The scarf over her newly-restored brown hair threatening to be torn loose, Ilmena leaned her head out of the carriage window, eyes closed, simply wanting to be in the sunlight as she reflected what had happened.
During the battle, she'd been knocked out- quite lucky, actually, as she'd been able to work her magic and bring in some (human-friendly) warriors from Imorna. She still wasn't sure how she'd done it, but she had a hunch that her magic was split into two categories, as, as soon after the wizard was killed, and she'd woken up, she'd found that she could do small tricks of persuasion against what was left of the vile creatures. Not only that, but the leader of the battalion from her homeland told her that they had been whirled away by
wind, of all things, and had been sped off to the battlefield.
Her magic, while still mysterious, seemed to finally be working itself out.
The next time she'd gone to sleep, the girl found that her dreams were peaceful, void of all magic. Ilmena had her first peaceful night of sleep in years.
Shortly after, she'd found that Edwornd was one of the fairies she'd summoned, and he proceeded to excitedly hug her while telling her of everything that had happened since she'd left: a very long list of
very pleasing events.
He and Kemieya were engaged, for one, and thankfully, no one had argued against it.
But when the two siblings returned to Imorna after the battle- aided by her newly-found powers with the wind, they both found, to their great joy and shock, that the best event had happened shortly after the wizard was defeated.
The civil war was over.
It had happened suddenly, Kemieya told them, tears streaming down her cheeks as she embraced Ilmena. It had been an hour away from what everyone knew would be the first true battle of Imorna's civil war, and without any warning, every creature that had sworn against humans and anyone who sympathized with them had suddenly surrendered.
Apparently, they were all saying that they never knew why they'd gone against the others in the first place.
Ilmena believed them, for she had seen the wizard's powers, and she knew how destructive hate could be. It would start out small, but would soon explode, spreading from person to person like a disease.
And now that the source was gone, the one who had started off this giant snowball, the one who powered it all, it ended.
----------------
Now faced with the choice to either stay in the Otherworld forever, or leave, with no chance of ever coming back, the human population of Imorna was divided.
Many were staying.
But many more were leaving, deciding to take their chances on Earth, where they knew, at least, that their species would be the majority.
Even some fairies and humans with magic were immigrating to the planet, to stay in known magical sanctuaries.
That was what Lady- for she was a Melyani Lady again, now that the war had ended- Ilmena of Imorna was doing.
She knew she could have stayed, but she felt that she didn't really belong, not even among those that she had shared her short adventure with.
The day after the battle, she had sought out and explained everything to all of the creatures she had been with- the gypsies, 'Nobody', Celeste.
She had told them about how, firstly, her name was not Eeta, it was Ilmena, yes, her hair really was brown, as it was now (she'd convinced her hair to restore itself back to what it had originally been), yes, that water fairy that kept following her around really was her brother...
And then the big truth.
She quietly told each of them that she was from Imorna. That she was nobility, that her brother would be the King one day. That she was the reason her entire country had fallen into a civil war.
That last one was one of the main reasons she was leaving the Otherworld. Ilmena knew it wasn't really her fault, but she couldn't stand to remain in Imorna, what with her conscience screaming that by wandering into the Otherworld as a child, she'd started a civil war.
She'd nearly killed, even if only indirectly, thousands of Imornians.
----------------
Ilmena had already decided where to go. While thinking back on everything that had happened, she'd suddenly found, buried in the recesses of her memory, one word:
Avalon.
She'd found out everything she could about it after that, asking every human she stopped by in Imorna about it.
And so, now knowing a great deal more about it, she was leaving the land that had been her home for so long, to go to a place she knew so little about.
Why?
Simple. She felt something pulling her there. She didn't know what it was, and to be honest, she felt it didn't matter. Destiny, fate, a calling from one of the Faye that inhabited the land... It would all lead to the same ending anyway.
And whatever that was, she didn't care.
((And yet another one of my infamously long posts. This one came about after my actually forgetting about PPT for a week. >_<
Oh! I forgot! When Ilmena gets to Avalon/Camelot/that area, she's going to change her name again, though she won't be the one to change it, but whatever, ze Faye are mysterious creatures.
Guess what her new name is going to be.
I am
so evil.))