{-Mirabilis-}
Freyr's smile was warm, bringing her that happy feeling from deep inside her that she hadn't felt in a long time. If she could stay in that warmth forever, she would be happy. And she got it the night he offered her the dream nectar.
She didn't remember who she was before then, but she knew she didn't care. That girl—whoever she was—had longed for this, the refuge that Ljósálfheimer now gave her. The girl had gone through a life of suffering, left alone in a big world that seemed to only want to hurt her. Who was she to go against the wishes of that girl? She had everything that she could have wished for. There was no point in trying to remember who "she" was and what happened to her. She should just embrace this new life, shed every little bit of her old self and finally become new.
For a while she just played with the children. She always thought of it as her repaying the álfar for taking care of her; every night she hoped that she would give them even the fraction of hope that those álfar had given her to those children. But she tended to stay away from the ones that seemed to possess a situation that sounded too close to that girl of her memories. It brought up a certain feeling that she didn't like, so she left that to someone else to handle.
Then one day Freyr called her into his throne room. She hadn't been there since he'd given her the dream nectar, and had assumed that would have been her first and only time. So she didn't quite know what to think.
She slowly opened the door and, with Freyr's smile, completely came into the room. "What do you need me for, Dream-King Freyr..?"
"You don't need to worry, Mirabilis," he said, getting up from his throne and walking up to her. "This isn't anything serious. In fact I'd like to show you something that many álfar before you have found to be a great honor…"
…
He taught her how to travel between the dream and waking realms. She was also given a new mission to go along with the skill: she would visit the waking realm whenever he wished, sometimes to check on something but usually to help the other álfar spread daydreams to mortals. Soon afterwards he gifted her the Flower of Ease, which Freyr explained as something that will help her if she were to run into mortals who wanted to hurt her.
With being closer to mortals, however, several more things came back to her. Things she didn't understand and didn't want to understand, yet knew that she had gone through it all.
"I can't bear to look at her anymore… she's too much like him…"
"So what if you lose her too?"
"I don't care. She can do nothing for me except bring me more heartbreak. If she dies young, so be it. At least then I won't be reminded of him…"
With all that time alone, Mirabilis did the one thing she really didn't want to do: think about those voices and where she'd heard them before. She didn't mention it to anyone else, though eventually Freyr did catch on that there was something bothering her.
When he asked, she told him everything.
"It's not unusual for an álfar to be reminded of something in their past," Freyr had told her. "I can make you forget the parts that you're beginning to remember. It isn't guaranteed to be a permanent fix, but the good thing about it is that you can just come to me whenever they start bothering you."
She felt lighter again after that, walking away without even realizing what had made her come to Freyr in the first place.
…
"How did this happen?" Freyr's voice was just slightly more upset than usual after seeing her. He'd guided her to a little room in the palace where she had never been before, looking at all her cuts as soon as she had sat down.
"I wasn't as careful as I should've been. Bandits found me. Luckily they thought soldiers were coming so they left."
This wasn't her first encounter with violent mortals. Sometimes she was able to keep them away from her, but then there were times like this where she couldn't quite run away quick enough. The difference between those times, though, was the way she responded to Freyr's next question:
"Would you like to forget about this?"
"No."
Mirabilis knew she was repeating the same mistakes. If it had to come to forgetting the unpleasant encounter or having a better chance at avoiding it again in the future, it was smarter to choose the latter. It worked the way she hoped it would, at least.
…
Everything was chaos. At least now she understood why she'd felt so uneasy; something had been on the brink of happening, which she was now watching unfold.
Somehow she knew that if she could get to the palace, she'd be safe. She didn't understand what all these dark things around her were, but she knew that they only brought death along with them. For the first time, she saw Ljósálfheimer reduced to nothing more but wilting flowers and a reality that felt like it was coming apart.
Freyr was relieved to see her when she finally burst into the throne room. There were about a dozen ljósálfar there as well, along with Freyja (whom up until now she'd mainly just heard things about, rather than actually being introduced to her) and several of her dökkálfar.
Finally having the time to catch her breath, Mirabilis worked up the courage to ask, "What's happening?"
"She purposely set her nightmares to cause a dream imbalance," Freyja said matter-of-factly.
"You know that's not it," Freyr sighed. "If the Trickster had meant to send them she wouldn't be coming to help. Though even if she comes quickly, this is going to take a while to recover from…" He solemnly looked around. "It doesn't look like many of us will be moving on from this…"
…
He was right: only the álfar that were in that room continued working with the children after the Trickster gathered her runaway creatures. The others… Even after mortal centuries it was hard to think about what happened to them. Suffice to say there were a few visits to Death, all of them ending with the same result. Most of the others had asked to forget about the events. She didn't, learning that if she could tell the signs again then maybe so many wouldn't need to be lost.
Mirabilis always remained wary of those creatures, the nightmares. Now the Trickster had gifted them to Freyja, along with giving Freyr beings she called dreams. She said they would counteract each other, and could be used for work with the waking mortals that álfar were a bit too obvious for. With them she suggested they keep an eye out for someone, and told them what to do when they finally found them. Mirabilis never heard the exact specifics, but Freyr had later explained it to her.
"You know how to tell a dreamer from a normal child, don't you?"
"Of course. They're much closer to álfar than regular mortals."
"I want you to look for a dreamer. We have reason to believe that they'll be much easier to recognize than the other dreamers—should the Trickster's words be trusted, they're going to hold a strong connection to the dream realm from the very beginning. When you find someone that might fit those qualifications… let me know immediately. The Trickster's wishes are only to see her own plan fulfilled, without any care for what happens to that child. If we can… I want to get them out of that situation. Keep them from becoming a pawn in her cruel game…".
…
Slowly, Mirabilis began to understand more about the Trickster. She was also known as the Trickster God, one of the two gods that had given Freyr and Freyja control over the dream realm. But the list of her praises ended there: she only did what she needed to make herself happy, without any care for what happened to anyone else. She tended to do bad things to others just to give herself a bit of entertainment. The good part was her partner, the God of War, seemed to be rather fair… though she, too, enjoyed watching mortals struggle on occasion, she claimed it was to see how they grew stronger from it rather than just hoping to see them fail.
Really, Mirabilis didn't know how long she'd searched for the dreamer Freyr wanted her to find. She'd encountered countless dreamers from an innumerable amount of worlds, but none of them completely fit what he was looking for. She did find someone else of interest, though: the prince of peace, who she'd overheard Freyr and Freyja talk about. Apparently he was supposed to be the counterpart to the dreamer, and together they'd fulfill whatever plot the Trickster had planned for them.
She'd seen him before in Ljósálfheimer, of course, but this was the first time to see him in the world he came from. She realized that, if he was supposed to work together with the dreamer, they needed to come from the same world. At least that gave her a much narrower search.
She headed to the throne room to tell Freyr about her progress, but stopped at the door.
"We lost her!" Freyja clearly sounded distressed. "I told you it was going to happen! Oh, the poor girl, she—Hel doesn't deserve her! If you had just made up your mind sooner…"
"Don't blame me for this," Freyr said calmly, "and don't act like this is the first time it's happened. Things in the mortal realm simply aren't under our control. There's nothing we can do to help her now."
"I'm going to do something."
"Freyja, please, be rational. You can't do anything."
"I have those nightmares. They're not doing anything but taking up space. They don't even talk. They've killed mortals before, the Trickster said that much herself… So if I sent them down there…"
"You cannot kill mortals!"
"I'm going to make sure they know just to go after the adults," Freyja remarked, as if that solved any possible issue. "Besides, it's your indecision that brought us into this situation in the first place. Think of that girl. It's tragic what had to happen to her… and I'm sure she's terrified. I know Hel won't give her away for free. But I'm sure she'll be willing to trade… All I want is the girl, and she can have all the adults she wants… No one ever said we couldn't help the dead mortals… Perhaps with me, she'll finally know the peace impossible to acquire even in death…"
"Freyja—"
"Too late, Brother! My mind's made up! I'm going to Hel!"
Then it got quiet and, after waiting a few moments, Mirabilis slowly pushed the door open. Seeing that Freyja had left, she walked further in and said, "I still don't know where the dreamer is, but… I found the world of the prince of peace."
"Where?" Álfar didn't naturally know where all of their children came from; usually, when the child got older, they could piece it together by specific names or places mentioned. But the prince of peace wasn't quite old enough for them to get that kind of information out of him, not like it would have been easy if he could.
"A World of Zenith… as one of Askr's."
Freyr contemplated it for a moment before mumbling, "What is she planning, using someone held so dearly..?"
…
Mirabilis quickly met the girl Freyja had mentioned, and overheard a bit more of the story. Apparently she had been shoved into a well and died there—right when Freyr and Freyja were discussing making her an álfar. Freyja then went to Death and traded the lives of adults for the girl. When they returned to Dökkálfheimer, she was given the dream nectar and the name Plumeria.
It seemed pretty obvious, at least, that Plumeria remembered being dead. She was quiet and even more of a lapdog to Freyja than an average dökkálfar was. She knew she wasn't supposed to be in this paradise, even if she didn't remember why she qualified to be here.
They met when she delivered a message from Freyja to Freyr. She introduced herself and explained that Freyja had appointed her as the envoy between the two places. It was a while before they knew any more about each other besides their names and general roles.
Mirabilis was in the throne room because Freyr had wanted to discuss something with her. She was nearly about to fall asleep when she noticed someone else come in, who turned out to be Plumeria. They ended up talking, since they were both waiting for the same person.
"So ljósálfar only takes care of children?" Plumeria asked.
"No, it's the same as dökkálfar; children are the only ones to come to Ljósálfheimer, but we give dreams to adults too."
"Oh… You never made a distinction from adults and children. Aren't they so different?"
"Not really. I mean, it's kinda silly to give an adult a dream of unicorns and rainbows but, other than that, it's pretty much the same thing."
"Maybe it's just different to give adults nightmares… Their minds are darker than a child's. They desire awful things…"
…
She'd decided to check on the prince of peace in his own world since she was in the area. She was not expecting to sense a dreamer nearby, or to notice how strong that dreamer felt, or to realize it was coming from the castle.
Mirabilis waited for a break in the guards' patrols before flying up to the window closest to where she felt the dreamer. And there the baby was, crying until it saw her. Then it smiled and laughed.
She immediately told Freyr about it. For the longest time, he was just stunned into silence.
"Are you sure?"
"I'm confident that's the dreamer you wanted me to find. If it's not, then I have no idea who it could be."
"This is suddenly going to become much more complicated…"
…
They later learned that this dreamer's name was Sharena. She stayed with Freyr in order to keep her safe as they tried to think of a way to prevent the Trickster's plan from happening. Perhaps not surprisingly, they could find nothing to help them immediately.
Mirabilis's assignment had changed to play with two other girls—who would later be known as Triandra and Peony—since she didn't really need to be in the waking realm too much anymore and she could use the extra time to rest. Eventually Freyr and Freyja decided to let Sharena join them, so occasionally she would watch all three.
None of them were here now, though; it was morning where they were, which meant it was her long and well-deserved nap time. That is, if Freyr didn't call her in.
"What do you want?" she moaned as she walked into the throne room. "I was ready to go to sleep…"
"Could you… take me to the mortal realm?"
"It depends. Is it really a smart idea for someone like you to be out there?"
"Probably not, but I… want to see her. She said it was her birthday and that her mother was taking her to town. I presume you know where that is?"
"Why don't you just wait until she goes to sleep?"
"I believe it would mean more to her to see me in person at least once."
"Well, if you want to, who am I to deny my king?"
So they went. He used a bit of magic to conceal a part of their identities; it didn't get rid of all of it, but it was enough that, from a distance, they seemed to be an average father and daughter. With as many people in town that day as it was, no one bothered to pay them any mind.
Until, of course, Sharena and her mother appeared among the crowd. The girl immediately recognized Freyr and excitedly ran towards him.
"Freyr! Mirabilis, is that you, too? Hi! What are you doing here? Oh, oh! Are you here for my birthday? I'm five now!"
Freyr's smile wasn't nearly as wide as hers, but Mirabilis knew to take it to mean just as much. "Yes we are. I've got a little present for you." He bent down and put a flower in her hair. "If you'd like, when we get to Ljósálfar I can transform for you and give you a ride through the gardens."
"Yeah!"
Sharena's mother finally caught up, pulling her closer. "Sharena, I told you not to run off. You need to stay where I can see you…"
"But Mother, this is Freyr! The nice goat-man that plays with me when I'm asleep!"
She quickly tried to move on so she didn't have to think of the fact. "I'm so sorry about her. She has such an imagination…"
"Mother, I'm not imagining it! It's really Freyr!"
"Sharena, please, keep it down. Leave this man alone."
Sharena relented, mumbled an apology, and stood behind her mother.
Freyr wasn't quite done yet, though. "You're Henriette, correct?"
Slowly, Sharena's mother nodded.
"Congratulations on fulfilling your dream. Both of your children will grow up to do great things."
((A/N: No, you are not getting any more detail towards Mirabilis's dislike towards adults and nightmares. The situations regarding them will remain like the year after Zacharias's disappearance: it's mentioned, briefly shown, but otherwise you get nothing except for the fact that it was hell.
Poor Henriette has, like, three different gods telling her things about her kids. Of course she just assumed Freyr is a random dude, in which case this probably isn't the strangest thing some stranger has told her and decided not to think of it any further.
This also ends about thirteen years before the current day, when most Memory Matters tend to be much closer, but this is almost three thousand words long as it is…))
