{-Sharena-}

Triandra couldn't have been any more unclear in her actions. "There's only one reason I miss you. And that's because she missed you. I'm only thankful that we met you because you're the only thing that's keeping us from falling apart."

Sharena decided it was best if she just didn't say anything. She didn't try to push Triandra away or stand her ground, simply accepting whatever was given to her with an unnatural sense of calmness. Somehow, she knew that nothing bad would happen as long as she didn't fight it. She was glad to see that Lekra took the hint and stayed still as well.

"I really was being honest when I said you've never done anything for us. I realized that once we started spending more time apart… how much I hated you. You had everything we didn't, but that wasn't even the problem. You didn't think to use any of it, or sacrifice it to understand what it was like for us…" Triandra backed away only to circle around her. "When the time came, you got overwhelmed—you didn't make your decision until it was already too late to make much of a difference. The sheer memory of you is enough to bring up so many different emotions… worst yet, she clings to that memory like it's some form of salvation. But all it does is hurt her, making her force a smile, hoping for a bittersweet feeling at knowing you were out there, living, growing older and experiencing the joys and pains of the waking world. I'll admit to believing those lies, thinking that there was a better path if I only just held faith for a little while longer… but the truth came to me. I wasn't moving forward, instead letting the past control me like she is. Even now, her past emotions are getting in the way of her living in the present. All because of you."

"What do you want to do with me now, then?" Sharena prompted calmly. "I don't have enough memory to deny or confirm what you're saying. All that matters is what you feel like doing."

"So true," the dökkálfar mused. "Yet that isn't my decision to make. It's about time you reunite with Lady Freyja; she's been waiting for the opportunity to see you again, you know… Someone's got to clean up the mess that Freyr made."

It got a little brighter as the vines began to pull away. Through the gaps, it was possible to see the area around them; they might as well have been standing right in front of the entrance to a palace parallel to Freyr's. Triandra simply motioned for the two of them to follow her without so much as a glance back to make sure they actually were.

They were quiet up until they reached what Sharena assumed to be the doors throne room, which was actually a bit more hard than it might've seemed; all throughout it, she kept wanting to tell Lekra to stop getting nervous, but didn't want to break the silence. It felt like they'd been here before and knew what was behind the door—though it likely wasn't impossible, since they were a nightmare and Peony did say there were some like them in Dökkálfheimer. With her months of experience with them, though, she had to admit that their worry was normally well-placed. The truth itself didn't make her feel any better.

Triandra calmly knocked on the door once. "Lady Freyja, I've finished…"

"You may enter, my roses." Despite the voice being welcoming, Sharena couldn't help but feel unsettled. It wasn't like she'd never seen Freyja before—and she was confident that's who it was, given the familiarity, though she had no recollection of ever actually hearing it before.

Sharena wondered, for a moment, if Triandra thought she looked like a trapped animal; the dökkálfar glanced at her with what she was going to take as pity before gesturing to the door. "You don't want to keep Lady Freyja waiting."

Choosing to ignore Lekra and her own doubts, Sharena nodded. She entered, immediately greeted by who she knew to be Freyja. It felt like parts of her memories were trying to resurface the longer she stayed in the room, which only made her dizzy to think about. Triandra calmly stepped around her in order to give the woman on the throne a polite bow.

Freyja offered each of them a considerate smile, oddly comforting in spite of everything else. "If it isn't my two little runaways, tied together by a single common thread… rebels always find each other in the end, don't they? I don't know how they do it…" She paused when she passed over Triandra. "Thank you, dear. If you'd be so kind as to join me up here, I'd be ever so grateful; no need to be shy, now. You know that I'll never bite." Then she waited until Triandra wandered over to stand beside her before moving on with the conversation, turning her gaze to Sharena and Lekra. "Well, my roses, I assume you just came back from Freyr. But I'm afraid my brother left out a couple of important details about the two of you. Oh, and you don't have to worry about your friends. They've got Peony and I'll send Plumeria down their way soon, there'll certainly find their way back to the waking realm… they might even find their way here, however awfully tedious that would be."

"He told you a story, didn't he?" she continued, her voice slowly running dry of welcomeness. "About three girls, two of which became álfar and the third dreaming away between what's real and a mere matter of fiction. But did he ever share why that was? Why they became álfar, why are you, of all people, stuck in the crossfire between the waking and dreaming realms?"

"I'd advise not to listen to her, Sharena," Lekra mumbled cautiously. "Nothing good could come from a woman who weaves lies and distributes them through nightmares."

"Now now, little nightmare," Freyja warned. "You might want to keep quiet unless you'd like to be the one explaining all these pesky secrets. Or maybe I should just cut off that pathetic thread of a connection between the two of you and you could watch your dear dreamer collapse under the imbalance..?" This got all of them a bit more intent on what she was saying—there wasn't room to risk her joking about that.

Her smile turned to more of a malicious one. "Good." She seemed to give them one more minute to try to protest. "Let me paint you a picture. Long, long ago, there was a world that was falling apart from the seams. It was the home of a little boy and girl, the only ones who could do anything. In response to the threat, all alone with the encroaching shadows threatening to swallow up all they held dear, they pointed their gaze to children. Mortals always praise children for being the future of a nation; we saw them as our only chance of saving the place we grew up in. Children were full of dreams, you see—so much more creative than adults, and so much easier to coax with the prizes of an eternal playtime. It's though this that álfar came into existence.

"But there were ever so many ethical questions that needed to be considered. We couldn't just abduct these kids, with the point that they might—for whatever reason—choose to stay in the waking realm. They had to do so willingly. Then there was also the problem of that child's impact on the world and what it would be like for that person to just… disappear from the world. To answer these, we looked at our own upbringing, and soon decided to pick from the unwanted; those left to starve, forever unloved by the world, so that we might give them a happy home and even save our own. They held no consequence in the grand scheme of the real world, yet they were little saviors in their own right. Wasted potential, honestly, those forgotten children… If we were lucky, we came across an extremely talented kid, and with their becoming of an álfar, they didn't just postpone but completely get rid of the chance of a collapse. That's where you come in, little rose. That single child that could've prevented any more from suffering in the waking terrors that awaited them in the real world. Now that single child's all grown up, and could do more than that… so much more… So tell me, Sharena, my dear little white rose… do you remember how you strayed so far from the right path?"

((A/N: Triandra was never good at being inconspicuous…

My plan is for Freyja to be a "overprotective mom" kind of person. To the point she's telling you lies in order to keep you "safe." Also I'd love it if you just spend some time considering what "rose" might refer to besides the obvious flower theme the álfar have.))