Aurora's POV
The dream starts soft.
I'm running through the tall grass at the edge of Hawthorne's northern fields, and the world around me is exactly as I remember it, gold light slanting low, the smell of cut hay riding heavy on the wind, my bare feet already sure of every root and stone. Somewhere behind me a dog barks twice and goes quiet. The air tastes the way it always did in late summer, warm and a little sweet, and I laugh out loud at nothing, and it feels like the truest sound I've ever made.
I turn.
My mother and father stand at the fence line, and beside them, my brother, all three of them laughing at something, waving me toward them like I'm still a child and there's nowhere else in the world any of us needs to be. My mother's hair catches the light the same way mine does.
