{-Sharena-}

Alfonse and Anna worked together to make sure the bandits stayed in one place until Heroes from the Order came to deal with them. This also made they made a short detour to the nearest town to get the message across; Anna and Fauna were the only ones to go in, of course, and Peony and Mirabilis stayed far away from anywhere they'd be seen. The bright side to that was that by the time the letter was sent out, Mirabilis seemed ready to take them to the dream realm.

They'd all wandered into a more secluded section before she began explaining what exactly they'd be doing. "You all know about how you guys go to different worlds. What I'm going to do is pretty much like that. But you've got to remember that this is a place you definitely don't belong in; you're only here because Freyr wants you to be." She paused for a moment, giving a sideways glance to Lekra. "And Sharena? Keep your nightmare in check while we're there. In Ljósálfheimer—Dökkálfheimer too—everyone's going to know about them. If they're not well-behaved, they will be dealt with, and that's the one warning I'm going to give."

"You don't have to scare them!" Peony pointed out stubbornly. "It can't be that bad…"

Lekra sighed. "I'll be on my best behavior," they promised dully. "Honestly I'm not sure what you think I plan on doing…"

Sharena couldn't figure out her nervousness, though. It wasn't just from going someplace new (well, as far as she remembered), or going there in order to forget things again… something else was bothering her that she wasn't even able to begin to guess what it was. Was it just more of Lekra's feelings that were rubbing off on her? Or was there something else that she didn't remember but acknowledged about that place to make her feel like this? She felt sick thinking about it, though was given little time to think it over more.

By the time she'd stopped zoning out, they were there. Bright and seemingly made out of plants, it was hard to deny this as the palace she'd seen in her dreams in the past month. She would've just immediately started following Peony if she hadn't noticed the others staring at Lekra.

"I don't get what that's for," the nightmare pointed out. "She said 'everyone.' Everyone includes you. Back in the real world, I have a form that's simply a projection of the minds of those who can sense me; here, I arguably actually have a material body, since this is the realm of dreams rather than reality." Despite their explanation, it still took her a little longer to realize they were implying that the other three could see them.

"Weren't you taller in that mirror?" Anna wondered aloud. "You were floating then and you're floating now, but I definitely feel like you're shorter." They'd all seen Lekra once before, in a cave near the royal castle; it was when they told their story shortly after Sharena became their dreamer, and soon after they'd been allowed to stay.

"I guess Sharena didn't mention that I can change my form like Loki. To put it simply, I made myself shorter in order to better fit her." Lekra shrugged. "But I believe we have other things to trouble ourselves over. Like the reason we're here at all..?"

Mirabilis nodded. "They're right… Freyr's not too far from here…"

"Mhm! I'll show you where he is." Peony gestured for them to follow her, and they did. "He's probably not busy right now. I mean, I've never really seen him busy before, at least. I don't really know how much can be done when you're just the king of dreams. A lot of the stuff normal kings deal with aren't problems álfar normally come across."

She continued with a thoughtful ramble about the dream-king as they walked. It wasn't really anything that they weren't aware of before; it seemed more like a repeat of information in order to fill the void of silence than to do anything useful. No one pointed it out or tried to stop her until Mirabilis declared they were at the throne room.

When Mirabilis went in to introduce them, Sharena had fully intended to be right behind her—but she stopped when she felt Alfonse's hand on her shoulder.

"Are you sure about this?" The question was simple, yet brought up a bit of doubt in her all the same. "No one is going to ask you to do something you're not comfortable with…"

"I'm fine," Sharena assured him. "Besides, I don't really think we have much more options." She gave him a small smile before walking into the throne room.

Sitting on the throne in front of them was Freyr, exactly the same as she'd seen him in her dreams. Seeing her, it was like he couldn't help but smile a little; his solemn expression seemed to lighten up if not slightly, and his voice was soft and welcoming to match.

"Our little dreamer has come home," he mused. "Come closer, Sharena. I wish to see how much you've grown." He gestured her forward, but she knew that Mirabilis and Peony kept the other four from going further.

Freyr thought over what he planned to say, looking at Sharena and then Peony before continuing. "I hope to help bring some light to a particular problem on why you're here. It's a story that has been kept from you for quite a while now—one that never should've been a secret from the start. That being said, it is something that only involves the four of us as álfar; whether or not your friends are present is up to you."

"I want them here," Sharena decided with a confident nod. She'd be explaining it to them later anyway—not to mention, given the apparent seriousness of the subject, she didn't know if she'd need their support or not.

"Very well then. Allow me to tell you a tale, and I'll let you fill in the blanks as I go. It isn't complicated. You might even find it familiar, though there's no pressure to understand all of it right away." Freyr got up from his throne and slowly began to make his way closer to her. "This story begins with three young girls. Each had their own talents; the oldest had the willpower of someone three times her age, the second oldest knew no bounds with her imagination, and the youngest held nothing but support for the others.

"It was here, in Ljósálfheimer, that they met. They never interacted or even seen each other in the real world, yet they still forged a bond through their dreams that seemed unbreakable. Eventually, though, there seemed to be no real place for the oldest and youngest in the real world—they'd been forced to endure terrible things, and as soon as we realized that, we offered them a chance of a happy life as álfar. As per the agreement between my sister, Lady Freyja, and I, one would become a ljósálfar and the other a dökkálfar. Of course, they'd be allowed to see each other so long as they had permission, and they both accepted. But… there'd been an issue. When mortals are reborn as álfar, they lose all sense of mortality that they'd ever possessed; they couldn't go home, but they also didn't need to worry about health or hunger. These two weren't like the rest: they still possessed that mortality. They still had their 'off-days,' and their forms as álfar faltered. We didn't know what went wrong—nothing like that had ever happened before, it shouldn't have even been possible. At the rate things were going, however, it seemed we'd lose them between forms, giving them no real home or even happy ending.

"That's when Freyja reminded me of someone. The second oldest. This girl had a type of ability that we'd never really heard of before, either. Usually, as kids age and mature, their imaginations and connection to the dream realm grow weaker. She, however, remained as she was when she first came, if not growing closer as time went on. Freyja's suggestion was to simply make her an álfar, as the easiest way to use her for stabilizing the other two; they needed something to keep them steady, and she seemed to be our best option. I didn't think it was workable, though. She wasn't like most álfar—she had a home, a loving family… not to mention a too important social status to just go missing. That's when we used her pre-existing connection to dreams and building onto it. We gave her the power of an álfar but the appearance of a human; with dream nectar from both sides, she belonged to neither good dreams nor nightmares. And finally, we connected their lives to hers. They were her first set of dream guardians, and the three continued to be friends for quite a while longer."

((A/N: Behold, the power of AUs which means I can make up backstories! There's a fair bit of things Freyr is leaving out in this story…))