AN: Okay, "Salt" inspired me to make Elsa a full character with a story. It seemed like a cheat to create her only for that little bit, so she gets her own story. Elsa is mine, nothing else.
Elsa Markham had laid herself out in the grass of her grandmothers front lawn, and now that some time had passed, the young woman could no longer feel the luminary's glare on her porcelain skin. She could hear the faint roaring of fighter planes launching from the military base nearby and Elsa felt slightly disoriented for a moment. Having been sent out into the yard to enjoy the sunshine while it was there, she suspected her parents and her grandparents were discussing the war inside, and such talk was not appropriate for a lady like her.
Standing to her full height with her guide stick in hand, she negotiated the sidewalk inside and heard the carefully controlled voices of the matriarch.
"We can't afford to stay here any longer." Came the hushed voice of Joan, her mother.
"Well, what do you suppose we do? All the travel is coordinated by the SS. If they find out about her, Mengele will snatch her up without a second thought." Her breath caught in her throat when the blind young woman realized they were talking about her.
"This is not the Austria we knew," came the wise voice of her grandfather. Grandpapa knew what to say, he would get her out of this. He had to.
Elsa's ears picked up the scraping of wooden chair legs on linoleum tile and she felt her mothers practiced hand grip her elbow gently.
"Come, edelweiss, we have much to do." It had become their secret code for her. Edelweiss was the family favorite and it symbolized the strong nationalism still present within the fabric of the oppressed people. Elsa felt proud to have been called by that name.
"Who is Mengele, papa?"
"No one you will ever meet, Elsa." Kurt was resolute in his words as he packed his small family inside the volkswagon.
Dinner that night was minestrone soup, Joan claimed that a storm was coming and the soup would keep everyone strong. Little else was said around the Markham family dinner table and Elsa couldn't stand it.
"Why don't we just flee to America?" Elsa's friend Liesl had gone with her family weeks ago, unable to withstand the German oppression.
"This is our home, edelweiss. I will not abandon it, and neither will you."
"This hasn't been our home since der fuhrer took it over." Elsa's voice rose with anger.
"You may be right child, but the time has passed for us to flee safely. We will wait it out here."
"Why did we wait so long, papa?"
Kurt was quiet and Elsa knew why they couldn't leave. The urn that Elsa knew resided on a shelf in the prayer room confirmed this. After Suzanne had died, Joan and Kurt hadn't seen the reason to fight for much of anything.
"Mother, if you would excuse me" Elsa muttered softly as she left the dinner table.
Her room was the last one to the right and she let the back of her hand trail against the wallpaper until it came across the brass knob of her bedroom door. Closing her door for privacy, she sat on her tiny cot in the corner and reached for the leatherbound volume she kept by her bedside. She could no longer read it, but she knew what it was as she clutched it to her chest.
"Abba, things here are getting rough. Sometimes I wonder if you are even listening. Your children die by the thousands, and this war has marched on." Tears had threatened to spill over her cheeks as she thought back to the SS raid a few nights ago.
She had awoken to the sound of splintering wood and fractured glass. Yelling, both in German and in Hebrew ensued and she heard a rush of footsteps, a burp of gunfire and the driving away of a car.
"Abba, do you hear your children crying out for you?" Her broken voice questioned the entity as she stripped down to her night gown.
Elsa awoke later that night to what sounded to be like a lions roar in her ears. The rain had escalated outside just beyond the pressed fingertips to the cool glass and she felt feverish. The leather bible had slid off of her lap and made a foreign sounding thud on the floor. Bending down, she groped in the inky blackness for the familiar book.
"Come, dear one," called a faintly father-like voice. Elsa's head snapped up and she quieted her harsh breathing and trained her ears to listen for the disturbance once more.
"Come to me, child." Came the voice again. She turned her face towards the window and in a flash of brilliance, the image of a lion appeared in her minds eye, standing just on the brink of the forest. Not bothering to grab her cane, she pounded down the ten steps and flung open the front door. Elsa ran across the street, her bare feet splashing in the rainwater until they hit the lush grass.
"A little closer, beloved."
"Who are you?" Elsa yelled, breaking into a jog into the dense forest. She had stumbled over a fallen timber and was pretty sure she was bleeding somewhere, but the strange, yet comforting voice beckoned her further still. After hours of traipsing in the mud and the rain, she sunk to her knees in the soft moss and felt the rain pelt her sodden locks.
Her throat was raw from screaming and tears were freely running down her face. She was sick, completely lost and for the first time since the accident; Elsa Markham felt completely helpless.
"Abba, help me," she prayed as she drifted off into unconsciousness.