Editing Eldramin (section)

== Chapter 26 ==
''Fannara''

Sunlight streamed into my old bedroom, lighting up the shafts of dust in the air and making them shine like specks of gold. Moren and I were going through the massive closet, finding a concerning amount of kitchen cutlery and a generous rock collection. Apparently, my younger self had some questionable hobbies. 

It was strange to see so many random items that immediately brought such vivid memories back to me. Stranger still, Moren knew the story behind almost all of them. Those he didn’t know gave him a lot of practice in catching me as I momentarily lost consciousness. The bouts of memories were becoming less and less intense, and it eventually got to the point where the memories mostly just overlayed on top of the moment I was actually in. 

I was just about ready to suggest a beak when the door to the bedroom creaked open. Moren and I exchanged a confused look.

“Were you planning on having visitors today?” I shook my head. 

Standing up, I peeked out of the doorway, Moren right on my heels, and was shocked to see–not Ana or Wryn in the doorway–but Ari, Mel, and Mara. I walked out of the closet and all three of their faces lit up, although Ari’s dimmed a bit upon seeing Moren. 

Mara ran over and hugged me. “Fannara! It’s been so quiet without you around, not that you make much noise in the first place, but the dorm is so empty and we’ve all missed you so much.” She pushed away, holding me at arm's length and smiling brightly. 

Mel pushed past her and gave me a hug too, making a joke about having to work with my partner during patrols. Moren looked extremely uncomfortable from where he stood, now at the back of the room. 

“Okay, scooch.” Ari wedged herself in between me and Mel, claiming the hugging position. “Seriously, it has been so weird without you around. But on the bright side, you’re not going to Alithos.” I laughed and hugged her back. 

I hadn’t thought of that. Being Isabell meant I would probably never go back to Alithos. Somehow, even though just a few weeks ago I wished I could stay on Lathra IV, it made me a bit sad to think I’d never see Alithos again. Maybe I would, but from what I’d heard of the responsibilities of the Eldramin, I doubted it. 

My friends began to pepper me with questions, but not of the kind that I’d faced from the Chairman the day before. These questions were far more gentle: how have you been? Have you been getting enough sleep? Is Ana feeding you right? Do you want us to call you Isabell or Fannara? What have you been doing? 

I tried to be as vague as possible with the last question, especially when addressing what had happened the day before. I looked back at Moren as I brushed over the topic of why I’d been pulled from the hospital early at Jasper Keleth’s request, but Moren wasn’t there anymore. He must have left the room while I was answering questions because I hadn’t noticed his absence beforehand. 

Strange, I hadn’t really considered Moren a very close friend. I mean, obviously, we’d spent hours upon hours together during patrol and he’d been helping me through this whole Izzy situation, but it was in that moment, when he was suddenly gone, that I realized how much I relied on his support. I didn’t like it. 

The next few hours were spent catching up with my roommates. They told me about patrols and classes and taking finals and updates on who was still enrolled in the university and who had left to join the military. I hadn’t even been thinking about those kinds of things, I’d almost forgotten about the war entirely, which was pretty ironic seeing as I was now in the middle of it. 

The most concerning part of their report was the increase in raids from the Shifters. However, Jana wasn’t killing the soldiers, at least, not to their knowledge. She was simply taking them. I had an idea of what the missing soldiers were facing and it wasn’t a pretty one. 

As their visit came to an end, Ari pulled me aside, letting Mara and Mel talk with Ana about the interior of the palace. 

“Okay, I’ve shared a room with you for a lot of months and I can tell you’re not telling us everything. What happened yesterday?” Arienna put her hands on her hips and looked up at me with a face that told me she wouldn’t back down until I told her the truth. I tried anyway.

“I told you: I met with Chairman Keleth, and then Ana took me here.” The glare I received made me go into further detail. “Fine, I had to sit through a whole day’s worth of questioning and watching tapes to try and trigger memories. But it’s fine now-”

“-pardon, ''what?''” 

I sighed, realizing it was a losing battle to give her the bare minimum details. “The tapes of the failed rescue attempt, those ones, I had to watch them on loop. For hours. And then I kept passing out and every time I woke up I had to answer the same set of questions again and again but none of the memories being triggered actually had to do with what was being asked—it was bad.” 

“I believe that counts as borderline torture.” Ari had a look of disgust on her face as she processed what I’d told her. “Is there anyway to, I dunno, maybe get him removed from office? She looked ready to storm into the government building and punch Jasper Keleth across the face. I wasn’t sure if I’d stop her either. 

I didn’t know much on the laws in Palendine, but I highly doubted that one instance would be grounds for anything. “Probably not, especially since he technically had a good reason.”

Ari glared and rolled her eyes. “It’s like being an insensitive jerk runs in the family.”

Ana eventually decided there’d been enough time spent with others and sent the three girls, very kindly, out the door. With only four of us left in the house, Ana gave us lunch and then practically put me down for a nap. I wasn’t going to protest against more sleep. 

As Ana was walking me back to my room, she paused and turned to me. “Via and Eli should be coming in tonight, but it’ll be a few more days until the rest of your family comes back.” She resumed walking and then paused again. “And tomorrow you’ll probably have to meet with Jasper again, but Via will be with you, as she knows most of the memories you’re missing.” Ana opened the door of my room, ushering me in before I could respond. 

The door clicked shut, and I was suddenly alone. ''Well, that was a lot of information at once.'' Walking over to the bed, I pulled a blanket around me and tried to sleep. It didn’t work. 

I tried to imagine what Eli would look like now, after thirteen years, running scenarios of how meeting him and Via tonight would go. After deciding that was too stressful to think about, and that thinking about tomorrow was even worse, I chose to resume my survey of the closet. 

Several storage bins still sat unopened in a pile towards the back, coated in a layer of dust. The bin Moren and I had been in the middle of sorting through still sat open on the floor, a neat pile of papers on the carpet next to it. 

I sat down, cross-legged, and started fingering through the material remaining in the bin. This container held mainly old drawings and random pieces of paper at the top, but as I got further down, I found a little wooden box. It was painted a nasty orange color and looked about ready to splinter into a million little pieces. 

Carefully, I unlatched it and flipped the lid open, discovering a small pile of tiny pictures. These images had been printed onto actual paper, not one of the weird holographic tablets that held practically everything else. They looked really old and showed the faces of people I hardly recognized. 

In the top photo, a woman with long blonde hair and caramel eyes smiled at the photographer, wearing a long white gown. She was holding hands with a tall, brown-haired man who had the most intense blue–nearly turquoise–eyes I’d ever seen. I smiled to myself as their names suddenly registered. Marcy and Kayden Harpson, my parents. 

The next four photos were of my mother holding each one of us kids as babies in a hospital. As I studied the last picture in the sequence, one of Faith as a newborn, a vague memory pulled at me, but the feeling quickly passed before I actually learned what it was. ''Weird.''

I continued looking through the contents of the bin, eventually giving up and laying on the carpet as a headache built up behind my eyes. It was so weird, the memories had suddenly stopped coming all the way and it was becoming painful. Sighing, I stared up at the white ceiling, trying to formulate an explanation, but I couldn’t think of one. 

I must have dozed off, because the next thing I knew, I was jolting upright at the sound of someone knocking on the door. Stumbling over the mess I’d made in the closet, I made my way to the door, opening it to reveal Moren. 

He looked at me and gave me a small smile. “Via and Eli are here.” My stomach dropped a little bit. 

I took a deep breath and nodded. Moren nodded back and offered his arm for support, which I gladly accepted. 

As the door behind me swung shut, I walked down the quiet hallway, bracing myself for my new life as the Eldramin.