HAYVALA

I can't live on dreams, hopes and stories — but this is all we have now. Dreams. Hopes. Stories of another time, of our ancient ways.

Her shoes clacked against the tile while she stomped away from her Magistera's teachings, with familiar, heavier, metal footsteps following behind her with the sounds of dutiful loyalty. Her dress of furs and woven firesilk bloomed around her while she dug her fingers into the weaves of frustration. Hot-headed. Brash. It was how her Magistera described her, when she was nothing but a porcelain doll to play the Naveeran dance of ice.

But it was my dream. I wanted to be queen — but I wanted to be myself, and I realised I could not have both — nor was it ever mine to begin with.

Auras fluttered and danced from the white palace stone. Metal footsteps continued to echo her own as she rushed further from her lessons of sitting pretty and saying sweeter words. Words were thrown to imbalance her, and she longed to show her barbed tongue — her inner wyvern. "I hate dancing," she muttered as she led her scaled armoured shadow into the shrine for the Knights of the Round. "I hate having to pretend. I think I'd rather be stabbed with a dagger than honeyed words."

Shadows from the knights swallowed her, where each of their lances met the icy dias on the floor, shaped into a snowrose. In the center, the Snow Prince, their hero of eld, who brought Naveera into a golden age and fought against the Great Crimson Dusk. He raised his hand high, carrying the heart of their land, while the wings of Evyriaz bloomed along the mosaic behind him and shone the light of snow across the magelights. On either side, two knights. Ser Atoran of the Ice Glaive, and Ser Zahira of the Ice Shield. Ladies cooed over meeting their gleaming Atoran's, regaling in their distant affections and passing glances.

"My lady," a voice reminded her from both past and present.

Her fingers released her strangled silks of woven warmth, furs and white lace. It danced and wound around her arms and trapped her in her own duty of the dance, of the icy spins and snow-touched words. Zahira, the shield, no one cooed over meeting her, but her dream remained — to be a shield, to fight — and never a doll. Auras continued to dance when she turned to the closest thing she had to a knight in shining armor, and no one compared.

Not even the great Atoran Lotayrin.

He stood in the snowtouched magelights with a steady expression. His silver locks glowed with the light of the dream as his long feathers stretched across his ears. None of the knight's Father tasked for her 'protection' ever gazed upon her for who she was. Ser Yokonei never blinked, never wavered, and most of all, never bowed in reverence. He lifted his head to the knights she had taken him to with a thoughtful noise and a single ear flick when wind coursed through the stone.

"I know, I probably shouldn't have called her an ice wraith," she mumbled and folded her arms. "But she was acting like one."

Yokonei smiled, where his eyes and beautiful moonlit aura echoed the motion. "And she referred to you as a pixie spitting fire, my lady. It is, as we say in Irimount, throwing ice into the blizzard and getting it back in return." His smile turned from serene thought into a dash of mischief. "I shan't tell no one," he said in his distinct, Irimount dialect of their Navee song before he joined her on the dias, hands behind his back, laced over his ice glaive, decorated with ceremonial ribbons, but as lethal as freezing ice in the right hands. Her fingers itched for it, but she kept them folded across herself and dreamed.

Tell me a story, something different than what I've had to hear. Stuck in these palace walls having to dance to their tune.

Ser Yokonei looked upon each knight, and behind his fluttering aura of moonlit roses coalesced with thoughts and recollections of tales unspoken. It sorted through the flurry while he tried to pick one to satisfy her. Her silver-haired knight. He rested his gaze on Ser Zahira, then smiled at her. "You know the story of why they refer to Ser Zahira as the Shield of Naveera in Irimount?" He stepped between the Snow Prince's greatest knights. "It's said she raised the wall of mountains which stopped the tide of Derelicts upon our tundra. Some even say they stay frozen to this day from her powerful magick. Her shield." He bowed to the plaque at Ser Zahira's stone feet.

"There's also the tale of her battle of wits with the ice wraiths of the west," Hayvala recalled, and excitement fluttered the world and auras. "But... people say one cursed her for winning a fair fight — they told her 'your name will be forgotten by the annals of history'." Her heart trembled at the injustice and the flightiness of ice wraiths. "It's not fair. She won." Hayvala choked her fur dress again, and gazed at her hero. "I hate being a princess sometimes."

Yokonei's feathers shuddered, but he turned with a smile. "Why is that, my lady?"

Tears crawled down her cheeks.

Because I couldn't save you.

"I'm expected to dance, when sometimes I just want to... bite," she admitted, where her fangs drew upon her tongue with longing wants and impossible dreams. "I'm the Princess of Naveera. Oldest to the great and infallible King Jevtay II, sister to Crown Prince Laucan. I am nothing but those things. I am no Zahira. I am not even allowed to hold a glaive, the beloved weapon of our ancient stories. I am allowed to sit, to think, but never allowed to raise my voice into a scream. I am supposed to be as silent as a whispered breeze, but never full of the same rage as the blizzard which encompasses our home and buries us underneath its agony."

Words repeated through all time.

Yokonei turned to her with violet-touched eyes, nothing more than a distant past. His metal footsteps of protective scales came closer to her, and she lifted her head when he brought his glaive into his hand, and held it vertical to her. Ironbark laced around the metal and spread its roots along the shaft. Deft, noble fingers held the weight of the noble Ice Knights. Lethal and quick as ice, but capable of plucking gentle strings of Naveeran lutes.

"I like dancing," he told her. "It's not that different from fighting, really." His fingers released the glaive, where it balanced on its end, but he kept his palm cupped around it. "Here, my lady."

"What?"

"Take it." He motioned the glaive. "Hold it."

Hesitation inched across her arms, but he waited for her approach. Her fingers laced around the ironbark shaft. He let it go, and the weight steeled straight to her elbows when it lost its balance. It pushed against her chest, and she stumbled on her restrictive dress and lace, though Yokonei steadied her.

"It's heavy, Ser Yokonei."

"Many things are," he acknowledged. "Still though, remember this. In our souls, we are wyverns. You cannot silence a wyvern's song — to do so is to kill it, so do not silence that song of yours, Hayvala. Ser Zahira never allowed the ice wraiths to silence her. If it is screaming, there is a reason. Listen to it. Feel it. Xe'tena. Zet'alna. Navei'al. Sing."

Sing.

In the darkness, a wyvern of moonscales opened its mouth, where icy plumes of silence left its throat.

"M'lady?" another voice shattered the aura dream, with his own lacing through her fingers and wasting away into nothing but a flurry at her touch. Tears dropped to her bath water when she leaned deeper into the headrest, where Kazmira brushed out the wetness out of her moontouched hair. "Is everything alright? Is your bathwater too cold?"

Hayvala gazed at the snaking wyvern along the roof tiles of her private bathhouse off the side of her room. Water dripped out of the pipes to fill her bath in constant motion to prevent freezing of the plumbing. Her head rested into the palm of Kazmira's waiting hand. "Nothing, Mira," she murmured while strings sang from the high streets of Volaris. "Just thinking."

Kazmira nodded and brushed out the tangles in her hair from her daily dance of the icy song. "I am almost finished, my lady," she said. "I have your robes ready for you behind the screen with your medication."

Dance I must, I will. Dancing is fighting, and I'm fighting for Naveera in the only way I can now.

Kazmira let go of her hair, and she lifted herself out of the headrest to lift herself out of the bath, where droplets of water scattered along her movement. Kazmira trained her gaze somewhere to the left while she walked across the sopping tiles of crystal to head behind the screen. It protected her from the judgement of a thousand gazes, though she trusted Kazmira with her life. Hayvala set the first layer of the dress across her bare skin, where the warmth hugged and tucked closer around the joints of her limbs. One more soft layer of silks and weaved touches of flames, she wriggled herself into comfort and picked up the phial full of glowing essence. Kazmira hummed along with the song outside while she wrapped the last of her winged ribbons across her chest, then took her dose to clear the crawling auric migraine dragging her into the endless Sleep.

"If it's not too bold of me to ask," Kazmira muttered when Hayvala left the protection of the dressing screen. "What were you thinking about?"

Hayvala smiled at her handmaiden before drawing her snowshawl across her shoulders, twisting her fingers in the metal rings. "A story an old friend told me," she said the half-truth. "Thank you, Kazmira. I apologize if I concerned you. I just lost track of time."

Of my dreams... it'll come. I'll see you soon, Ser Yokonei. I know not when this will take me, but I know you're waiting in Avaelondu. I hope you've treated with Ser Zahira. You belong among them... not here, among our frozen hearts, but nonetheless, I will say your name until my final breath and refuse to forget. Just remember me too.

Hayvala swallowed her tears and refused to scream out the injustice unchanged. Kazmira followed in her shadow, with the silver-haired shade beside her with a gentle, genuine smile on his warm face. Bells tolled with the return of Naveera's king, and she sped her pace to the front balcony while a carriage pulled by gryphlings stomped into the roundabout around the frozen fountain. One clucked and shook its head and long feathers, and she smiled when her brother opened the door instead of a knight.

In a dreary landscape, auras spread sunlight across the fading lamps.

Hayvala leaned across the marble railing, but frowned at a pressure in her temples at the next carriage which followed her brother's. Pitch engulfed the air at the black-cloaked person who followed behind her little brother. Thoughts refused to coalesce into a single being. Her happiness dwindled at the newcomer with not one, but many auras to drown out the rainbow. It snaked along his path with sharp, too knowing eyes. Swallowed by the same darkness it made out of, it disappeared into the palace.

What... was that?

Its oppressive nature remained on her mind as she rushed back around to meet her brother in the grand foyer for an explanation to what he brought home. He beamed at her approach, where his downy feathers raised higher into the air. Smile back on her face, she asked, "How was your journey, Laucan? Was it..."

Was it as he described to me?

"It was fruitful," he said with a hopeful grin, then stumbled on his next breath. "I want you to meet someone. Keeper Blackwall." He motioned to the too many thoughts and noises, where Keeper approached and brought his hood down to reveal black hair striped with grey, with his eyes empty of a singular voice. "He told me he may have a way to help your auric entanglement!" Her brother's newfound relief swept over her, and she tried not to shed more tears. "Not only that, but I entreated with the King of Haneka... we're going to get help for our people."

"I am heartened to hear that," she whispered in the fading light, with Yokonei's shade gazing at the knights and told her a story. "It is a pleasure to meet you, Keeper Blackwall." Her gaze rested on the band clasped around his forearm, without an insignia of a kingdom or a home.

"Pleasure is mine, Princess Hayvala." Blackwall bowed with the movement of a snake, and the heavy aura followed.

What is inside you?

Something growled around her, where rippled moonscales moved and swayed with the wind and the danger. Her fingers dug into her palm while she refused to drop her guard around the man with many colours, many faces, and many voices of a thousand eons.