Previously
He turned to look at Elm. "A whole future completely different from what we have right now, all at the hands of the gods." Willow smiled sadly. "So many things that could have gone differently. So many opportunities we could take."
Elm didn't reply, still drunk on the sight of his beautiful form. Willow shook his head, apologizing for the sudden weird topic before he saw that her hands were starting to shiver. With it, he reached for her hands, bringing himself closer to her in the process as the two stuck in a lovely, warm embrace under the lazy moon.
"Were your hands always this big?" Willow asked, comparing his hands to her as he was once reminded of how small and feminine he actually was.
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Elm thought of what Willow had just said. She knew herself. She knew of the many talents she'd been blessed with and all of this was even before her Awakening. But before all of her strength, came her wisdom. It was a blessing and a curse to her - the gift of wisdom and intelligence. A curse because it derived her of the element of surprise, of the element of hope and optimism. To her, the world seemed to run slow, cold and grey - a box of toys to which she'd been granted detailed instructions on how to build, manipulate and create.
The moment she'd come out of her mother's womb, she didn't cry. When the sight of the world first came to her eyes, she didn't laugh.
She thought the world would continue to be that - boring, stale, dry. And it would have been that way.
If it weren't for him.
Her world that consisted of only black and white suddenly lit up with the intensity of a dragon's breath the moment he appeared in her infantile vision. She'd been granted him, the incarnation of beauty itself and she knew that regardless of her brother's words, she could no longer see a future without him.
But fate had been cruel once more, chaining him to her as family - blood - forbidden to want to consummate her love. By force was a thought but the thought of his tears deterred her from acting on it.
Of course, there was only so much she could do and holding back seemed to be the most difficult despite all her talents. Oh how madly in love was she and what a forbidden love it was.
Above them, the starry night sky glittered, so blue that she wondered if the Goddess Neptune was smiling down upon her. Constellations lit up the night, providing a beautiful ocean of stars and celestial bodies to bewilder upon. In the far right of the sky, she could see a gorgeous cloud of celestial dust and to the far left, a raging thunderstorm swirling above the Western Mountains.
Yet, all of it couldn't hold a candle to how beautiful her brother looked at the moment.
He smiled, enjoying the caress of the wind and her warmth. How adorable was the smallness of his form in her embrace.
From above, she could see how his cerulean eyes glowered - reflecting the festive beauty of the town. He looked so small, so weak beside her, with his little knees tucked before his chest as he sat above the world.
Elm's heart skipped a beat. She wanted to spill the beans, to convey her undying love for her brother, to claim him as hers in this very moment.
But she didn't. Elm knew, with her gift of wisdom, that the world wouldn't accept the future she wanted. So if the world planned on stopping her greatest desire, she'd have to grow strong - strong enough to take on the entire world by herself. She knew she could do it.
She would crown herself the King of Kings and present the world to him as her gift before taking him as hers. But for now, simply being by his side was enough. She scooted closer towards him, wrapping her hands around the smallness of his waist and pulled him to her shoulders. She felt him tense for a moment before he relaxed as she acted like she didn't want to steal his lips right then and there. The drunken yells and screams from the village died down as all she could hear was the beating of her heart.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Willow sighed, his blue doe eyes suddenly upon his sister.
Her heart thumped against her chest. "What?"
"The village. The festival. Everything." Willow said, smiling under the moonlit night.
"Yeah." Elm turned to look into his cerulean eyes. "It really is beautiful."
* * * * * *
Willow tossed and turned in his bed, unable to fall asleep that night. Thoughts of what could and would happen tomorrow morning plagued his mind as he reviewed and revised his plan for the Awakening. After the sixth time, he thought that his plan was fool-proof. . .enough and if the world suddenly became a good, little girl for him then nothing should go wrong.
He blew against his hair. If reality really treasured him so much, it might as well have put him in an ordinary peasant's body and not as the older brother of the freaking protagonist. That brought his attention back to the source of all his would-be problems.
Elm. His younger sister and the future Hero that would slay the Demon God or so was how the plot went in the game. But seeing as his presence would affect this world's progression some way or the other, he had to be very careful in how he used his gift of foreknowledge. He could only hope that his presence hadn't already introduced problems into his life.
He turned to look beside him, seeing that Elm wasn't in her bed yet. Willow's eyes landed on the bright light that shone from the bathroom and knew where she was.
Knowing the main motivation for Elm's quick ascent to power, he knew that regardless of whatever happened tomorrow, he couldn't take her along with him. Tomorrow would be the day where he would make his first tweak in the world, making sure that his parents and most of the townsmen were safe but that was about it.
There would be a major commotion and he'd use it to disappear from Elm's life, burning a body double he'd prepared for two years so as to reinforce the authenticity of it since he knew her sister's acute senses when it came to him. From looks to smell to taste, everything about him had been exactly copied onto the body double so that even his sister would have a hard time distinguishing it.
He sighed. "I can't take her along with me." He said, as if trying to convince himself.
It wasn't a secret that ever since he'd transmigrated here, he had come to see this world as his reality. Many years ago, he'd tried to prove that it was just a long dream or that he was in a coma as he tried to wake up but the truth prevailed. These people were real and so was his presence in this world of magic and swords.
Willow got up, unable to go to bed, as he walked over to a mirror stand and sat upon a wooden stool. He smiled as he saw his own reflection, reminding him of how unmanly he looked, how unmanly Willow looked and understood that the mirror that had appeared so big when he was young looked so small now. Their room had a little open window situated high on the wall, giving way for the moon's silvery light to pass through so they had no need to buy night lamps even though Willow really wanted one. He grabbed his old-time brush and gently straighten the curls in his long, scarlet red hair - a habit that never failed to calm him down.
Thoughts of the Awakening, or any big events that would happen in the future slipped out from his mind with every stroke his brush gave his hair. He closed his eyes and enjoyed the moonlit gaze on his body, humming a childhood song from his previous world.