{-Alfonse-}
His day was already bad to begin with, this just assured him it was only going to get worse—and it was just barely noon. He'd gotten up late, started work late, and realized how much he hadn't done the night before; it was something he'd been slowly going through while fighting back the urge to fall asleep, even though he knew full well the kind of nightmare that he'd be greeted with.
Alfonse only told Henriette he was leaving before catching up with Sharena and Peony. He didn't think about how this was technically the first time he'd be seeing Anna in two months (the near-miss of a fight and generally being busy giving him little reason to be at the Order's castle), just walked the distance between the two castles without much thoughts at all.
They were all there by the time he came into the meeting room. Fauna gave a short nod in greeting, Anna mumbled something, and Sharena smiled a bit. He took his normal position and, after she realized everyone was ready, Peony began her explanation.
"Okay, so. I already told all of you my name and Sharena knows this but I'm going to say it again for the rest of you, but I'm a ljósálfar—or light elf, whichever one you'd prefer. I'm assuming you know what that means? And I bet you're wondering what the heck an álfar, known for their dream-giving stuff, is doing in the very much real and waking realm. It's kind of a long story… geez, where do I even start..?
"About two months ago—according to what Mirabilis said about time in the mortal realm, anyway—someone did something that unlocked a part of Sharena's memories. Freyr, the dream-king, can explain exactly what happened before then that makes it even more important. Those few little memories then went through and began to unlock more memories; things relating to us, for example, that showed up as the dreams that I don't know if she's told any of you about. Without going into too much detail, there's a chance those memories, if given the option to keep being unlocked, will eventually set of the extremely delicate balance between the waking and dreaming realms. And possibly also kill her. That would be pretty bad too.
"To keep this from happening, she's going to have to go to Ljósálfheimer and see Freyr. He'll make her forget again to keep that worst case scenario from happening. I don't really know why he asked the rest of you to come along, though. Basically, to sum it up, some really horrible things are going to happen if we just leave things as they are now. I know that Freyr will be able to explain the whole thing better than I could since there's a lot I still don't know, but first I kinda got to convince all of you to come…"
Anna was the first to show her unwillingness towards the idea. "Not more dumb dream crap…"
"How severe, exactly, are we talking about here..?" Alfonse didn't like the thought of just following along with this. He needed a good reason, if not just to put his mind at ease about how long he'd undoubtedly be neglecting everything he needed to do.
"Uuuh… judging from what Sharena, Mirabilis, and Freyr told me about that world of nightmares place you went to, it'll be like that but there's not really any place that's safe." Peony's reply was casual enough to show that she didn't fully grasp how bad that was. "Oh! But it's probably worth mentioning that time moves a lot quicker in the dream realm. No matter how long you guys stay in there, it'll only be a couple of minutes or maybe an hour here."
"The only one this really involves is me, right?" Sharena likely had made up her mind about what she was going to do as soon as Peony had initially finished the explanation. "So long as I'm there, the others don't matter?"
Peony nodded. "Freyr didn't tell me he needed all of you for that plan to work, just to bring you along. The only reason I can think of is to keep you guys from telling other people álfar actually exist, but that's something Mirabilis should be able to do. But the important part is you, so…"
"Then, if no one else feels like going, I'll go with you alone," Sharena suggested. "I technically screwed it up in the first place—Lekra never would've shown me if I hadn't asked. The least I could do is fix it again."
Anna sighed. "You're dead set on this, aren't you..?"
"And you know we're not going to let you go on your own," Alfonse added. "You might as well just be forcing us to actually agree to this."
Fauna didn't seem to like that plan any more than they did, though her own response came as little more than a mumble. "Someone gets hurt whenever we all go to another world…"
Sharena, however, acted like she'd asked them all nicely and they accepted. She always did know what to say to get the rest of them to agree with her on things they normally wouldn't. "We're all set, then."
"Actually, there is still proper planning that needs to be done first," Anna pointed out dully.
"Mother should probably know about this," Alfonse agreed. She knew about the nightmares, and Sharena's connection to them; she'd been the one to tell him that his sister played with "álfar," which lead to his lack of surprise to know Sharena found Peony. He didn't want to leave Henriette in the dark anymore. "How about we set out tomorrow morning? That should give us all enough time to get everything ready."
"Oh, there's uh… one more thing," Peony admitted sheepishly. "I don't actually know how to travel between the two worlds—only by the general falling asleep which isn't an option here for a couple of reasons. BUT the ljósálfar I came with, Mirabilis, does; it's kind of something only she and Freyr can do, I guess other álfar can but as far as I'm aware of they're the only ones who ever do it. The problem is, I kind of maybe… lost her on my way here..?" She shrunk a little, seeming to anticipate some sort of bad reaction.
Everyone seemed to be expecting that.
She continued on to nervously talk about it a bit more. "I also don't know where she is. She was right behind me, but when I hit a tree and she didn't respond to me I realized she wasn't… I mean, there's a chance she just fell asleep midway through so she got sent somewhere else, and once she notices that she'll come and find me because Freyr definitely wouldn't be happy if I got lost. She also falls asleep a lot so I'm afraid she might get into trouble—I mean, she's gotten out of bad situations before, but…"
"You're worried about a friend." Anna shrugged. "That's something all of us can relate to. I'll send some scouts out tonight to look around for her so then we might have an idea of where we're going tomorrow."
Peony nodded her thanks.
"While we're talking about planning, I have an important question." Fauna waited a moment before continuing with her thought. "What are we going to do about Iztali? Even if we're only gone for a little while, he's never really been alone before… I was with him when you two went on your road trip, and there was that one day where he was really sluggish like you were too far away for too long."
"Lekra did said Ihu got sick when they were too far from Natheniel…" Sharena sighed. "I guess the best we can do is leave him with Mother and make sure she's aware of it. I'll talk to him later too so he knows what's going on. I don't want him to think I abandoned him…"
"Iztali's that kid you mentioned, right?" Peony perked up a bit at the mention of him. "Can I come with you? Ljósálfar do specialize in giving dreams to little kids, after all!"
Sharena gave her a warm smile. "Of course! So we'll go and talk with him and Mother, Alfonse can do whatever he needs in order to be able to come with us, and Anna and Fauna can gather up everything for the trip. Sound good?"
There was a mutual mumble of agreement (and Anna's "Who put you in charge, again..?") before they dispersed. Alfonse waited for Sharena and Peony to get Iztali—who'd stayed the night at the Order's castle with Fauna, as per their usual alternating—and the four of them walked back to the royal castle with as much silence as there could've been with a little boy and an excitable álfar there.
((A/N: In an alternative universe, when Anna said "Not more dumb dream crap…" Peony replied with "ALL THE DUMB DREAM CRAP!" I actually sent my friend a message with that thought as soon as I thought of it.
There's one thing that doesn't actually get an explanation in the story: Fauna. In short, she's the Summoner, but she pretty much never has the cloak in any given part of the stories. She's a precious little bean who's trying her best to fit the role she's replacing in the team.))
