the secret dreams of bones [solo]

[Vendredi]

Immediate continuation from the rustling whispers of trees (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?29905-the-rustling-whispers-of-trees-solo&highlight=)

In which Fii meets the fae, and things happen.


The world was darkness and shadowy blurs, interrupted by his own ragged breathing and the rustling whispers of trees. Into the distance, a single beacon of dancing white light flitted between the leaves. His left arm, still injured from the adventures of the prior day, ached dully. His feet were sore from the pace. Yet, there was no rest to be had.

Damn that man, Fii thought, as he scraped past another bush of thistles and felt the sting through the poor linen of his leggings.

In front, Eduard Whitecloak stumbled and fell. Fii took the opportunity to close the distance. He had chased the other man this far, and at some point Fii was no longer sure what Eduard Whitecloak was chasing. They had came for two children thought to be lost. They had came for Eduard Whitecloak’s sense of righteousness and honor. They had came in the pursuit of an elusive ideal that made little sense to Fii.

Then came the light, and then came the song.

In front, the light pulsed, and danced closer. Unbidden, Fii’s eyes went to it. No matter which way they turned, no matter how fast or slowly they ploughed through the woods, the light was there. The light shone like the sun, like the moon, like a sweet promise of redemption and a burning kiss of temptation. Eduard had picked himself up now and was moving again, towards the light and the song.

“Wait, you bastard,” Fii muttered. His voice sounded muffled to his own ears. Despite his best efforts, the other man was still a good stretch ahead.

No matter where they ran, or how they ran, the song was there. The song sang like the joyous river, like the solemn stone, like an effortless singing lark and a toiling swan song. Eduard was stumbling as he moved now, and so was Fii.

It was as though he was watching himself from above, as though he was watching his own body move on its own accord. His mind controlled nothing. His mind could barely think. The light pulsed and flashed, and it was drawing ever closer.

Then the song faded. Silence. Suddenly, a cold, raw whiteness roared through the trees, overtaking everything in its path with blistering speed. Eduard disappeared. Fii stopped and felt breath hitch in his throat. He dropped to his knees and felt nothing beneath his legs. He looked up and saw nothing. Not even shadows.

He blinked. He tried to breath. In that moment, reality slipped away from him. Then, there was the vertigo.

[Vendredi]

Eduard Whitecloak was a stallion in man’s form. Fii understood this the first night they met six months ago. Fierce, demanding, yet gentle, Eduard rippled with unbridled strength beneath a veneer of lightheartedness, humour, and good sense.

He’s also an ass, Fii decided sometime between the first and sixth month he had known the other man.

Their meeting went something like this: It was a dark and stormy night. On the streets of Radasanth, Firelis Tvy’ern thought he found an easy target. He had stepped forward to cut the other man’s purse, and then discovered that his target was not so easy after all. Fii spent the rest of that night in a sheriff’s gaol, before his target kindly bailed him out again.

They began travelling together because Fii was a shameless tag-along who could not stand the thought of being alone, and Eduard was the type of man who could not say no.

Three days ago, they had chanced upon a tiny village in the middle of nowhere. The villagers pleaded for their help. We have lost two children, they cried, a young blacksmith’s wife, and many livestocks to the forest’s beasts. Eduard agreed without a second thought. Two days ago, they trudged through the forest deep and found no sign of beasts. One day ago, they found the missing woman’s grave. Then, they found the village’s woes to be the work of men, and not beasts.

The children, however were still lost. Eduard Whitecloak was not the type of man to let troubles lay.

"Wait a day, damn you," Fii had cried behind Eduard Whitecloak's departing back, but by then the other man was too far away to hear.

An ass, Fii decided when he followed a charging Eduard Whitecloak back into the woods. And I am a fool for following an ass.

[Vendredi]

When Firelis Tvy’ern woke up, he was alone.

He woke to air that was high and dry and burnt in his lungs. He was on his back, laying upon a stretch of grassy plains that was not here moments ago. Sharp blades of grass cut lines into his back through the thin fabric of his shirt, and the searing midday sun beat mercilessly down upon his face. In the distance, thunder echoed without the company of a storm. The world was ablaze in a white fever, and Eduard Whitecloak was nowhere in sight.

Fii blinked. Blinking was hard. It made his eyes water.

He struggled to a sit, moaned, and pressed the heels of his palms to his temples. That made the world a little more bearable. His mind was still not his own. Thunder rumbled once more in the distance. He was still lost and alone and confused. Then he looked up.

No, not quite alone.

No, not quite thunder.

Oh, fuck me. His heart skipped a beat. In the span of a second, Fii had scrambled up to his feet and was poised to run. His eyes were wide, but focused. His mind keened in wakeful distress, and yet felt strangely distant.

The creatures looked like children, and there were two of them. Hairless and unclothed, they circled each other with unholy glee. They were large. So large that their heads seemed to touch the skies. Fii would bet that he barely reached the toe of one. One jumped at the other, sending both tumbling down. They wrestled, falling trees and flattening mountains in their reverie.

They could crush him. They did not see him. He was all but invisible, the way ants were in front of mighty men. They could crush him without ever seeing him.

A dream--

One of them fell. It landed with a booming crash, sending earth and rocks and unrooted trees into the air. Even this far away, Fii could feel the strong blow of the wind, and it almost swept him off his feet. He shielded his face from the worst of it with his good arm. Fear pulsed through his veins. No, this was no dream.

The creatures giggled as they stood, and their voices were thunderous and low. They pulled apart, and were circling each other again. With each step, they drew ever closer to Fii.

No, this was no dream. He was lost but not alone, and if he stayed he would be crushed. In the end, it hardly took thought to prompt his body into movement. Fii ran, the way ants scuttled in the face of mighty men.

[Vendredi]

The two giant creatures were the first clue that Fii had landed himself somewhere strange. The tree was the second.

***

He ran as hard as he had ever ran in his short lifetime, so fast that the world blurred into indistinct blobs of unrecognizable colors and shapes, so fast that his breathes could not complete themselves, so fast that his legs felt red hot with the strain of movement. Then the land warped and time passed strangely, and it seemed like between one moment and the next, he had moved from a flat field to a forest.

With the shift, the thunder of those two creatures disappeared. At first, Fii did not notice it. His ears were too full of the sound of his own pumping heart. Then, miles deep into his mad trample through the forest, he noticed the silence. He slowed. He looked back. He no longer saw those creatures.

Relief surged through him like a sweet wine, and it made his legs soft as strength abandoned him. Fii found himself slumping to a sit in the dirt ground. Even the twisted roots and broken branches digging into his legs could not dim his relief. He closed his eyes and tried to catch his breath.

“Gods,” he breathed to no one in particular.

“None of those here,” no one in particular replied.

Fii’s eyes snapped open. He looked up. There was no one there. He looked back. There was no one there. There was no one around him at all.

“Here,” the voice said, mockingly. “Here.”

The voice came from his right. Fii looked over his shoulders, but there was nothing but trees. A giant oak stood bare inches away from his face, and then dozens and dozens of oak trees stood behind that one.

“Here,” the voice said, amused. “Here.”

The voice still came from his right. Fii looked up. The giant oak had bent over to look at him a twinkle in its wood-bark eyes, and it bore a terrible and knowing wood-bark smile. It looked horrifyingly real, and Fii already knew he was not dreaming.

“Gods,” Fii breathed. Now, he knew he had landed somewhere strange. He had to find Eduard. They had to get out of here.

“If you must say so,” the tree replied with a long suffering sigh. “Suppose I would be, to your kind.”

Its grin stretched so far that Fii could no longer see where one end of its wood-bark mouth began and where the other end ended. In that second, Fii cursed Eduard Whitecloak with all the anger he could muster, which wasn’t much at all compared to his horror and unease.

“Do you have questions for me, manling?” the tree asked, pulling back to a proper stand for a tree.

Fii shook his head numbly. He could not pull his own eyes away from the tree’s gaze. Oh gods, gods, gods. Ants were crawling across his hands. It itched. He did not scratch. He was held in place by some greater trance, and he could not look away.

“None at all, manling?” the tree asked again, disappointed. “By the thunder and the wind, I do swear to be honest.”

Fii shook his head a second time. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw a glint of something shiny. Fii would not learn the name of Moros Fata, the tree-creature who saw all and knew all, until later. Much later. By then, he would have had a greater appreciation of the beings who were approaching them now.

"Anything, manling," the tree swayed and asked a third time, its voice more ominous than both times before. "Anything at all."

[Vendredi]

Fii was saved from having to answer a third time by an onslaught of arrows, and it seemed strange that none had hit him.

He heard the beings before he smelled them, and he smelled them before he saw them.They drummed and trumpeted their arrival with the marching beats of a warsong. They smelled like rain and steel and the midsummer’s storm. They came on galloping horses, shimmering as they appeared suddenly in the air and glowing with ethereal light. The first ones held swords the length of Fii’s torso. The latter ones were armed with bows. They were great, shining beings that were armoured in glorious silver. Even their horses were armoured.

“Cwn Sith,” the tree hissed. It shook and swung where it stood, as though trying to uproot itself violently.

Fii felt the trance evaporate as the tree’s attention turned away to the shining ones. He could move now. He stood, shakily, trembling with an uncertain edginess.

Soon, the shining ones filled the area, surrounding the boy and the tree with their numbers. There must have been a good twenty to thirty of them at least. The first of them lifted a hand. That seemed to be a signal to strike.

Then the shining beings attacked. The bowmen let loose another volley of arrows, and the swordsmen lifted their swords.

The tree twisted and turned to dodge, but the arrows flew true. The tree screamed a curse as the arrows sunk into its trunk. Where the arrows had struck, its bark turned black and withered, as though burnt by fire.

“Sith!” it screamed, thrashing its branches. “Accursed Sith!”

Ah, gods, gods, gods, Fii thought as he hunched to make himself smaller. None of the arrows reached him. All of them passed over the top of his head by a narrow handspan, and he wasn’t sure if it was by chance or on purpose. He scooted backwards as far as he could go, and felt his back slump against a rock and a thistle bush. He was jittery with anxiety and fear. He would go further, but the shining beings left no openings in their circle, and he dared not draw their attention with sudden movements.

Hide, whispered a voice into his mind. Hide.

I’m trying, Fii thought. The shining beings were moving closer, drawing the circle tighter. Gods save me. Fii gulped. Then he threw himself down to the ground, drew upon the scattered shadows of the foliage to shelter him, stayed absolutely still.

[Vendredi]

The shadows had always been an old, reliable friend. Once again, it drew Fii into its embrace and sheltered him. It was a gift he had. As long as he did not move, he could stay in the shadows and not be seen.

Don’t come here, he pleaded with the greater powers as the battle raged overhead. Someone must have answered him, for the sounds of the swords and arrows and burning wood stayed away from where Fii crouched. From the screams and dying whimpers of the tree, it sounded less like a battle and more of an execution.

The tree gave one last desperate shriek. Then it fell silent.

The sounds of the swords and arrows clunked to a stop. Horses neighed. Then there was the trotting sounds of hoofs as the horses galloped away with their masters astride. Before long, shadows and silence once again pervaded the forest.

Fii breathed deeply, and peeked from his spot.

Silence. Blessed silence, and no one in sight. There was a burnt stump where the tree had stood, and no other evidence of the conflict that had just took place.

This time, however, relief did not find Fii so easily. There had been too many surprises today, and Fii was the type who learned caution quickly. He rose slowly, crouching as he did, and he made sure that he stayed in the shadows as he moved. His eyes flitted continuously, covering every side. Nothing could be trusted. Danger could come from anywhere. Even trees.

Once again, Fii cursed Eduard Whitecloak beneath his breath. Lost and alone and very confused as to where he was, his own survival weighed heavier than his frustrations towards the other man, but the petty vengeance made him feel a little better.

He had barely taken three steps before a voice came from behind his back. He panicked and almost went scampering down onto all fours. He would have, if not for the branches blocking his way.

“Oh, a Shadow-Walker,” the voice said, amused. It was a woman’s voice. “I haven’t seen one in an eon and a day.”

Instead, Fii turned slowly and braced himself for conflict. Nothing he had seen today had seemed well-meaning, and he was not optimistic now.

[Vendredi]

She was beautiful the way a tumultuous storm was, dark and glorious with the promise of violent power and disaster in her eyes. She was as tall as he was, and ebony silk clung to her skin like scales upon fish, capturing every curve. Her hair was the color of midnight, it flew behind her like a river. He felt small and scruffy. He felt insignificant. She captivated him in a way no other creature ever had, and he was hers the moment he laid eyes on her.

Her edges flickered as she moved, as though her form was not concrete and tangible. Yet, when she touched him upon the cheek, he felt red hot flesh.

His lips parted, involuntarily. He wondered what an eon was. She smiled at him, and all thoughts flew out of his mind.

“The last one I’ve seen... the last one was Avesta.”

His mind gave a start because that name sounded ever so familiar. Avesta née Tvy’ern. That was his mother’s name. She had disappeared six months ago, and he had left the rest of their family to unravel the mystery that was Avesta née Tvy’ern. Yet, somehow, Fii could not hold onto that thought for long. It slipped away from him like an eel.

“Shadow-Walker,” she said. “By the darkness and the night, will you be mine?”

Could he have given any other answer? Entranced and enthralled as he was, enchanted and enraptured as he was, there was only one answer. The words came to him unbidden, as though from a faraway place. His voice sounded far away. Everything but her eyes were far away.

He said, “I am yours.”

And he meant every single word of it.

[Vendredi]

Do you know of the Otherworld?
Do you dream of the Otherworld?
Do you see the Otherworld?
Do you?



The people of Corone sometimes whispered of the fae who appeared in the dark of the night. They appeared in Concordia. No one knew where they came from. They danced in the woods. They sang airy lullabies in the middle of the night. They seduced young men and women into their embrace. They stole children. They disappeared as easily as they appeared. No one knew where they went after.

No one, but those who had been seduced and stolen away. Those unlucky few rarely ever returned, and when they did, they were fey-touched and wild. Most of them refused to speak of what they had seen. Some of them could only speak gibberish. There were preciously few accounts of the Otherworld, and even fewer reliable accounts.

Emne, the few who knew of such things called it at times, and also Foraoise de Erecura, Gaea, and the Forest of the Young.

For the fae of Concordia, however, the Otherworld simply was. The Otherworld was a part of the land as much as it stood apart from the land. It was like another layer, another plane of existence, occupying the same place, with its inhabitants breathing the same air and looking at the same sky, drawing strength from the same moon and the same sun, and still somehow apart.

Yet, the Otherworld was a stranger place than its counterpart, for its inhabitants were strange creatures. These were not the civilized, organized fae of Dheathain. These were wilder creatures, older creatures, freer and more tempestuous both. Here, the shape of the land could shift in the blink of an eye as one moved between each creature’s domain.

There were doorways between the separate planes of existence, between the known world and the Otherworld. There were locations where the fabric between planes were thin, and there the fae would slip through to play their little games with their songs and lights and dance.

[Vendredi]

Her name was Neamhain. Neamhain of the Night, and she was one of the Firsts of the fae.

She took him to her glade within the forest, where the grass was soft and trees willowy and the water sweet, and it was always a moonless twilight. There, he would remain till his hair grew long enough to braid twice over. She named him Sceadwe. Her Sceadwe. She said it was a good name for a Shadow-Walker. A true name.

“You’re a manling!” she exclaimed in delight that first night. In those first few weeks, she taught Fii many things. Some of it was useful. Others were merely curious.

He learned: Moros Fata was the tree-seer who knew all and saw all, in all the planes. Ask him a question, and he would give you three answers for a price. Of the three answers, one was always a lie, one would be an answer to another question, and one was what you sought. The problem laid in understanding which was which.

He learned: The rules of this land and the fae forbade lies, for the host of Cwn Sith were drawn to lies no matter where it was spoken. The host of Cwn Sith destroyed lies in the most absolute way. They destroyed the speaker.

He learned: The fae could tell the difference between a man and a fae, for a man could carry iron safely, but the fae burnt at iron’s touch. It would not kill them outright, but it pained them greatly. In return, the fae could drink safely from the Well of Brigid, but the Well’s water burnt like acid for a man.

Yet, it seemed like with every piece of knowledge he gained, he forgot something. The first thing he forgot was the name of Eduard Whitecloak. The second was the reason he was here. No. Not quite forgotten. If he focused, if he tried hard enough, he could still remember, and he could still think. Yet, his life from the other-where and the other-when seemed distant and unimportant. Everything seemed insignificant, because when --

“Sceadwe,” she called. “Come to bed, Sceadwe.”

He rose to answer with a murmur and a smile.

Everything else seemed paltry and gray when she called him. Everything but her requests were insignificant, and yet when she asked him for something, his focus was absolute. Soon he answered to no other name but Sceadwe, remembered no other name than Sceadwe.

Sometimes the things she said confused him. Once, lounging in the furs of a recently dead fox, both of them naked as the day they were born, he remembered enough of other-when to ask her where they were.

She had looked at him strangely, and said, “Here.” As though that answered everything. He had pressed her, wanting to know where here was, and why it was so different compared to the other-where and the other-when, and that was when he saw the first flare of her anger, her rage, her terribleness.

“Here,” she said with quiet thunder in her voice, with power cackling in every word. “Where we were the first, and mortals came after. Here, where mere mortals had driven us to be. Here, where we became less than we were. Here.”

She gazed at him then, eyes unseeing, as though looking at a long-ago past. Her edges flickered. Lightning danced in the air. In her eyes, he saw his own terrified reflection. Never again would he bring up that topic.

[Vendredi]

Then he met Aine. Aine of the Summer. Aine of the Dawn. Aine the Bright. Aine, who somehow made every color seem brighter and more vivid every moment he spent with her.

She found him one day, after Neamhain deemed him knowledgeable enough to roam the forests himself. As long as you know the way home, Neamhain had said, the way one spoke to a faithful dog. He was staring at a field of elderflowers, with strange memories (of himself?) teasing him by being just out of reach, when she appeared. She rose out of the fields like a spectre in white. Her white-gold hair glinted in the sun (and there was always sun when she was around), and her eyes were the color of newly harvested wheat. He thought her lovely, and then he remembered Neamhain.

“Oh,” she had said, watching him strangely, as though she knew something about him that he did not. “Oh.”

“Oh,” he had echoed, feeling foolish, because he had seen no other living thing since Neamhain took him in.

Then that moment passed, and she smiled, and the sun returned to his world for the first time in what seemed like months. Neamhain’s domain was always the night, while Aine’s was always bright. He had smiled back, and they found themselves traipsing down valleys and waddling through rivers, climbing up trees and burrowing through dungeons that day and many days after, behaving foolishly and tempting fate.

“Tomorrow, we’ll have as much fun as goldfishes do,” Aine said later that day, clasping his hands in hers. She was a tiny thing, and barely came to his chest. “Today, I have to meet my keeper.”

“Doesn’t sound like much fun to me,” he quipped.

She gave him a look of mock disappointment, and said, primly, “Then you don’t know enough about goldfishes.”

He laughed with a lightness that bubbled up his chest, and danced away with a fleetness he did not knew himself capable of. She did not follow. She turned away towards the horizon, and there stood the silhouette of a man whose shape and stature looked curiously familiar to Sceadwe. Later, after Aine and that man had disappeared together, Sceadwe went back to Neamhain, where he promptly forgot all about his interest in that silhouette of a man.



Time passed strangely in the Otherworld, where in some places it was always bright, and in other it was always dark. Between his first meeting with Aine and his second-to-last, Sceadwe had grown two beards and shaved them clean. Six weeks? Two months? More?

“Shave it,” Aine had giggled after he had grown his first, dancing circles around him with the lightest pair of feet Sceadwe had ever seen. “It itches.”

So he did. She watched on as he took the razor to his own throat, and laughed with her golden voice when he nicked himself and bled.

In that stretch of time, Sceadwe caught more glimpses of the man who intrigued him so. He learned to dance properly from Aine, and she showed him the Well of Brigid and the East. Neamhain sat him at her feet and taught him more things, some of which even made sense. Three is a good number, Neamhain had said. Four is not. The fae do not make war. We joust with men as our champions. We can live forever, but we can choose to grow old and crumble. Choice is important, as is an invitation.

He learned that Aine was more than she seemed, as was Neamhain. That, Sceadwe learned during the second-to-last meeting he saw Aine. That was also the first and only time he had seen Neamhain and Aine together, dusk and dawn, ebony and gold, shadows and light.

If he were the poetic type, he would have cast that day in verse, in which he would have called everything that happened afterwards a tragedy.

[Vendredi]

“Come with me,” Neamhain said one night. Her lips were a tight line across her face, and she looked grim.

Sceadwe nodded unthinkingly, as he was wont to do these days. He threw a cloak of silk over his shoulders, fell into steps behind her, and they made their way out of the glade, through the forest, past a valley, and into meadow filled with daisies of gold. There, Aine stood waiting. Her keeper was there as well.

In the meadow of daisies, it was noon, and that was the first time Sceadwe had seen Neamhain out of the shadows. Under the sun, she looked too pale and almost sickly, and she was half-faint and almost see-through. Her edges no longer just flickered -- they blurred. She looked ghastly, like something long-dead that refused to fade. Even so, Sceadwe was not reviled. Poor Neamhain, he thought with a faint touch of pity, and then returned to his drab world of comfortable thoughtlessness.

It was also the first time Sceadwe had properly saw Aine’s keeper. In the light, he looked like a stallion of a man. Tall, broad, and powerful, the other man rippled with unbridled energy and strength even when he stood still. Interesting, Sceadwe thought with a faint touch of curiosity, but did nothing more. The larger man was eyeing Sceadwe in turn, with something akin to knowing and recognition in his eyes.

The man’s eyes made Sceadwe uncomfortable, so he turned away a second later to watch the ladies instead. There was concern in Aine’s face. There was ice in Neamhain’s. They stood an arm’s width apart, gazing at each other solemnly, with their companions quietly behind. All four were strangely still like a tableau. Around them, power thrummed mutely like a drum unheard.

“Sister,” Aine said, breaking the silence. It was the first time Sceadwe had seen her this serious. “Sister, are you well?”

“No,” Neamhain said. There was a bite in her voice. For a moment, she almost disappeared entirely from sight.

“Sister, sister, will you yield?”

“No.”

“Sister, sister, must we war?”

“No,” Neamhain repeated, a third time.

Three trines of a triumvirate, Sceadwe thought, repeating one of his lessons out of habit. (He never knew what that one meant.) There was something ritualistic about the words exchanged by the two women, and the exchange flowed with a worn rhythm that could only be born out of repetition. It was though they had done this a thousand times before, and this was just once more in a weary long line of many.

The sun grew hotter, and sweat began to form on Sceadwe’s brows. However, the ritual was not yet over, for Neamhain continued after a beat. The way Neamhain addressed Aine piqued Sceadwe’s interest.

“A duel in the stead of war, my Queen?” Neamhain said. She was smiling now, as though the thought of a false-war amused her somehow.

“Yes,” Aine said. Was that disappointment in her eyes?

“With our champions as they stand here, my Queen?”

“Yes.” The second time. Aine’s keeper shifted in his spot, breaking the stillness of the tableau.

“Three touches, and one time for all, my Queen?” Neamhain was more than smiling now. Her grin was a jagged, wretched thing that showed teeth, and it stretched unnaturally wide.

“Yes.” Aine thrilled a third time. “Here, today, three touches, and one time for all.”

Then it was over, except it was not over.

“What was that?,” Sceadwe asked, bewildered, when Neamhain led him to the far end of the meadow, where crying willows spotted the grass. “Your sister? Your Queen? A duel? Me?"

She sat him down upon a rock and took his cloak off his shoulders. She knelt before him. She held his head with both hands, and laid a kiss upon his forehead. The kiss was sizzling with urgency and feverish with hope. Her eyes were ablaze.

Aine’s voice drifted from the other side of the meadow, and she sang-chanted words that Sceadwe had never heard before. The song felt like a gentle caress, and as it grew, the moon rose, and Neamhain looked more real. Soon, both the sun and the moon were in the middle of the sky, circling each other, chasing and nipping at each other's’ heel, following a path unseen to man. Sceadwe watched in a dazed amazement until Neamhain called him back again.

“Once there were three trines of the the Triumvirate. Now there is only she and I.” she said, fingers in his hair, gripping the red strands tightly. He did not understand. She breathed deeply and placed her forehead against his. “Win, my champion. Win, and I will tell you a story.”

“Time,” Aine called. Her voice was carried over by a soft breeze. Overhead, the sun and the moon waged their war for dominance, casting irregular streams of lights upon the land.

Neamhain rose, pulling Sceadwe to his feet as she did. She touched his hand once more, and slipped a tiny golden vial into his pockets. “For luck.” Then she patted his back, and pushed him forward. He did not understand, and he was very much confused, but she commanded him to win, and therefore he would. It really was that simple.

[Vendredi]

“Three touches,” Neamhain had said. Three draws of blood, Sceadwe translated dutifully. Such were the war games of the fae, and it was practically civilized by the standards of men.

Overhead, the sun and the moon have compromised upon a settled path. The moon’s pale glamour and the sun’s grand rays now blended to draw a circle of light in the center of the meadow. Grass glittered silver and gold where the light touched them. It was strange and made little sense, but such were the ways of the Otherworld. Neamhain stopped at the edge of the circle, and Sceadwe walked forth alone. On the other side, Aine mirrored Neamhain, and her keeper stepped forward.

They met each other in the center of the circle. “White Bear,” the man said, pointing to himself with a easy smile.

Sceadwe said nothing. He eyed the other man, walking in slow circles around the man. Eyed the sword White Bear was carrying. Eyed the leather jerkins that had seen much abuse. Eyed the ease of the other man’s stance. Eyed the way White Bear carefully always kept Sceadwe in sight, despite standing still and unmoving. A warrior.

Yet, he was strangely not afraid. Sceadwe was no warrior, and he knew this inherently, intrinsically, innately. He was the other kind, the kind without honor, and he would take what he could get. Win, his mistress had commanded, and it really was that simple.

White Bear eyed Sceadwe until Sceadwe was directly behind White Bear’s back. At that point -- the moment when the larger man was shifting his weight to turn -- Sceadwe drew his daggers into both hands and lunged.

The sharp screech of a metal blade met Sceadwe’s dagger the moment he had lunged in for the strike. White Bear had drawn his blade, and was pressing down heavily with his bulk.Fast, Sceadwe thought, and struggled to hold his place. Seconds later, he gave up and swiftly stepped back. Strong, as well.

The larger man did not lose his bearings, and stood firmly with blade still in hand. Now, it was Sceadwe’s turn to watch his opponent. He circled his opponent again, watching for an opening. There was none.

Mist was lolling in, fogging the grounds and dampening men’s vision. The mist shone a mysterious gold where it met the circle of light.

He tested his opponent. He danced forth, striking towards the left, then the right, aiming for the head, and then a leg. He danced backwards, ducking swipes and parries and blows. He spun circles around White Bear, and yet his blows were always deflected. Minutes later, he was breathing heavily from exertion. Neamhain’s gaze was on his back, and he could feel her thirst for victory. Win, she had commanded. Was it that simple?

When he stilled and pulled back, so did his opponent. It was as though his opponent was playing a game of endurance, of waiting for Sceadwe to cry surrender, of only reacting and never striking first. That made Sceadwe angry -- he felt toyed with -- and this was the first time he was angry since coming to the Otherworld. Good, Sceadwe thought savagely. Good, you honorable bastard. Give me a fucking advantage.

He stepped back. He ran forward. He aimed for the throat with one blade, and as White Bear raised his sword to defend, Sceadwe’s other dagger found its mark in White Bear’s hand, piercing straight through. A flash of pain ran through White Bear’s eyes, and he looked almost startled, as though he could not believe Scweade could strike him. Yet, the larger man did not drop the blade. Such tenacity.

“First touch!” Aine called from the sides. Sceadwe’s grin showed teeth.

He did not give his opponent a chance to recover, because he was an honorless bastard and knew it, because he would press and milk every advantage dry. He pulled the blade out of White Bear’s hand, seeing but ignoring the spray of blood that followed. His other hand drew away. White Bear dropped his blade, and in that moment, Sceadwe leaned down and pushed upwards, and felt his skull collide with White Bear’s chin and nose. That sent the larger man staggering backwards, now freely bleeding from the nose. Some of that blood was in Sceadwe’s hair.

Second touch. He needed one more to win. Blood rushed into his ear, and exhilaration tingled in his fingertips.

But White Bear was a hardy creature, and Sceadwe could not deny that. By now, that man knew that Sceadwe would press all advantages, and therefore rushed his recovery. The larger man was already standing at ready, braced for the next move.

The third touch would not be easy. Sceadwe circled his opponent again. He looked for a opening, expecting to find none. Both of them were breathing heavily. Both of them were drenched in sweat. Both of them smelt of salt and blood and steel.

Then White Bear went on the offense, and it took every bit of strength and speed Sceadwe had to duck or dodge or parry for a second. The other man was stronger, even when injured, and relentless in his fury. Scweadwe was pushed to the edge of the circle and back, pushed to the edge of his endurance and beyond, pushed until the wild viciousness in his eyes dimmed into violent desperation. Win, she commanded, and now he felt like he could not.

The bigger man pushed, and Screadwe fell to the ground where the mud welcomed him and the mist tried to swallow him, landing on his ass and elbows without dignity. One of his blades fell from his hands. Sceadwe groaned. The larger man took a step forward, blade pointed towards Sweadwe. Oh, fuck me.

In desperation, he shuffled backwards into the grass, and as he did, the tiny golden vial that Neamhain had handed him earlier tumbled out. He gripped it along with a handful of gravel and mud. He held his fist tight. He watched the edge of the blade pointed towards his neck, and then he cried as he threw the fistful of vial and gravel and mud up towards White Bear’s eyes--

“Ahhh--”

And the scream that erupted was harrowing and pregnant with burning agony. Sceadwe looked up to see that White Bear had dropped his blade with a dull thud, and was clenching and clawing at his eyes with nails that left blood-tracks. Where the larger man’s hand did not cover, Sceadwe saw burn marks that pulsed a scorching red. Water from the Well of Brigid, which burns man like acid.

“Cheat! ” Aine cried in the distance. Neamhain’s cackling laughter reverberated with the moon. Sceadwe did not see any of that. He did not hear any of that.

He had scrambled to a stand, and had sprung forward with only one blade in hand. The blade sunk itself deep within White Bear’s chest. The larger man howled at the heavens and dropped to his knees. Third touch.

Sceadwe laughed. He laughed like he had never laughed before, and his voice was soon joined by Neamhain’s. He laughed until his voice cracked and he could no longer breathe. His hands were still on the hilt of the blade, and when White Bear collapsed downwards, Sceadwe had followed, laying in the meadow upon his back, blood seeping through his fingers until his entire hand was red.

“Won,” he croaked, still laughing until his throat burnt with agony,

Overhead, the moon convulsed as though being squeezed. The sun dimmed and disappeared. Then the moon blossomed, growing rounder and brighter and truer with darkness seeping and bellowing from its every edge until there was no light but itself, nothing but itself. This is the light at the end of the world. Beneath it, Neamhain whirled, reaching upwards as though to touch, and the moon reached back with its pale tendrils.

[Vendredi]

Aine came to him first. Sweet Aine. Gentle Aine. She gazed at White Bear, and he gazed at her from his spot on the ground.

“Why?” she asked, finally, still not looking at him. Was she disappointed?

“Because,” he said. He coughed. He sounded like he had a throat full of gravel. “Because she asked me to.”

She looked at him then, with her golden hair and golden eyes and no smile, and there was such grief and aching in her face, and she had aged a millennia in the course of a second. She looked at him like she knew something about him that he did not, and she mourned for him because he did not. She looked at him with a sliver of muted fury, as though he had just done something contemptible, deplorable, unforgivable. That look confused him. He did not understand, and it showed on his face.

“Sorry,” Aine whispered, and she sounded even like she meant it. “Sorry, but my sister had no right. And I suppose… I suppose neither do I. For this.”

She dropped to her knees. Then she touched him.

The dam in his mind exploded outwards into blistering bits of blighted nothingness. He fell, plummeting in total darkness as memories of the many pasts and futures raced past his consciousness. Abject terror held him in its tight embrace, and he screamed until his vocal chords tore. Then, as suddenly as they came, the memories were gone, and he was plunged into a suffocatingly cold clarity.

Firelis. My name is Firelis. I may have killed a friend.

Then his mind splintered and he was adrift. There were some things a man ought not to know about himself, both for other's’ sake and his own. There was some things a man’s mind was not built to hold, and all his futures was one of them.

Firelis sunk deeper into the soft, forgiving earth and curled, letting go of his grip on the hilt of the dagger. It was unbearably hot. He was burning from inside out. Aine moved away. She had turned her administrations towards Eduard Whitecloak. Eduard’s blood had seeped through Firelis’s fingers, coating every inch red and burning like it would cook him. Firelis was shaking, trembling, quivering at the sight of the red.

“Gods,” he spat it like a curse, but it sounded like a whimper shivering in the dark.

He might have destroyed a friend, but the guilt in him was minuscule compared to the horror at having seen himself more true than any man had a right to. He knew he should feel terrible at that, but he could not bring himself to. He broke Eduard Whitecloak, and Aine broke him.

Then he wept, for he had seen his futures, and the shapes of his futures had loneliness and knives in them.

[Vendredi]

He wept until he lost consciousness. Neamhain must have carried him home, for when he woke he was back in the familiar shades of the glade, laying upon soft grass and clean fur beneath a canopy of stars and the canvas of leaves.

Firelis blinked. Blinking was hard. It made his eyes hurt.

He did not sit. He breathed, and his breath carried a spark of light. He stayed down, watching a ladybug struggle to stay upon a blade of grass. Neamhain came to him then, walking across the grass on bare feet and lithe legs, until her toes came to a stop beside his eyes and her face covered the stars and the leaves. It was like she had just thrown off some great shackle. Her edges no longer blurred and flickered, and she was ripe with power.

“Poor, poor manling,” she said. There was a cloak of green in her hand. She knelt to wrap it over him. Then she touched his chin, his throat, his hands, and lightning danced where her fingers trailed. “What have my sister done to you?”

“Those are new,” he murmured, still on his back, feeling the pricks upon his skin where lightning touched. Something in him was responding to the lightening, and it charred him from inside out.

Then he regretted speaking, because he had seen it before. In the thousand futures that had diverged from a singular point in time, Firelis had seen Neamhain gone mad with a power that could pull the stars from the sky and crystals from a stone, and he had seen her stay sober at the lack of it. Sometimes he saw a wolf of light. In some of those futures, he would never leave this grove.

A swallow choked in his throat. The veil upon his mind had lifted, but it was replaced by a sterile hell of dreams beyond his control.

“Old,” she said. “Older than you think. Older than time. Older than age.”

“Old,” he echoed. But no older than you. No older than Aine. In the land of the fae, secrets were wrapped in secrets were wrapped in half-truths, and he had never bothered to look past the first lie. That seemed almost funny, and he smiled at the humorlessness of it.

“Did I choose this?” he wondered, and he wondered what his own question meant. Did he choose her? Did he choose to come here? Did he choose his futures? Or were they force-fed upon him?

She sat down beside him, and took his hand in hers. The heat of her palms were comforting. It stilled the dreams. Glamour. Enchantment. The Veil. He knew exactly what she was doing now, but still could not bring himself to mind. “I promised you a story, manling,” she said, and her voice was still lovely. “Will you listen?”

He turned his head away, choosing to look at grass and trees and a lonely ladybug instead of his lady-love. Would he listen? She would tell it regardless, even if he would not listen.

No, he thought. “Yes,” he said.



The First of the Fae was Mab the Tempestuous, and at first she was alone, yet not lonely. There was no loneliness in being a sole existence of only consciousness. It was not until she gained flesh and learned life that she gained the ability to feel. Mab had the gift of life, and in her loneliness she created Aine the Second with the gift of light, and Neamhain the Third who thrived in the night. They were the Firsts, the three trines of the Triumvirate.

In the beginning there were no men, no Otherworld, no separate plane of existence to segregate the fae against the rest of them. The Firsts wandered the world, learning the name of all things, teaching the wind to sing and the rivers to dance, plucking stars out of the sky and drawing crystals in mountains deep. Soon, there were the Seconds of the fae, birthed from the names of all things true, and then the Thirds and the Fourths.

The mortals came later. Much later. The mortals came with their iron and their steel, their gods and their wars, and their empires that crept and grew slowly but truly. Aine loved the mortals even as Neamhain avoided them, but lonely Mab was a trickster without care, and Mab treated the mortals as a child would treat a toy. She gifted them wonders upon a whim, and destroyed them upon a lark.

But the mortals, being the strange creatures that they were, did not take well to lonely Mab's games. They raged while they were powerless, but they were not powerless for long. What came next was a secret, silent, inevitable war. The mortals came with their iron and their steel, their magics and their gods. There were battles. There were dreams and whispered secrets in the night. There were traps and enchantments, deaths and destruction. There were stories, both told and untold.

Then in the midst of the madness, there was a mortal who loved Aine, and he used that love to entrap Mab. In return, Neamhain used Aine to destroy him, and in doing so she committed the gravest of betrayals. Neamhain destroyed their lonely sister as well, and Aine lost her great love.

At the end of that secret, silent, inevitable war, lonely Mab returned to her existence of solely being a consciousness. Aine created the Otherworld and became its Queen. Neamhain was trapped by her sister for that betrayal old, never to be released until she proved herself true. They meet every year after year after year to wage their games of war with the lives of men, and the moment Neamhain won was her moment of release.

[Vendredi]

By the time she had finished her story, the ladybug had impaled itself upon a stick, and another had take its place on the blade of grass. Firelis had found over two dozen constellations in the stars overhead. The wind had began a whispery song that sounded like a funeral. Her voice trailed off, and she looked at him with bright, watery eyes.

“What am I to you?” he asked. He thought he knew the answer, but wanted to hear it from her lips regardless. “A tool to recapture the power you once had? You said you despise men.”

“My Sceadwe,” she said without hesitation, laying a kiss upon his forehead. He leaned into it. “Will you always be mine, Shadow-Walker?”

“If I wanted to leave,” he countered, “would you let me go?”

He watched her face change and her hands pull away, and he heard all the things she did not say as loudly as thunder. He knew the answer before she answered, for he had heard it a thousand times in his dreams. In return, he kept his silence and slept.

No, she would whisper in one future, and wrapped her pale fingers around his throat. Then her thumbs would press down every so lightly.



He was listless, weepy, feverish, and prone to fits and outbursts those first handful of days after that battle, after Aine, after seeing what he had no right to see. His sense of time was utter garbage. He slept much and woke little, and could not bear to count his dreams. His mind teetered between the gray state of despair and a vivid blister of clarity, and memories of the future rolled into memories of the past until he could not tell what had already happened.

Once he woke and remembered Eduard Whitecloak. He remembered the other man’s laughter. Fii had slipped Eduard’s sugar out for salt one morning, and had watched in amusement as Eduard sputtered incoherently at the first sip of that caffe that the other man liked so much. Eduard had swatted at Fii half-heartedly, and then laughed heartily because he saw the amusement in the trick as well.

Once he woke and remembered Avesta née Tvy’ern. They were in Fallien, though Firelis knew he had never been to Fallien before. They were in the Outlander’s Quarters, and he hid in the shadows while watching her paley with fierce warriors that were twice her size. She spoke with a savage eloquence that he would never be capable of. Then the first knife flew, and he burst out of the shadows.

Once he woke and remembered Neamhain. In this time, he had never left her, for she refused to let him go. You are my instrument, she said, as she melded his mind into her own, and he knew all that she knew and loved all that she loved. He was almost content, until he sunk iron into Aine’s throat and watched her not bleed.

Once he woke and remembered himself as an old man, and he was alone. The mountainous ranges surrounding him was an icy prison of white. There were no chains around his wrists, but he felt the oppressive agony of loneliness as acutely as a ton of iron upon his back, and every step he took was sluggish and heavy. His furs were thick and worn, and he had not opened his mouth to speak in nearly a decade. This is the end of the world. Then he fell backwards into his nest of grass and fur, and stared at nothing for a long time.

[Vendredi]

Once he slept and dreamed of Aine, except it was not quite a dream.

He was standing beneath an autumn oak on a hill that he thought he recognized, but could not place the name of. The grass beneath his feet had been colored a fiery orange hue by the sun on the horizon, but he wasn’t quite sure if it was sunset or sunrise.

Aine was with him. She was sitting on a low branch of the tree, her fair legs dangling free. Her white dress fluttered with the wind. The red-brown leaves from the oak danced their way into her golden hair, but she did not seem to notice. When she raised a hand to pull hair away from her lips, he thought he saw the fresh, tender scar of a recent burn.

“This is new,” Firelis observed. There was a stark clarity to this dream. In all his dreams, he never remembered the future. In all his futures, he never remembered this dream.

“Where am I?” he asked. He had pulled his gaze away from her and into the distance, into the direction of the sun, where world was fair and full of trees. “What happened to you hand?”

“A memory of a dream,” she said, dreamily. The melody of her voice was a balm to his soul. “Or a dream of a memory. I burnt it upon a star.”

It took a second to digest that. He wasn’t sure if he did digest it.

“He wasn’t toying with you,” she said instead, pushing him out of his reverie. “He didn’t believe you would strike.”

It took a second to digest that one as well. He got it, eventually, though it took much digging into the recesses of his own mind. “Eduard?”

“Yes,” she said, hopping down from her spot. She stood beside him now, gazing into the distance.

He felt a mad urge to explain himself, but words died in his lips, and there were no explanations other than I was entranced and I did not know better, but both were paltry and thin and barely held against the wind. Instead, he turned towards her, and brushed a leaf out of her hair.

“Why did you do that?” he asked. “Why did you show me all that.”

She pulled away, and went to sit with her back against the tree. Her back looked lonely. “Because she had no right. This wasn’t meant for you. It was never meant to be you. Do you blame me?”

He looked at her with question in his eyes, and she returned the look with a tremble. She reached out to cup a leaf. It fell gently into her hands. “This is you,” she said. Then she blew the leaf out of her hand, and it fluttered softly until it was caught by a sudden gale. She pointed to the wind. “Here are the threads of the fae’s destiny.”

The battering wind carried the leaf away, and crushed it against the earth.

A melancholic smile took hold of her face. She looked up at him. “You didn’t choose this. Someone else would have chosen this, and then it would be their right."

Firelis didn’t expect the sudden spike of sharp agony that had driven its edges into his heart. He was a leaf that had chanced upon the path of a gale. He was a pebble that was unfortunate enough to be in the way of an axle. He was an unfortunate spectator who had suddenly found himself to be a lead actor in a play. He was an accident, and not a very happy one. Choice is important, Neamhain had once said.

“And the memories?” he asked. His voice sounded bitter to his own ears.

She continued smiling at him, and it was the same sad, familiar smile. Another leaf fell into her hand. “This is you,” she said. Then she held up her other hand, and a burst of white flames appeared. “This is me,” she continued, and brought both hands together.

Then the wind came to scatter the ashes of what was once a leaf. The ashes were white, and shone with a brightness they had no right to, and sharp sparks lit and dimmed when the ashes met the grass. Then, the ashes were gone, and in their stead they left burnt earth.

The laughter that sagged out of his lips was tired and spent. Firelis’s eyes followed the ash until they disappeared. He was a fox of wax that had leapt too close to the sun, and the sun inevitably melted him. It was an accident, and not a very happy one.

“And Eduard?” he asked. His voice was harsh, but he could not help himself. He ran a hand through his hair and looked away. “What was he to you?”

“My lover. Mine. He chose, in return for the bones.”

[Vendredi]

“Bones?”

The bones pushed out from the earth, one by lonely one, until they formed two suits of skeletons. By then, the hill looked as though it had been completely turned over, and there was barely any grass in sight. The bones of children, Firelis thought, watching those things with a sense of gnawing unease. They held each other’s hands, and stood so closely that their ribs edged against each other.

“Bones,” Aine said. “He promised to take them home.” Her voice sounded strangely distant to his ears. The bones were shivering, but from what? “I showed him the bones, and in return he chose to be mine for a year.”

So here’re the ones we came for. Firelis thought. This is new. Now he knew. Now he understood. He lowered his head. Something was stuck in his chest, like a knife twice twisted, but the feeling wasn’t quite sorrow. Guilt and regret and anger, and for the first time since he had plunged a dagger into the other man’s chest, Firelis felt emotions directed at himself, flooding him until it harrowed him out. That fool. And now he’s as dead as they are.

Then he smiled, and it was a crooked little smile. So what about me? Was he willing to continue to be a chess piece in a game bigger than himself? Was he willing to continue to be an ant caught in the torrent of a storm? There was a comfort to not thinking. Everything was simpler when he knew nothing.

Yes. So what about me?

“I’ll do it,” he said, finally, staring at the toe of his boots. The sky was growing dark, and there were no stars. “I’ll take them home.”

The bones shattered, falling back into the earth with a soft crack, as though some burden had been laid to rest. Aine stood up, “You’re a good man,” she said.

“No. I’m not. He was a good man.”

“You’re better than you think.”

He tried to come up with something honest and profound, but what came out was aggrieved brutality, and his voice was rough and angry. “I’m honorless. I’m rash. I’m a thief. I anger too easily. I’m terrified of being lonely. I lack courage. I’m a fool. And I blame you.” He caught her eye and held it, almost defiant from the rampage of words. “A good man?” he croaked. “I’m worse than I should be.”

His words must have pleased her somehow, for she smiled strangely. “And as honest as a lark,” she said, taking small steps forward and reaching for his forehead. “Perhaps if you chose, you could have done it. Taught her to love. Taught her that your lives are worth something. Taught her that some sacrifices should never have been made.”

[Vendredi]

He startled awake into a sit, and there were two links of bones clenched tight in his fists. A thin sheen of sweat coated his forehead, and he shivered as though cold. Firelis felt like he had made a decision that had put steel in his spine and iron in his blood, had drained away all thoughts from his mind and all emotions in his heart. He felt hollow, and he was almost himself for the first time in days.

I’m leaving this place. He could not stay. He could not bear the thought of sitting in this nest of furs and grass for another day, another night, another week, caged by his own mind more than anything else while time slipped away between his fingertips.

The bones -- so thin, so smooth, like fingers -- were icy against his palms, and he swept them into a pocket against his breast. Their jagged ends pressed against his heart with every breath, but their concreteness comforted him.

Beside him, Neamhain turned in her slumber. He saw her back, and Firelis thought he knew every smooth ridge of her bared spine. Then he thought about never seeing that back again.



"How does one leave the Otherworld?" he had asked Neamhain once, a long time ago into the future.

"When I choose to let you go," she said. "You swore to be mine, so only I can release you."



There was one last thing to do here. One last being to meet. He knew he wanted this meeting as soon as he understood what it was. He remembered having this conversation many times, and yet the words exchanged were always wrapped within a layer of fog.

He left while Neamhain was still asleep, slipping away into the woods barefoot and without a cloak. The cold night writhed around him like a serpent. The path was familiar, for he had walked it many times before. By the time he reached it, his feet were cross-hatched with scratches.

“Fii, Fa, Fe, Fo,” it sang. It was a willow with a woman’s voice this time, but they were in the same forest Firelis had first found himself in so many months ago, when he met that oak.

There were no oaks now. Only willows. They swayed as one beneath the moon.

Firelis sat upon the ground, stretched out his legs, and thought about Fii in a faraway land and a faraway time. Fii felt faraway. Fii was a child who knew nothing. Firelis was a child who knew something. There was a slight and subtle difference.

He knew what he was talking to this time. He knew what he was risking this time.

“I have always wondered,” he said to the tree. “What happens after? Are you reborn in another form? Or are you a different creature, altogether?"

[Vendredi]

“Is that your question?” it asked. Its eyes were etched into the tanned wood, and they looked drowsy as though half in a dream.

He shook his head. “You should know my question. She says you know everything.”

It smiled at him, almost fondly, almost kindly. If it had hands, Firelis thought it might have reached out to touch him. “We cannot go against the our nature, child. Ask your question, child, and I will answer.”

We cannot go against our nature. Firelis wondered if nature was the thing that forced him to live life one accident at a time. Then he shook his head lightly. No, that was not what he was here for. That was not his question.

So what was his question? On his way here, he wanted to ask about Avesta, the woman who had disappeared from his life for a destiny, and only in some futures did he find her eventually, but in all the futures he had not seen her at the end of that destiny. He had wanted to ask the Moros Fata how to find her. Now that he was here, uncertainty stilled his tongue.

There was one other question that had burrowed its way into his heart. In his mind he saw Neamhain’s back, smooth and flawless and ivory white. Sceadwe, she had whispered in her sleep. He thought he knew how to get away. He had done that before. But how do I get away from her and still keep her -- and myself -- whole?

“We are all born with all of our predecessors’ memories,” the tree said, cutting into his thoughts. “But I am born anew, a wholly different creature. Ask your question, child.”

He opened his mouth. He tasted the cold air. It tasted like grass and herb and stone. Then he closed it.

“A third time I ask, child. Your question, child.”

One question. One chance. What was more important? The future, or the present? We cannot go against our nature, it said.

“How,” he wetted his lips. He pushed himself to stand. His feet itched. There was mud between his toes. “How do I get away? Get out and stay whole?”

“Whole,” it said. Its eyes closed. Then it laughed and bent forward. “Whole. Whole. Whole. What are you asking, child? Why ask a question when you know the answer? What sends the evening scuttling into the dawn? How do you trap the moon? What are you getting away from? And who is staying whole?”

Then it straightened. Firelis stared at it, and felt like he understood half its words. Why ask a question when I know the answer? Even if he knew the answer, he wanted to hear it from someone else’s mouth. Only then would it seem real.

“Destroy her, and you may stay whole and walk away. Submit to her, and you may stay whole, and someday she will release you. Join her, and you may stay whole, and someday you will outlive her.”

There were truths wrapped in lies wrapped in words in that answer, and it rang with a sense of urgency that echoed in his bones. Yet, Firelis wasn’t sure what he was hearing. He kept his silence.

“I’ll take your memories for my price, child,” it continued. Its branches touched his cheeks, making his skin itch with heat. “You need not so many.” Then it pulled back, and when it did, it took something from him.

Suddenly, the future felt dimmer and spotted with holes, as did the past. Avesta, Fii remembered, but could not draw up the face associated with the name. A large man, strong as a stallion, Fii remembered, but he could not recall the name. A snowy mountain, where he was alone, Fii remembered, but he could no longer see the path that brought him there. Yet, he was somehow unable to mourn for what was lost.

In the distance came the dreambeats of a warsong and the throttles of beating hoofs. Fii ran before he saw anything else.

[Vendredi]

Neamhain was awake when he got back. He still remembered her. He still remembered what he came back for. She stood in the middle of the grove, ever so regally, with her hands folded neatly in front of her chest. Her eyes were smouldering pits. He thought she might be waiting for him. She terrified him.

In front of her, he was small and scruffy with his with his scratched and sodden demeanor. The trek back had not been kind, for the path was no longer familiar, and he had gotten lost twice. His feet were muddy and his hair disheveled, and the corners of his tunic and pants were torn. He stopped at the edge of the grove, half hidden by trees.

“Where did you go?” she asked, looking up. Even across the distance, her eyes found his with eagle sharp accuracy.

Her voice was too sharp, too calm, too cold. She always was calm, but he could not remember another time when she sounded like an iron-wrought blade, when she looked like a statue of ice, when enchantment did not roll off her skin like mist upon a morning brook.

“My sister came,” she said, without breaking a beat. Her voice was rhythmic and measured, and he felt himself step forward unbidden, moving out of the shades and into the grove. “My sister came, and brought back your iron blade.”

It laid in front of her upon a piece of white silk on the grass. Someone must have cleaned it, for there was no blood on the blade. Fii remembered the scar on Aine’s hand in his dream, and thought he knew something. Ah.

“Go on,” she said, looking at him. “Pick it up. She said you’ll need it.”

Need it? He moved forward slowly, carefully, as though trying to convince himself that she would not see him if he was slow enough. That was foolishness on his part, for she scrutinized his every move. He crouched down to pick it up, and the hilt settled into his palm like an old friend. The blade of the dagger was still as sharp, but there was a shimmer of unfamiliar white light upon it. He held the dagger, and did not place it into the sheath around his belt.

She was still looking at him when he stood. “Do you have something to tell me, manling?”

What did Aine tell her?

His throat was parched. In that moment, his mind drew blank. There was something jagging uncomfortably against his chest. Neither the past nor the future helped him then, and yet that decision that had put iron in his blood and ramrod steel in his spine was coiled deep within his core. He wanted to leave. He needed to leave now, for he could no longer bear to stay. Destroy her, and you may stay whole and walk away, it had said. How could he?

“Let me go,” he said. “Please, Neamhain.”

She held his gaze.

The silence was so loud that it deafened him. Every quiet breath was exacerbated by the silence. Every twitch of his fingers was a pronounced plea.

“Why?” she asked, finally, still looking at him. Was she disappointed?

“Because,” he said. He pleaded. He sounded like he had a throat full of sand. “Because I have to.”

She looked away then, with her dark hair and stormy eyes and no smile, and there was such grief and anguish in her face, meshing with a simmering fury right beneath her skin. He ached for her. His heart throbbed. He was still Sceadwe, for he found that he still loved her even without the glamour, without the enchantment, without the veil that shrouded his mind, but even so--

“She said she released you. She had no right.”

He thought he heard a whisper of regret in her voice. He thought he heard a tremble in her voice. Then, before he could unroot himself to react, she had swept forward in one swift step, and her pale fingers were wrapped around his throat. She still would not meet his eyes.

“Shadow-Walker. By the Twilight dream and the Cimmerian hail, will you not be mine?”

And trap myself again? The blade was in his hands, and her flesh was close. Yet, she had applied no pressure with her fingers, and he could still breath.

“Is there no other way?” The words tasted like rot in his lips. “Must you force me?”

She looked up, and her expression was strange. Her thumb pressed down ever so slightly. “Force you? Must you force me, manling?”

[Vendredi]

Must I?

He felt a twinge of hesitation. I only trust what I can control, she said once, though he could not remember if she was speaking to him or someone else. Then he shivered, for the night was cold, and he felt it acutely. Her fingers were a searing source of heat. He wondered what would happen if he leaned in.

“I must,” he said, lips dry and words soft.

Her eyes flashed. Once. Twice. Her nails dug into his flesh, and he felt himself choking and pulling back on instinct. There was a white fire burning within him, reminiscent of when Aine burnt through his mind, and it harrowed him to the core. He nurtured it. He let it grow. He let its warmth surge through his torso and limbs until sweat sizzled on his palms.

She let go of him suddenly, and cradled her hand. He stumbled back, fingers on his neck, and looked up to see surprise in her face.

“Aine,” she whispered. Darkness seemed to whirled and thrum by her side. “What she do to you?”

Fingers still rubbing his neck, Fii remembered that dream. He remembered the white flames that burnt a leaf into ashes, but the ashes still managed to torch the earth. Sometimes the sun left residual heat upon what it had touched.

“This,” he said, and opened his palm. His flesh gleamed a faint sheen of white.

What did Aine do? Aine purged the glamour from his mind with her power, but he was a man, and men were not built to conduct such power unharmed. Some residuals of her power lingered in him still, and he could force it out. He still remembered that from the memories of the future past.

Neamhain's cry cut through the night, and a cloud of darkness lunged at him like roaring giant with dripping fangs. For once, he did not duck. He did not hide. He watched as it came, and he smiled. This, too, he remembered. He opened his mouth. He spoke the silent words. He watched her hesitate. The mass of black shadows stopped in their tracks.

What did he say?

He said: I could have loved you.

She said: I do not believe you.

Memories layered themselves upon this reality, and Fii felt like he was watching the world from multiple sets of eyes. He watched himself hurtle forward, watched her snap back into the moment, watched the darkness pile onto his figure until he was swallowed whole. Then he was in the dark, and serpentine shadows filled his eyes and mouth and nose and ears, creeping into every crevice they could reach until he was sealed in an abyss of nothing, and he saw no more.

Instead, he felt. The pulse of white heat beneath his skin began beating as soon as the darkness touched him, responding to an unspoken challenge. The heat clawed through his skin, through his pores, sheen of white light that accompanied the heat sliced through darkness like steel through hot butter, and the shadows wilted under the onslaught.

How did one defeat the dark?

With fire and with light.

His left hand struck out of the darkness first, and he grabbed her wrist in the air. She tried to pull back, but his grip was unrelenting. Then the darkness surrounding him dispersed, and he watched as the white light that covered his hand spread to cover her wrist. Then the heat drew out of him like a flood, tearing and erupting through skin, for that white fire had tasted the shadows and had learnt the flavour of the dark, and now the fire had found the source, had found the true prey.

Around them, the grove fell eerily silent. Even the crickets had stopped their habitual song. Wind did not blow. Leafs did not rustle. Grass did not dance. The eternal night held tableau-still.

The thunder of his breath was the only sound for a beat, then two, before Neamhain screamed. She screamed like a woman being torn to shreds. The white fire was a furious storm that was now flooding upon her, covering her with ever increasing speed and intensity. She struggled. She cried. Her nails found his arms and left streaks down them. Still, he did not let go of her wrist. He gritted his teeth and tasted blood upon his tongue, for he felt like he was bathing in liquid fire with each passing second as the fire left him and entered her. How much worse would it be for her?

There were horror and madness in her eyes, and he could not look away. He watched her age in front of him as the light bound her, bathed her, scrubbed her dry as though peeling away a layer of skin. He watched her skin wither and dry until they crinkled, watched her hair fade into gray, watched her back crack and curl into a hunch, watched as her voice turn shrill with distress.

“Let me go,” he whispered. “Please, Neamhain.” For yourself. For me.

“Yes,” she cried. There was a sob in her voice. She had fallen into a kneel, and took him down with her. “Yes.”

Then it stopped. As suddenly as it began, it ended, for there was nothing left beneath his skin, and he was hollow as an empty well with walls chipped thin, as empty as a towel wrung dry. Never again would he be able to repeat this feat. He let go of her bony wrist. She was an old woman now, a burnt shell. They knelt, facing each other. She sobbed. He panted with dull ache.

[Vendredi]

“I did not realize,” she said, minutes later, when her broken sobs had calmed to a stop. Her voice was as hoarse and hard as a nail scratching upon hard wood. “I did not realize how well you knew Aine. How much power she had lent you.”

The bitterness in her voice dripped like venom, and he shuddered. He shivered. He gripped the sleeves of his tunic tight and hid his eyes behind lanky strands of red hair. He feared looking up. He did not want to see her. Without that ephemeral beauty, she would be as incapable of casting a glamour as he would be of blocking one, but he was more afraid to see the damage that he had wrought upon her flesh.

“No matter,” she continued, cackling into an abrupt laugh. “No matter. I said I would let you go.”

He heard her shuffle, and could almost picture her unsteady gait as she plunked one bony leg in front of another. Then he felt her vicegrip hold jacking up his chin, and her fingers were so cold that they burnt, but they had more strength than he would have expected. She forced him to look up. To look at her.

She had grown old. Her was skin cracked and pale, her hair was a frazzled mess streaked with gray and white, and the joints in her hands were more prominent than her fingers. Yet, she was still so angry. She was still so proud. Still glorious in her black rage and sorrow, despite it all. Her eyes were smouldering coal, and they burnt and burnt.

“I could still destroy you,” she said. “Release you, and destroy you. I have that much left. I did not promise to keep you whole, Shadow-Walker.”

His lips were dry. I’m sorry, he wanted to say, but he did not. He could not speak. Her fingers kept him in place, and they dug deep into his jaw and chin. Her voice were thunder to his ears.

“But I will not.” She breathed. She leaned forward, until her lips were by his ear. There were no warmth left in her for him. Not in her words, nor in her action, nor in her flesh. Cold. Everything was cold. “By the mystic and the never-ending path, I curse you to the lonely road. By the stone-keeper and the unfound door, I curse you with sleepless dreams. By the lost wiseman and the forsaken kingdom, I curse you to the forgotten destiny. May the rest of your life be ever interesting, Shadow-Walker.”

She breathed deeply, and shoved him into the ground. He fell backgrounds, half in stupor. I’m sorry, he wanted to say, but he did not. He held his tongue. What more could he say? Then she began singing. The song sang like the seething ocean, like the biting ice, like the wrathful fire and the venom rain.

Then the song faded. Silence. Suddenly, a cold, raw blackness roared through the grove, overtaking everything in its path with blistering speed. Fii blinked. He tried to breath. In that moment, reality slipped away from him. Then, there was the vertigo.

***

When Firelis Tvy’ern woke up, he was alone.

He woke to air that was high and dry and burnt in his lungs. He was on his back, laying upon a the tangled roots of overgrown trees. Sharp blades of grass cut lines into his back through the thin fabric of his shirt. Above, the foliage grew so wild that he could not tell if it was night or day.

The trees did not speak. The world did not feel like it was awash in magic. He was… back.

Her last words still rang in his mind. Pray that I never find you again, Shadow-Walker.


End. TBC.

[Gnarl & Root]

Judgement Name: the secret dreams of bones (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?30016-the-secret-dreams-of-bones-solo)
Judgement Type: Condensed Rubric
Name of Participant: Vendredi

Commentary:

Story: 20
It wasn't difficult to be intrigued with this story from the offset. You gave a quick but decent background to where you had come from and progressed quickly into your main story. Although, one wondered why they had to be sprinting so hard, a little more information on their current progress would have been preferable.

Everything in this story felt so magical and mystical from the offset until the very end. The illusion of the forest and the secrets it could hold, never broke. This is done well and sets an intriguing tone and mystery that maintained interest throughout.

The story and setting you have chosen is a difficult one to portray while avoiding repetition, but you did a good job of it. At times it would have been nice to have see some more outright world description, but you covered it well with what your characters interacted with.

It felt like a quick start, but confusion set in while trying to understand what was going on and where it was going. Transitions were difficult to get at first, especially at post two. Whenever doing these myself I always re-read over it at least twice and ask myself; not when it becomes clear that you've changed scene, but how quickly it becomes clear to the reader where you are. If the way you've transitioned takes too long to understand, then consider making it clearer or shorter for clarity.

Pacing didn't change much throughout, but once a few posts in it flowed nicely and your story had an intrigue about it, that was honored greatly as all the answers started to become clear. Who 'White Bear' was felt predictable, but the reasons behind his actions, were not. It was little touches like that, which added to the beauty of the story. Overall this felt like a magical fairy tale, sticking to explaining the important points of a much longer story.


Character: 19
Fii is an interesting character, though I'm never entirely sure what he wants. It was difficult to ascertain his friendship with Eduard, if you could call it friendship at all. He appeared to admire him somewhat, but then shared none of his ideals. Nor did he seem to care for him, to any degree(especially when told of the truth of his actions). This really needed more depth to fully understand. While you refer to the past, which explains how you met and how you got to where you are, you don't state any key moments about your characters relationship. How did Fii feel about being bailed out from jail? Did any key moments instil a friendship? If not, what made Fii not care about his death? Adding to your flash back, a small scene to develop some emotion or understanding between them could have answered this.

Having said that, once within the Fae world the fear and apprehension he goes through is well done, and began to get a better grip of the type of character Fii is. As of meeting the Fae themselves, he changed to a different person, somewhat forced to love and admire, you did a decent job here, but this only really shone as 'Sceadwe' (Fii) challenged the ideals that Neamhain presented to him. Mystery to what Neamhain and Aine were doing was powerful, and their personality, while fairly one dimensional in terms of the light and dark, didn't feel out of place.


Prose: 18
There is some beautiful writing within this story. Your use of metaphors and similes were powerful and successful, allowing this reader to disappear in your writing. You played on all the sense; colour, taste, sound and smell, making it easy to put a picture together at key moments.

Overall, there were only a few general mistakes, so you were pretty solid here. Examples:


Post 4: 'breathes' should be 'breaths'

&


Post 12: Spaces - bulk.Fast

&


Post 14: In the land of the fae, secrets were wrapped in secrets were wrapped in half-truths

You used repetition very well, it struck the spot in the right places and you didn't over use it either. This was complimented by a strong vocabulary and well used adjectives. The big issues that took away from this score was sentence structure and wording. You sometimes skip through movements and scenes with short sharp sentences. This was used effectively at times, but mostly broke me out of the flow of the scene/ writing. This also occurred when you tried to say or describe too much.


Post 12: He stepped back. He ran forward. He aimed for the throat with one blade,

This would flow better with use of commas rather than using a full stop with another 'He'. Granted, what you've done isn't wrong, but stopping and starting did take away from the flow.


Post 12: He eyed the other man, walking in slow circles around the man.

Sentences like the above happen a few times also, repeating 'the man' twice when you didn't need to. Instances such as this had me re-reading your posts as I thought I'd mis-read it.

Wildcard: 8
This was a great story. I certainly lost myself at times within this, and I will definitely read more of your writing.


Final score: 65
Vendredi (http://www.althanas.com/world/member.php?17657-Vendredi) receives:
Experience: 2500
Gold: 290

Congratulations!

[Rayleigh]

All EXP and GP have been added!