Page 1 of A Dance of Water

PART I

DREAMS

1

A DREAM?

LUELLA

Water rippled under Luella Eritrais’s fingertips as she skimmed her hands across the surface of the lake.

Her reflection shimmered with the incandescent rippling waves cascading across the near glass-like surface. A stranger’s eyes stared back up at her.

Not the golden hue she was so accustomed to seeing in the mirror, but a vibrant, velvety blue. It was as though the galaxy had been stuffed into a glass bottle, corked, and then shaken. Tendrils of ever-shifting stardust and rich nothingness and clouds of celestial blue.

Luella sighed longingly, even as the corners of her mouth turned down in discontent as she stared at her reflection.

She flicked her hand hard over the surface of the water, barely paying heed to the way droplets splashed up onto her skirts.

And—

Her brow furrowed.

She did not remember going to the lake.

Luella lifted her head, but as she did so, her curtain of white hair fell over a shoulder, the ends so long they dipped into the water, growing heavy and turning a dark silver with the dampness.

Her rosy lips parted, not bitten and chapped as they had been as of late with her anxious habits, but glossy and full. She stared down at herself, unnatural eyes tracing the shape of her face. The paleexpanse of skin, how the tip of her nose turned up slightly at the end, bare of freckles… The way the middle of her lips dipped slightly into a perfect pout. She ran her tongue along the bottom, watching as her reflection did the same.

Not me, but a stranger, Luella reminded herself.

Her white hair curled around her temples, falling over her shoulders and blocking out the sun in the background. Her eyes wandered as she peered down at herself. The ripples on the surface had calmed as the motion of her hand had slowed. No longer a furious battering against the water, as if it had somehow been the cause of all of this, but a lover’s caress, a gentle sweeping over the icy blue. The tips of her fingers dipped into the pool and swirled around as if she were willing herself to become one with the water.

Her attention was caught by a flicker of green reflecting back up to her. The gentle swaying of tree limbs behind her was mirrored by the lake. The leaves rustled from the slightest hint of air breezing throughout the forest, and her head turned to the side as she stared at the thick greenery around her. Tree trunks dotted the land, thick and dark, shadowed by the canopy of leaves overhead.

The treetops swayed by the gentle, balmy breeze, and she breathed in deep, taking it all in. Her lungs filled, and it was such a sweet relief she could nearly weep. Yet a niggling feeling brushed against the outermost spaces of her consciousness, and she realized something was amiss here.

Luella’s eyes narrowed, her head tilting imperceptibly as her arched ears strained for sound. The hand that was not in the water tangled tightly in the grass underneath her. She felt the short fronds strain, threatening to be plucked free from the damp dirt.

Trees. Grass.

And a lake.

Her mind whirled as she sat there on the bank of the water, so still, she appeared as a statue, if not for the faintest rustle of her white curls or the barest rise of her chest as she breathed.

When had she gone outside? Where had she been last?

What was the last thing she remembered doing?

The water tickled against her lazily resting hand, lapping against her skin as if to say,look here, look at me.

And she did.

Luella looked back down into the water, her white tresses falling around her and framing her equally pale skin. Those strange blue eyes, how she loathed them, loathed what they meant.

Slowly, she leaned down, bracing herself with a hand against the ground, fingers digging into the muddy bank of the lake as her other hand stayed floating atop the surface, not willing to part from it.

She stared down at herself and found herself staring back up at her.

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