Kindred Folk - Velvet Wings

[FennWenn]

This takes place chronologically after an as-of-yet-not-finished solo called “Black As Her Heart”!
...I like to remember when everything takes place.

~ § ~ § ~ § ~

”Recollect to me the snare of snow; first chill, then stupor, then letting go.”

[FennWenn]

Fenn floated. Amid speckled lavender clouds, he drifted, his feet just barely skimming over silver waters.

A part of him itched to fly. A more rational part wondered why he was floating in the first place, and pondered the rationale that he shouldn’t be able to fly if he hadn’t wings to fly with. That he was pondering rationality in the first place (in a dream of all places) was due to her presence.

By “her”, he meant Regent Banrion of the Icepeak Court. She could be no other.

The elder fae lounged in the air, embracing the skewed physics of Fenn’s dream with the ease of which one might breathe air. She was a strange sight, to be sure. Two snakish heads rose from her shoulders, pierced by carmine eyes and framed by a mane of black feathers. Scaly blue hands twiddled their thumbs in slow deliberation. Her robes dripped, wine-red, into the waters below. There were no ripples from the fabric’s touch. She was too calm.

“I thank you for your help in ridding me of Morrighna’s blight,” his elder told him, offhandedly rolling an empty vial around in the palm of her hand. “In the weeks thus far, none have challenged my ascension. None suspect — or else, say that they suspect — our foul play. Now then! I have my Court under control for once and all. There is much that I have resolved to teach you. You need learn more of your heritage, of the realm of dreams, of how to conduct yourself and earn other’s respect… other’s fear too, if needed.” A glance down at their reflections followed. A flicker of consideration to his; perhaps, a thought was spared to his distinct inability to strike awe or fright into any onlooker. It wasn’t a new realization to Fenn, but before meeting Banri (and other jarring events) he’d never thought that needed remedy. The Regent made a thoughtful pair of noises in the back of her throats. “Please, visit again soon so I can make good on those promises. Agreed?”

<Agreed,> he replied. He spoke cheerfully, hiding the weight im his chest with a bob of his shoulders. A part of him quivered ever so slightly at the staring vial. The palpitations were ignored.

Banri beamed. “Then make haste to Sidhe. I await your return.”

Fenn followed her gaze downward, into the lake below.

There were numerous ways in and out of the fae’s land. Numerous portals that shifted open and closed, by season or other natural circumstance. In the reflecting waters shone a circle of dewy mushroom and dark grass, vivid against a backdrop of a shattered house, comfortably encompassing a stone gateway. The boy nodded. He knew where to go.

[FennWenn]

Trees sulked under the weight of the wind, withered needles and curls of whitening bark flaking off to plaster the ground underfoot.

Fighting against the gales, arms braced headlong against the brunt of the wicked weather, was a figure most small and pale. His feet sank into sticky lemon-colored clay. He had to keep moving; his anxiousness generated a frost at his extremities, his toes white with an icy sheen. He had to keep moving if he didn’t want to freeze to the riverbank. The nearby waters, like his cloak and loose hair, raged against the onslaught of winds. Lightning filled the distant sky. It was midday, but it was dark. It was midday, but it was getting darker.

The shrieking wilds were most unwelcome today. There was a feeling whirling about in the fae’s ribcage. One of change, one of destruction. He assumed it was simply the makings on an oncoming tornado.

Thaynes, he hoped that was all it was.

Against the backdrop of the lashing trees with their deranged and rippling mosses, amid the grey of young light and charged air, Fenn struggled against two itches plaguing his physical form.

His arms were flexible enough to feel his upper back. He knew what was back there; knew but did not know. There was a wrong there. Two lumps, soft and painful underneath the surface, a grinding-up-against his shoulder blades. They had showed up slowly over the last two weeks. It was an uncomfortable feeling, that itching-beneath-the-surface. As if... almost, there was something under there, something moving and quivering and wanting to slide its way out. The fae withdrew his hand and shuddered yet again as he bolstered himself against the weather. This had been going on too long. What was it? He wasn’t sure. He didn’t know. He didn’t really want to know. Maybe he needed a physician or a healer; Nevin was an alchemist. Was that close enough to a physician? Maybe the little fae needed to pop in for a visit…

But he was supposed to be visiting Banri now. The alchemist was far, far away. Back in Corone, back on another continent. Not in Raiaera. He didn’t trust many others to be so helpful. Perhaps, the little fae thought as he braced himself against a fir, it’d be best to simply quash his urge to scratch the wrongness; like how one deal with mosquito bites, simply ignoring the itching until it faded away of its own accord.

There was something else that he wanted to scratch too. A mind-itch, for lack of better words. An urge to crawl into a dark, dry space.

That, too, he was uneasy about scratching.

But he supposed it was going to be scratched anyway. Some shelter was sorely needed; soon. Soon. Before the wind picked him off and carried him away...

[FennWenn]

Up above the trees, Fenn spotted the toothed brow of a castle.

Bent against the winds, he stopped. He squinted. Somehow, the looming shapes seemed familiar to him. He was fairly certain these were close to the faerie-ring Banrion had shown him in his dream; that they had been in the background of the glimpse of forest he had caught, within the confines of the silver pool. Certainly, they looked a sturdy place to rest himself while the tornado passed. Silently chortling to himself, Fenn trudged through the wavering winds toward its lonely shadow. It was a struggle to keep on his feet. The weather was picking up, now tearing small branches off of trees, causing him to stumble and slide through the mud and needles. In the first instant that he hit the rugged rock path leading up to the fortification, he took off. Coarse rocks made better purchase for his hoary toes.

The air’s resistance against him diminished as he found his way into the castle’s vast entryway. It was a bit of a grand entrance, but in heavy disrepair.

Chunks of stone crumbled off of the elaborate engravings etched into the stone frame of the doors. Fenn would have had a great deal of difficulty forcing them open, but for a section where the nails had rusted out of their thick planks. With a weary shove, they were foist from their holdings, falling inward with a crack and a plume of dust. Panting, Fenn squeezed inside. What he found was a vast and empty hall. There was little in the way of furniture, and everything in the way of cracked columns. The boy’s dragging steps vibrated in the dead stone. There was, in fact, one aspect of the place that was not bare rock. The old-fashioned windows were veiled by heavy grey drapes, their greasy silks keeping the pine-rot out but not the boring of white moths. Glancing outside, through one of the insect-eaten holes, Fenn observed the castle’s courtyard from his position of relative safety. Outside the glass was a garden that might have once been primly trimmed. Now, it was a sea of rippling ivy, and wildflowers being shredded by hungry gales.

This was an abandoned place. A hesitance filled the fae as he glanced back into his temporary, impersonal shelter, prickly snowflakes popping into existence around him. He wouldn’t expect to find anyone else here.

Yet, that suited some deep, darkened piece of him just fine. The inside-itch, the one that was quietly begging for him to go deeper into the castle, wanted him to be alone. Alone was safe — supposedly. He didn’t know why, though. He just felt vulnerable.

His mind wandered back to someone who would be safe to be alone with.

Staring back through the door into the seething, cloudy turmoil and wondered if Daugi was alright. He slowly moved to poke his head out his makeshift entrance, wincing at the twigs and dirt that blew into his eyes. A shaky breath left him. They’d been separated — just for bit — while she had investigated the darker corners of the forest for enough prey to sate her hunger. She was a large beast. Large beasts needed large meals, and Fenn was normally perfectly happy to let her have the alone time she needed to feed herself. But the threat of that tornado had come rolling in, and now…

The little fae shivered, and pulled a brass whistle from his bag. Fweeeeeee! it shrilled. The sound echoed out of the narrow confines of the castle entryway, fading into a lonely sigh.

Holding his breath, Fenn waited. He waited. And waited. No howl answered his call.

Eventually, the fae had to shake his head and retreat into the building, no longer able to take the winds yanking at his neck. She was strong, he reassured himself. She was smarter than he like to give her credit for too. Wherever she was, Daugi was going to take care of herself.

A bout of dizziness had grabbed him by the back of his head. The mind-itching was a throb now. A need. To the dark. To a dark, deep corner now. To somewhere hidden and hollow. Somewhere to not be found. Gripping his skull, Fenn started down the castle’s hallways. Maybe the weather had worn him down. All he knew was that he wanted a place to sleep. He wanted to just forget the hell of gales outside; forget it until it went away and his wolf came back.

[FennWenn]

No. No. Too spacious. Too open, too bright. What he looked for eluded him, and yet, he kept marching on. Through dark halls, through dank rooms, through his wobbly-kneed state and incrementally increasing fatigue. He breathed in dust that must have been centuries undisturbed and rubbed his watering eyes against that which he’d stirred up with lurching strides. His earlier struggles through the weather had left him terribly off-balance, and it was taking a long time to right his senses again. An uncomfortably long time.

Finally, he came across one that felt right to the itchings.

It was a bedroom. A child’s bedroom, judging by the moth-eaten stuffed animals scattered about, and the cheery white and blue color scheme of anything painted or fabric’d. Make no mistake though, this room was in no better shape than the rest of the house. The colors were darkened by deep shadows. There were no windows to shed their light; only dead lanterns and half-used candles. The fae wandered in. His eyes drew upward to a hanging mobile of cotton-sewn clouds. A part of him wished he had something to start fires on him, so that he could explore the room in greater detail. But the itching part of him had no protests. This was small, cozy, dry. This would do.

Do for what? Why?

The itchings gave him no answer that he could hear.

There were other things that weren’t forthcoming with their stories either. Fenn wandered over a lumpy rug to part the canopy of the bed. He ran his hand along the faded duvet, staring blankly at the dust the accumulated on his fingers, and intricate wispy patterns underneath the settlings. This place really hadn’t been inhabited in ages, had it? Though, perhaps this state of emptiness wasn’t that long to an elf, was it? This was Raiaera after all. Letting out a held breath, the sprite wiped his hands off on his cloak. It occurred to him that he’d probably never know the circumstances behind this castle’s ruin, or who once lived here. He’d only know what little he could through what had been left behind. The physical building, the furniture that had been forgotten… he could only speculate.

Perhaps natural disaster.

Perhaps a coup. Perhaps fright caused by the distant machinations of the long-dead Corpse War. Perhaps, a chain reaction of people heading out for greener pastures.

Perhaps, nothing he knew of at…

[FennWenn]

Mid-speculation, Fenn felt his legs give. There was no warning. Only the sudden realization that the floor was swooping up to his face, and the split-second panic of grabbing the bed by one of its canopy poles. Clinging to the frame, breathing heavily, he made a pair of split-second observations. There was no frost on his hands, nor the pole. And he shouldn’t be this exhausted.

This didn’t

feel

right.

Fenn’s head snapped up, eyes widened. Despite being out in a breezy abandoned castle in the middle of an autumn tornado, he realized that he didn’t feel the cold anymore. Even if he was immune to the harsh bite of it, normally, he still had a sense of the temperature around him. So why did air slowly grow hotter and hotter around him, pressing much too heavy and dry on his skin? And what heat was this within him? Explanations raced through his mind as he let go of the bed and eased himself into a sitting position. Did he have a fever? Had he come down with something awful? Was there some odd magic in the air?

Maybe he just needed to lay down for a bit.

When he touched a hand to his forehead, he found a thin sheen of cool-but-unfrozen sweat. Fenn stared at the clear liquid on his fingers. Fever, he decided. Definitely fever. Sighing, he stretched. His bag was slipped off his shoulder. Casting it aside, he set about peeling his icy cloak off of him, and then attempted to do the same with his shirt. With his uncomfortable warmth, he couldn’t stand to wear them any longer. For a moment, the boy simply shivered in his threadbare sweater and stared at the pile of green cloth on the dark carpeting and wondered if he was coming down with anything deadly serious. His heartbeat fluttered warily. His back crawled with an itchiness that shook him all the way down to his nails. Eventually, the sweater was wrestled off as well and pushed aside.

At least, Fenn thought as he lowered his head, the musty rug wasn’t much different than sleeping on loose soil. Here he was, sick and shivery in the middle of nowhere. “Fuck,” the fae mouthed. He was not used to being ill. It did not happen often. He did not like it.

The mobile above was still. There were no frosty breezes to disturb it from its place.

As his eyes fluttered shut, the young puck reached out into the empty air, faintly wishing that his fingers would meet dark, coarse fur; he wished that Daugi was here. Having her to hold onto would have been a Thaynesend at that moment. Fenn didn’t have anyone to admit it to, but he was a little frightened. A bit fearful. Afraid that, in the rain and the aloneness of these suffocating stone walls, he would die. But perhaps he was just being overly dramatic. He was good at that… he was very good…

Heaving a sigh too warm and too dry, Fenn’s eyelids slid closed.

[FennWenn]

The forest was large, luminous, and rich. Just enough light filtered down for disorderly ferns to grow amid the leaves and twigs dusting the earth’s skin. Silent branches waved from every tree, and vines of blossoming morning glories, which grew dispersed and sparingly, clashed with the otherwise green view. A cacophony of wild sounds resonated through the air. Most belonged to insects, their thrumming muffling the occasional calls of birds of prey gliding unseen in over the forest.

There was frost on the ground. It crunched under the weight of him as he stood up. Fenn breathed in the crisp air and stretched, toes squishing the icy dirt.

There was frost on the ground, and the air was warm.

The puck glanced about, frowning. Fenn’s recent experiences delving into dreams had taught him to recognize when he was in one, but this one felt off to him in some unexplainable way. There was a strength to its edges. He closed his eyes, feeling warm sunlight on his face. When he mentally reached out to figure out where Banrion was within the dream — she was usually present in the lucid ones — he ran into a wall. A hard, inescapable edge. The only one here was him.

Him, and him.

The fluttering sight of the other-him, perched in the tangle of branches above like a bird about to take flight, caused Fenn to flinch in surprise. It was him, but it was not him. It was him, but with nicked ears and heavy eyes, and deep dark bags under those eyes. It was him with rosy skin and raven-dark hair. It was him, but with black shackles and chains dripping off his wrists and ankles. It was him with black blood trailing off his hands in a steady stream. The thick ooze glopped to the leaf litter below with nary a sound.

“Don’t be scared,” the other him said, smiling only slightly as he squinted against the sunlight. His voice was recognizably like Fenn’s inner voice... but older. More like a young adult than a child. “I’m just you.”

Fenn took a step back, ears flat to his skull. <Are you?>

“Yep. A very different part of you. Minds are complicated places. Most people have multiple faces inside themselves, you know. You could call me an accumulative form of your darkest experiences, your harder half, your sense for survival, or a manifestation of more Mortal Concerns, if you’d like?” The other Fenn shook his head and stared downward into the grass, dark bangs drifting in front of his eyes. “If things go how I hope they might, then you’ll forget about me anyway. We have a lot to discuss and nearly no time to make some really important choices.”

Fenn (his main self?) hesitated, and crossed his arms.

Mortality — that was what the not-him-him was to be called that for now — sighed, sensing his unease. “Just cooperate with me here? Things are going to get really weird if you don’t. Like usual, we’re breaking a few rules-“

<What rules are we breaking here?> Fenn asked as he took a cross-legged seat in the dirt. It was an inquiry he couldn’t quite hold back. The lack of context for all of this vexed him.

The other-him shrugged. “Mmm. Let's see. I can’t tell you the specifics — that might fuck things up? But I guess I can vaguely say that they’re ones of causality and psychology. It’s probably not a good idea to for a person to split themself up this strongly. In our case though… I’m mostly subconscious shit anyway? And this is supposed to be Big Fuckin’ Change Time anyway. So we should be fine…” Mortality trailed off, and the chains around his wrists clacked as he crossed his arms together, leaning back against his tree’s trunk. “You know what? That’s all the questions we have time for from you today. I ask things now. First; am I a part of you that you really want to keep around? Am I even a part of you that you particularly need? Would I be missed if I was shoved back into the deepest corners of our mind?”

Sharp canines clicked together in Fenn’s mouth as he ground the nonsensical questions around his head. <What? How’m I supposed to- I don’t know- augh! I need to know what do you do. In my head. If you’re a part of me. And, why are you asking me this?>

“Reasons. Look at me. Look at how battered I am.” Mortality’s chains rattled as he lifted his cuffs skyward. A spray of blood landed not two inches away from Fenn, and he winced. “What do you think my job is? I keep a looot of scary shit under lock and key. And I need you to- to agree to kind of…”

The dream was quiet a moment. The breeze, the birds, and even the bugs had vanished. Fenn leaned in toward Mortality’s tree with his head in his hands, frowning. <To kind of..?>

“Kill me.”

[FennWenn]

A soupy storm of white whipped through the forest, cracking wood and withering lush leaves with its intensity. At its center were the two Fenns.

Well, specifically, one of the two Fenns.

Seething incoherently, Fenn — his main sense of self — paced, harsh patterns of frost trailing after his every step. It was difficult to articulate just what he was feeling; there was a lot going on at once. His chest was tight with a stammer of panic, his eyes narrow with anger. Confusion stirred him into frantic motion. Kill? The other him? How? Why? What was even going on here?

Just as placid as before, Mortality watched him rage. “I wondered if this would happen. Maybe I should have phrased that better.”

<Well fucking duh!> Fenn screeched, whirling around to face his other self. His projected voice shook the fabric of the dream. Massive crystals of ice shot up from the ground around him, tearing apart several trees; probably his fault. He was too caught up in his flurry to even turn and stare. <You can’t meet me all of a sudden for the first time out of nowhere and tell me I gotta kill you. Can’t say that you wanna die and act like that’s not a big thing! That’s not okay! That’s really not okay if you’re also kind of a part of me! That’s weird, and creepy, and it freaks me->

“Aaand I’m going to stop you right there. Calm yourself. Before you start off on some tangent about how we should be all perfectly fine — fuck, we’re good at tangents — don’t try to rationalize me off as needing to be some happy, useful bit of your brain. You’re the happy (mostly) useful part of the brain. I’m the bit we quash down because you can’t seem to deal with shit in healthy ways. You can’t deal with the couple of times you’ve almost lost Daugi, you can’t deal with the fucked up monsters you’ve met, you can’t deal with helping Banrion kill Morrighna in cold blood, and you can’t deal with Amari’s betrayal. Right?” Mortality chimed.

<Yeah, but, I wouldn’t’ve guessed a part of me was suicidal though,> he whispered back between agitated hiccoughing. <That’s pretty depressing.>

“I am depressing! That’s why I’m asking for this.” The other him groaned and slumped back, covering his face with his hands. “Everything I’m squashing back — it just keeps coming back to the surface! It’s starting to get unhealthy. Not just for me. For you you. You’re on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Hell, we’re in the middle of one right now. You were musing about loneliness and death not two minutes from passing out!”

Fenn took a deep breath, hands clenched into fists at his side. The storm about him tightened. <But I didn’t want to die. See? I was just sad and sick and all by myself, so I worried about dying! Different.>

Mortality only shook his head.

“That is still not normal for us. Normal for us used to be pretending we weren’t ill so we could go be an idiot and climb the castle’s turrets mid-tornado to see the storm for ourselves. Or something equally ridiculous, just because we could. Do you remember that? I do. It’s my job to remember things.”

What was he supposed to say to that? There wasn’t an easy answer. Still gasping back sobs of panic, Fenn lowered his hands, forcing them to unclench. The blizzard’s breath, the snowflakes and hail chinks raining down around them lightened into nothingness. The entire forest was as pale as a fresh sheet of paper. Slowly, Mortality eased himself off of his branch and fell to the ground — slowly, as if he were sinking through molasses. When he touched down on the frozen earth his feet were muted by the snow. He held out his hand, a gesture made ponderous under the weight of his chains.

“Come on. Come with me. I want a change of scenery. A better place to conclude our business. A better place to help you understand what we need.”

[FennWenn]

A moment passed.

<Fine,> Fenn eventually replied. <But, fuck you?>

“Ghesundteit.”

Uneasily, with a sense of foreboding, Fenn took the hand.

Mortality’s glazed gaze lit up. Silvery winds swirled about them, howling like banshees. As soon as the brief storm whooshed into nothingness, the other him’s hand retreated under his cloak.

The forest in its entirety had vanished. They now stood within a ballroom-like space, decked out in shelf after oaky shelf of vivid books, centered by a table of tea-party implements. Icicle dripped from the vast ceiling to shed silver light down on them. Meanwhile, a glassy ice formed the floor. Fenn tapped it with one shy foot. Frost spun out from his touch, as he willed it, giving the shimmery surface a bit of traction. He grinned, quivering with a wordless chuckle. His seething irritation and confusion wasn’t gone, but it was dampened by wonder. For now.

<This is->

“A library from a dream we had with Banrion, yes,” interrupted Mortality. He skidded across the floor, and grabbed ahold of the tea table with one hand, bringing himself to a sudden stop. His eyes were on a pile of books laid out on the table. They were dusted with stray cubes of sugar and dark spills. “We liked that dream. Didn’t we? So, I took this place for my own. It’s sort of… where I live? Exist? Visualize myself being? I can’t find the words for it. Subconscious things don’t translate well to the conscious. Anyway, it’s a convenient place to visually represent stored knowledge and you should find it comfortable here,” he murmured, easing himself onto the maroon cushion atop one of the several mismatched chairs.

Fenn slowly stamped his way across the ice, leaving a trail of hoar behind. This place did give him a sense of familiarity, at least compared with the forest. But it was still missing one crucial detail. <Can we invite Banri into our dream? I’d feel better with her around,> he admitted as he took a chair for himself.

“No. We’re locked inside of ourselves right now. She is completely incapable of visiting us.”

<Oh.> His ears drooped. <Are there any other mes in here?> So I don’t have to be alone with you, Fenn neglected to mention aloud.

“None that we’re aware of.” Mortality stretched and took a swig out of one of the many teacups scattered about. Once it was empty, he stared at it, then took a bite out of the porcelain. Fenn flinched. It was startling, but… technically allowed? Weird shit and dreams went hand in hand. Yeah, he wasn’t sure how much he liked this steely-eyed other him.

Quietly — out of a need for distraction — he reached for one of the books on the table. It was battered of cover, with little dragonflies embroidered into its leather.

Mortality’s instantly shot out to grab him by the wrist. “Don’t touch that. That’s some snarl of… really early memories. I can’t parse them, they’re so faded.” The mind-figment sighed as Fenn yanked his hand back. “All I’ve figured out is that it’s as far back as those first ten years we spent being a clueless wild thing in the forest, and it ties to our Glamour somehow. Maybe it has to do with learning it in the first place? Or, it could be something else. I don’t know. It’s probably not worth the effort to recover.”

Grumbling as Mortality retreated back into poised normalcy, dragging chains leaving streaks of actual blood on the table’s top, Fenn glanced aside to the tea implements. A cup caught his eye. Green, decorated with lacy patterns and a singular snowflake.

He remembered that cup!

Eagerly, the fae grabbed for it and took a sip of the dark brew. Just as quickly, he spat it out, squeaking and grimacing.

The taste of fae blood lingered in his mouth even as he wiped his tongue on his sleeve. How could he have forgotten that tiny detail? Fenn stared at the black liquid pooling on the table, his heart jerking in his chest. His thoughts flashed back to grey eyes, lifeless as marbles, and a table table of tea-things tipped over. He thought of clawed hands grasping for his throat-

Suddenly, amid a clatter of chains, the teacup was whisked from his hand, and a book was slammed down on top of the spill. Fenn hazily glanced up to meet the gaze of one very squinched-cheeked, irked-eyed Mortality.

“Whatever you do, don’t panic, dumbfuck. We’re in a pretty delicate state right now. Our physical body is… well, it’s doing some things. You have a big freak out again before accepting my deal, and I can’t say how or if it’ll affect us.”

<We sleepwalking?>

Mortality flipped idly through the pages of a random book, not even glancing at it. His eyes were on Fenn. “No. We’re not even moving. It’s a good thing. Trust me. Now, enough of me babysitting you. I think you’ve had enough time to simmer down. Ready for me to tell you what needs to happen?”

Muffling his urge to reply with something distractingly rude in turn — babysitting? — Fenn nodded.

“What we need is for you to make a pact with me. With yourself, really. We’re fae. We can pull shit like this if we want.” Mortality glanced at the book he slammed down on the tea spill. It was a Salvarian tale; The Snow Queen. “While we’re in this state of flux, we can mess around with things. Mess around with our mind. When I said I need you to kill me, I meant it metaphorically. I don’t need you to stab me or anything. Just need you to verbally and clearly agree to… put me to sleep, as it will. To thrust me so far back into our mind that the word ‘consciousness’ is meaningless echo of reality. And, to let me take some of our baggage with me, while leaving behind all the practical knowledge I’ve been sorting out of said baggage.” He sighed, shuddering. “Like all barters, this comes at a price. And no. I’m not at liberty to say it.”

<Oh. That’s... all? So you’re telling me,> Fenn rephrased, head in his hands, <that if I take this offer, I can go back to being dumb and happy? Forget all the bad things that give me nightmares?>

“That’s the deal.”

<Yes,> the puck replied instantly.

Something bright, like the glint off of a silver coin, filled his other self’s eyes. He made an expression that was akin to a smile. Perhaps, in the same way that Mortality himself was akin to Fenn. “Re-articulate your ‘yes’.”

It was a very Banrion thing of him to say; and the puck knew exactly what his other-self meant by that.

<I, Fennik Glenwey,> he telegraphed firmy, <promise to shove you and your weird baggage so far away into the back of my mind that darkness will be your new sunlight, so that maybe I won’t be so dreary so much in the waking world, because apparently all this mopeyness is your fault or something. Or at least, I’m gonna say it is, because you refuse to tell me jack shit.>

A prickly shrug rose out of Mortality’s thin shoulders. “You know what? Close enough. Brace yourself now; what’s coming won’t be easy. Not for you, anyway.”

Winds thick with snow rushed past the bookshelves, ruffling the pages of open tomes as they gathered closely around Fenn and his counterpart. The table and chair vanished under their touch. There was nothing underneath him now but frigid, blizzardy air.

[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.