Nuala can faintly recall, amidst pulsing flashes of grass and sunlight and laughter, a memory, one in which she smiled freely and held her brother's hand like he was her one and only anchor.
She can, if she searches far within her mind, find many of those memories, where Nuada was kind and loving and innocent, but they always leave her too soon. She can never hold onto them long enough to fully enjoy them, and the fact pulls a sigh from her lips as another images goes flying past, a blur of golden eyes that hadn't darkened yet glowing behind her eyelids when at last she closes them, prepared to sleep as she lies atop the downy pillows of her new bed.
Her new bed in a new place.
A new place that thrums with life, that promises all of the world for her to seize, and yet she feels so truly alone.
She cannot turn her head to glance at her twin, about to share an observation with him. She cannot take his hand and squeeze it ever so gently, letting him know she's there. She cannot walk down the hall and hear the echo of his footsteps at her back, his shadow cast behind hers upon the wall, where flickering candlelight dances in circles. She cannot nestle into his embrace as she cries, feeling his familiar warmth against her tear streaked cheek.
She cannot see him, nor feel him, and the absence is a near physical thing, something so potent that the princess can't not notice it.
Nuada is gone, so very far from where she's found herself, and yet he is there in every moment of her life.
Her body cannot breathe without feeling the ghost of another's body breathing in time with it.
Her eyes cannot see without the memory of looking through another's eyes.
Her pain is only phantom pain, and her happiness is only a fleeting thing, because half of it is real, and the other half is a mere echo, a shadow in the corner of her eye when she turns down the hall, or the tickle of voices in her mind before it vanishes, or even the imprint of hands in her own, like an eternal brand upon her pale skin. Nuala feels her brother in the wind, sighing as it rushes beneath her hair. She sees him in the harsh sunlight cascading upon the ground, casting everything in a golden glow as she walks across the grass.
His ghost lies within everything, and she sees him more and more as he was, before his heart blackened, and before his gaze darkened, when he was young and loyal and her very best friend. And the one time she sees him the most, the one moment she can always look upon him with fondness, is when she looks in the mirror, at her own face and the ghost beneath it, her golden eyes sparkling just as his once did, the corners of her lips turned up, the scars upon her cheeks identical to the ones he once bore.
Nuala aches from his absence, aches so much in such a way that she's never felt in all of her all too long life, and when she turns to look at her reflection, she sees the bright memory of love-
"Sister, you're running far too slow. At this pace you'll never catch me." Laughter rushes up around her and she runs faster, realizing with an odd kind of surprise that it's she who is laughing, laughing so hard and smiling so wide that her face and throat hurt from the strain
-and that overwhelming ache, having for so very long resided in the darkest corners of her grieving heart, dims to a slowly throbbing sting.
And now, Nuala doesn't have that much trouble sleeping, either, her dreams plunging her into tight hugs and small smiles.
Father always tried so hard to shield your heart from mine.
But, no matter how hard her father had tried, the echo of her brother would forever remain, trapped within her fluttering heart like a bird without wings.
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