Kindred Folk - Velvet Wings

[FennWenn]

It was dark.

It was dark, when the white winds died down again, dark but for a pinprick of light in the distance.

“Goodbye now. Hopefully, we never meet again.” Mortality, silhouetted by the light, glanced over Fenn’s shoulder with his dull, dull eyes and a sense of deliberation.

What was there? The fae whirled around, but found nothing but black. He scoffed. Of course, he thought, glancing back over to frown into the distant prick of light. Now, the other him was gone too. What else would he expect from himself?

Fenn paused, hearing the gentle shhhhfff of wings on papery wings.

<...Mortality?>

There was movement in the dark.

Memories brushed past him like the gossamer wings of a swarm of insects, fluttering toward the light far away. Vague impressions fluttered over him; silver hair and flowery perfume. The tang of dried blood and a disgruntled glance his way. A boney hug. Thick, strong hands gingerly petting a black wolf on the head. Eyes, green like his, reflecting him back from under straw-blonde hair. The movement of a cart and the promise to visit again. Laughter, a man’s, and many shiny piercings glittering in the sun. A mane of feathers falling over him, two courteous voices speaking of the same mind, blue scales. Being held tall atop mountainous shoulders. “Good night, my little dragonfly,” whispered a hazy blur of gossamer wings, delicate hands brushing a lock of black hair back from his eyes…

The impressions were attached to faces. To names, sometimes. To people. To places and times.

They were shadows in the dark, movements out of the corner of his eye. It was difficult to quantify their exact appearance when looking directly at them — when just touching them — gave him thoughts of times past. Fenn watched them float away. It struck him somehow that he could, if he desired, reach out to catch them. Maybe call them back to him. Where were they going? But he found himself afraid.

<Mortality! Come back!>

He was afraid because among the flickers of soft remembrances he felt sharp-winged forms shedding pain like dustings of scales. They were many. Reptilian eyes, ice-white teeth tinged pink and grey with blood, the stench of rotting meat. A child, looking much like him, face-down in the snow. Decay and fungus blooming in the dark, a voice that spoke in colors, a harsh cracking against his skull. Red hair and even redder eyes, black cracks over pale-white skin and a raw-bleeding eye held in one hand. A flash of heat around his wrists. Eyes spinning around him, a blizzard of cold faces, beastly and beautiful. Thick blue drinks in clear crystal. Clammy flesh hidden under bones and skeins of algae, not quite smelling of the sea, but drowning all the same. Tea black as blood, black as poison. A girl with a wolf’s face, a wolf who was not a friend. A girl in a wolf’s guise, screaming, screaming at him. A ghost in a wolf’s guise, screaming empty promises to haunt his dreams.

Fenn drew back.

The winged creatures trickled and whirled past him, borne on a breeze he could not feel. Toward a destination he could not identify. The pinprick of light called to them. Like sand, he felt them vanish, felt their presence lighten. One by one by one. As a memory cut up against him — one that emanated a weight of time and the heat of cold iron — he felt the urge to scream. He was silent. The phantasm passed.

All the angry things that whispered to him in the non-voice of his inner survivalist — Mortality? — streaked away. Many of the things that made him the gleeful thief screamed off with them.

What was going to be left?

Panic pulsed through him as emptiness crashed down on him. Belatedly, he reached out to grab something, anything that didn’t cut him.

It emenated the essence of red yarn, a sweater heavy and damp with bathwater. The wings— they were soapy— they were slick and soaked through with a thickness that he wasn’t sure was water—! It slipped through his grasp. Gasping, he reached out into the dark again, into the void. Deft hands struck the next — the last — memory to brush against him. Whatever he’d grabbed, whatever he now held, he didn’t let go. The impression of frost spiraling out from a cold touch fluttered up his hands through wings as delicate as fresh snow.

So did the essence of a name. A face. Blank green eyes reflected in the puddle of a dark city street. Silent laughter.

<Fennik Glenwey,> he whispered to himself as the whirling wings took their leave of him. Trembling, he clutched his name to his chest. Dusty membranes still fluttered against his hands. <I’m still Fenn. Even if…>

Even if…

He couldn’t remember.