| World Endings ~ New Mornings |

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"I don't pay attention to the world ending.
It had ended for me,
Many times,
And began again in the morning."

- Nayyirah Waheed
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She had been the age of one and a half when her world ended the first time, just barely seen life when hers shifted. There had been a crashes of screaming and thrown blankets. Sobs of her brother besides her curled through the air while their curly haired mother wrapped them in blankets. The cold air whipped across her face from where it peeked out beneath the blankets their mother stole away. Their mother held one of them to each shoulder as she marched away and through the city, trudging until the ground underfoot became soft with Old Town mud. Regardless of the dirt that stuck to her shoes, the mageling mother struggled onwards. Somehow, she only managed to trip once.

Everything settled for a day and a few weeks then as they settled beneath the ground, under the Nelfin man's bar. The two babies curled besides one another upon the ragged bed that the man owned, their mother happy to cry against his arms. Though the memory was faint, still sometimes the girl could recall the soft dripping of water through the cracks in the basement ceiling. It hadn't been cozy, perhaps the least comfortable place she ever stayed- even in comparison to her later life events. Despite such, the child was happy where she was, in her own way. She had her brother besides her, who often suffered from his sister's fingers grasping at his own curled locks. Their mother also remained close, and there was the kind Nelfin man- whom seemed just as close to their mother as their papa had been. Nothing lasts long, though.

After that dreadful month in the dirt and darkness that she had come to see as home, something changed- as they often do. Their mother, hands tattooed with flowers after her days of bad choices, appeared suddenly one day, her curls out of place as they often were, though a sense of rushed energy surrouned her. The time was unknown to them, as it often was, as there was no sense within the basement that they found shelter within. The woman smiled towards her twin children and lifted them into her arms, murmuring good tidings in their mother tongue as she carried them off, swaddled again in blankets. The young woman, the mage's daughter, sometimes wondered if the Nelfin man even found what had happened to her and her brother. She never saw him again, though- she knew that much.

The rare sunshine hurt the children's eyes as they appeared above ground, fed but dirty as any would be after being kept a month in a stone chamber. The woman had swept her children into a bathhouse before they found their destination, carefully cleaning the evidence of their troubles into the warm water. And then, like magic, their father was before them again, though it took them a moment to remember who he was. The girl remembered first, her eyes- that matched her father's- brightening before she grasped onto his beard with a happy screech. There was no darkness or dirt in the two months that followed for the tiny things. Just yellow, warm happiness that would have made their ginger locks had it been sunshine.

Of course, the morning came again and the world ceased to be what it was before. This morning, though, was a midnight that brought the coming of the blonde man, his hair like spring sunlight rather than the red fire that the child was used to. He was dressed seriously and his expression was all business despite the warm smile he offered to the child. She curled her fingers into the man's hair after her mother silently handed her to him, the child unsure how to know him. Nearly two, she knew the world just barely, and never knew when to expect a change. The man had worn a warm smile, but the unknown features of him brought no matching smile from the child. Though she did not notice until after they left, her brother never was taken along. His absence was something that made her fingers cold- so she clung tighter to the golden haired man.

He swept her away that night. Her mother made up a bag and handed her child, wrapped warmly to fight off the Summer chill, to the well-dressed man, and off he went. By the time the child's father awoke, she was far gone in an estate owned by the family her mother previously worked for. That brother, the boy that she had always slept side-by-side with and held onto when she was scared did not come along. Though she sobbed many nights and throughout the journey of that night, blubbering incoherently on occasion, her brother never reappeared. Thus, her next chapter began.

And so, she was no longer the child of a muddy floored cabin and magic wielding mother. Never was there a morning in which she woke up with a chill caused by a crack in the wall or holes in her blanket. The girl's stomach never rumbled like it had when she lived in the gloomy basement, nor did she sleep in whole darkness as she had with her father since candles were too much to waste through the night. Instead, she slept in a warm, lit room- though alone. Her mageling mother never read her the old Claith tales- though there were stories of swans and Herons; her brave father never wrapped her in his cloak and made her trinkets from wood; and her brother never pushed or shoved her- or held her hand and brushed her matching curls like he had when he was bored.

So her chapter continued for many years, even to the current day where she was nearly seventeen. There was no change in her lines or life, place or person. She was a story that had yet to change scenario again. Regardless of who she had been so many worlds ago, her time was with her current place. Until the next morning, she would remain with the name the golden-haired man gave her; Winifred Yvonne.

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