Alani had been a very, very melancholic child, so much so that even Gabriel, a kid two years younger, could perceive it. Or was it because she was so young that she could tell? Whatever the reason, it was clear to her.
It was the way Alani stared long to the horizon while traveling in their parent's cart, and how she ate very little every meal. It was the way she only spoke in short whispers, so faint Gabe thought she was imagining it sometimes, and even the way her eyes were always, always dropped to the ground. Almost as if she was sleepwalking through life, Gabe remembered.
“Why sad, sis?” She would ask early on, but Alani would never answer, so eventually, she stopped speaking to her altogether.
Gabe spent a lot of time by herself, so she learned quickly how to take care of her own. Because of that, their childbearing Mother, with a baby in her arms and tiredness in her eyes, started to ask her for help with the petit and frail-looking child her older sister was.
So, as soon as she was old enough to understand, Gabe helped Alani bathe and dealt with their portion of food, as well as acted as a bridge to observe her closely and pass on the silent message of whatever Alani needed to their mother... And after her, Samir. Her younger sister was a blessing she cherished deeply, even if Gabe(at the age of five at that point) had double the work looking out for her.
She was too young to get the details, but she knew their parents weren’t financially well. Food was scarce and they never stopped in any city, like they did the years before. Their Mother and Father argued a lot too, something related to “going back to their Mother’s land” so she kept herself and her sisters away from them as much as possible.
They wandered on the edge of the forests, marking the way back with colored rocks while she sang and told tales she heard the passing villagers share. Many times, her tiny brain ended up forgetting huge chunks of it, but she stretched on the stories and the songs as long as she could so that they could at least for a while forget about it all. As they explored, Samir always within her eyesight and Alani’s hand firmly in hers, she scanned for berries they could eat. Many times, that would be their only meal besides a daily supper in the evening.
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It was around that point in time (her Samir reaching the mark of three and Lulu on the way) that something seemed to snap on the oldest.
She began talking out loud, for starters, which brought immense relief to their parents. It was only then that Gabe realized Alain’s affliction had been another major topic for them to argue and worry about. The fights decreased greatly after that.
Alani stood in front of them when dealing with their parents and took to herself the job of instructing them on anything they didn’t know of (and why, she seemed to know of everything). After some complications in Lucious' birth, she dealt closely with the infant as well. Because it took a long time for their mother to completely heal (forcing them to stay stationary in the Capital while their Father traveled back to their Mother’s land to get some of the goods they still sold in recent days) their oldest acted like their core caretaker.
It was a change that Gabriel did not take lightly. In fact, she had a great deal of trouble accepting the absurdity of it all. Had a devil cursed her soul to have a great boon in exchange for a terrible curse? Had the Fae killed her on a dark night while they were sleeping and was now playing a sick joke on them by puppeteering her corpse? Was she a doppelganger trying to slowly replace them all with their otherworldly twins? She certainly had listened to enough stories to entertain every kind of theory, back then.
Her distrust got to a point that the reluctant and mild-mannered Alani confronted her about it, in tears.
And Gods and Goddess above, Gabe had never seen her sister cry until that point, much less in that intensity. She wailed, sobbing loudly, “Please, don’t treat me like a stranger. Please. I don’t want to be alone again”.
It still didn’t make much sense, and Gabe would only have answers many years later, but seeing her like that, desperate for acceptance, was something that would be forever engraved in her mind. She understood then that whatever her sister was before that point was merely a shell, and this was now Alani. A lonely older sister who was very eager to help and in deep need of care and companionship. After she thought of the latter... At least that part of her didn’t change, she supposed.