She danced through meadows of green and gold, waves of grain opening to accept her. The sun, overhead, shone like a lamp: Bright and yellow.
Or was it white? Bright blue? Compared to lamps... Was there supposed to be a moon?
Alessandra awoke with a start.
She found herself sitting in her chair, cheek resting against her table. A panicked check confirmed that she hadn't drooled onto any of the books surrounding her head, and the two-inch lightwell above suggested it was around midday. The light was blue. But maybe it was because she was used to lamps...
"Is that a no?" came a voice.
"Sorry?" Alessandra looked around. In the doorway to her cell stood a silhouette. It was open, of course, at midday.
"I said, can you show me to block C?"
Who was this stranger, who talked of moving between blocks so easily? Furthermore, who was this stranger at all? She clearly wasn't a guard, and Alessandra knew most everyone in the block, the mobile ones, at least by sight. What was that in her forehead?
Was she some sort of guard plant, here to test her somehow? It wasn't a tactic that they'd normally used, but since the red man, anything seemed possible.
"Please leave me alone," Alessandra told her. "I need to do... chores." On the table near the door lay two plates. She picked one up and scurried past the woman. Were those elf ears? It had been years since she'd seen...
Not since she'd seen a dagger, though. Guards had those on their hips every day. But those ones hadn't been so shiny, or drawn, or pointed at her.
"I need to feed Donato," Alessandra told the blade, stepping backwards. "He's in solitary."
The blade flourished and spun through the elf's hands for a moment until Alessandra's gaze followed it back into a sheath. "Go to him," the elf ordered. "I'll wait."
The path down the wing wasn't long, not when you had nowhere else to be. But Alessandra found herself timing each footstep as she scampered down the hall. The path had to be too long, or else why would the guards make her deliver food thrice a day?
Let her. Not make her, let her. Because she wanted to be out of her cell. It was an arrangement that made everybody happy.
At the end of the hall, past rows of doors to empty cells, was an open door to an empty cell.
"Donato?" Alessandra shouted. Where could... what did this mean? Was he taken away? Where could he have gone? Would the guards say she had no more duties and keep her cell locked all day again?
Had the red man taken him? Had he escaped?
"He's a funny one," came a voice from behind. Alessandra jumped. She hadn't realized the elf was following.
"You!" Alessandra took a step towards the woman, then stopped. There were more sheaths on her belt than Alessandra had realized. "Uh... where is Donato?" Was that a gem in her forehead? Not all elves had that, right?
The elf raised her hands at her sides and composed a face of perfect innocence.
"You're not from here." Alessandra was trying to put things together. There was a lot of information that didn't make sense.
"If I were, would I need your help to find my way out?"
My help can't even get me out. "Take me with you." Donato. "Us."
The elf snorted. Alessandra didn't know many elves, or actually any elves, but snorting didn't seem like a very elfly gesture. "You wouldn't last a day in block C."
She just meant to enter High-Risk and stay there? "You're not leaving?" The elf was insane.
"Why would I come just to leave again?"
Definitely insane. "Why come at all?" Not all elves were, Alessandra decided. She'd heard of some very sane ones in block B. But all of the ones that broke into prisons and stuck gemstones into their foreheads, yes, those were the insane ones. It shone and sparkled, despite the dim light.
"If things go well, you won't have to worry about being locked up here much longer," the elf told her. "Block C. Let's go."
What was her plan? Was she going to ask the guards for release? No, that couldn't work. The red man...
Enough talking in circles. "First, tell me what you mean."
The elf drew her dagger, one of her daggers, and took a step forwards.
"One man built this prison," she said. "In three weeks he will be dead, and we'll be even."
"...We?" asked Alessandra.
"Yes, us too." The elf spun the knife in her hand and thrust it, hilt-first, towards Alessandra.
Alessandra took the knife and pointed with it. "It's that way, but we'll have to go through two guard checkpoints to reach the thoroughfare." Is this for me? What will I even do with it?
"Walk me to the first one. And maybe tuck that away somewhere." The elf was right. Few were ever about in block E; most of the prisoners were in solitary or under watch to prevent self-harm. There were a few people like Alessandra who had been born here, and a few guards to watch over them, but there wasn't a single person she'd want to kill, or a person she'd trust to know she had weapons.
Alessandra held the dagger by her side, in the folds of her dress. It would have to suffice for now. "So, for me, for us. When you kill the head of the prison, you think the guards—"
"I won't tell you. You'd spill in 5 minutes of... You know what, hold on." The elf grabbed Alessandra's shoulder and she stopped. Then the gem in the elf's forehead started to glow, and Alessandra blinked. It glowed brighter and brighter, until the light seared through her body, light of the moon, of the stars, never stopping, tearing up—
And then it stopped, and Alessandra was standing in the prison hallway, held upright by an elf, blinking spots out of her eyes.
"There. That wasn't so bad, was it?" The elf's tone was light and conversational, like she hadn't just pierced through someone else's soul. "Now I trust you, if you don't scream so loud again. That tends to be a bad idea in prison, if you haven't heard. I'm Ilaria."
"What did..." Alessandra's mouth formed the words, if slowly. "...Was that?"
"I trust you now." Ilaria spoke like Alessandra was a child. Maybe it was an elf thing, but Alessandra was beginning to suspect not. "What do you want to know?"
That Ilaria seemed determined to downplay her magic could be an indication that she felt bad about it and wanted to move on. The alternative, that she didn't see the pain she inflicted as worthy of note, was much worse. "I... what will you do?"
Ilaria handed Alessandra a dagger. The same one; she'd dropped it. "I'm going to bring this whole prison down on the guard's heads. You'll probably survive. Were we going somewhere?"
"Oh, it's just down here. Third right." Alessandra didn't want to take too many steps just yet.
Ilaria nodded and took a few steps. Was her gem dimmer? "Before I go," she added. "Do you want to know where Donato went, or would you prefer someone else find him?"