As a child, Eldora had had odd tastes. She liked weird hobbies (or, at least, she thought they were weird because she was treated like an outcast for liking them until her husband confirmed later on that they were perfectly normal). Peers at school had relentlessly teased her about the things she liked, until she had withdrawn completely and refused to share what she liked with anyone, because it was safer. She was a lonely girl in school, and felt like it was impossible to fit in anywhere. Part of it was her own cowardice; she knew she had to put herself out there to make friends, but the first time she had done it, she had been met with cruelty. The girl had approached her first, saying she wanted to be friends, but upon speaking to her real friends when Eldora was present, her supposed friend had laughed in her face and told her true friends that she didn’t know Eldora. 

It took Eldora until high school to make real friends, and even then, they felt like they were her friends because they wanted her help on homework more than anything. She had been too cowardly to tell them off.

But her worst memory of cowardice was when Claudius had come home from work one day with tears in his eyes.

“Claudius, what’s wrong?” Eldora had asked. 

Claudius had marched straight upstairs and shut the bedroom door behind him. Eldora had followed him, but her hand shook when she was about to knock on the door.

Somehow, her courage had left her. Her head was so heavy with the possibilities of what could go wrong from the conversation that she thought it might fall off her neck. She went downstairs and made dinner instead. She had another chance to ask him when he had come back downstairs, but lost her courage once again. Her husband avoided the topic by refocusing the conversation on her, and she was all-to-happy to avoid talking to him about what happened.

She went to bed that night with her arms wrapped tightly around her husband’s stomach. Her eyes were glassy and she found herself questioning how good of a wife she was. I ran away from his emotions. I’m such a coward.