Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story.

[smallestopener]

Ingress had a brilliant birthday. She’s eleven. Eleven is nearly grown up! It’s also the year when children in the stories she’s read come into their own. Adventures begin, schooling starts, worlds are saved… she can hardly wait to see what will happen next.

Her party earlier was such fun. Door was almost nice to Puck; Ingress had worried a little about that after she invited him. But he was very nice and charming, and Tom was nice, too, and Puck helped Ingress steal lots of roses off the cake while Havelock talked to Tom and Door, and it was brilliant.

She ate far too much icing sugar, but Tom had the peppermint potion waiting for her when the party was over. She feels much better now. And she’s eleven!

It sounds so good in her head. Eleven, eleven, eleven.

She should have asked Mary to stay the night with her, she thinks, as she tosses and turns. She’s never going to fall asleep, even with staying up past her bedtime. Tom and Door insisted she go to bed after she started yawning. They can be so silly sometimes.

She tosses one more time, and she thinks, again, how impossible it will be to go to sleep tonight. Her eyelids flutter and close. It is not long before she’s deep in dreams.

Comments

Re: Not all is as it seems

[river_meimei]

There's another young woman sitting with her back to the gate and her knees tucked to her chest. It's River, younger than she is in Milliways these days; a white lacy sweater spills over her arms, over her red-patterned dress.

"It's in the redefinitions," she says, to the sky or to no one.

"Don't look at her hand."

Re: Not all is as it seems

[smallestopener]

"Her garden grows quickly," Ingress says, taking a step back and not looking at Anthy's hand.

The garden is like the wild ones in London Below. The ones that have been lost and forgotten, and grow as they will.

"But we're all friends, right?"

Re: Not all is as it seems

[anthy-rosebride.livejournal.com]

Her hand rises, twists a rose from the vine until the stem snaps.

"Perhaps we'll see each other again," Anthy says. "Someday."

Re: Not all is as it seems

[river_meimei]

River smiles, faintly, at the sky. When she tips her head down towards Anthy, the smile stays.

"I'll make the tea."

"Ingredients are renegotiable. It's an if."

Re: Not all is as it seems

[smallestopener]

"We could have lavender tea. Or maybe bubblegum flavor. Or marshmallow!"

The rose vines writhe along the iron fence and drape down to the ground, searching for purchase.

Re: Not all is as it seems

[anthy-rosebride.livejournal.com]

Anthy is walking through the gate, fading as she does, until Ingress can see the grass through her long red skirt, and the sky through her skin.

"Have you heard of cantarella?" she says, but she doesn't stop to wait for an answer.

Re: Not all is as it seems

[river_meimei]

"Yes," River says softly, and lifts her hand as Anthy passes. Her fingers ghost through Anthy's, or Anthy's through hers.

River doesn't lower her hand until Anthy's faded away entirely.

Re: Not all is as it seems

[smallestopener]

"Will she be okay?"

Re: Not all is as it seems

[river_meimei]

"The soil is in flux," River says distantly.

Beat.

She glances at Ingress. The faint smile returns, and she confides, "Sometimes it's graves."

Re: Not all is as it seems

[smallestopener]

"There are three in the House of Arch."

Three white doves fly up from the bushes behind the gate.

"I know about graves, I guess."

Re: Not all is as it seems

[river_meimei]

"I know it."

River offers her a hand. There's a rose leaf in the center of her palm, silver-grey and delicate, but River doesn't seem to notice.

Gently, "You'll learn more."

Re: Not all is as it seems

[smallestopener]

She takes River's hand. The leaf is soft as velvet between their palms, but a thorn prickles there as well.



...blood sisters



"Ashes, ashes," she sings and pulls River into a circle. "We all fall down."

Re: Not all is as it seems

[river_meimei]

River laughs, spinning with her, bright and joyous and sunlit.








Between the space of one blink and the next, she's gone. Ingress is holding a knife with a blade that tapers like a leaf; there are two drops of blood on the bright metal.

And River? Perhaps she's gone the way of the roses. They've all vanished too.