The tiny sound of a floorboard creaking just a few feet away from where Neha rested her head in sleep tore the child from her dream and into reality.

By the clock on the wall, she could see in the dim light provided by the embers of the fire, that it was nearly exactly midnight. Blinking a little in the dark, the girl turned her head away from the clock and toward the door where she could just see the door being latched as a figure crept out into the cold.

Neha rose from the chair where she slept, rubbing her eyes and yawning. This was it, that was Asaliah and Neha knew where she was going and what was going to happen.

Taking a deep breath as she thought over the effects of what she was going to do once more, Neha limply hobbled out into the cold behind the woman, keeping a safe distance.

There was something beautiful about the way the moon reflected off the still midnight snow. The glimmer it cast onto the blankets of white illuminated the dark world in such a way that Neha felt as if she could get drunk on the beauty of this place.

Even though she knew little of her life before she was a Kellestri, she had a feeling that wherever she had lived it had had snow. For every time she set eyes on the white powder, she could feel the fuzzy feeling of a memory pushing its way out of the locked away memories in her mind.

All was silent that night except for the gentle rustle of leaves above head and the occasional hoot of an owl. Neha limped through the dark, replacing her pain with memories as she followed Asaliah into the night.

Wrapped in a red coat that seemed oddly familiar to Neha, Asaliah was not hard to follow, her figure glowing in the white world.

It was so peaceful and quiet in that forest; so peaceful that Neha would have never noticed the two figures that had watched her follow Asaliah out of the house, concealed in the shadows.

Their figures drew nearer and nearer yet Neha's eyes were glued on Asaliah and her thoughts on the beauty of the night.

Closer and closer the two figures crept. Their bodies were so close to hers now that she stopped dead in her tracks as the hairs on her neck stood on end, sensing the strange feeling of eyes on her.

This was a terrible mistake for the second her feet slowed their pace, the figures were there, standing beside her.

Neha's whole body tensed as her peripheral vision provided her with the image of the figures that stood at either side of her, the clocks that covered their faces making them look like death itself.

Thin, boney, white fingers curled over Neha's mouth, "Hello beautiful, scream and we will kill you right here, right now," an all too familiar voice whispered, anger dripping from his lips.

Neha struggled to break free from the scrawny boy's grasp but then the second figure grabbed both her hands and pulled them behind her back, "If you do not struggle, no one gets hurt, child," another familiar voice whispered in her ear, causing Neha to stop resisting as her brain attempted to assign the voices to faces.

The two people worked quickly, the one covering her eyes with a cloth while the other tied her hands together.

The second took a deep breath, and then grabbed Neha's arm and, with that, all three of them were gone in the dark of the night.

It was so quick and soundless that Asaliah, only fifty paces or so in front of them, saw or heard nothing at all as she walked out into the snow.

***

Neha could feel her body being thrown up against something hard as rock. The girl gasped for air as her pained body writhed after that trip. Whatever the two people had used to take her here felt as if it mimicked Nostro Lumine's way of transporting the Kellestri yet was not half as gentle.

"What do you want from me!" Neha spoke, her voice muffled from the cloth as she squirmed on the floor as she tried to help herself to her feet.

"Shut up, sweetie!" a voice snarled at her, spitting as he spoke.

"C'mon, Yadiel, you don't have to be rude about it. We can at least explain," Dia's voice said in her usual tone and Neha froze as the pieces of the puzzle in her find slowly fitted together.

"What is there to explain? She shows up here with all her fancy abilities and then leaves immediately on a mission which will take Asaliah from us and therefore sending the two of us on our god-forbidden missions that will take us home. Oh god, not home oh please," Yadiel spoke, his voice trembling as Neha could feel his fear at the thought.

Dia let out a sigh, turning to whisper to Yadiel who was shaking all over.

"Listen, child. When I was just a youngling like ya are now, Yadiel and I found a way to see our lives before Merveille. Now, we love the Nostro but it, too, has its flaws that allow us to get around the rules. Anywho, we watched what our lives beforehand were and wanted nothing more than to never ga home. Begging Asaliah to allow us to stay in Merveille, she promised we would. Yet as ya can probably guess, the Nostro didn't like the idea of anyone hiding from their human lives and living forever so she linked out time as Kellestri to Asaliah's. We both knew that when the girl of fire came yapping to town that she would free Asaliah and then we'd ought to best be on our ways. So forgive us, child, but we can't have ya finishin that mission," Die spoke and then turned to give Yadiel a hug so that he might quit shaking.

In the time Neha could feel their eyes off her, she rolled onto her back, in hopes she could get up this way.

As soon as she lay flat on her back, she felt them. Their large weight was restored to her back in a wonderful way. The girl wanted to laugh with happiness but continued to remain silent. She knew where she was. 'Welcome home to, Merveille, Neha,' she thought to herself as she used the sharp horns on the end of her wings to cut the rope that bound her hands.

The child immediately brought her hands to her eyes where she removed the blind fold and flung her body off the dust of the ground and into the air. Oh, how she had missed her wonderful, wonderful wings!

But as soon as her vision cleared, she surveyed where she truly was, and her heart sank. No, she was not safely within the walls of Merveille.

Instead, she was in an infinite abyss of nothingness. All was white and even though her body hung twenty feet in the air, as far as her eyes could see in each direction all there was to see was white.

In the time her eyes were off the two people below her, she had missed the two of them preparing to do something. Now that her full attention was thrusted back toward them, it was too late.

All her eyes could see now was the two of them disappearing in a flash of white like they had come. Her wings lowered her to the ground slowly, as the realization hit her.

The flame in her heart was snuffed out as she sat on the floor, allowing her thoughts to crash down on her once more. What... was she supposed to do now?

Alone. The simple work echoed throughout the nothingness of Neha's mind--cooing about the infinite abyss of white. As a sort of numb panic caused her to jump to conclusions, her heart did not race, her face did not smile, and her wings sagged behind her like lifeless limbs.

Here she was again, alone in the nothingness where no one could protect her from her thoughts. She beat herself up for slipping so easily into the temptation of her thoughts, yet it was all she could do at this moment.

The whole situation made her think of an iced lake. One can be so gleeful and fearless walking on the ice, not a care in their mind, yet when they fall in all changes. Before they can think to get off the ice, the frigid water swallows their body and its crystal knives stab at your nerves.

As you watch the daylight fade away from above, you wonder why you ever thought the thin ice was a good idea. The tears in your eyes are not even shone under the water, but instead are hidden away.

You sink deeper and deeper, giving up struggling in the water so that you might just see the sun through the ice one last time before your lungs fill with water and your limbs die off.

It hurts at first, and then as you sit at the bottom of the lake and look up. You give up on trying to swim and simply savor your last few minutes of sunlight as your heart begins to slow and you can feel your body dying away; one limb after another, falling into death.

You lose control as your body feels like a bag full of water and at that moment in time, you feel a muscle your entire life you did not feel working. It is a muscle in your heart, slowly loosening as it lets go of something you spend your entire life protecting--your soul.

That part of you floats out of you... no, it takes you out of that body you were trapped in. It leaves behind the bag of water you called your body and instead floats out and away into freedom.

Here Neha was, figuratively laying at the bottom of the lake, looking around her with nothing but nothingness for miles and miles. All of her hurt and her soul begged to escape.

Her entire body felt like a bag of water, yet she was not physically dying. Although her body was in perfect shape excluding her ankle and hands, her heart was burning in pain as she sank to the very bottom with no hope of resurfacing.

The only way out of this would be to let her die and hope her soul could be reborn, yet that felt hopeless. The pain of the icy water was too much, blinding her as she sobbed alone in the nothingness.

So alone, so, so alone, she was. Again, she was oh, so alone. Not for the first time, not the second but the third time. It was never truly her fault, everywhere she was planted she did her best to bloom for herself and others, yet something was never just right, and someone always decided to rip her from the earth and throw her in a new place.

It did not care if it hurt her. The Nostro Lumine—the ice—would still break and dump her wherever it pleased, no matter how much pain it would bring.

She was choking on her sobs now, there was nothing, nothing at all that could get her out of here. She barely knew which way was up or down, not to mention which was the correct direction.

What was next? Would she die out here with no one? If she were to die now... she would never know what love was—what her name meant that is. She would never get to help Asaliah or Leo. She would never get to tell Raziel that she thought of him more than he could ever imagine. She would never get to go home to her family or whatever she had before all this.

No, this was not the end no matter how much she wanted it to be. This could not be the end she had a duty. She needed to save, not through actions like the Nostro Lumine wanted, not through romance like Asaliah believed...but 

Instead Through... Love.