"Just a normal patrol, they said," Sarai grumbles, squinting through the inky darkness. "Just a normal patrol through a dark fucking cave, Sarai, it'll be fine."
Her torch flickers as she walks.
She hates caves. Hates them ever since she and Amaya had gotten lost in one when they were kids.
"And without backup no less," she mutters.
The lack of backup was more or less due to the rest of the fortress being either sick or already on duty elsewhere.
Sarai grumbles another curse. They've had reports of movement within the cave network here for a few weeks now, and honestly, Sarai would feel so much more comfortable with a good dozen men. The network is a maze of winding corridors that reminds her of those two days trapped in a cave with Amaya.
They had huddled together, praying to any and all gods that would deign to hear them until their father's search party had located them.
Sarai shudders, and because life hates her, it is just then that her torch snuffs out.
"Oh fuck, oh fuck," Sarai whispers, overcome with the sudden fear she'd had as a lost child. She fumbles for her flint, trying to relight the torch to little avail.
Sarai curses, closing her eyes and praying that there would be something, anything. A glow-worm, maybe. Anything to lift the dark that suddenly frightens her so.
It takes a minute for her to realize that there is a dim glow now, coming from the low ceiling.
"Oh," Sarai says, releasing a stuttering breath. "Glow lichen. Oh thank the gods."
She needs to find her way back out, and come back with more people and a good lantern. Fuck doing this with a torch.
But finding her way through the maze of corridors is hard, even with the faint glow. Sarai thinks she's heading in the correct direction, right up until she hits one corridor that dead ends in a round, circular, rather peculiar hollow.
The room, if Sarai can call it that, is lined with broken mirrors. Glass crunches underfoot as she follows the dim glow of the lichen.
There has to be at least thirty mirrors lying there, and Sarai can barely see the runes that line each and every one of them. Had they been magic? Something that the elves had left before they retreated to the border?
Another mirror lies at her feet and it is mostly whole, though it looks like someone tried to do their best to shatter it. Cracks spiderweb out from the center, but the runes about the edges seem to glow with the faintest starlight.
Interesting.
Sarai kneels to examine it. The craftsmanship is exquisite, and Sarai mourns for the loss of such beauty. Why would all these mirrors have been destroyed?
There is a story she remembers her mother telling her, one of monsters who could travel through mirrors, and though she is a woman grown now, unafraid of such things, a flicker of unease travels down her spine.
She looks at the mirror, and reaches out, touching her palm to one of the few uncracked sections of glass. It glows beneath her touch, and the world shatters beneath her, bright light obscuring everything.
When she can see again, she is no longer in the cave.
She is within a room, with high stone ceilings, starlight glimmering from stained glass windows.
"Wow," she breathes, looking around.
It is then that she realizes she is not alone. Someone is sitting in a chair on the other side of the room, cloaked in midnight blue, hood hiding most of their face.
"Are you an elf?" Sarai asks, staring at the being in front of her, who is gracefully standing from their chair.
"Is there anything else I would be?" a smooth, deep voice asks curiously.
"You could be a dragon," Sarai says, still staring. They are quite beautiful.
"I'd be a rather small dragon, then," the being says with a laugh that makes Sarai's spine tingle pleasantly.
"Or you shapeshift," Sarai says with a grin, "I've heard dragons can shapeshift."
Another laugh and the being walks closer, pulling their hood back as they go.
Shimmering pale hair falls over their shoulder, framing a dark face. Glowing freckles are spattered across their nose. White diamonds lie beneath their eyes, golden irises that are surrounded by black.
Dark horns curl away from their head, and a gleaming outline of a star is visible on their chest.
For a moment, Sarai forgets how to breathe.
It is as if a part of the night sky has abandoned its greater whole to manifest as a walking person. Glorious and magnificent in its alienness.
"I am an elf, not a dragon," they say softly, kneeling beside her and extending a hand to pull her upright.
"You're not like any elf I've seen," Sarai says, allowing them to pull her to her feet.
"Perhaps," they say. "What is your name?"
"Sarai," she says, meeting their eyes. "My name is Sarai."
"Sarai," the elf says, "A pretty name."
"And what is yours?"
"I am Aaravos," the elf says.
"Also a pretty name," Sarai says, "I don't suppose you know where I am?"
"I don't know," the elf murmurs. "I have never known."
"What do you mean?" Sarai asks, worry flooding her veins like ice-water.
"I have never known where this place is," the elf replies. "It is not for me to know."
Well, that doesn't sound ominous at all.
"So, you're only allowed to know certain things?" Sarai says carefully.
"That is correct. I know why I am here, and that is all I know."
"And why is that?"
The elf looks away, a look of pain crossing their face.
"I would rather not answer that question," they say. "But I regret to inform you that you will not be able to leave the way you entered. The mirror behind you broke in the process."
Sarai turns on her heel to look at the mirror. "It looks whole to me."
"Not that one," Aaravos murmurs. "The one you came through."
"It was broken when I touched it though," Sarai says.
"Then it had enough power to deliver you here, and only that," Aaravos says softly, "I am sorry. You are trapped here, just as I am."
Sarai just stares at them.
She has left Amaya behind, her only family member who yet lives, to be trapped in this place with one of the strangest elves she has ever met?
"You're absolutely sure?" Sarai asks, and she is proud that her voice doesn't tremble.
The elf gives her a long, measured look, but their eyes are soft and sad. "I am."
It takes time for Sarai to adjust to this new existence, and Aavaros gives her space.
There is a balcony outside the room she'd fallen into, and it is filled to bursting with plant life of all kinds.
Time seems to pass oddly here, and thankfully there is at least variance in the lighting, dawn to noon to twilight, to full dark. Aaravos doesn't seem to need light to see as Sarai has seen him wandering around in the dark when she has to squint hard to see anything.
There is one other room, a small bedroom that is sparsely decorated and mostly filled with bookshelves, and a bed that becomes Sarai's as Aaravos claims he can sleep in the study to give her more privacy.
Sarai is...grateful for it, she supposes.
It is near dawn one morning, when she finds Aaravos on the balcony, tending to a somewhat wilting moon-dew flower.
Sarai sits beside him, watching.
"I left my sister, Amaya, behind," she says, apropos of nothing. "She's the only family I had left after Mom and Dad died."
Aaravos is silent, slender fingers plucking away dead leaves, eyes not leaving his task.
"I did not have any siblings," Aaravos says at last. "I do not remember my parents."
"You've been here that long?" Sarai asks.
"Startouch elves live a very long time," Aaravos says, "Though without the heart of my power," he touches the dark star that lies upon his chest, "I will live far less."
There is a jagged pain to his words, a story there that Sarai has not yet heard and maybe she thinks, she never will.
"Tell me of your sister, Sarai," Aaravos murmurs, his gaze flicking to her face for the smallest of moments. "Let another soul carry the weight of your grief."
Sarai draws in a shaky breath.
"I was five when my sister was born, and from the moment I held her, I wanted nothing more than to protect her. We grew up on the western side of Katolis, away from the Breach, amidst the green rolling hills, and it was peaceful there, a world away from the horrors of war," Sarai begins.
And all the while Aaravos listens, occasionally looking to her, a quiet sorrow in his eyes.