Aether
Was he in bed? Why was he in bed? That didn't make sense because he hadn't been in a bed when he went to sleep. Although… he wasn't really sure where he had been. Or where he was for a matter of fact. What did he remember? Okay, there was an, ummm… yesterday… he had…? He realized with some surprise and alarm, both moderated by his overwhelming exhaustion, that he couldn't recall much of anything about himself. Or anything else. He was Aether. There was also Lumine, who was… his older sister? That made the most sense. They were certainly related. Were they siblings? ...that was too much thinking. And after all there wasn't any real reason not to fall back asleep so he gave up on remembering for now and did exactly that.
He woke up again. Someone's voice was filling his ears, a voice of which he was NOT a fan. It wasn't a very nice voice, he thought judgingly to himself. It was cold and hollow. Like you might expect an elderly serpent's voice to sound like, should an old serpent for some reason have one. The voice said something about a sister not waking up yet. Something else about an academy? He stopped listening.
Aether opened his eyes. He was in a rather nice room. There was warm sunlight pouring over the hardwood floors, and it overlapped onto the foot of his bed. The green-quilted covers were warmed to a very comfortable and enveloping temperature. He was lying down underneath those very covers, nestled in the warm pocket.
On the same wall, the bed was pushed back against was the window responsible for welcoming in the sun. The sound of wind chimes from outside intermingled with the laughter and faint songs also filtering in from the curtained aperture. Besides the more pleasant sounds of the outer world, there was also the murmur of a crowd coming into the room. All manner of distant voices poured in. Some conversed, some argued, and others bargained or advertised. It was all very chaotic.
Standing between the curtains of the window, which were fluttering slightly in the breeze, was a girl that Aether somehow recognized. She had bright blonde hair falling behind her shoulders, and eyes that matched its vibrant color. She looked quite calm standing that way, framed by the sun. It made her figure even more golden than it was. She was wearing a slightly oversized white jacket, with black shoulders and black cuffs. The pants she had on matched the white color, and mirrored the black in the form of two lines down the sides, with patches set over them on the outside of either knee. They displayed an uppercase "A" within the silhouette of a mountain.
Aether sat up in the bed, pulling the closer top corner of the blankets around his shoulder and pulling across so that he was thoroughly cloaked. The girl turned, startled from her observation by the sound of Aether arranging his bedding garment.
"Oh! Hi... you're Aether right?" she slowly asked. It had seemed like she was sounding out his name.
Aether tried to clear his throat, but only mustered what was really more of a weak cough. "I think so. I'm not super confident about that but it seems right," he stopped to try again to restore his voice. It only sounded like a pained whisper.
"Hey, so I can't really remember how I got here. Would you mind filling me in?" he asked tentatively, his throat feeling a bit less hindered as he kept talking. In truth, he could remember nothing at all, but limited honesty seemed like a good start considering he had just woken up next to a stranger he was only about 50% certain was his sister with no memory.
She shrugged, "I don't know I woke up in the room across the hall. I just kind of assumed Aether was you because you were also asleep and we look alike."
"We do?" Aether asked. That was good, he could work with that aesthetic.
"Yeah. There's a mirror in my room, and also other clothes. So, I don't know if you want to…" she gestured towards his figure and then out the open door across from the bed that looked out to the hallway.
"Oh, um, I'm Lumine. I think we're related. I don't really remember anything except our names. I'm also pretty confused, I woke up just now. I don't think anybody else is here, but I didn't go downstairs," she said.
She looked back out of the window as she did so, and didn't really seem like she knew what to do. Lumine, that was the name he had thought of before. Okay. This didn't seem like a super terrible situation then.
"Okay. Hi! It feels like we've met already but still, it's nice to meet you. I think we're in the same situation," Aether voiced while exiting his blanket sculpture and stepping onto the warm, smooth wood beneath him
Lumine smiled, "It's nice to kind of meet you too."
Aether walked out of the room. Down the hall to the left there was a staircase that quickly turned to the right and didn't offer any view of the area downstairs; Aether was eager to see where exactly he was but he was more interested in changing. He also ignored the bathroom at the other end of the hallways and entered Lumine's room.
It looked similar to his own, but it had no window and there was instead a mirror beside the bed. The armoire had been left open, with another uniform-like set of clothes folded in a small pile. He had only been wearing thin and loose flannel pants and a white T-shirt. He slipped out of them and pulled on the contents of the dresser. His outfit looked like his sister's but its main color was black and it was accented by gold. It fit even looser on him than it did on her.
He walked over to stand in front of the mirror and took in his appearance for the first time that he hadn't forgotten. He had very light skin and bright amber eyes. He leaned into the mirror to look at their pattern. They almost seemed to have streaks moving outwards from the pupil that was a lighter, golden shade. Oh, no. That was only the right eye. It wasn't noticeable from a distance but it was a strange detail. His hair was the same color as Lumine's, but longer. It was a little thin and slightly wavy and fell to the small of his back. It was messier than he would have liked it to be at the moment, but that could be fixed later. Overall it was a halfway decent appearance, he didn't hate what he saw.
He remembered what the old woman had mentioned, the Academy. He was going to bet that that was what the logo was representing. Were they in an academy? Were they just stealing clothes? Was this their house? Probably not, they looked too young to own one.
Aether looked back to his reflection, wondering how old he actually was. He had no references for specific people, but he had a general sense of what someone should look like at what age, and he seemed about 16 or 17.
Aether walked back into the room he had woken up in and joined Lumine by the window. She was slightly taller than him and looked a little more mature. She was probably a year or so older than him.
The window was on the second floor and looked out over clean, white, stone streets. They wound and curled around small, mostly wooden, buildings. The whole city seemed to rise upwards the further on Aether looked, and as the taller, more elaborate buildings rose his vision was obscured and blocked. It was huge, far bigger than what Aether had pictured based on what he had been able to hear.
There were half a dozen massive windmills towering above the roofs in the section that was less built-up and between the two a winged and hooded figure towered over the city amidst terraced gardens. The statue's palms were outstretched as if gifting something to the settlement itself.
In the streets that were in view, there were people everywhere. Most of them were moving about the market stalls and open-air stores that littered the central plaza the siblings were overlooking. Their window vantage point was one row of buildings back from the square but the only thing in front of it was a small art supplies shop that they could easily see over. There was a roof beneath the window and Lumine was sitting partially out of the frame, her feet resting on the small ledge beneath it.
The glass had been opened to swing fully out and against the side of the building, so Aether stepped completely over the ledge and sat on the roof in front of it.
"So, you don't remember anything at all? Just our names?" he asked, still entranced by the new and unfamiliar place, not wanting to turn away.
Lumine smiled sadly. "I was hoping you did because my mind is still blank."
"If we both lost our memories at the same time do you think we were in some accident? I mean people don't just do that. Are you injured at all? I have a few weird scars, but that's it," Aether inquired, a million questions racing through his head.
"Weird scars? What do you mean?"
Aether frowned, "I don't know, like a large cut but with burns at the edge."
Lumine unbuttoned the top of her jacket and shrugged off the left shoulder. Divided in half by the strap of the tank top she was wearing, was a stroke of discolored and scarred skin, with slight redness and texture indicating burn marks around the edges.
"Yeah… like that," he thought for a second, "So maybe we were in an accident after all? Maybe something exploded?"
"Why would that erase our memory though?" Lumine critiqued, frowning at her brother's guess.
Aether let himself fall back onto the roof, sideways across its angle. "I don't know. I don't know anything anymore. What is happening? Where is this?"
He tilted his head sideways to look down across the square. A large fountain was set at its center. It had a large clover-shaped basin, and a second round bowl above that, supported by four carved animals. In the center of the suspended pool, which was pouring water into the main basin, there was a robed and angelic figure. They had both hands held upwards to the sky and water was pouring down their figure into the rest of the fountain. It didn't shoot upwards, it just bubbled upwards and flowed down. It was pretty. It might be large and intricate but it was somehow calm and didn't dominate the square.
Aether let out a long sigh. "I think I'm 17," he commented. Their previous topic had let a feeling of despondent loss settle over him, and he didn't really want to dwell on it.
"That could be… I think I'm about 18," Lumine hastily added, apparently also eager to focus on something else for the time being.
Aether's gaze drifted past the carvings to the people milling around the square. Those that weren't moving through or making a purchase were sitting around sunlit pavilions, either above the first story or the ground level, but all open to the air. There were four counters enclosing outdoor kitchens from which the restaurants were served. At the one directly across the fountain from the siblings, something caught Aether's eye.
There were four people sitting together around a table, and two of them were looking right at him. The other two turned around to meet his gaze as well, and suddenly all four quickly got up and began to run down the stairs, behind the building they were on top of, to get down to the street.
"Hey did you see tho-," he started.
"Yes, yes I did and we need to go. They were hurrying for us and that makes me nervous," Lumine interrupted, stepping onto the roof.
"Wait, were they the ones that kept us here? Maybe they know us? Shouldn't we talk to them?" he stammered.
"I don't know, but they're running towards us and we might have stolen their stuff. We need to find out more before we throw ourselves into an unknown like that."
"Find out how? We don't have a plan!" Aether protested. But his sister had already jumped from the ledge to the stone alleyway below them.
Aether pushed himself down the edge, sliding over the smooth wood of the roof and dropping off the end.
It was only a six or seven-foot fall but it still stung a bit when he landed, they hadn't found shoes anywhere. Lumine glanced over her shoulder to verify that he was intact and then darted down, moving between the building they woke up in and the back wall of the establishment in front of it.
Aether took off running after her and they flew across the clean stone alleyway. Aether's feet still hurt even so he caught up with Lumine. He tried to avoid the rough edges of the warm white tiles but his feet still got cut.
Nobody was on the side street they were taking but they were about to cross over a larger road perpendicular to it than connected to the square. As they bounded across it pedestrians turned to catch sight of them, and Lumine pushed on even faster into an alleyway on the other side. It was between two brick buildings and there was a wall at the end, but it did turn to the right along the back of the buildings they ran between.
Aether followed Lumine behind the row of shops and houses, glimpsing from time to time between them to see the street on either side. After about 50 feet alleyways started connecting the back lane to a street on the other side as well.
Lumine turned onto that other street. It was quieter, and it didn't reach all the way to square. There were only houses here and they lined up all the way to the impressive stone walls of the light city, where a gate was lined up with the street. Both of its wooden doors were thrown open.
"Where are we going?" Aether panted, struggling to catch up.
"I'm leading us out of here, it's too big and populated and I think we just stole some people's stuff. What if we were-," Lumine stopped talking for a second to catch her breath, but didn't slow down, "We were probably kidnapped or something. And they're likely chasing us."
She turned to look over her shoulder, she did have to slow down this time.
Aether nodded, "Okay, we'll find anywhere else to be so we can figure out what we're doing here. But you're wrong about one thing."
Lumine looked back over at him, confused.
"I'm the one leading," he laughed and sprinted ahead of his sister.
She gave an indignant yell and ran after him.
