Returning to Solterra offers the chance for adventure she has been waiting for. She wants to see the dunes again, picture them, hold them in place until she can put paint to canvas and capture it there. She is so like her mother at this age, so soft and bright, so curious.

She has seen her mother’s brokenness, of course, but she cannot fathom that she had ever been anyone but who she is now, strong, if not quieter than what she had been, not quite as bright as the afternoon sun, but more the soft glow of her mother in the early mornings. Her mother was steadfast, compassionate, and courageous. But Elli does not know the woman who was so reckless with her heart and her soul. The woman who was much quicker to smile and make friends than she is now. 

But Elena still shares stories, of times before, when she didn't have her heart locked down so firmly in her chest,

One of her favorite stories is when her mother and godmother met the man of Frost in a spring meadow. They stared down winter with all the warmth and fire of summer. They were just fillies then, little girls who before this had been admiring flowers (sure one was an orphan and one was unknown to a father.) But there were still childhood pieces tucked inside them (‘for safekeeping,’ she imagines her mother saying, just as she does when she stick flower petals under their pillows for wishes later). And the winds blew in her mother’s godfather and the silver regent who melted the ice with but two singular glances. Maybe her mother was not the hero of the story, but Elli still admires her for it. 

What would she do if she ran into winter on a spring day?
She would pull a hood up over her head and brace herself for the blizzard. 

She cannot think about frost though as she stands by the dunes, squinting in the sun. Her mother will be wondering where she is, but she will be unsurprised, asking Elli’s wandering feet to still is as much of a task as trying to keep the world from spinning. Her hooves sink into the sand and she feels the heat grow around them as blue eyes blink against the warmth of the desert. Elli is picturing the paints she would mix together to create this shade. Her breathing is steady, but when she looks out at the horizon she feels it shimmering, she feels the headiness of the heat, and she thinks what colors would this feeling be?

The sun is overbearing, its unabashed sheen of light blinding to the eye and unforgiving, silvery-blonde hair catches in a slow, rolling desert breeze. She does not think for a moment that she is alone. Those dunes shift too much, they sing too loudly for her to ever imagine such a thing. So the sound of movement through sand is unsurprising to her.

“Hello,” she responds, her voice quiet and colored with a shade of wonder, “this world is so beautiful.” She says as a gentle murmur of the words she really wants to say, but once glance and she knows, this boy is not Aeneas. And she cannot tell this Not-Aeneas all the secrets of her heart, how she is dreaming up colors she has never seen before, only heard. How she wonders what the desert is thinking, how when she and Dune once went and listened to its shadows speak (it told her stories of spears, and queens, and battle cries, but it told her stories too of the innocent side winder mistaken for a monster, and the babies the desert bore). Maybe she could tell him, but she opens her mouth and she knows in an instant she cannot. There are fireflies caught in the back of her throat.

“It’s lovely,” she says instead to Not-Aeneas, in her voice of Dusk fog. “The desert,” she says and for the first time turns blue eyes to him. They brighten against the color of the sand, and for once look like blue skies instead of winter frost. He looks warm, this boy, and she thinks, what a magnificent thing to be so warm. Does the sun kiss his skin every moment of every day? Or does it simply live buried beneath him? Elli ponders as she watches him. “I thought I might memorize its colors, build a sandcastle,” she says and sounds all at once too wise for her age, and incredibly childish at the same time, in the same words, and the same breath. “But the sun is…” she doesn't finish, just blinks pretty eyes. “What do you suppose I do?”