We will run across the tall grass as it tickled our sides and ankles. We will have tears prickling our eyes as the rain comes down, mixing our tears with the rain. We fall on our backs, breathing hard, looking over our shoulders to see if more of those men are coming. When we do hear those footsteps of the army, we get up and run again, tearing the ground up with our footprints, our fists grabbing for the air that seemed to slip from our grasp. We will sometimes pick each other up when one falls down, too exhausted to move or our knees give out. Sometimes we have to steal only one horse from a unexpecting farmer and keep going, making sure they lose our trail before the poor farmer can yell out and try and chase after us.
When we couldn’t run anymore, and the horse was close to exhaustion, we stop near a watering hole so we can rest for a bit and let the horse get the water. Thanks to our icy blood, we were warm in the winter, the only place our kind would stay from the humans.
We would look over the mountains and see the small, sleepy village, seeing the people stroking fires and sleeping peacefully in their warm beds. My brother Arilan turned to me, nodding once.
“Food?” he said.
“Food.” I agreed.
We waited till the guard turned his back to slip into the village, creeping around like little rouges who wanted to steal in the dark. We go inside the tavern, pulling our hoods up, and order simple things to eat and drink, then leave, leaving the barmaid and the tavern owner a mighty fine tip, something that we cannot carry. We crept out into the night, slipping past the guards and make it back up to the watering hole, where we found a cave and slept all night.
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We dream of home, of the sakura flowers blooming when the springtime comes around, when our people would celebrate the arrival of spring. We dream of the many spring nights where we would dance and sing our favorite songs. We dream of our father, his smile so big and large each time we’d come by with a sprig of the sakura flowers, so rare to bloom in Shenmen Mountains. We’d dream of our mock fights that would take place in a tournament, and we would go in together, the Sakura twins, they’d called us, or the Sakura White Dragons, fighting as if we were one. We’d fight with lances, swords, naginatas and longswords, twirling them and stabbing the air, as if it was a show.
Sometimes we combine all of those moves into a dance, moving synchronously as one. We would slam the naginatas down, making the dirt fly up in the air, or make the longswords clash. We would call upon the one spell we knew to blast ice into the air. We would take our bows and arrows and shoot at our targets, getting high scores each time. At the end of our dance, we would do a performance last onstage while the fireworks goes off behind us.
We would dance to tell the story of how the artic elves moved from our homeland to Shenmen mountains, and how our first leader, Leth’lastor Nightstrider, built this temple with his own two hands before he died.
We dream of our home, of what it used to be, before it was destroyed. We dream of mom and dad, and our older brother and sister. We dream of our people, who are looking down at us, wondering what we will do next.
We dream of the man that was hunting us down, and when the sun rises, we get up and do it all over again.