The day in question arrived far faster than I would have liked. There was a constant string of happenings in our house as caters were both hired and put to work along with party designers. It was safe to say that mother was not sparing any expense on the party. Our ballroom, that we rarely used other than when we simply wanted to have a party of ourselves, was now put to good use for a grander scale. If possible, our traditional garden manor had exploded with life as the gardens were not even spared from the decorations for the party. Both a DJ and a 9 piece string set were ordered and employed for the day in question.Excessive, that was the word for it, and as much as I complained I was soundly outvoted by both my best friend, as Alexis had quickly become, and my family. Their argument was that while the party was for my birthday it also served a good salt into the wound of my being the class valedictorian and thus the whole ball likewise served as a graduation party as well. Rather quickly, everyone jumped on board with that leaving me to suffer with the reality of how much bigger this party had gotten.
The morning in question I awake to my traditional ash covered room but with a strong sense of foreboding feeling throughout me. Something was going to go wrong today. I had learned very early on in life to trust my instincts because when I ignored them it always made things just that much worse. However, this was an avoidable day, so up I went to wash and dress in something comfortable for breakfast. As I headed downstairs I could already see the signs of the decor taking shape. The lights littered all over the gardens in both the front and the back. The hedge maze looked like something from a fairytale with ribbons of silver and carefully tied in flowers. There wer still several hours to go and thus the garlands of life were slowly creeping their way into the house, the thick blooms of flowers around the property being trimmed to perfection and the trees finding whimsical lanterns and ribbons on them. It seemed like something fit for a Princess's grand ball honestly. Mother was not kidding when she said she intended to go all out and with the help of Alexis's mother, who turned out to be my mother's actual best friend, the grandeur was top notch. It turned out that Aimée and Daya were a top notch party planning pair and had at one point led all of Parisian social circles. Thus a birthday party for their eldest niece, as I had so been dubbed, was nothing but pure child's play. And thus, my mother finally had her army to take over our small town's social circles. That was great….just freaking great. There would be more parties if they had their way, ones I would actually be forced to attend. I had to work to stop the eyeroll at the thought as I approached the breakfast table that was full of people. The mother's were settled together enjoying tea and scones, meaning they had already eaten breakfast...was it brunch? Did I oversleep
"Lilindar, you failed to tell me how charming this town was, otherwise we would have moved here ages ago. It is so...freeing here. We were starting to feel a bit crapped in the city, not enough space, more than enough people but still somehow lacking life. You know?" Aimée spoke with my mother in whilst holding a cup of tea.
"Yes, Lili, ages ago. Though, I think that now we are here, much may change about this little town." Spoke Daya holding her own cup.
On the other side of the table was Alexis with my sister. They both looked up as I entered and waved me over, and I obliged quickly, there was no way I was going to sit with the Mothers and endure that pressure. It might be the day I turned sixteen and an adult as far as my mother was considered, but I had very little social experience and I was not anywhere near ready to swim with the social whales that were those three.
"Oversleep much?" Teased Cella as her gaze traveled my figure before reaching and tugging a bit of ash from my hair, "Missed a bit sis. The dream again?"
"Isn't always? And this was a rare chance for me to sleep in. Mother has forbidden me to travel outside of her orbit until after I turn eighteen, no matter how many degrees I have I will never understand her fear. Instead she is insisting I learn social norms and navigation here at home. I might culturally be an adult but I am still legally a child here in America."
My words were spoken in a grumble as annoyance shot through me at the thought. Because, as much as I hated to admit it, I only understood the world on paper. I had tested out of the actual High School courses ages ago, and finished up two degrees this past year. But I was physically, and legally a child, as well as arguably a mental child. In most cases, parents would afford every single opportunity to shove their children at the biggest and best education things in the world, but my mother was raising two geniuses, as well as being one herself. She understood the side effects to little social experience could have on a child and even more potently, the side effects of having the supernatural abilities we had in addition to all of it. Control was something even our mother was still figuring out. Our magic worked on emotion and it did not help that we seemed to feel things more deeply than others. Frying phones as a nervous reaction was a small sliver of what could happen if we were stressed and one should be wary of the things that would break if we let our happiness get too out of control. We had made that mistake once and luckily Cella was still a babe. She had gotten 'too' happy and the life in our yard had exploded in a plant growth, causing the light ivy growth on our manor to make it look like it had been there for a few hundred years, and to this day our gardens are one of the finest in town. We still win the garden competition every year because of Cella being a little happy. Thus, leaving home would risk either a life of living as never allowing oneself to be anything other than neutral or risking exposure. Neither of which our Mother wanted to deal with, and for good reason.
"Again? What dream?" Alexis asked. Her question breaks me from my thoughts. Her gaze was staring at the ash as if it had directly offended her.
"Oh, its just a dream I keep having. There is a lot of ash, a village burning, people screaming and dying while I trapped watching it and the people die unable to do anything until this boy speaks to me and after we have a quick verbal exchange, I feel an intense pain an wake up to a room covered in ash." There was a strange mixture of emotions in my voice as I spoke somewhat matter of factly but also with a hint of embarrassment. "We haven't really had a good chance to figure out why it's been happening for as long as I can remember and it is rather constant. I have read that other people dream different dreams at night, sometimes, multiple ones. But I have just the one and I remember it clear as day, right down to the pleading eyes of the people being murdered and the chilly coldness of the men in armor ignoring their pleas and my own." My eyes start to burn as I continue speaking, it's only then that I realize I am on the verge of tears. It has been a long time since I have explained my nightmare to anyone.
As I stop speaking the room is utterly silent, even the staff that was hustling around in the room trying to stay unnoticed. For what seems like an eternity we all stay quiet as I look around the room confused as I take in the utterly still forms and solemn faces around me. It stays that way until one of the maids collapses into herself dropping the porcelain in her hands to the ground with a crash as her words come out in a blur of a language my mind doesn't understand.
It takes mere seconds before I feel as if the world is floating past me as I stand rooted in space as I feel something break in my mind as something porous into me, filling me up with its essence and warmth and chill. It's strange, it's all of those things and more as I feel like something utterly important hovers just outside my mind, just on the tip of my tongue waitin for me to reach for it.
Then just as quick as it came it's all gone and I am standing in the dream again but this time, all is frozen and before me in the trap I am tapped to stand a man with the same dark brown hair flecked with gold standing there with me. His golden and emerald eyes stare into the carnage before us as tears stream down his face over his high cheekbones and down to her perfectly pick lips. I know who he is in not even a second.
"Father….?" The words part from my lips but the movement of my tongue is wrong from any language I know that I logically know.
"My daughter….finally. Happy birthday." He speaks in that same tongue. "We have much to do before we send you back to your mother, and I am not the only being waiting to see you."
With a wave of his arm, we seem to disintegrate and reappear before a man chained to the ground. He opens his eyes as he feels us come into being before him.
"Grand-daughter, my heir, at last. Happy birthday my dear." Another language I know but don't know, and even more confusing, he speaks with a deep voice that seems to hold an eternity to it, as if it is the voice of a being who has always been from the beginning of time.
With another flash both men disappear into streams of light, my father a golden and silver, and my grandfather, a line or rainbows.
When they speak, they do so as one.
"Today, on the day of her Sixteen birthday since her rebirth, we do acknowledge and proclaim this child Helixii Nimah as our heir and the rightful ruler in our stead. Long may she reign."
The streams circled me before shooting into me forcing their way into every bit of my soul into my being. At some point I let my mind seek the shelter of rest and I black out in the pain of the overwhelming force.