A full gasp filled her lungs.
And she was thrown back into the reality around her.
Her eagle screeched and flapped his wings at her back.
She was on her knees. Her trembling fingers digging into the sand. Water sloshed with the tide up and around her, meeting her skin with the cold salt of its depths. The tips of her fingers were black, the streaks of it growing and growing up her skin. She forced breath into her constricted lungs. Demanding that form back down and down. Grasping at her reality and counting out loud to keep herself above the void. The black descended into the depths, and she finally opened her eyes.
The only light came from the fire that had apparently come from her form. It danced around her in a circle and atop the surface of the water. As though its magic could boil the waves.
She realized she was naked. She didn’t even remember rising from her bed. Didn’t remember wandering onto the beach or how she was on her knees.
A ragged breath thrust into her lungs. She sat back on her feet as the calmness of the cold water surrounded her. Her eyes shut tight, willing her breaths to even out of whatever attack she’d just found herself in.
"Excuse me—“
The noise of a young girl's voice rattled her. Her eyes shot up to the right, heart jumping out of her chest.
A child was standing beside her.
No older than five, maybe six. The girl's long scarlet hair draped down past her elbows, a mop of waves frizzed all around. Steel eyes met Nyssa’s amber ones, and for a moment, Nyssa thought it was an apparition of Aydra as a child. They had the same eyes. But the hair… the hair was wrong. Aydra’s hair had been bright ginger bouncing curls. This girl’s hair was much darker but brighter than her own cinnamon hair.
“Hi,” Nyssa managed, gaze squinting at the young girl as the firelight bounced off her features. “It’s late. You shouldn’t be out here.”
The girl rubbed her arm, and Nyssa squinted at the numbers and letters etched into her skin. Almost like a branding number. Fresh and raw, the red symbols stared back at her in the light.
SE3916EBR
3916... Her heart dropped as she remembered the number from the void.
“Where’s my brother?” the girl asked Nyssa.
Nyssa's gaze averted from the girl's arm, and she took a gander around, looking back up at the village, at the ocean… but there was no one else around. “I… I don’t know. What’s your name?” Nyssa asked.
The small girl tucked her hair behind her ear—her normal ear— and Nyssa swallowed.
She wasn’t a Dreamer as she did not have the pointed ears. She wasn’t of the Honest. Her skin was far too pale, features far too similar to her own. She wasn’t a Venari. She wasn’t a Blackhand. And Man insisted they’d no red-headed women of their own.
So Nyssa only gaped at her.
Was this a trick?
“Are you crying?” the girl asked her.
“I… Where did you come from?” Nyssa managed.
“She told me I should see you,” the girl said. “To tell you there was another.”
“Who did?”
“Bina.”
Nyssa’s insides froze. She shot to her feet, looking wildly around her for any inclination of her own mother. She couldn’t be here. She was gone. Forced into her burned tree. She shouldn’t have been able to wake. Not for years. A hundred even.
Draven burned her.
She’d seen the shadow of her body against the trunk.
Fear struck her core, and her feet wavered. The possibility of Arbina being anywhere near a beach not of her own chilled her. She whirled around, and when she finally gathered she was not there, she turned to face the girl again.
