Kindred Folk - Velvet Wings

[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.