To Save a Saviour

Elorae let herself go.

Not in a metaphorical way. In a true, real, defining way. Her body, her shape — all of it dissolved as her power roared outward, consuming her like flame devouring parchment. Her power tore at her, stripping away what little of her soul remained. If she found him, there might not be enough of her left to follow. The ether rushed in around her, whispering its endless nothings. Never before had it gotten so close. Her life had been protected, shielded in a way that the rest of her world was not. Now, though, it permeated every part of what was left of her being. It should have erased her. But she would not let it. She could not.

She was looking for Joey.

Her messiah. Her chosen one. Her true love.

She had waited her whole life for him, his name a nightly prayer, a secret she held next to her heart. She remembered, just days earlier, saying his name aloud as she looked at his face for the first time. She had crossed realities to find him, the man she believed in, the one who would save her. She had felt him in her very being before she ever saw him, the way a heartbeat feels another heartbeat through the skin. They had told her she was mad, that her dreams were delusions, that the ether's rejection of her was proof of weakness, not destiny. But what else could it have been? The ether embraced everyone — except her. It pushed her away, refused her, left her stranded in colourless exile.

Wasn't that proof enough that she was meant for something more? That she was meant for him?

Now the ether stretched endless and beige around her, thick as breath, thin as thought. She pushed through it like a swimmer lost in fog. Every movement was agony — like pushing through honey that wanted her gone. The nothingness whispered her name backwards, inside out, until she barely recognized it.

"Elorae."

It sounded wrong here. But she clung to it anyway. She had to keep something real.

She searched. Her power reached outward, flaring in spirals of light that the ether tried to smother. She could feel him somewhere ahead — faint, trembling, barely a spark left in the void.

When she finally found him, she almost didn't recognize him.

A shape, a shadow, a suggestion of a man dissolving into the nothing. His edges were breaking apart, softening into haze. His colour — the colour she loved, that miracle from another world — was almost gone.

"Joey," she whispered, and her voice was a ripple that faded before it reached him.

She stretched out her hand, and it passed through him. He was there, but not there. Her touch, as weak as it was, could not find him. Her power flared into him, around him. If she could not touch him, then perhaps her power could bring him back. There. She could feel him through the torrents of power, but she dared not pull too hard. He was fragile. If she seized him carelessly, she might rip him to shreds — a thought that made her tremble.

He was hers. He was her proof, her purpose, her love. She could not destroy him.

And then, through the shifting haze around his form, she saw them.

Faces, faint as dreams, orbiting him in slow, silent arcs. They shimmered like candlelight on water — women, all of them. Donna, Eliza, Juniper, Madison, Aynsley, Bianca, Serena, Indira, even herself. Each one glowing with the same strange colour that Joey had brought into her world. Each one still tethered to him by something the ether could not consume.

Love.

That was it. That was the thing she could use.

Elorae's heart surged. She gathered her power — more than she had ever dared summon — and it burned through her veins like molten gold. The ether screamed around her, furious at her defiance, but she didn't stop. She reached toward the images, her power splitting into rivers of light, seeking the echoes of their hearts, the memory of their love for him.

Through them, she could reach him. Through them, she could save him.

"Hold on," she whispered. "I'm coming."

And then she let everything go — all her strength, all her fear, all her hope — pouring it into the tether between Joey and the women he had loved.

For a heartbeat, all the beige in the world began to glow.