3rd place part 3

[idmadmin]

“However, we found out that there was one, who came there right after you did. I learned of him through my contacts. We discovered he is the doctor that you’ve seen for many years. He disguised himself under the name Fay, I believe. This man had a good idea. He would notice you, knowing you were a faery, diagnose you with a faulty disease, and start making you go through ‘treatment.’ That way he could possibly get you to trust him, and he would find out more about your powers, to see if our family was really as much a threat to his organization as he feared. He found the perfect way to try and manipulate you, by using your mind against yourself to block your magic instead of learning to control it. That way, not only could he someday aspire to control the world using your ability to connect all that is living, but he could make you fear and hate yourself as well. He thought he was doing himself a favor when he played Riverdance for you today during your test. If you passed that one, he could advance you to learning to block out your abilities in your sleep. Those without the ability to connect to the earth do not understand that we do not need something directly pointing to nature to bond with its similarities to the land nonetheless. That said, almost everything has some link to life, meaning that it would not be difficult for any one of us to influence the world on a great scale. Which is what makes us perfect targets. Especially you, Ellara. If your young mind had ultimately fallen under his control, then he could have easily taken over the world, because of our influence on all things alive. Fay himself witnessed that, if I am right in saying that you feinted in his presence more than once? A large part of that might be my fault, dear, sorry… I had so many friends watching you… their presence would have been greatly overwhelming… I’m sorry to have put you at risk, but the tricks he taught you got you to realize that you needed to learn to control your magic, and not run away from it. Also, they might be useful someday, and this way, by allowing you to see him, he was convinced that his plan was working.”

“I do have a question,” Ellara commented, while her mother paused for a breath. “When you would speak to me through the dreams, and through the wind, you talked differently, almost as if you are two different people.”

Her reply came ready. “When I must use the elements to speak, I have to use an older form of our language that the other elements understand. It is just like Irish Dance, an ancient dance of a people very connected to their land. Everything about the dance reflects the elements of the earth, as well as the emotions of human and beast alike. It is therefore a language that the earth understands, which is why it opened the transport for you in that fashion, and that is why you pick it up so quickly, rather than go through countless years of training like the professionals. Now that our dear Mr. Fay has witnessed this in action as well, that gives him one more reason to bring the organization after us. They cannot defeat our family, though, because it just so happens that dance is a language that the land, humans and faeries alike understand. Through it we will reunite the worlds, to an extent, and we can all move toward ending this war for the good of all. But first, we must all be prepared.”

* * *

When the girls’ championships were announced, Ellara Lassar slipped past the attendant at the door. Moving behind the veil of Faerie, she could not be seen. Entering the competition wasn’t a problem. With her newfound faery powers of Glamour and illusion, she could convince everyone that she was supposed to be there. Still, she was anxious. Could she and her family pass for human without saying or doing something wrong? She was dressed for the occasion, in a stunning solo dress of black, with colors and patterns reminiscent of the earth’s elements. It felt wonderful being onstage, ready to dance. The music aroused a rhythm in her blood as she worked on feeling all presences of the universe. She envisioned herself standing on a stone slab in the middle of a piece of land, sensing life all around her, in the animals that gathered around her and in the fire in the bowels of the earth. She felt the spirits of the rocks, ancient and weathered. She felt her brothers and mother, in the wind, plants, and sky. She reaches out to the people of the audience at the last minute, binding all these beings together, letting them flow into one another through her, all different, yet all the same. All surrounding presences connected, she lets her spirit unleash them, channeling them into the dance, as she begins hammering out steps.

The audience was captivated at once, as well as the judge, for this dancer communicated her dance well. A small girl in the audience asked her mother, “Who is she?”

The mother, as awed as the rest by the breathtaking performance in front of their eyes, teaching them things about the world they’d never dreamed, replied only with, “She is a dancer, an athlete of God.”

THE END