A/N: ⚠️Really important, must-read Okay there was a quick change in chapter one: the setting is now in the ancient period, and "my OC" does not know the elephant is Airavata.⚠️ This was just for those who didn't want to go back and re-read it, nothing else has changed apart from that!

She had been five when she had first seen an elephant. All had lined up to watch as the King made his way down the dirt road, riding on top of the grey beast and looking down at his citizens with haughty smiles and raised eyebrows.

Every once in a while, he would toss a single gold coin to the crowd and the people would rush towards it like starved animals. Perhaps she should have lunged to get the money as well, but she could not take her eyes off that... thing.

At the time, she did not know what the beast's name was. So when she got back to the orphanage, she immediately went to the archives.

It was old and already falling apart. Wood from the shelves swayed in a crooked dance, sprinkling shavings to carpet the bare, stone floor.

The caretakers nor the head did not care for it. Opal was probably in her study, sliding coins one by one across the table and listening to them scratch the surface as she counted her funds. The Maruts were more interested in getting their body in good shape rather than the building itself. But she didn't mind, this was where she could shut the door on life.

She sat down on the floor, letting the cold seep into her and shake her a bit. She had forgotten to bring the rug.

For hours the young girl had pulled out books from their places, leaving little prints in the dust. All of them were picture books, so she could recognize what she had seen with her eyes.

Reading was not her passion, but she did love listening to them. Let them enter from her ears instead of her eyes. She could craft them too, molding masterpieces with nothing but snippets of truth. Only ghosts could whisper the writing to her in this library, but she had nothing to translate their stories.

At last, the girl stumbled upon 'Dumbo'. As she was leafing through the pages and smoothing out the bent corners, she came across an inked picture of Dumbo holding onto his mother's tale with his trunk. It was the strange creature!

She quickly flipped back to the start of the book and found the word. 'Elephant'. She had memorized it and later asked the tutor, Sherrilyn, about it. To this day she still remembered how she had pronounced it. Ele-PHONT. That day, the orphans learned about animals.

And now, after eleven years, she was seeing an elephant again. But this one was different. They were supposed to be a gray, lumpy mass. Wisdom shown with wrinkles in their hide.

No, this elephant was intelligent for different reasons. It was porcelain white and without blemish. A shawl was draped across its back, the color of coral. The color of kings. Gems sewed in every other thread. Also, it was floating. Standing on air.

Distantly, she thought of Dumbo. But its ears were not the reason for its flight.

Briefly, their eyes locked on each other. Brown met brown, before her's strayed back to the scarf on its back. Her hands twitched. This was most definitely a dream, she'd had stranger ones. She must have fallen asleep as well while telling her tale. Perhaps she could make this one good. Every other dream had morphed into nightmares.

This time, while walking through the halls of Nidra, she would smile. That cloth could get her thousands of pieces of gold. She would be able to get Poppy, Burton, and Arielle out of the orphanage. Maybe even pay them back for the honey cake. They'd finally live in a proper house. They could finally get something nice to wear. The possibilities were endless.

Her hand twitched again and she reached for the shawl. This was not going to be the first time she stole something. All her life she had been told the only thing she could do was lie. Many a time she had told tales of how her parents were of noble blood, and for a while, people believed it. Believed her Until she was outed as having filth running through her veins. And all refused to see her as anything better than a deceiver.

Humiliated and angry, and having nothing more to gain her food, she became the thing they said of her. Grabbing their values and telling half-truths became her job. She was a sly thief no one could imprison for long, darting out of their hands with their gold in her pockets before they could even pronounce her name. And that shawl had caught her eye.

Her fingers grazed the fabric and for once, her nails did not get caught on the rough material and thousands of threads growing and shedding. She snatched the elephant a quick glance and bit her lip, teeth scraping against the dry, peeling skin of it. It was staring right at her.

She pretended to pet it but didn't fake her amazement. Her awe was genuine. Her hand snagged against the tiny mirrors and beads sown in. Their polished surfaces contrast with the softness it was embedded in. She looked to its eyes and saw they had been turned to the side. The chance was dangling just there, and she could break the string that held it back.

The young woman tensed, then lashed forward, grabbing the shawl that folded so easily under her grip. But she couldn't yank it back. Stuck like dirt in the corner of a pillar. And she couldn't let go, her hand unable to un-clench from its iron grip. Thieves had flexible fingers, they needed their nimbleness so as to make the owner of the treasures unaware that their loot had been deftly picked right out from the slashes in their clothes.

She panicked, trying to wrench it free. It wasn't a cramp. And if they caught her and sliced at her wrists with a blade, no. No, she couldn't let that happen.Her hands were the source of her vitality. Her gaze flicked towards the beast she was linked to and the shakiness and salt rivers that threatened to spring from her eyes disappeared. This was all a dream.

The elephant blinked serenely, before turning away from her slowly, as if in water. She breathed, relief seeping into her from her head at the thought of the creature finally leaving, however slow it was, when she suddenly jerked forward.

Shock hit her in the face. What was happening? Then she saw that her hand was still clumping up a fist of velvet and diamonds.

"No, wait! Please stop!" She begged, as she once did before turning to the web of lies that held up this world. But it wouldn't stop, and she was tugged over the windowsill, the stone ripping her already worn clothes. Her legs tangled with the stars as she swung violently to keep her hold on the creature, who sped faster and faster as they gained altitude.

A cloud buffeted in her face and she spat out the sticky air condensation that was glued like beads to her mouth. This was a dream. This was a dream. However, It took longer and longer periods of time to brand that in her mind each time she said it. Her breath was sucked back down every time her gaze flickered below.

Her feet were dangling high above the palaces' arches and peaks. If she fell, she'd die, and her lifeless body would become a ragdoll whom everyone would stare at before scurrying off to continue their day's work. Her feet kicked uselessly in the air, as if trying to find a solid platform that wasn't there to haul herself onto. Flocks of birds disassembled their arrow formation to avoid letting a single feather of theirs tickle its strands across the elephant's white skin. Meaning they crashed into her instead, before being hurled away by the wind.

On the fifth bird, she decided to stop sulking. She had vowed to make this a good dream. And so it would. Before her other arm had been limply hanging by her side, in fear it would also curl and never move again after touching that cursed shawl. Now she clenched at the fabric easily and finally found the balance and grip to swing herself onto its back.

The rocky parts of the journey smoothened into mud and her amazement grew as they floated gracefully over the entirety of the world. She took in the sand smeared across the ground and poles sticking out of it to create shelters for the bowls of spices and jewels bulging from their metallic cases that were to be haggled and negotiated for lessened prices.

The number of birds slamming into her face lessened greatly. She couldn't help it, ]a laugh slipped from her throat where thousands of emotions swirled and swam, on the brim of fleeing into the night. And she looked upwards, a smile cracking her face in two.

Perhaps if she had looked down, she would have seen that she was leaving everything behind. Would have seen that her entire world was becoming nothing but a speck of dust in the wind. If she had looked down, she would have seen something new approaching, a land that was the essence of dim lights and magic.

But she didn't look down, instead she lifted her head up. Just as she was about to cheer at a dream gone extraordinary, she fell.

Clouds whisked past her, but instead of turning to mist with her warmth, their weight bounced her to and fro. She tried to scream, but the back of her mouth was clogged with honey. Only a few tears slid out from her eyes, the force with which she was falling making it look like dewdrops flying back to their place from where they were formed in the foggiest parts of the air.

Her arms spun in an attempt to slow down, latching onto any cloud, ripping out chunks of sky in the process of trying to stop. As the ground neared her, instincts took over and she used one cloud to upright herself and used her legs to bounce from one to another before skidding to a stop in the finely powdered sand. Her momentum was off, however, and she ended up falling on her face, coughing up beads of dirt and scraping thin lines that colored themselves red in a few seconds on her elbows and knees.

Even worse, she had fallen in front of a group of people looking at her with supposedly wide eyes. Her eyesight was still blurry from gazing upon all there was to see in life in a couple of minutes. But besides the faint ringing of prayer bells, her ears were fine and she was able to pick up and piece together what they were saying. Specifically the smallest one with blotted-out purple glasses.

"Aashni? Is that you?"

"Who? No, my name is Aru Shah." 

A/N: There you go, I didn't actually kill off Aru, but instead my actual OC. Can you guys forgive me now?