli should have felt intrusive for witnessing it, but he just felt pleased that it had happened because of him. Ickle was happy, so was Cordie.

So consumed by his contentment at such a small thing, Eli realised how lonely he had been in the months since he had come back from his internship. Failure was gutting, but it wasn't the only thing that mattered. He had friends, good ones. And he could give them - her - this shred of magic he wouldn't have been able to replicate that from some distant, wild animal trail. He'd found Cordie at that book shop at the moment he had needed it most, when he'd felt the weight of his mundanity at its most crippling.

Hands clasped, Eli had asked Cordie an open question. When she answered it with good-natured confusion, he asked himself the same thing. Was what okay? That they were holding hands? That he'd snuck her into a creature reserve that could very much land them in serious trouble? Or, perhaps it was just the closeness. It was all more than okay for Eli, but he couldn't help but question if Cordie felt the same peaceful comfort. Her confusion, however, pretty much answered his question for him.

"Nothing..." He shook his head with a soft, closed mouth smile, leaning back against the wooden paddock wall with Ickle's large head draped across their stretched out legs. He sighed the remaining, tense air in his lungs and sagged against Cordie's shoulder, their clasped hands resting between them. He felt the silence drape over them like a large, warm blanket. Eli didn't rush to fill it for once, and quite typically neither did Cordie. He felt his eyes grow heavy just a little bit, but peeled them back just as he felt his mouth began to slacken.

Eli turned his head slowly, Cordie's face still incredibly close to his. "You know, these paddock's are actually pretty comfortable to sleep in," He told her with a hushed laugh. "I've bunked with Ickle a few times." It was a revealing piece of trivia that Eli would likely have to explain, but he was being honest. Sometimes 'home' didn't feel very homely. 

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NEVERLAND at ADOXOGRAPHY 2.0!

[cordelia regan smith]

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She had set herself up to get an answer, and was sort of stunned when Eli ended up not elaborating on what he meant by asking if all of this was okay. Her immediate thought was still regarding the fact that they had kind of broken into the paddock and were trespassing. While she wasn’t fine with that, it was sort of too late to do anything about it. Adding onto that, there was potentially someone in the vicinity still, and moving from where they were would only lead to them being found. Staying where they were, safe inside Ickle’s paddock, was about the best outcome for the time being. Making a mad break for the edge of the facility and into an area they could disapparate from didn’t really scream like a fun thing to do, and she was sure she’d bungle it up somewhere along the way. Having Eli losing his job over something as innocent as looking at animals in the middle of the night would be sort of bad too.

Or Eli could have been asking about the proximity between the two of them right now. She had sort of forgotten about holding onto his hand as she had been preoccupied in following his lead with the foal, but now that they had finished petting the creature, the awareness of it came back very quickly. Thank Merlin the only source of light was coming from a moonbeam, and she was sitting partially in the shadows being cast by the barn rafters. The combined silence (aside from the occasional animal noise or Ickle checking if they were still in his paddock) and Eli sitting shoulder to shoulder with her should have been quiet. She barely heard him whispering about sleeping in the hay with the animal, her head hyper focusing on the feeling of her pulse skyrocketing. There was no way Eli could hear it, but that didn’t change the fact that she was now fully conscious about what she had done while being distracted by the foal.

Turning her head to face Eli as he was explaining how the paddock was comfortable, she hadn’t realized how close he actually was. Inches away, really. She hoped her face wasn’t red, because it certainly felt like it was now. “W-W-Wouldn’t it b-be itchy?” she stuttered out, unsure of her own volume. While warm, she didn’t know if she could take laying in hay all night long.

Elijah Theron Fleming ● 408 ● These Drugs by Sugar Pine 7

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

[Elijah Theron Fleming]

only dust settles.

fall, 2025

IN THE PADDOCK, WITH JUST CORDIE AND THE foal to keep him company, Eli felt draped in privacy. He felt like he could spill his deepest, darkest secrets and it wouldn't really matter. Because it was dark, and Cordie was quiet, the foals hadn't quite learned how to snitch yet. His thumb starting a gentle circuit along the back of Cordie's butter soft hand. Wondering if her gently flexing fingers were purposeful, wondering if he were to acknowledge their connection, would she pull away. So, he didn't say anything at all, not for quite some time.

When he spoke of the paddock's comfortable hay, it was more of a confession than he realised. His throat a little tight and his fingers flexing just slightly around Cordie's hand, pulling where they were clasped over onto his thigh so he could restlessly roll them and wait a minute before he turned to face her as she spoke. She'd turned to meet him and for a second they were so close if he breathed their noses would brush. His eyes a little crossed, her face illuminated and owlish and speckled with freckles. He thought quite briefly that he'd quite like to count them, and that it'd be very easy to kiss her like that. With the heady smell of hay in their noses, hands so tangled they became one singularly entity. He thought he'd quite like to, but her face flushed so suddenly that he felt it radiating heat and all at once he realised how stupid he was being. This was Cordie, who was mortified by the barest of inconvenience. And with that realisation, Eli couldn't imagine a moment where Cordie might kiss him back.

Eli dropped his head onto Cordie's shoulder with a self-deprecating huff of laughter. Forehead rolling against her t-shirt as he hid his wanting there, eyes screwed up as his heart rattled relentlessly in his chest. He was just being stupid, being lonely and desperate. Eli couldn't afford to ruin his friendship with Cordie, wouldn't jeopardize it. Even if he had really, really wanted to. Instead, he gave a muffled answer into her upper arm, lips brushing against her shirt.

"I'll take itchy hay over my dad any day." He muttered, rolling his head to rest his cheek on her shoulder this time, peering up at Cordie's face from the awkward angle. He could just make out the fan of her golden lashes before he shut his eyes again. "He's... I mean, every since my mom disappeared..." Eli cleared his throat, the words getting stuck somewhere behind his tonsils. "Living at home just hasn't been worth much." He thought of Temperance and her oppressive need to mother him. Of his dad grumbling about the Daily Prophet over the top of his Dreamless Sleep potions. How awful the quiet was there in comparison to the quiet in the paddock. To Cordie's quiet. "Do you think Ickle would let me move in?" He used his free hand to tangle it in Ickle's mane, whose ears twitched in acknowledgement. 

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NEVERLAND at ADOXOGRAPHY 2.0!

[cordelia regan smith]

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And here she thought Eli was already close to her. The stuffy warmth of the paddock combined with the physical contact had her nearly holding her breath, except for the part where the last remaining sane part of her brain reminded her that she needed to breathe in order to function. Going from zero to one-hundred with closeness like this with both Eli and Lily was strange. They were equally clingy people, but in different ways. Lily always made her feel like something insane was about to happen because of her presence. Eli also gave her a similar feeling at times, like right now, but it was completely different and harder to explain. Whatever it was, she hadn't decided if it was scary or okay, or a little bit of both.

Before she could figure out how her mouth worked again to speak on the matter of sleeping in the hay, Eli dropped an information bomb that she had never even heard him mention before: his mum's disappearance. Maybe that was on her for never thinking to bring up family around him, though she knew he had mentioned living with his dad and siblings. Her own dad was a piece of work, but that had never come up in conversation between them either. Unfortunately she sort of understood what it was like to be at home with someone you didn't want to be around. Now that he'd moved out following the divorce, everything had been a lot better. For all of this closeness, they really didn't do a lot of talking except from when animals came into the picture. She listened quietly as he asked if she thought Ickle would mind having a roommate. "P-Probably not..." Cordelia answered after another brief moment of silence. Those seconds were unbelievably peaceful when they happened, as much as she enjoyed her time talking to Eli too.

"I'm p-planning in moving out of m-my mum's place soon," she continued. The thought was scary, but it was another one of the goals she had on her checklist for things to do after graduating. "She t-told me she found a flat in Horizont the other day. It's c-closer to work there..." Where was she going with this? If she needed roommates, Eli wouldn't be the worst. Supposedly the place already had a couple tenants but she didn't know the full details yet.

Elijah Theron Fleming ● 396 ● song by artist

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

[Elijah Theron Fleming]

only dust settles.

fall, 2025

THE PROXIMITY WAS NEW FOR ELI AND CORDIE. Though he had no trouble pressing himself into her side and sighing with contentment. It was new, but not unwanted. In fact, Eli found himself wondering why he'd never held Cordie's hand before. Sure, he had steered her with a hooked finger into the sleeves of her robes. He'd even hung over her shoulder to untangle himself from her hair, but those instances were not intentional. They were absent, or accidental. This was different, uncharted territory. He treaded very carefully, lest her scare her away.

Although, in the grand scheme of 'things that might scare a girl away', Eli reckoned bringing up his dead mom was a bit of a mood killer. It had slipped out before he could censor it, the topic he tried his best never to touch. He cringed against her shoulder, turning his face away when he couldn't stand the interim of silence that palpitated between them. Her shirt smelled of a sweet, floral perfume and earthy hay. It was really, really nice - like spring. "You're right," He laughed gratefully. "He'd love it."

In true Cordelia fashion, she did not pick him apart for his confession. She didn't even really acknowledge it, but Eli didn't think it brushed aside either. Cordie had a way of cataloguing, he thought. Always watching, ever the observer. She wouldn't forget, but she never pushed. He liked her all the more for that, curling his fingers around hers snugly, his thumb doing a circuit on the back of her hand, as if in thanks.

Eli's attention shifted at the mention of moving. He lifted his head, leaning away to get a better look at her soft profile. "You're moving...?" He asked, blinking his surprise. Cordie was such a rigid person at times, he wondered how long she had been planning such a thing. How they had drifted, and how he had missed so much because of it. "That's amazing!" He declared gleefully, lifting their joint hands to give them a celebratory shake. Ickle gave an unhappy chuff at the disruption, but Eli shushed himself accordingly. "You have to have a party." He whispered, grinning wildly. "And maybe... if your old friend Eli is in the neighbourhood, I could stay over sometime." He raised his brows with a teasing smirk, cheeks creasing. "I am very good at sleepovers." 

cordelia regan smith

NEVERLAND at ADOXOGRAPHY 2.0!