{-Sharena-}

When they joined together again, there wasn't so much as a word spoken between them. For a minute, she even wondered if they overheard her and Peony's conversation or had had one of their own. It was like the kind of march they'd do in the past; no one wanted to disrupt the fragile balance, so they all resolved not to say anything at all. That, if nothing else, didn't feel like a good thing.

Still, she hadn't put it past Peony to be the one to break the silence—loud and sudden enough to startle all of them. "There you are!"

Sharena became a little more alert knowing who she'd called to: the other girl from her dreams, Triandra. It took a minute, but eventually she found the dökkálfar coming out from her hiding place.

"Why are you here?" Triandra, in almost every degree possible, seemed more like a projection than the real thing. Her voice held little emotion at all, even at the sight of her little sister, and her blank stare moved through the six of them before she finally noticed Sharena. "And why is she with you?"

"I bet you already know the answer to both of those!" Whether on purpose or not, Peony moved to better stand between Triandra and Sharena. "For one, you keep ignoring me. You never came over, you didn't respond to my notes, and even Freyr couldn't get Freyja to talk about you. It was like you didn't exist! I thought you might be dead and everyone else was just trying to keep it from me! Sharena's here because Freyr wants her to be. I won't stop you if you want to head over to Ljósálfheimer and ask him yourself. I bet he'd like to see you again."

"How about we make a deal, then? I know you're planning to get to Freyja… why you need to be there is what I don't get… But how about I take over from here?" Triandra tilted her head curiously. "I'll take our friend to see Freyja. The rest of you get to go back to the comforts of Ljósálfheimer. It's safer there for you that way; wouldn't want any of you getting hurt..."

"I can't even trust you with replying within a decent amount of time! Why would I trust you with Sharena?" There wasn't actually anything in Peony's tone that indicated that she didn't mean any harm by it—she likely didn't even realized it might be taken as considerably offensive. To her, this was probably just another sibling quarrel that ultimately would have little true meaning attached to it at the end anyway. "You're not even saying her name!"

"Why should I? It's not like she ever did anything to help us…" The matter-of-fact edge to Triandra's tone was what made Sharena freeze; she knew she couldn't protest, since she actually didn't even remember they existed until recently. Who was to say that what the dökkálfar wasn't telling at least some form of the truth?

It was a noticeable conflict; both Anna and Alfonse glanced at Sharena for her reaction. She didn't try to make it obvious, but it probably couldn't get past them—Peony and Triandra likely would've seen through it, too, if the former was paying attention and the latter was looking any harder than to see she was thrown off by the statement. Despite all the people she knew, it's not like she was particularly used to something like that (in fact, every other time, it was probably a grumpy Hero to begin with saying "You're annoying." which she didn't think about at all because, really, they were just having another bad day and didn't mean it that much).

"Why don't I just show you?" Triandra continued, pulling what looked like a flower bulb from nowhere. She tauntingly waved it around, only Peony and Lekra seeming to know what it was, and started to bloom the longer she held it.

Peony made a quick attempt to get it. "Don't you dare—"

A smile etched across Triandra's lips as she deliberately let it drop. "Whoops."

The change may not have been drastic, but it was definitely sudden. Most of their surroundings stayed the same, and they were all still there, just a few things almost seemed… older; the dark but vibrant landscape was replaced by one that looked like the life was slowly draining from it. Yet it was also familiar, and Sharena, deep down, understood that this wasn't a future, but the past. And somehow, she could recognize all the voices, with a faint understanding of how this would all play out.

Several wisps appeared in front of them, though each held little detail to make it hard to tell who they were trying to represent. To her, just the voices was enough—Peony seemed to need even less indication as she paled even before a word was spoken.

"I-I'm sorry! I didn't mean to—"

"Apologize all you want, but that ain't changing anything, you little wretch."

"She didn't do it, though! It was my fault that she misplaced it, Dad, I swear!"

"Well then I'll just punish the both of you. Which one's up first to the slaughter?"

"I was the one that broke Mom's vase!"

"What? You brat, that cost more than you two rats could ever dream of! So you finally came clean about that one, too, eh?"

"But neither of us have been in the house for months… we hadn't even seen the vase until—"

"Don't lie, Sis. We both know what happened, and I'm ready to face the consequences for my actions."

"Details don't matter. Even the horses would be relieved when I'm done with you."

The wisps change to take on different forms, this time four instead of three.

"None of you would ever need to suffer in our care… As our world faces ruin, you are our hope. Would you all join us, and accept this embrace of never ending love?"

"We've never had a home, no matter how hard we tried to make it. I don't want to live like that anymore. If it means staying here forever, then so be it—it's better than that place would've ever been anyway."

"I think… Mom might be a little sad, if she notices we're not there anymore… but I'm with you. This can be our sanctuary."

"Then what about you, little rose? I daresay you'd make quite the álfar…"

"Leaving everyone and never being able to see any of them again…" Now that was a voice that all of them would've recognized: Sharena's, albeit much younger. The scene still felt foreign to her without any memory of it. "I don't have what you do. I don't know if I could give up all of that…"

"Through you, we would all be saved… but I can understand if you'd rather have time to think it over."

Then the wisps disappeared altogether, proving the end of the little show. Triandra gave them all a moment to think it over before she went on to explaining it further.

"That was a small fragment of a nightmare. I can't come up with those things on the spot, though, so it was rather pathetic…" The Dökkálfar dared a step closer to the rest of them, which none of them responded to at all. "Tell me, what do you think you heard? Do you think it was all just a play of the imagination set up to trick you?"

She waited, but received no reply. "Tsk, of course. Suppose I'll have to do the honors of explaining this to you… wouldn't want Lady Freyja to realize how ignorant you all are, now would we?" With another step forward, she continued. "That was the cold reality of álfar, illustrated through our story… Our birth father died when we were both young. Heartbroken, she soon found a new man, and from there, things got bad quickly. We were forced into the stables, treated worse than even the livestock… everything that went wrong was blamed on us. Then we were given the chance of salvation. But it's ruined. We're still forced to hold the weight of our past, while everyone else is able to soar without it… And that's all because of you, isn't it, little dreamer?"

Triandra slipped past Peony to stand right in front of Sharena. Her smile was a superficial one as she pulled Lekra over too as vines appeared to come up from the ground to surround the three of them. Before either Sharena or Lekra could question her, Triandra brought Sharena into a hug.

((A/N: Most of the truth about álfar, anyway…

I understand that those two bits of just dialogue might be a bit confusing. The second one, at least, will get a better explanation later; the first I'm just gonna say now was Peony-Dad-Triandra-Dad-Triandra-Peony-Dad-Peony-Triandra-Dad.))