Alex had had no qualms about searching for her older sister’s diary. After all, if Toni wouldn’t talk to her, she’d have to find things out for herself. Besides, Alex thought jokingly, she wasn’t even breaking the golden rule—Do to others what you’d have them do to you—because Alex didn’t have a journal for her sister to retaliate with. 
    That was stupid reasoning, of course. However, Alex hadn’t realized just how stupid until she found something else tucked away with the journal.
    She stormed downstairs to find her sister at the kitchen table, just about to take a bite from a PB&J sandwich. 
    “What is this?” Alex asked sharply, slamming the folder she had found onto the table. Most of its contents seemed to be Toni’s fiction writing, but front and center in the right pocket was a page torn from a sketchbook. Alex’s sketchbook.
    It turned out, Alex did have something equivalent to a journal.
    Toni stared blankly at the folder for a moment, her mouth still open slightly. “You found my journal?” she finally gasped. 
“Yeah,” Alex rolled her eyes. “But I didn’t read anything. I was more worried about why you stole this from my sketchbook!” She tapped the drawing impatiently, waiting for an explanation.
“Oh, okay. Good.” Toni relaxed slightly. “And actually, you threw this in the recycle, so I saved it. It’s a really good drawing, and I liked the fallen angel vibe.”
Alex glanced down at the drawing again. It was of a teenage girl, done in pencil. She sat curled on the ground, a lost, forlorn expression on her face. At her back were a pair of wings, but they drooped limply, dragging on the ground when they should have been lifting toward the heavens.
Alex had almost forgotten this drawing. At least, she had certainly tried to forget it, ripping it out of her sketchbook like she had. But it all came rushing back in a moment.
“She’s not an angel,” Alex muttered. 
“Really?” The corners of Toni’s mouth curved up in a faintly curious smile. “Tell me, what is she?” Alex hadn’t been expecting such a pleasantly conversational response from Toni, not after accusing her so angrily, and admitting to finding her journal. And certainly not after they’d barely talked in months. But that was Toni for you. 
Alex’s first instinct was to take the drawing and leave without answering, but that didn’t feel right. Now that Alex gave it thought, with Toni smiling there in front of her, it seemed obvious that it was mostly Alex’s own fault that there had been a wall between them for so long. So she should be the one to begin tearing that wall down. 
Even if this felt really awkward.
“Remember how we used to share our dreams when we were younger?” Alex asked hesitantly.
“Yeah. It was so unfair.” Toni chuckled. “You always had all the best dreams… Wait a sec”—She leaned in to see the picture closer.—That’s dream Alex, isn’t it? ”
“Yes.” Alex smiled sadly. This drawing was from three months ago, the last time she’d had a dream in her winged form. She’d had plenty of dreams since then—maintenance insomnia made sure of that—but they weren’t the same. She’d gotten used to lucid, multi-night adventures as a winged heroine, charging into battle with twin swords blazing. Back when she and Toni still talked often, those dreams had made for fantastic stories that sometimes left Toni questioning whether Alex had made it all up.
But slowly that had changed. Alex’s winged state had grown weaker, and the dreams less exciting, until on the rare nights when she still had a lucid dream, she only languished in a plane of blank grey. One of those dreams had been filled with such despair that on waking up, Alex hadn’t known what to do with herself except vent everything through this drawing of herself sitting alone with tattered wings in that dim, grey mire.
After that, the lucid dreams had stopped entirely. It was like a piece of herself had been lost. Another casualty to this cruel year that was ravaging her from the inside out.
“Man, why’d we ever stop sharing dreams?” There was a hint of nostalgia in Toni’s voice. “Tell me, what was your last adventure as a crazy avenging angel?”
“Actually, last night, I just dreamed about school.” Alex didn’t feel like telling her that the lucid dreams were gone.
Toni grinned playfully. “Well, my dream had a dog, so I think that automatically trumps school.”
Alex smiled. Why had they stopped sharing dreams? Even when the dreams themselves were boring, Toni always had a way of smiling just right and making the whole thing more fun.
It was odd, since they still saw each other daily, but Alex realized that more than anything else she’d lost—more than even the lucid dreams—Alex missed her sister. 
So Alex was really glad when Toni kept the conversation going and they talked for over an hour.

————————————————

That night, Alex fell asleep quickly for once, thinking about her conversation with Toni. Alex needed to make a few changes to her life, and she finally felt prepared to do so.
She was still thinking about that conversation when she opened her eyes to sunlight and a gentle breeze. A Colosseum towered above her. And at her back were two magnificent wings.
Alex stepped forward toward the building in disbelief. A cynical part of her was convinced that what she was witnessing was only a normal dream. But this clarity of thought and sensation was unmistakable. Despite all the time that had passed, she really was back. Alex ran forward, heart pounding with excitement. A laugh formed in her throat. She was back!
And whatever was going on here, she was going to make the most of it.
Approaching the entrance of the Colosseum, she saw a bored-looking person handing out flyers from a stack. A moment later, though, the wind picked up, and it was all they could do to keep the stack together. One paper whipped away into the air. 
“I got it!” Alex called, sprinting after it. It felt amazing to be outside, feet pounding against soft earth, her legs stretching to propel her forward. And then, with a swoop of her rust-colored wings, she leapt into the sky. Air whistled in her ears as she rose higher and higher, reaching for the paper. Finally, she snagged it from the wind current, and glided back to earth. She’d forgotten the glorious freedom of taking to the sky.
Alex studied the flyer. It was a bit crumpled, but still perfectly legible. Apparently, there was going to be a battle tournament in this arena. She smiled, summoning one of her swords from thin air just to feel its old familiar shape in her hand. She could do this. She wanted to do this. 
It had been so long since she’d really wanted anything. She’d spent months drifting through life in a haze of apathy. She’d done her best to close herself off from the world until she had nothing worth caring about.
But no more.
She would enter this fight. She would prove herself to everyone here, but more importantly, she would prove herself to herself. 
And boy, would she have a story to tell her sister.

⚔

Written by: SoulsPenumbra