Page 2 of A Dance of Water (Moon Song #2)

A DREAM?

LUELLA

W ater rippled under Luella Eritrais’s fingertips as she skimmed her hands across the surface of the lake.

Her reflection shimmered with the incandescent rippling waves cascading across the near glass-like surface. A stranger’s eyes stared back up at her.

Not the golden hue she was so accustomed to seeing in the mirror, but a vibrant, velvety blue. It was as though the galaxy had been stuffed into a glass bottle, corked, and then shaken. Tendrils of ever-shifting stardust and rich nothingness and clouds of celestial blue.

Luella sighed longingly, even as the corners of her mouth turned down in discontent as she stared at her reflection.

She flicked her hand hard over the surface of the water, barely paying heed to the way droplets splashed up onto her skirts.

And—

Her brow furrowed.

She did not remember going to the lake.

Luella lifted her head, but as she did so, her curtain of white hair fell over a shoulder, the ends so long they dipped into the water, growing heavy and turning a dark silver with the dampness.

Her rosy lips parted, not bitten and chapped as they had been as of late with her anxious habits, but glossy and full.

She stared down at herself, unnatural eyes tracing the shape of her face.

The pale expanse of skin, how the tip of her nose turned up slightly at the end, bare of freckles…

The way the middle of her lips dipped slightly into a perfect pout.

She ran her tongue along the bottom, watching as her reflection did the same.

Not me, but a stranger , Luella reminded herself.

Her white hair curled around her temples, falling over her shoulders and blocking out the sun in the background.

Her eyes wandered as she peered down at herself.

The ripples on the surface had calmed as the motion of her hand had slowed.

No longer a furious battering against the water, as if it had somehow been the cause of all of this, but a lover’s caress, a gentle sweeping over the icy blue.

The tips of her fingers dipped into the pool and swirled around as if she were willing herself to become one with the water.

Her attention was caught by a flicker of green reflecting back up to her.

The gentle swaying of tree limbs behind her was mirrored by the lake.

The leaves rustled from the slightest hint of air breezing throughout the forest, and her head turned to the side as she stared at the thick greenery around her.

Tree trunks dotted the land, thick and dark, shadowed by the canopy of leaves overhead.

The treetops swayed by the gentle, balmy breeze, and she breathed in deep, taking it all in. Her lungs filled, and it was such a sweet relief she could nearly weep. Yet a niggling feeling brushed against the outermost spaces of her consciousness, and she realized something was amiss here.

Luella’s eyes narrowed, her head tilting imperceptibly as her arched ears strained for sound. The hand that was not in the water tangled tightly in the grass underneath her. She felt the short fronds strain, threatening to be plucked free from the damp dirt.

Trees. Grass.

And a lake.

Her mind whirled as she sat there on the bank of the water, so still, she appeared as a statue, if not for the faintest rustle of her white curls or the barest rise of her chest as she breathed.

When had she gone outside? Where had she been last?

What was the last thing she remembered doing?

The water tickled against her lazily resting hand, lapping against her skin as if to say, look here, look at me .

And she did.

Luella looked back down into the water, her white tresses falling around her and framing her equally pale skin. Those strange blue eyes, how she loathed them, loathed what they meant.

Slowly, she leaned down, bracing herself with a hand against the ground, fingers digging into the muddy bank of the lake as her other hand stayed floating atop the surface, not willing to part from it.

She stared down at herself and found herself staring back up at her.

White hair, blue eyes, pale skin, and the sun’s golden rays shimmering behind her against the water’s surface, mingling with the impressions of green from the leaves.

She trailed her pointer finger up, dipping directly over the rippling image of the sun.

She watched, transfixed, as tiny waves cascaded outward from her singular, harmless touch.

A thought came to her, then, so amusing that an out-of-place laugh bubbled up in her chest.

"Who—" she started.

Her voice broke with disuse, cracked and husky with sleep—had she been asleep?

Luella shook the fleeting thought away, no more than that of the drifting petals of a flower in the wind. Here one moment, gone the next. She forgot what she had even been thinking as she stared at the water.

She licked her lips and started over. "Who knew little old me could be so important?"

The water did not respond, but she swore the very air seemed to still from the words. The reflection of the sun grew blotted out from her touch, alone.

Just when she was going to dive into the water’s taunting depths—discover where it would lead, how long she could hold her breath before her lungs started to seize and her heart stalled—the enchanting haze that had befallen her was broken by the distant sound of leaves crunching.

Her intense fascination with the water dissipated like smoke as her head whipped up, her neck aching from the quickness of the action .

She saw nothing except the forest. Trees and more trees behind her, on either side of her. The sun shone high in the sky above her. And the untouched, pure blue of the lake before her.

It was cold against her hand, and something in that sharp bite of chill seemed to snap her out of her still reverie.

Luella’s limbs unfurled, and she stood. Her feet sank into the mud, and tiny waves lapped against her toes. Her feet were bare.

She closed her eyes briefly.

Warmth seeped out from the speckled darkness behind her lids, the ghost of touch and the scent of belonging. The tugging call of five invisible strings…

A hand against her skin, flashes of moments and words.

And she opened her eyes, the feelings leaving her bereft of their warmth. But not without it completely.

With her eyes open, Luella was still warm, a pleasant and cuddly sort of warmth that wrapped her up like she was in the embrace of a soft blanket.

However, that tugging, almost uncomfortable, pull that made her feel as though she would be torn into different pieces—called in different directions—abated.

It left her feeling strangely melancholy.

It was a peculiar thing, to be taken somewhere different when her eyes blinked closed.

She found herself missing the brief moments when she felt nearly torn apart by that pulsing call radiating out from her soul.

Her hand pressed against her belly, her chin dipping to rest on her sternum as she stood by the water’s edge and felt .

Memories trickled in slowly the longer her eyes were closed, and the rush of sights and scents cascaded over her.

Curling horns and tanned skin, whispered lullabies. Iron manacles and delicate chains. Lies. Wobbling lips and teary eyes. Treachery and pleas for forgiveness.

Golden hair and a golden crown. Red apples and redder blood. Onyx scales and glinting eyes. Taking, taking, taking everything she had ever known from her and forcing her into a cage of iron. Then, a cage of gold. And finally, a cage of utter lies.

A cloak and dagger. Gloved fingers tracing the curve of her cheek. Lips pressed against hers in a library of deep secrets and shadowed corners .

White hair, scars, and a perpetual half-smirk. Eyes like ice and hands like the coals of a fire. Minty, berry-tinted liquid cooling her tongue as it was forced down her throat…

The flash of fangs and the entreating knock of knuckles against the door of her mind.

And finally, it all clicked into place.

Bastian had brought her here.

Her lips parted at the thought, at the rush of feelings and memories that swept her under a drowning tide.

Bastian had to have brought her here… right?

She could not pause on the revelation for longer and examine its validity, for just like moments prior, that thrum of feeling turned to a hazed, fleeting dissolution.

The air vibrated with a presence, and her eyes popped open, no longer able to focus solely on that call, but on whatever it was that had just arrived in this space she had found herself in.

She scanned the forest with intense focus.

Its wooded depths were dark. Yet, not foreboding. Something about it was almost inviting to her. Warm and speaking of strolls at dusk and picnics at midday. Picking flowers and making shapes out of the clouds.

But the longer she stared, the more spindly those limbs became. The deeper the shadows grew.

Tendrils of air tickled against her white hair as it tumbled about her shoulders, and her fingers tapped a nervous rhythm against her thigh.

She looked up above her. To the soaring heights of the trees and the swaying leaves of the treetops.

To the quick roll of the clouds in the sky, blotting out the sun for the briefest of moments before the puffs of white swept by, forcing shadows to flicker out and burst to life from the steady, constant covering of the thick sun.

Leaves rustled.

Luella jolted to action.

She took quick steps forward, forgoing all sense of hesitancy from the knowledge that this was not real. That Bastian had brought her here. She was dreaming. This was a dream.

Something quiet begged her to turn and look at the water, the way the small waves lapped against the muddy shore—to press her hands into the chilled depths and allow herself to melt into it. But she did not listen.