Author's Note: Alright guys. If you're just joining us, this is the sixth installment of the Seven series for Nuada x Nuala. The ones preceding this one, in order, are: "Seven Secrets", "Seven Colors", "Seven Shades", "Seven Points" and "Seven Emotions". I suppose it's possible to start the series from the middle--since they have no real ordered chronological events--but if you start from the beginning, it makes the author happy! ((smile)) Also, reviews are like candy to me.

As always, I recommend listening to mood music when you read, as I did when I wrote this: "Mordred's Lullaby" by: Heather Dale

Enjoy!

"Seven Elements"

Earth

It wasn't beyond them, as elves, to summon the powers of some force greater than themselves. Intertwined as their people were with the power of Mother Earth, it would be unusual if it were so. The first time Nuala raises earth energies, she's sitting among the flowers in the garden, swaying gently in the summer's still air. A song slips from between her lips on whispers, consuming the silence of the space with its innocence. It is Nuada of whom she thinks, her smile soft and hopeful. It is Nuada who comes upon her when the flowers begin to sway in a wind that is not a wind. They are seven years old, and inseparable.

Fire

As warriors, they must forge their own weapons if they are to wield them. Nuala is anxious around the forge and he can feel it in his bones, in the quiver of his own muscles. The sweat beads on his brow and he aids her in pulling her hair into a braid; she controls the bellows while he works. Silver turns to liquid under his touch; the whole of his lance forms up in moments, seeming to swell and rise under his fingers eagerly; it flickers under his palm, licking like the flames his sister stokes to inferno. When it is her turn, the gold is stubborn and willful--but she is gentle and determined, despite her fear. It is that purity that tames the spirit in the element; it spreads wide beneath her hands and goes thin, like paper. The base is thick and the edges are sharp like a blade; the fans, twined, are masterpieces of elegance. And in both the silver and the gold, the fire sprites danced an endless jig. They are twelve years old, and warriors.

Water

She's waist deep in the crystal pool of the misty glen, her arms at her sides and her fingertips trailing over the surface. An undine resting on the shore smiled at the elven princess with reassurance and gestured for her to continue forward. Nuada sits on a boulder, in the middle of the pond, waiting for his sister. When she finally finds her peace--her center--she opens her eyes and meets his gaze; they find themselves drowning in the golden heat. The water beneath her fingers--all around her--flickers with color; images appear in hazy half-light on the surface. A child with her wild hair and his intense coloring. The undine warns not to trust the visions of water; it shows what one desires to see and not always the truth. They are eighteen years old, and hopeful.

Air

She whispers to him on the winds, even from as far as the cliffs. He leaves his room and tracks through the halls in a trance; he can feel the spray of sea-salt against his cheeks; smell the crispness of the breeze. His hair whipping in a phantom breeze entices him to seek her out. He finds her on the edge of the cliffs, as he knew he would, and his arms come around her, to hold her from the precipice. He begs her not to fall, not to jump; she laughs her special chimes-and-bells giggle and asks whatever would give him the idea that should would do such a thing. He only shrugs. He's considered it more than once, when he could not be with her. He doesn't say this aloud, but her smile--and the way she presses back into his chest--tells him that she caught the thought anyway. They are twenty-five years old, and in love.

Lightning

The raw energy of the lightning strike is his favorite to work with, to possess. He gets them both scorched and electrified more times than he can count, but Nuala never holds it against him. The spirit of lightning energy is flighty and violent; it hates cages and despises domination even more. She cautions him to be gentle with it--to coax it--but he's deaf to her reasoning. Night after stormy night, he fights a battle with an elemental spirit he can't hope to tame; night after night, she stands beside him on the cliffs and takes the shock of its wrath. Months later, her brother has made an uneasy bargain with the lightning and its spirit; he wields it and it wields him. The electricity running in her bones--their bones--tingles near-constantly and makes her jittery; she says nothing to spoil his victory for him. They are twenty-eight years old and devoted to their cause.

Ice

The chill of frost and wintry hatred is in her body, stealing up inside her muscles and robbing her of her breath. The shock of seeing him again--in all his glorious, electrified hatred--is too much to bear. The energy inside her escapes, in the form of a troubled breeze, and whips around him. The unnatural wind tugs at his hair, makes it billow shamelessly, and she stares, heartbroken. The absurdity of standing in a meat-packing freezer and facing down her soulmate is echoed in the snowy-cold depths of her mind. After so long, again, they're together. They are two-thousand and twenty-three years old, and at war with themselves.

Darkness

They're standing in a vast emptiness--a nothingness with no substance and all the solidity of a dream. It engulfs them, though, and they see no way out. This is their place of being--their afterlife--and it is not at all what it was made out to be. He gives her a wide smile and she returns it, all the bitterness of the war they've left raging--of the battle she forced him to lose--forgotten in each other's company. He takes her in his arms and she clings to him sweetly, glad of his embrace. "Never let us be separated again, brother." His answer is to hold her more tightly, closer. Behind her back, he raises his hands and lightning crackles around his finger-tips spilling from within as the last of his weapons. Around her hands, too, there is lightning--it joins them in their embrace and arcs back and forth between them as they pull away ever so slightly. "Now," he says, "let us rend these shadows." And they do, spilling out of darkness and ignorance into the summer-land of light and gold. At this end, they are ageless in years--and, in continuance, eternal.